PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 313 



which was known to Anghiera,* and more especially to 

 Sir Humphrey Gilbert in the sixteenth century. Its first 

 impulse and origin is to be sought to the south of the Cape of 

 Good Hope ; after a long circuit it pours itself from the Ca- 

 ribbean sea and the Mexican Gulf, through the Straits of 

 the Bahamas, and following a course from south- south- west 

 to north-north-east, continues to recede from the shores of the 

 United States, until further deflected to the eastward by the 

 banks of Newfoundland, it approaches the European coasts, 

 frequently throwing a quantity of tropical seeds (Mimosa 

 scandens, Guilandina bonduc, Dolichos urens,} on the shores 

 of Ireland, the Hebrides, and Norway. The north-eastern 

 prolongation tends to mitigate the cold of the ocean, and to 

 ameliorate the climate on the most northern extremity of 

 Scandinavia. At the point where the Gulf stream is deflected 

 from the banks of Newfoundland towards the east, it sends off 

 branches to the south near the Azores. f This is the situation 

 of the Sargasso Sea, or that great bank of weeds, which so 

 vividly occupied the imagination of Christopher Columbus, 

 and which Oviedo calls the sea-weed meadows. (Praderias de 

 yerva.} A host of small marine animals inhabits these gently 

 moved and evergreen masses of Fucus natans, one of the 

 most generally distributed of the social plants of the sea. 



The counterpart of this current, (which in the Atlantic. 

 Ocean between Africa, America, and Europe, belongs almost 

 exclusively to the northern hemisphere,) is to be found in the 

 South Pacific, where a current prevails, the effect of whosa 

 low temperature on the climate of the adjacent shores, I had 

 an opportunity of observing in the autumn of 1802. It brings 

 the cold waters of the high southern latitudes to the coast of 

 Chili, follows the shores of this continent, and of Peru, first 

 from south to north, and is then deflected from the bay of 

 Arica onwards from south-south-east to north-north-west. 

 At certain seasons of the year the temperature of this cold 

 oceanic current is, in the tropics, only 60 whilst the undis- 

 turbed adjacent water exhibits a temperature of 81*5 and 

 83 -7. On that part of the shore of South America, south of 



* Petrus Martyr de Anghiera, De Rebus Oceanicis et Orle Novo, Bas., 

 1523, Dec. iii. lib. vi. p. 57. See Humboldt, Examen critique, t. ii. 

 pp. 254-257, and t. iii. p. 108. 



f Humboldt, Examen crit., t. iii. pp. 64-109. 



