THE GULF STREAM 



769 



immensity of this great ocean river. The 

 Straits of Florida at its narrowest point 

 is about 40 miles wide and observations 

 here numbered between three and four 

 thousand, surface and subsurface. A 

 calculation of the average volume of 

 water passing in one hour gives the enor- 

 mous sum of 90 billion tons. If this 

 one single hour's flow of water could be 

 evaporated, the remaining salts would re- 

 quire many times more than all the ships 

 in the world to carry it. 



When one is on board a vessel, floating 

 upon its waters, one is not as much im- 

 pressed at the power and grandeur of 

 this wonder of nature as he is when he 

 stands before a towering mountain, an 

 immense iceberg, or a fall of water such 

 as Niagara, but when one remembers 

 that the mighty torrent, speeding on hour 

 by hour and day by day in a volume 

 equal to all the largest rivers in the world 

 combined, carrying its beneficient heat to 

 temper the climate of continents, one be- 

 gins to realize that of all the forces of 

 the physical world none can equal this 

 one river of the ocean. 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE GULF STREAM ON 



THE COLONIZATION OF AMERICA 



WAS VERY GREAT 



It is interesting to note in the history 

 of the Gulf Stream how great its in- 

 fluence has been on the fortunes of the 

 New World. Before the discovery of 

 America, strange woods and fruits were 

 frequently found on the shores of Eu- 

 rope and off-lying islands. Some of these 

 were seen and examined by Columbus, 

 and to his thoughtful mind they were 

 convincing evidence of the fact that 

 strange lands were somewhere to the 

 westward. These woods were carried by 

 the Gulf Stream and by the prevailing 

 winds from the American continent, so 

 that in part, the stream is responsible for 

 the discovery of the New World. 



Ponce de Leon, while on his famous 

 search for the Fountain of Youth, made 

 the discovery of this great stream. After 

 his failure to find, on the coast of upper 

 Florida, the means of cheating death, he 

 turned to the southward and skirted the 

 shore for hundreds of miles, thus stem- 

 ming the current. 



Referring to this in his journal he de- 

 scribes that they found a current that, 

 though the wind was good, they could 

 not stem. It seemed that their vessels 

 were going fast through the water, but 

 they soon recognized the fact that they 

 were being driven back in spite of the 

 strong and favorable wind. Two of the 

 ships near the coast were able to anchor, 

 while a third, being in deeper water, was 

 "soon carried away by the current and 

 lost from sight, although it was a clear 

 sky." 



The first one to traverse the Gulf 

 Stream from the Gulf of Mexico was 

 Antonio de Alaminos, who had been with 

 Columbus on his last voyage, and had 

 been with Ponce de Leon among the 

 Bahamas and along the coast of Florida 

 from St. Augustine to Tortugas. Later 

 he was in chief command of the fleet with 

 Cortez in Mexico, and when it was de- 

 sired to send dispatches and presents to 

 Spain he was chosen as the one most able 

 to carry out the nautical part of the mis- 

 sion. He sailed from Mexico, and in 

 order to avoid foreign enemies and do- 

 mestic rivals, took the route north of 

 Cuba and through the Straits of Florida 

 into the Atlantic. 



The influence of the Gulf Stream in 

 the colonization of America was very 

 great. The division of the English colo- 

 nies into New England and Virginia was 

 probably in part due to the routes by 

 which they were reached. Vessels bound 

 from England to New England crossed 

 the North Atlantic outside the limit of the 

 Gulf Stream, or in a feeble adverse cur- 

 rent. They had the advantage too, of 

 crossing the Newfoundland Banks and of 

 being able to surely replenish their pro- 

 visions by fishing. 



This voyage, however, much as the ad- 

 vantages might be either by the shorter 

 distance or the gaining of food, was not 

 thought to be practicable with a vessel 

 bound to the Southern Colonies. They 

 sailed south to the trade-wind region, 

 through the Caribbean and around Cuba, 

 thence following the Gulf Stream to 

 their port. 



The Dutch adopted this passage to the 

 Hudson, so that really Nantucket Island 

 became the dividing line between the two 



