THE GULF STREAM.- 23 



THE GULF STREAM. 



WILLIAM HOSEA BALLOU. 



Circulation is not confined to the blood of man nor to the currency of a gov- 

 ernment or bank. It is the essential factor visible everywhere in nature. The 

 network of the rivers is the life blood of land, the winds of the atmosphere and 

 currents of the ocean. It is death to stand long in the snow because the circula- 

 tion of the system becomes blocked; thus circulation of some kind is necessary 

 to the preservation of all the elements of nature, social and physical. Man dies 

 when the circulation of the blood ceases. The land would similarly die, so far 

 as habitation or cultivation is concerned, if the rivers should cease their flow. The 

 air would similarly die and no longer afford refreshing breath should the winds 

 cease and the cyclones fail to purify it. The ocean without its currents would 

 soon die and its surface be blocked with dead fishes and lower forms of animal life. 

 This earth will remain habitable just so long as these infinite methods of circula- 

 tion are perpetuated, and when the force we call gravitation fails to circulate the 

 orbs in space, the doom of the universe will be sealed. 



The Gulf Stream is the largest and longest body of flowing water extant. 

 We are to regard it as the steam pipe which conveys the heat from the equatorial 

 furnace of the earth to points where the sun is not sufficiently operative. The 

 amount of heat thus transferred is easily estimated at nearly eighty quintillions of 

 tons annually. The evidences of geology exhibit this stream in a fickle light. 

 It has not been constant in its devotion to Northern Europe and England. 

 When it sought other idols, the cold currents flowing south occupied the greater 

 part of the Atlantic and cooled the now moist westerly winds. Then in North- 

 ern France the Arctic fox, reindeer, and glutton prowled about. After this, there 

 was a gradual change and the current returned with greater warmth than is now 

 experienced, so that the fig-tree and canary-laurel flourished where Paris now is. 

 Then it was that lions, tigers and elephants held sway in the valley of the 

 Thames, and London was founded by the denizens of jungles. Some one has 

 been foolish enough to express a fear that an isthmian canal would turn this pow- 

 erful current into the Pacific Ocean, forgetting that the dimensions of such a 

 canal would hardly average fifty miles in width by one thousand feet depth. 



There are numerous theories in regard to the origin of this perpetual-motion 

 current. The most ancient supposed the Mississippi river the parent, but it was 

 found that its volume was one thousand times too small for the purpose, although 

 its waters mingle with it. Captain Livingston ascribed it to a sort of yearly tide, 

 conceived by the sun's apparent yearly motion and influence on the Atlantic. 

 Dr. Franklin held that the stream was the reflux of waters piled up in the Gulf 

 by the trade winds, but these gentle breezes only blow about in days per year 

 and could not possibly pile up so much water. Besides, water being eight hundred 



