340 THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE CHAP, 
and with kind friends, is a joy never to be 
forgotten. 
To the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Ocean 
Northern Europe owes its mild climate. The 
same latitudes on the other side of the Atlantic 
are much colder. To find the same average 
temperature in the United States we must go 
far to the south. Immediately opposite us 
lies Labrador, with an average temperature 
the same as that of Greenland; a coast 
almost destitute of vegetation, a country of 
snow and ice, whose principal wealth consists 
in its furs, and a scattered population, mainly 
composed of Indians and Esquimaux. But the 
Atlantic would not alone produce so great an 
effect. We owe our mild and genial climate 
mainly to the Gulf Stream —a river in the 
ocean, twenty million times as great as the 
Rhone —the greatest, and for us the most 
important, river in the world, which brings to 
our shores the sunshine of the West Indies. 
The Sea is outside time. A thousand, ten 
thousand, or a million years ago it must have 
looked just as it does now, and as it will ages 
hence. With the land this is not so. The 
