Behavior of the Atlantic : 39 



are caught up in the Florida Current which is the beginning of the 

 Gulf Stream and carried rapidly between the north coast of Cuba and 

 Key West in Florida; then north between the east coast of Florida 

 and the Bahama Bank; the Gulf Stream then carries them north and 

 east in a wide arc; out in midocean the Gulf Stream gradually loses 

 some of its speed and spreads out in area (technicians now refer to 

 this portion as the North Atlantic Drift) ; but it is recognizable as 

 simply a continuation of the Gulf Stream and our Central American 

 logs continue leisurely northward and eastward toward the European 

 coast; then the drift begins to divide and separate in smaller currents; 

 one of these continues to curve in a clockwise arc and would deliver 

 logs to the Bay of Biscay, the Portuguese or the Spanish coast; an- 

 other flows past Ireland and Scotland and on up the west coast of 

 Norway past the North Cape and on into the Arctic; one current, still 

 warm, flows north and then west in a counterclockwise fashion and 

 is known as the Arminger Current, running south of Iceland in the 

 direction of Greenland. 



Thus the Atlantic without human assistance accomplishes a natu- 

 ral intercontinental export-from-America import-into-Europe trade in 

 timber. The fact that men have used these timbers when they were 

 sound after their arrival in Europe and that at least one ancient medi- 

 eval church {stavektrJ{) in Norway is reported to contain Central 

 American timber does not alter the nature of the original case. Nor 

 does the fact that nowadays cut and sawn timber occasionally appears 

 along with the natural product. 



While this may sound like a unilateral trade in which the New 

 World gives and the Old World receives, the Atlantic is really more 

 impartial and offers another deal under which the East gives and 

 the West receives. 



Explorers and other travelers who have visited Greenland have, 

 from time to time, commented on the fact that the Greenland Eski- 

 mos on both coasts made carvings out of wood, used it in their 

 weapons and, when they could get it, in their structures such as ca- 

 noes and houses. This was often a puzzle to the travelers for no trees 

 of sufficient size to yield a piece of timber had grown in Greenland 

 within the memory of man. The answer, of course, is that the Eski- 

 mos have been using driftwood and that this wood to them is a treas- 

 ured possession. The woods that the Eskimos have used have almost 

 invariably come from the forests of Siberia. Trees from the Siberian 

 forests have been carried into the Arctic Sea by rivers like the Ob and 

 the Lena in the spring and summer. When the freeze-up comes, they 



