GULF STREAM UTILIZED BY NAYIGATOHS. 31 



taining a paper, stating date, position, and such other facta 

 as you may deem interesting. For this purpose yoti will 

 have prepared papers, containing a request, printed in sev- 

 eral languages, that the finder transmit it by the most direct 

 route to the Secretary of the Navy, U. S. of A." 



Toward the end of the seventeenth century, a Dutch brig, 

 pursued by the French corsair, Phoenix, w^as overhauled be- 

 tween Tangier and Tarifa, and seemed to be sunk by a sin- 

 gle broadside ; but in place of going down, the brig, being 

 freighted with a cargo of oil and alcohol, floated between 

 the two currents, and, drifting toward the west, finally ran 

 aground in the neighborhood of Tangier, more than twelve 

 miles from the spot where she had disappeared under the 

 waves. She had therefore floated that distance, driven by 

 the action of the under current, in a direction opposite to 

 that of the surface current. 



Recent invention has wrought out an improved plan of 

 warming houses in winter by hot water. A furnace heats 

 the water; this heated water and steam is conveyed by 

 pipes to the place to be warmed. 



This convenient mode of warming our offices and dwell- 

 ings was probably suggested by two things : first, because 

 of its utility ; and, second, the fact that we have a similar 

 heating apparatus in nature, in the warm waters of the Gulf 

 of Mexico. The heater is the torrid zone ; the Gulf and the 

 Caribbean Sea are the boilers ; the Gulf current is the means 

 of conveyance ; from New Foundland to Europe is the reser- 

 voir. According to Maury, '* the quantity of heat discharged 

 over the Atlantic by the Gulf Stream in a winter's day 

 would be sufficient to raise the whole column of atmosphere 

 that rests upon France and the British Islands from the 

 freezing point to summer heat." 



How benign is the influence of this wonderful stream, 

 and how a contemplation of it leads one to revere its creator. 



" He treadeth upon the waves of the sea, and is seen in 



