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-huudred-fathom curve all along the course 

 of the Stream from Hattei'as 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 wex'e 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 



1 Inshore of the Gulf Stream, though a to be mainly characterized by its velocity 



southerly current was distinctly traced in- and by its color. 



side the one-hundred-fathoni line, yet the ^ 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 case 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 



