398 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



in the middle. In the Korth Atlantic and North Pacific, on the 

 contrary, the warm water appears to divide the cold, and to 

 squeeze it out along the land at the sides. The impression made 

 by the cold cm-rent from Baffin's Bay upon the Gulf Stream is 

 strikingly beautiful. 



743. 2he great hend in the Gulf Stream. — Another feature of the 

 sea expressed by this plate is a sort of reflection or recast of the 

 shore-line in the tem'perature of the water. This feature is most 

 striking in the North Pacific and Indian Oceans. The remark- 

 able intrusion of the cool into the volume of warm waters to the 

 southward of the Aleutian Islands is not unlike that (§ 731) 

 which the cool waters from Davis' Straits make in the Atlantic 

 upon the Gulf Stream. In sailing through this " horse-shoe," or 

 bend in the Gulf Stream (§ 731), Captain N. B. Grant, of the 

 American ship " Lady Arbella," bound from Hamburgh to New 

 York, in May, 1854, passed, from daylight to noon, twenty-four 

 large " bergs," besides several small ones, "the whole ocean, as 

 far as the eye could reach, being literally covered with them, I 

 should," he continued, "judge the average height of them above 

 the suiface of the sea to be about sixty feet ; some fi.ve or six of 

 them were at least twice that height, and, with their frozen peaks 

 jutting up in the most fantastic shapes, presented a truly sublime 

 spectacle." 



744. Tlie Jiorse-shoe in the Ja^an current, — The " horse-shoe " of 

 cold in the warm water of the North Pacific, though extending 

 5 degrees farther towards the south, cannot be the harbour for 

 such icebergs. The cradle of those of the Atlantic was perhaps 

 in the Frozen Ocean, for they may have come thence through 

 Baffin's Bay. But in the Pacific there is no nurseiy for them. 

 The water in Behring's Strait is too shallow to let them pass 

 from that ocean into the Pacific, and the climates of Eussian 

 America do not favour the formation of large bergs. But, 

 though we do not find in the North Pacific the physical con- 

 ditions which generate icebergs like those of the Atlantic, we 

 find them as abundant with fogs. The line of s'eparation between 

 the warm and cold water assures us of these conditions. 



745. Tlie animalcidw of the sea. — What beautiful, grand, and 

 benign ideas do we not see expressed in that immense body of 

 warm waters which are gathered together in the middle of the 

 Pacific and Indian Oceans ! It is the womb of the sea. In it 

 coral islands innumerable have been fashioned, and pearls formed 



