THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 209 



yet this fact was scarcely recognised or distinctly recorded 

 before the time of Franklin, whose sagacity, applied to certain 

 special cases, showed him at once the value of a more exact 

 knowledge of all belonging to this great current. One of 

 these cases is curious enough to deserve mention. When in 

 London in 1770, he was consulted as to a memorial sent 

 from Boston to the Lords of the Treasury, complaining that 

 the packets from Falmouth were generally a fortnight longer 

 in reaching Boston than common traders from London 

 to Ehode Island, a passage fully 300 miles longer. Captain 

 Folger, a Nantucket whaler, who happened to be then in 

 London, was questioned by Franklin, and furnished him with 

 the true explanation. The Rhode Island traders were ac- 

 quainted with the Grulf-stream, and kept out of it. The 

 captains of the English packets, from ignorance or careless- 

 ness, or possibly seduced by the more genial temperature of 

 this southern course, ran their vessels into the current and 

 against it ; making a difference in some parts of their voyage 

 of not less than fifty or sixty miles in the daily run, besides 

 the loss incurred from sailing in a lower latitude. Dr. 

 Franklin made Folger, whose experience taught him to avoid 

 a stream in which whales are never found, trace out on a 

 chart the course of this ocean current, had it engraved, and 

 sent copies to the Falmouth captains. These gentlemen, 

 wedded to their old ways, or perhaps despising their in- 

 formant, took no notice of the suggestion and went on as 

 before. 



Franklin was also the first to indicate the temperature of 

 the Grulf-stream, as a valuable aid to the navigation of the 

 Atlantic, especially on the American coasts; the dividing 

 line between the warm stream and the cold waters of the 

 ocean which hem it in, being so precise as well as constant, 

 that the longitude may often safely be inferred from it. 

 Captain Maury affirms and, we doubt not, with truth, that 



