THE ' KUEO-SIVO,' OE TESSAN'S CUERENT. 83 



obliquely a current of cold water emerging from the Sea of Okhotsk, 

 to replace in part the void caused by the evaporation in the equatorial 

 seas. Thick fogs, similar to those of the Banks of Newfoundland, 

 rest above the spot of contact between the w^arm and cold waters. 

 Shoals of fish, the object of pursuit to fishermen, people this maritime 

 zone, which serves as a limit between the two currents, and where the 

 mass of animalcula and remains brought from the tropics is joined 

 to those which are conveyed in the waves coming from the north. 

 Still, the phenomena presented by the meeting of the two currents 

 have not the same grandeur in the North Pacific, as under the corre- 

 sponding latitudes of the Atlantic. For the mass of water flowing 

 from the Sea of Okhotsk is relatively less considerable, and the open- 

 ing of Behring's Straits, 31 miles wide and 50 fathoms deep, is of 

 too small dimensions to allow much water from the icy ocean to 

 penetrate into the Pacific. Only small coast-currents carrying the 

 pines and firs from the shores of Siberia, and rounded ice-floes from 

 along the two coasts, cross from one sea to the other. In sum- 

 mer the current which comes from the north, both on the eastern 

 and western bank of the strait, is only a superficial current. On the 

 other hand, the slight portion of the waters of the Black Piver which 

 passes beyond the range of the Aleutian Islands, to enter Behring's 

 Straits, is a submarine current, at least during the summer season. 

 Arriving in the icy sea, still warm and strongly saline, it mingles 

 with the cold and light water which descends into the Atlantic by 

 Baffin^s Bay.* 



The great mass of the Kuro-Sivo traverses the Northern Pacific 

 from east to west with a graceful curve, no less beautiful than that 

 formed by the islands that are washed by its waters; then bends 

 gradually to the south-west and south, to coast the shores of California ; 

 finally, in the neighbourhood of the tropics, it changes its direction 

 again, and is lost in the equatorial current, enclosing in its circuit a 

 floating forest of sea- weed hardly less extensive than that of the 

 Pacific. 



Contrary to Humboldt's current, which rolls its cold waters and 

 drives before it icebergs to refresh the dry and burning atmosphere 

 of Peru, the gulf- stream of the Japanese carries along the coasts of 

 Sitka and Vancouver's Island a mass of waters warmed by a long 

 sojourn under tropical heat, and by its vapours brings spring to 

 regions which without it would have a very severe winter. It bears 

 on its waves the fragments which it has received from the coasts of 

 * De Haven— Miihry—Gustave Lambert. 

 G 2 



