194: PnTSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOEOLOGY. 



rainless regions of Lower California reminding one of Africa, 

 with its deserts between the same parallels, etc. Moreover, the 

 North Pacific, like the North Atlantic, is enveloped, where these 

 warm waters go, with mists and fogs, and streaked with liglitning. 

 The Aleutian Islands are almost as renowned for fogs and mists 

 as are the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. A surface current 

 flows north from Bchring'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 currents, or to permit the in- 

 troduction 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 cold 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 resem 

 blance and of contrast between the currents and aqueous circula- 

 tion in the two oceans. The ice-bearing currents of the North 

 Atlantic are not repeated as to volume in the North 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 

 North Pacific. 



392. The LagulJias Current and the storms of the Cape. — The 

 Lagulhas current, as the Mozambique is sometimes called, skirts 

 the coast of Natal as our Gulf Stream does the coast of Georgia, 

 where it gives rise to the most grand and terrible displays 

 of thunder and lightning that are anywhere else to be 

 witnessed. Missionaries thence report to me the occurrence 

 there of thunder-storms in which for hours consecutively they 

 have seen an uninterrupted blaze of lightning, and heard a 

 continuous peal of thunder. Peaching the Lagulhas banks, the 

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



