28 THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



it flows north-westwardly along the coast of South America, 

 enters the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, from whence 

 it derives the name of the Gulf Stream. It passes out through 

 the Straits of Bernini, between Florida and Cuba, a great river 

 32 miles wide, 2,200 feet deep, flowing at the rate of four miles 

 an hour. Its volume is a thousand times greater than that of the 

 Amazon or the Mississippi, and its banks of cold water are more 

 clearly defined than are those of either of these rivers at flood. 

 So clear is the line of demarkation between the warm water of 

 the river and its cool liquid banks, that a ship sailing along may 

 be half in one and half in the other ; and a bucket of water 

 dipped from one side will be twenty degrees cooler than one 

 from the other. Skirting the coast at a distance of about 100 

 miles, its width is increased and its velocity diminished. Striking 

 the projecting banks of Newfoundland, its course is deflected 

 almost due east, until it arrives at mid-ocean. Here it spreads 

 out like a fan, skirting the shores of Spain, France and Great 

 Britain. It then divides, one branch sweeping around the west 

 coast of Iceland, the other approaching the shores of Norway, 

 and its temporary influence is perceptible in the ameliorated 

 climate of Spitzbergen. 



It is owing to this great ocean river that the temperature of 

 the western shores of Europe is so much higher than that of the 

 eastern shore of America in the same latitudes. Maury estimates 

 that the amount of heat which the Gulf Stream diffuses over the 

 northern Atlantic in a winter's day is sufficient to raise the whole 

 atmosphere which covers France and Great Britain from the 

 freezing point to summer heat. The olives of Spain, the vines 

 of France, the wheat-fields of England, and the green expanse of 

 the Emerald Isle, are the gifts of the tropical seas, dispensed 

 through the Gulf Stream. 



Near the Azores another branch of the Gulf Stream encounters 

 the return flow from the Arctic Ocean, bends around, and 

 skirting tbe coast of Africa, returns to its starting-place in the 

 Gulf of Guinea, leaving in its great bend near the Azores an 

 expanse of almost motionless waters larger than the whole of 



