THE GULF STREAM. 207 



the wind has therefore more power upon them than it 

 has upon the water itself ; they tail to the wind. And 

 if the supreme power over the currents of the sea reside 

 in the winds, as Herschel would have it, then of all 

 places in the trade-wind region, we should here have 

 the strongest currents. Had there been currents here, 

 these weeds would have been borne away long ago ; but 

 so far from it, we know that they have been in the 

 Sargasso Sea of the Atlantic since the voyage of 

 Columbus. 



In another argument, Maury certainly falls into an 

 error. He says, How can the north-easterly winds 

 cause the Grulf Stream to flow towards the north-east ? 

 But, as he himself points out, the trade-winds do not 

 blow over the Grulf Stream proper, and there can be no 

 doubt that, if the trade-winds sufficed to keep up a 

 continual equatorial current, finding a passage towards 

 the north after encountering the barrier opposed by the 

 American continent, this resulting northerly current 

 would assume a north-easterly course, for the very same 

 reason that the air-currents flowing from the equator 

 towards the north pole become south-westerly or counter 

 trade-winds. But he seems justified in asking how it 

 is possible that the impulse imparted by the gentle 

 trade-winds to the equatorial current could suffice to 

 generate a stream which eventually travels far towards 

 the north pole, if it do not even circle completely around 

 Greenland. When we inject water into a pool, he 

 says, be the force never so great, the jet is soon over 

 come, broken up, and made to disappear. In this 



