130 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



of the set of sub-arctic currents as we know them, it 

 does not appear that they, the Vikings, owed any of 

 their success in getting to the westward to current at 

 all, since all along the route they must have taken the 

 streams are feeble and irregular. But one thing 

 appears certain about the epoch-making voyage of 

 Columbus, and that is that either he or his pilot 

 decided upon going south first before launching out 

 westward, and thus they got into both the equatorial 

 current and the North-East Trade Winds, making their 

 arrival in the West Indies a certainty at some time or 

 other, whether they made any calculations or not. 



In like manner the return passage was made easy 

 by their discovery of the Gulf Stream and its accom- 

 panying westerly winds, which did the same kind of 

 office for their feeble little ships as the Trades and 

 line currents had done when they were outward 

 bound. It was, however, fortunate for them that they 

 did not sail into the great Atlantic eddy which lies 

 between the eastward and westward streams, a place 

 of comparative stagnation, which was early discovered 

 by the Spaniards, and received the name of the Sar- 

 gasso Sea. Hither comes all the flotsam of the middle 

 Atlantic eventually, unless arrested by some shore or 

 another, and once having arrived, here it remains. 

 Very few seamen have penetrated to the centre of this 

 eddy, for even on its outskirts the masses of weed, 

 the floating fucus of the Atlantic, which has been 

 called the Gulf Weed, are often so closely packed 

 together as to hinder a vessel's progress. A glance 

 at a good atlas, which has a map of the commercial 

 routes of the world combined with the ocean currents, 

 would seem to contradict this statement ; but the 



