NOTES. XCV11 



of West Indian seeds to the coast of Norway is undoubted ; and even parts of 

 the cargoes of vessels wrecked on the coast of Africa have reached the Norwe- 

 gian coast, after having made the circuit of the West Indian Islands : [such 

 an instance occurred when the Editor was at Hammerfest, near the North 

 Cape of Europe, in 1823 ; casks of palm oil were thrown on shore belonging 

 to a vessel which had been wrecked at Cape Lopez, on the African coast, near 

 the Equator, under circumstances which made her loss the subject of discus- 

 sion when the Editor was in that quarter of the globe, the year preceding his 

 visit to Hammerfest :] but it is quite conceivable that objects conveyed a 

 certain distance by the gulf-stream, and thrown oif on its north side into the 

 waters which do not participate in its movement, may be subsequently drifted 

 by the prevailing westerly and south-westerly winds, in accompaniment with 

 the surface water ot the sea, across the remaining portion of the Atlantic. 

 The stream current which terminates in ordinary years at the Azores, and 

 which in rare instances extends to the coasts of Europe, is unquestionably 

 traceable the whole way to the outlet of the Gulf of Mexico, by a continuous 

 strength of current and warmth of water ; but with respect to a northern 

 branch of the gulf-stream, supposed to detach itself to the N.E., and to convey 

 the waters which have issued through the Bahama Channel in a continuous 

 stream to the North Cape of Europe, positive information is greatly wanting. 

 It may be hoped that the importance to navigation, as well as the interest to 

 physical geography, of a full arid complete knowledge of all the details of so 

 remarkable a stream as the gulf-stream, will cause it to become ere long the sub- 

 ject of a systematic examination and survey. 



Amongst the sources which contribute to produce the currents which are 

 met with in navigating the ocean, M. de Hurnboldt has not mentioned the 

 discharge of large bodies of fresh water by the great rivers of the globe, which, 

 nevertheless, deserves to be included in such an enumeration, because the 

 river water is sometimes found to preserve its original direction, and to flow 

 with a very slowly-diminishing velocity over the surface of the ocean, for 

 several hundred miles from its first entrance into the sea. Thus, the current 

 occasioned by the discharge of the River Plate preserves an easterly direction, 

 and is still found to have a velocity of a mile au hour, and a breadth of more than 

 800 miles, at a distance of not less than 600 miles from the mouth of the river 

 (Rennell, Investigation, p. 65.) The current produced by the waters of the 

 River Umazon is another example of the same kind. This current was crossed 

 by the Editor in the " Pheasant" sloop of war, in the year 1822, at a dis- 

 tance of upwards of 300 miles from the mouth of the river, still preserving a 



