152 PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE GULPH STREAM. 



whole track of ocean from the coast of Florida ; and as the weed 

 which again pervades the Saragossa or Weedy Sea, and the whole 

 region of the trade winds, from the coast of Spain to the continent of 

 America, is precisely the same vegetable matter with only an appear- 

 ance of greater age and decay from longer immersion in the water, it is 

 clear that the entire mass has originated in, and been brought round 

 from, the shores of Florida. Considering the recent extension of our 

 knowledge upon the subject of the direction and length of the cur- 

 rent, and viewing the shape of the coast of Spain, projecting as a 

 promontory far into the Atlantic, it is apparent that a fresh impetus 

 is here given to the stream by the resistance of the coast, and we 

 venture to assert with confidence, that the equinoctial current of 

 Humbolt is connected with, and a continuation of, the Gulph Stream. 

 Indeed this weed is altogether peculiar to the shores of Florida, and 

 is not known to exist in any other sea, its rich load of berries being 

 the produce of the warm temperature of the Gulph Stream, and as 

 the experiments of Mr. Perkins prove that the temperature of the 

 sea is icy cold at not an immoderate depth, and as it is clear that no 

 vegetation can exist in the absence of heat, the opinion that the 

 vegetable matter which covers the Weedy Sea grows upon the spot 

 is manifestly not correct. Nor does similar, or indeed any other 

 weed appear upon the surface of the sea in any other quarter of the 

 world : all which circumstances, and the well determined existence of 

 the equinoctial current, brings us to the conclusion that the Gulph 

 Stream thus winds its way in one immense and perpetual circle, from 

 Florida to the coast of Spain, and from Spain to the continent of 

 America. 



The opinion of Dr. Franklin that the Gulph Stream is created by 

 the pressure of the trade winds, would appear however to be not very 

 substantially supported by other appearances, particularly as its cur- 

 rent is by a great degree the most rapid in the months of summer, 

 when the winds are the lightest and most variable, and even the 

 longest continuation of the calms of the West Indies produces no 

 diminution in its speed. The singularity of the high temperature of 

 the water of the Gulph Stream, which is always about 70 degrees of 

 Farenheit, and so far above the temperature of the sea even in the 

 tropical latitudes, induces to the belief that submarine volcanic agency 

 is probably instrumental in its origin. The probability has also been 

 gravely asserted of its issuing by a subterranean passage from the 

 Pacific Ocean to the Gulph of Mexico, founded upon the absurd 

 doctrine laid down by former navigators, that the level of the Pacific 

 is fourteen feet higher than that of the Atlantic and the Gulph of 

 Mexico ; but as the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans 

 commingle at Cape Horn, it is certain, that upon the principle that 

 water will find an universal level, there can exist no difference what- 

 ever between the level of the oceans upon either of the coasts of 

 America, and that the long received doctrine of this inequality, and 

 the consequent existence and force of a subterranean current, are a 

 mere mass of error. Some slight effect is probably produced by the 

 entrance of the waters of the Mississippi, for this river is of prodi- 

 gious depth, unfathomable for a hundred miles from its mouth, and 



