NOTES ON SABLE ISLAND—MACDONALD. 25 
Mary’s Bay, but the eastern part becomes lost. It is probably 
checked by the northern limit of the gulf stream, and turned 
into a more N. E. direction.” 
In that same year, however, it is recorded by CARPENTER, 
that while laying the Atlantic cable in lat. 51° N., and lon. 38° 
W., a heavy storm came down upon them, and they were obliged 
to cut the cable. A red buoy was attached to it by a long wire 
rope, which, however, soon after broke loose and drifted away. 
Seventy-six days after this buoy was seen by a West India mail 
steamer in Lat. 42° N., lon. 40°; having travelled due south 600 
nautical miles, a rate of about eight miles a day, directly against 
the gulf stream and prevalent winds, which can be only account- 
ed for by the fact of the great length of wire rope that was 
hanging in the deeper polar current. 
This has been further demonstrated by deeply-submerged 
icebergs being carried into and across the gulf stream, and being 
seen repeatedly as far south as 36° lat., by which it is inferred 
that the deeply-immersed portion offered more resistance to the 
lower current than to the shallow surface current, and was thus 
borne southward across the gulf stream, 
The other portion of the polar current, when it impinges on 
the gulf stream at the great bank, becomes deflected to the west- 
ward, partially by contact with the great bank, and in its course 
its northern edge sweeps around Cape Race, into St. Mary’s and 
the other bays north, until losing momentum it falls back and 
joins the main body of the current. This portion, sweeping 
around and into those bays, is commonly called the indraught 
by mariners, and to it, being accelerated by certain storms, is 
attributed the loss of the “Cedar Grove,” at Canso, and the Crom- 
well boats at Cape Race. 
The southern edge interlaces the gulf stream, and carries 
western bound vessels at such a rate as frequently leads mariners 
to miscalculate their position with reference to this island; to 
which fact are attributable many of the wrecks. 
Capt. Darpy, a former superintendent of the Island, in a 
letter to Blunt’s Coast Pilot, with regard to the strength of this 
polar current says: “The most of the wrecks occurring here 
