KURO-SIWO, ANALOGOUS TO ATLANTIC GULF STREAM. 429 



pole and throwing it to the west, along the shores and soundings of our Atlantic coast. The 

 Grand Bank itself, Mr. Eedfleld thinks, is less a cause than an effect. Now there are precisely 

 similar currents, warm and cold, with the same relative position too, on the coast of Japan. It 

 may be that the first nortJiioard direction of both currents may be produced by the configuration 

 of the eastern sides of America and Asia respectively, but their turn to the eastward afterwards 

 is probably not influenced by any agency of the land in its shape or position. 



There are other analogies which Mr. Bent remarked. These are found in the strata of cold 

 water -in the gulf stream, marked by Professor Bache on the charts of the coast survey in the 

 report of 1853, and corresponding strata, derived entirely from the observations made on our 

 Japan expedition. A comparison of temperatures of the two streams (Atlantic and Pacific) 

 showed a striking coincidence. The maximum was the same ; but in the Kuro-siwo, the differ- 

 ence between its temperature and that of the ocean, projier to the latitude where taken, was 

 somewhat greater than in the gulf stream. 



There is also a sea-weed floating in the Kuro-siwo, similar in appearance to the fiicus natana 

 of the gulf stream ; specimens of it were collected, but unfortunately lost before reaching the 

 hands of the scientific botanists to whom it was to be submitted. We cannot therefore say it 

 was the same plant in the classifications of science ; but to a sailor's eye there was no difference 

 between it and the weed of the gulf stream. Lieutenant M. F. Maury is of opinion that this 

 current in the Pacific has its origin in the Indian ocean, where the temperature is much greater 

 than in the Caribbean sea, .and where the waters, obstructed on the north by tropical lands, 

 must somewhere make a current by which to escape, but this supposition appears to us ques- 

 tionable. 



While steering along the shore to the northward the steamers, being about six miles from the 

 land, and off Isomura, approached a fleet of fishing-boats, where there was noticed a discolora- 

 tion of the water and an unusual drift of sea-weed. Soundings were then taken with the deep- 

 sea-lead, and seventy-four, and then eighty fathoms, with a bottom of fine black sand, were 

 found. The vessels still continuing to run along the shore within five or six miles, and 

 Dai-ho-saki or White Cape being made, another cluster of fishing-boats was noticed under sail, 

 apparently trailing for fish. About them the water was observed broken and discolored, and 

 when the steamers had reached within a mile of the spot, their engines were stopped, and the 

 lead again thrown, when soundings were obtained in thirty fathoms, coral bottom. The ships' 

 course being changed from northeast by east to southeast, and running slowly and cautiously, 

 they came suddenly on the eastern edge of the broken water into twenty-one fathoms, with what 

 is called overfalls, and a bottom of coral as before. There seemed every reason to believe, from 

 these indications, that there was a dangerous ledge lying directly in the way along the coast, at 

 a distance from the land where such a danger would bo hardly looked for. The Commodore 

 would have anchored and examined this ledge had it not been for the near approach of night ; 

 and as for waiting until next day, the necessity of being at Hakodadi on the 19th of May, made 

 it advisable not to lose any time by delay. It is true, with good weather, there was every reason 

 to expect that the voyage might be accomplished in a day or two before the time appointed, but 

 with the frequency of fogs about the Straits of Sangar, and the experience of the vexatious 

 detentions caused by those annoyances, there could be no certainty in the calculation. 



During the day time the course was kept along the coast, although at night the ships were 

 hauled a little off. On the 15th of May, Cape Kurosaki came into sight, with its elevated 



