190 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



Sea : it flows south on the surface, north below ; Behring's Strait 

 being too shallow to admit of mighty under currents, or to permit 

 the introduction from the polar basin of any large icebergs into 

 the Pacific. Behring's Strait, in geographical position, answers 

 to Davis' 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 warm waters of the Pacific, a shore-line 

 intervenes; being cooled here, and having their specific gravity 

 changed, they are turned down through a sort of North Sea along 

 the western coast of the continent toward Mexico. They appear 

 here as a cold current. The effect of this body of cool water upon 

 the littoral climate of California is very marked. Being cool, it 

 gives freshness and strength to the sea-breeze of that coast in 

 summer time, when the "cooling sea-breeze" is most grateful. 

 These contrasts show the principal points of resemblance and of 

 contrast between the currents and aqueous circulation in the two 

 oceans. The ice-bearing currents of the North Atlantic are not 

 repeated as to volume in the Korth Pacific, for there is no nursery 

 for icebergs like the frozen ocean and its Atlantean arms. The 

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

 the Arctic, cradle the icebergs for the Nortli Pacific. 



892. The Lagulhas current, as the Mozambique is sometimes 

 The Lagulhas Cur- callcd, skirts thc coast of Katal as our Gulf Stream 



rent and the storms ^ , , n r^ • ^ ' i^ ' 'xxi 



of the Cape.- docs the coast 01 Georgia, where it gives rise to the 



most grand and terrible displays of thunder and lightning that are 

 any where else to be witnessed. Missionaries thence report to me 

 the occurrence there of thunder-storms in which for hours con- 

 secutively they have seen an uninterrupted blaze of lightning, 

 and heard a continuous peal of thunder. Reaching the Lagulhas 

 banks, the current spreads itself out there in the midst of cooler 

 waters, and becomes the centre of one of the most remarkable 

 storm-regions in the world. My friend and fellow-laborer, Lieut. 

 Andrau, of the Dutch Navy, has made the storms upon these 

 banks a specialty for study. He has pointed out from the ab- 

 stract logs at Utrecht the existence there of some curious and 

 interesting atmospherical phenomena to which this body of warm 

 water gives rise. The storms that it calls up come rushing from 

 the westward — sweeping along parallel with the coast of Africa, 



