2 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 



sive engagement going on while we sail peacefully along. 

 What it means, or how the battle ends, if battle it be, we 

 shall not know for two months perhaps.* Mr. Agassiz is 

 busy to-day in taking notes, at regular intervals, of the 

 temperature of the water, as we approach the Gulf Stream. 

 To-night we cut it at right angles, and he will remain on 

 deck to continue his observations. 



April 3d. The Professor sat up last night as he in 

 tended, and found his watch, which was shared by one or 

 two of his young assistants, very interesting. We crossed 

 the Gulf Stream opposite Cape Hatteras, at a latitude where 

 it is comparatively narrow, some sixty miles only in breadth. 

 Entering it at about six o clock, we passed out of it a 

 little after midnight. The western boundary of the warm 

 waters stretching along the coast had a temperature of 

 about 57. Immediately after entering it, the temperature 

 began to rise gradually, the maximum being about 74, 

 falling occasionally, however, when we passed through a 

 cold streak, to 68. These cold streaks in the Gulf Stream, 

 which reach to a considerable depth, the warm and cold 

 waters descending together in immediate contact for at 

 least a hundred fathoms, are attributed by Dr. Bache to 

 the fact that the Gulf Stream is not stationary. It sways 

 as a whole sometimes a little toward the shore, sometimes 

 a little away from it, and, in consequence of this, the 

 colder water from the coast creeps in, forming these verti 

 cal layers in its midst. The eastern boundary is warmer 



* On the 17th of May, nearly a month after our arrival in Rio, this cloud 

 was interpreted to us. It was, indeed, charged with the issues of life and death, 

 for it was on this day and the following that the final assaults on Petersburg 

 were made, and the cloud which marred an otherwise stainless sky, as we were 

 passing along the shores of Virginia, was, no doubt, the mass of smoke gath 

 ered above the opposing lines of the two armies. 



