CURRENTS OF THE SEA. Ig3 



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. 



446. These contrasts show the principal points of resemblance 

 and of difference between the currents and aqueous circulation in 

 the two oceans. The ice-bearing currents of the North Atlantic 

 are not repeated as to volum^e in the North Pacific, for there is no 

 nursery for icebergs like the frozen ocean and its arms. The seas 

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

 Arctic, cradle the icebergs for the North Pacific. 



447. There is, at times at least, another current of warm water 

 from the Indian Ocean. It finds its way south midway between 

 Africa and Australia, and appears to lose itself in a sort of Sar- 

 gasso Sea, thinly strewed with patches of weed. The whales also 

 (Plate IX.) give indications of it. Nor need we be surprised at 

 such a vast flow of warm water as these three currents indicate 

 from the Indian Ocean, when we recollect that this ocean (§ 439) 

 is land-locked on the north, and that the temperature of its waters 

 is frequently as high as 90° Fahr. 



448. There must, therefore, be immense volumes of water flow- 

 ing into the Indian Ocean to supply the waste created by these 

 warm currents, and the fifteen or twenty feet of water that obser- 

 vations (§ 33) tell us are yearly carried off from this ocean by 

 evaporation. 



449. On either side of this warm current that escapes from the 

 inter-tropical parts of the Indian Ocean (§ 447), midway between 

 Africa and Australia, an ice-bearing current (Plate IX.) is found 

 wending its way from the Antarctic regions with supplies of cold 

 water to modify climates, and restore the aqueous equilibrium in 

 that part of the world. The current that flows up to the west of 

 this weedy sea is the greatest ice-bearer. Its bergs occasionally 

 interfere with vessels bound to Australia by the new route ; those 

 of the other seldom. The former sometimes drifts its ice as far 

 north as the parallel of 40° south. The Gulf Stream seldom per- 

 mits them to get so near the equator as that in the North Atlan- 

 tic, but I have known the ice-bearing current which passes east 

 of Cape Horn into the South Atlantic to convey its bergs as far 



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