64 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



fore asked tliat the Falmoutli packets might be sent to Providence 

 instead of to Boston. This appeared strange to the doctor, for 

 London was much farther than Falmouth, and from Fahnouth the 

 routes were the same, and the difference should have been the 

 other way. He, however, consulted Captain Folger, a Nantucket 

 whaler, who chanced to be in London also ; the fisherman ex- 

 plained to him that the difference arose from the circumstance 

 that the Rhode Island captains were acquainted with the Gulf 

 Stream, while those of the English packets were not. The latter 

 kept in it, and were set back sixty or seventy miles a day, while 

 the former avoided it altogether. He had been made acquainted 

 with it by the whales which were found on either side of it, but 

 never in it (§ 70). At the request of the doctor, he then traced 

 on a chart the course of this stream from the Straits of Florida. 

 The doctor had it engraved at Tower Hill, and sent copies of it to 

 the Falmouth captains, who paid no attention to it. The course 

 of the Gulf Stream, as laid down by that fisherman ffom his gen- 

 eral recollection of it, has been retained and quoted on the charts 

 for navigation, we may say, until the present day. 



But the investigations of which we are treating are beginning 

 to throw more light upon this subject ; they are giving us more 

 correct knowledge in every respect with regard to it, and to many 

 other new and striking features in the physical geography of the 

 sea. 



101. No part of the world affords a more difficult or dangerous 

 navigation than the approaches of our northern coast in winter. 

 Before the warmth of the Gulf Stream was known, a voyage at 

 this season from Europe to New England, New York, and even 

 to the Capes of the Delaware or Chesapeake, was many times 

 more trying, difficult, and dangerous than it now is. In making 

 this part of the coast, vessels are frequently met by snow-storms 

 and gales which mock the seaman's strength and set at naught 

 his skill. In a little while his bark becomes a mass of ice ; with 

 her crew frosted and helpless, she remains obedient only to her 

 helm, and is kept away for the Gulf Stream. After a few hours' 

 run, she reaches its edge, and almost at the next bound passes 

 from the midst of winter into a sea at summer heat. Now the ice 



