OCEAN CURRENTS 173 



pouring in from the south-east escapes through the Strait 

 of Florida as a river 50 miles wide, 350 fathoms deep, 

 flowing at five miles an hour. This is the celebrated '' Gulf 

 Stream," to which, directly or indirectly, we owe the genial 

 climate of North-west Europe as compared with correspond- 

 ing latitudes in North America. In latitude 58° N. off the 

 Hebrides, in July the temperature of the sea is 13° C. 

 (55-4° F.), while at the same latitude off the coast of Labrador, 

 in the same month, the temperature is 4-5° C. (40-1° F.). 

 Since the advantages in cUmate enjoyed by the eastern 

 borders of the North Atlantic are due, even if indirectly, 

 to the Gulf Stream, the origin, extent, and distribution of 

 that great current must be matters not only of scientific but 

 of surpassing popular interest. 



The Gulf Stream has been recognized by navigators since 

 very early times. It is indicated on a seventeenth-century 

 map, and Benjamin Franklin, in 1770, pubHshed a well- 

 known representation of it, which has been reproduced in 

 many books. '* There is a river in the ocean " are the words 

 with which Captain M. F. Maury commenced the chapter on 

 the Gulf Stream in his Bhysical Geography of the Sea (1860), 

 and he goes on to tell us that its banks and its bottom are 

 of cold water, while its current is warm, and it is more rapid 

 than the Mississippi or the Amazon, and its volume more than 

 a thousand times greater. Its waters are not only warmer 

 but are Salter and of a bluer colour than those of the sea 

 through which they flow. It arises, as a " gulf stream," 

 in the Gulf of Mexico, flows out to the Atlantic by the Florida 

 Pass, and runs in a northerly course past Cape Hatteras 

 towards the Banks of Newfoundland, where it turns more 

 to the east, gradually widening and losing speed and heat 

 as it goes. It is 32 miles wide where it emerges from 

 the Narrows of Bemini, between Florida and the Bahamas, 

 and flows with a velocity of 4 knots ; off Cape Hatteras 

 it has widened to 75 miles and slackened to 3 knots, 

 while to the south of the Great Bank of Newfound- 



