Rivers in the Sea 



Newfoundland lies actually more to the south 

 than Erin's green Isle. 



Turning to the Pacific Ocean, we find there a 

 corresponding river, again flowing to the north- 

 east. Just as the Gulf Stream wanders across 

 the Atlantic, so this river wanders over the 

 Pacific, carrying stores of tropical warmth to 

 opposite coasts. At its quickest, it is less rapid 

 than the Gulf Stream, and about three times 

 as wide. It too, as it journeys, becomes gradu- 

 ally broader, shallower, slower, colder. 



This "Kuro Sivo" or " Black Stream," so 

 named from its dark colour, flows outside Japan, 

 and then strikes freely for the northern coasts 

 of North America. And because of its work as 

 a winter heating apparatus in Alaska, the hum- 

 ming bird is found at a latitude which, on the 

 other side of the American Continent, means, 

 not the play and whirr of humming-birds in a 

 soft air, but the disporting of walruses among 

 ice-floes. 



As in the Atlantic, so in the Pacific, the warm 

 northward-travelling current is balanced by a 

 cold southward-travelling current. The Arctic 

 stream of the Pacific is not so marked as that 

 of the Atlantic, perhaps partly because of the 

 much shallower outlet from the Arctic Ocean ; 



53 



