§ 70, 71. THE GULF STREAISI. I9 



CHAPTER 11. 



§ 70-143. — THE GULF STREAM. 



70. There is a river in tlie ocean : in the severest droughts 

 Its color. it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never 



overflows ; its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its 

 current is of warm ; the Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its 

 mouth is in the Arctic Seas. It is the Gulf Stream. There is in 

 the world no other such majestic flow of waters. Its current is 

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

 more than a thousand times greater. Its waters, as far out from 

 the Gulf as the Carolina coasts, are of an indigo blue. They are 

 BO distinctly marked that their line of junction with the common 

 sea- water may be traced by the eye. Often one half of the ves- 

 sel may be perceived floatmg in Gulf Stream water, while the 

 other half is in common water of the sea — so sharp is the line, 

 and such the want of affinity between those waters, and such, too, 

 the reluctance, so to speak, on the part of those of the Gulf Stream 

 to mingle with the littoral waters of the sea. 



71. At the salt-works in France, and along the shores of the 

 How caused. Adriatic, where the ^^salines^^ are carried on by the 



process of solar evaporation, there is a series of vats or pools 

 through which the water is passed as it comes from the sea, and 

 is reduced to the briny state. The longer it is exposed to evap- 

 oration, the Salter it grows, and the deeper is the hue of its blue, 

 until crystallization is about to commence, when the now deep 

 blue water puts on a reddish tint. Now the waters of the Gulf 

 Stream are Salter (§ 102) than the littoral waters of the sea through 

 which they flow, and hence we can account for the deep indigo 

 blue which all navigators observe off the Carolina coasts. The 

 salt-makers are in the habit of judging of the richness of the sea- 

 water in salt by its color — the greener the hue, the fresher the 

 water. "We have in this, perhaps, an explanation of the contrasts 

 which the waters of the Gulf Stream present with those of the 

 Atlantic, as well as of the light green of the North Sea and other 



