Ne) Ge Ro WE Ao ve 
t 
for the conveyance of the great article of commerce, the mafts and timber of the 
country, from the otherwife inacceffible forefts.. The trees are cut down, and at 
prefent conveyed from fome diftance to the rivers, down which they are precipi- 
tated over rocks and ftupendous cataracts, until they arrive at the Lentzes or 
booms *, placed obliquely in the ftream in fit. places. To them the owners of the 
timber refort; and, on paying a certain rate to the proprietors, receive their 
pieces, which are all marked before they are committed to the water; but numbers 
are injured or deftroyed in the rough paflage. 
The fpecies which is of fuch great value to Norway, is the Fyr or Fure, our 
Scotch Pine, and the Pinus Sylvefiris of Linnaeus. It grows in the drieft places, 
and attains the vaft age of four hundred years + ; and is of univerfal ufe in the 
northern world. Such trees as are not deftined for mafts are fquared, and arrive 
in England under the name of Balk : the reft are fawed on the fpot, in hundreds 
of mills, turned by the torrents, and reach us in form of planks. An immenfe quan- 
tity of tar is made from the trees, and even from the roots, very long after they 
have been divided from the trunk. ‘The Gran, Pinus Abies, or what we call Nor- 
way Fir, is in little efteem. Thoufands are cut down annually by the peafants, 
who feed their cattle with the tender fhoots. It is the talleft of European trees, 
growing to the height of a hundred and fixty feet. In winter, the branches are 
deprefled to the ground with fnow, and form beneath them the dens of wild beafts. 
I muft here mention the adventitious fruits, fuch as‘nuts and other vegetable 
productions, which are brought by the waves to thefe fhores, thofe of Ferce, and 
the Orknies, from Famaica and other neighboring partst. We muft have re- 
courfe to a caufe very remote from this place. Their vehicle is the gulph-ftream 
from the gulph of Adexico. The trade-winds force the great body of the ocean 
from the weftward through the 4nfilles into that gulph, when it is forced back- 
ward along the fhore from the mouth of the AZifi/ip: to Cape Florida; doubles 
that cape in the narrow fea between it and Cuba, and from Cape Florida to Cape 
Cannaveral runs nearly north, at the diftance of from five to {even leagues from 
fhore, and extends in breadth from fifteen to eighteen leagues. There are re- 
gular foundings from the land to the edge of the ftream, where the depth is ge- 
nerally feventy fathoms; after that no bottom can be found. ‘The foundings 
off Cape Cannaveral are very fteep and uncertain, as the water fhallows fo quick, 
that from forty fathoms it will immediately leflen to fifteen, and from that to 
four, or lefs; fo that, without great care, a fhip may be in a few minutes on 
fhore. It muft be obferved, that, notwithftanding the gulph-f{tream in general ; 
* Pontoppidan, i- 93. tab. vii. t+ Amen. Acad. iv» { Voy. Hebrides, 
is - 
LXIx 
LENTZES, 
Exotic FRUITS 
FOUND ON THE 
SHORESe 
GULPH*STREAM. 
