CURRENTS OF THE SEA. I37 



the climate of California (State) resembling that of Spain ; the 

 sandy plains and rainless regions of Lower California reminding 

 one of Africa, with its deserts between the same parallels, &c. 



Moreover, the North Pacific, like the North Atlantic, is envel- 

 oped, where these warm waters go, w^ith mists and fogs, and streak- 

 ed with ligJitning. The Aleutian Islands are as renowned for foo-s 

 and mists as are the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. 



258. A surface current flows north through Behring's Strait 

 into the Arctic Sea ; but in the Atlantic the current is from, not 

 into the Arctic Sea : it flows south on the surface, north below ; 

 Behring's Strait being too shallow to admit of mighty under cur- 

 rents, or to permit the introduction from the polar basin of any 

 large icebergs into the Pacific. 



259. Behring's Strait, in geographical position, answers to Da- 

 vis's Strait in the Atlantic ; and Alaska, with its Aleutian chain of 

 islands, to Greenland. But instead of there being to the east of 

 Alaska, as there is to the east of Greenland, an escape into the 

 polar basin for these w\arm waters, the Pacific shore-line inter- 

 venes, and turns them down through a sort of North Sea along the 

 western coast of the continent toward Mexico. 



260. These contrasts show the principal points of resemblance 

 and of difference between the currents and aqueous circulation in 

 the two oceans. The ice-bearing currents of the North Atlantic 

 are not repeated as to degree in the North Pacific, for there is no 

 nursery for icebergs like the frozen ocean and its arms. The seas 

 of Okotsk and Kamtschatka alone, and not the frozen seas of the 

 Arctic, cradle the icebergs for the North Pacific. 



There is, at times at least, another current of warm water from 

 the Indian Ocean. It finds its way south midway between Africa 

 and Australia. The whales (Plate IX.) give indications of it. 

 Nor need we be surprised at such a vast flow of warm water as 

 these three currents indicate from the Indian Ocean, when we rec- 

 ollect that this ocean {^ 255) is land-locked on the north, and that 

 the temperature of its waters is frequently as high as 90° Fahr. 



261. There must, therefore, be immense volumes of water flow- 

 ing into the Indian Ocean to supply the Vv^aste created by these 

 w^arm currents, and the fifteen or twenty feet of water that obser- 

 vations {^ 33) tell us are yearly carried off from this ocean by 

 evaporation. 



