258 THREE CRUISES OF THE “ BLAKE.” 
Bank, was found in July to be 40°; and this last was the temperature 
that we found at the same depth just north of Hatteras and the Gulf 
Stream. 
“I have stated that the surface temperatures did not show a cold 
wall inside the Stream; but the bottom temperatures give a narrow 
cold section close to the one-hundred-fathom curve all along the course 
of the Stream from Hatteras to Florida. Soon after leaving the Straits 
of Florida there is a division of the Stream shown by the bottom tem- 
peratures, part-following the coast, and the remainder branching off to 
the eastward... . 
« We found that three knots was a general average to allow for the 
whole stream. This would give a greater velocity at some central point. 
Between the Bahamas and Florida the average was exactly three miles 
per hour; but for a distance of fifteen miles in the axis of the Stream 
it was as high as 5.4 miles per hour. To the northward of the Bahama 
Banks, and to the eastward of the Stream, there was a slight current 
setting southeast. We found the direction of the current in the Stream 
very much affected by the wind, — sometimes inclining it to the east, 
then to the west. 
“In the latter part of June, 1881, we were hove to, some fifty miles 
east of the Gulf Stream, off Charleston, where we experienced a current 
of three miles per hour, setting southeast; wind blowing a gale from 
southwest.” 
“The sudden rise of the plateau off Charleston, together probably 
with the meeting of the arctic and warm currents, creates a remarkable 
disturbance at this point. . . . 
“ We crossed the Stream six times in this locality, under conditions 
of weather from a calm to a strong breeze, and always crossed, near the 
centre of the Stream, bands of rippling water several miles in width. 
It is very like the rip at the entrance to Long Island Sound.” 
The Gulf Stream flows at the rate of about one fourth of a 
mile an hour through the Yucatan Channel, which is ninety 
miles wide, and over one thousand fathoms deep. Through the 
9 if D 
1 Inshore of the Gulf Stream, thougha to be mainly characterized by its velocity 
southerly current was distinctly traced in- and by its color. 
side the one-hundred-fathom line, yet the 2 On the southern side of the Gulf 
temperature of the water towards the Stream Commander Bartlett observed im- 
shore was but little cooler than that of mense quantities of gulf-weed ; this is also 
the Stream itself ; the same is found to blown into Narragansett Bay in consider- 
be the ease if we examine the tempera- able quantities, covered with clusters of 
ture sections of the eastern edge of the floating barnacles. 
Gulf Stream. The Stream itself seems 
