INFLUENCE OF THE GULF STREAM UPON CLIMATES. 59 



Stream back to its sources, and piled up the water in the Gulf to 

 tlie height of thirty feet. The Ledbury Snow attempted to ride 

 it out. AVhen it abated, she found herself high up on the dry 

 land, and discovered that she had let go her anohor among the tree- 

 tops on Elliott's Key. The Florida Keys were inundated many 

 feet, and, it is said, the scene presented in the Gulf Stream was 

 never surpassed in awful sublimity on the ocean. The water thus 

 dammed up is said to have rushed out with wonderful velocity 

 against the fury of the gale, producing a sea that beggared de- 

 scription. 



81. The "great hurricane" of 1780 commenced at Barbadoes. 

 In it the bark was blown from the trees, and the fruits of the 

 earth destroyed ; the very bottom and depths of the sea were up- 

 rooted, and the waves rose to such a height that forts and castles 

 were washed away, and their great guns carried about in the air 

 like chaff; houses were razed, ships were wrecked, and the bodies 

 of men and beasts lifted up in the air and dashed to pieces in the 

 storm. At the different islands, not less than twenty thousand 

 persons lost their lives on shore, while farther to the north, the 

 "Sterling Castle" and the "Dover Castle," men-of-war, went 

 down at sea, and fifty sail were driven on shore at the Bermudas. 



82. Several years ago the British Admiralty set on foot inqui- 

 ries as to the cause of the storms in certain parts of the Atlantic, 

 which so often rage with disastrous effects to navigation. The 

 result may be summed up in the conclusion to which the investi- 

 gation led : that they are occasioned by the irregularity between 

 the temperature of the Gulf Stream and of the neighboring regions, 

 both in the air and water. 



83. The habitual dampness of the climate of the British Isl- 

 ands, as weU as the occasional dampness of that along the Atlan- 

 tic coasts of the United States when easterly winds prevail, is at- 

 tributable also to the Gulf Stream. These winds come to us load- 

 ed with vapors gathered from its warm and smoking waters. The 

 Gulf Stream carries the temperature of summer, even in the dead 

 of winter, as far north as the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. 



84. One of the poles of maximum cold is, according to theory, 

 situated in latitude 80° north, longitude 100° west. It is distant 



