^/ 



374 OBSEEVATIONS ON THE CUREENTS. 



its course. From the numerous sections which have been examined, on 

 lines transverse to its course, between the Caribbean Sea and the banks 

 off Nantucket, we are enabled to calculate with some approach to exact- 

 ness, what is the amount, velocity, and temperature of the volume of 

 water which is transported by it into colder latitudes. 



As these investigations have been made in the spring and summer 

 months, the conclusions arrived at may be incorrect for the other seasons, 

 though there are no good reasons for supposing such to be the case. 



(356.) It may seem, therefore, somewhat surprising, that — in the face of 

 its now known much smaller volume and much slower rate of travelling, 

 and also of the well-ascertained interferences it has to encounter — a much 

 more extended area should be claimed by some to be under its influence, 

 than was considered to be when very much less was known of its real 

 character. "When Major Rennell's " Investigation " was published in 

 1832, containing a digest of all that was then known, the conclusion was 

 arrived at, " that as a Current, it may be said to terminate at ordinary 

 times at the Western side of the Azores ;" and this is the sum of all the 

 arguments subsequently used, with the exceptions that Dr. Franklin, in 

 November, 1776, on approaching the European coast, was never appa- 

 rently out of the warm water of the Gulf Stream ; and that Colonel B. 

 Sabine, in 1822, found an abnormal warmth of the ocean water in the 

 Eastern part of the North Atlantic, which he attributed to the unusual 

 strength of the Gulf Stream that season. 



It was only after the acquisition of our comparatively exact knowledge 

 of the Gulf Stream proper, between Florida and the Newfoundland Banks, 

 that the argument was advanced — that it is the Gulf Stream, which, after 

 traversing the intervening space of the North Atlantic Ocean, transports 

 the amenity of climate over the whole of the North-Western shores of 

 Europe ; and also that in entering the Polar basin, past and around 

 Spitzbergen, it keeps an open sea there, and by its warmth maintains a 

 constant circulation around the North Pole. 



(357.) It was during active researches in the Arctic regions, when the 

 progress and fate of Sir John Franklin and Captain Crozier, with their 

 ships' crews, were involved in such profound obscurity, that it was claimed 

 for the Gulf Stream to have volume and power sufficient to have vast 

 influence in ameliorating the Arctic climate. The failure of every attempt 

 to penetrate the mystery, which had been so zealously directed towards the 

 channels "West of Baffin's Bay prior to 1851 — 1852, led Dr. Augustus 

 Petermann to examine into the possibility of reaching the neighbourhood 

 of Behring Strait by the way of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlia, and the 

 elaborate and most useful investigations he then carried on led him to the 

 conclusion that the varied phenomena he then elucidated, the abundance 

 of animal life, the temperature of sea and climate, and certain features in 

 almost every department of physics, could only be attributed to a warm 

 North-Easterly Current, which he considered was an extension of the Gulf 

 Stream.* 



• See Parliamentary Papers on the Arctic Expeditions; Further Correspondence, Ac, 

 1852, pp. 142, et seq. ; also Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xxii., pp. 118 — 128, 

 on the Distribatiec of Animal Life in the Arctic Regions, by A. Petermann, F.R.G.S. 



