4 THE NORTH-EAST ATLANTIC. 



The velocity of this current has not yet been clearly determined, for it flows 

 too slowly to be detected in the midst of the various motions produced by the 

 winds on the surface. Admiral Irminger gives it a mean velocity of 3 miles a 

 day, while Captain Otto thought it amounted to nearly 12 miles, at least on the 

 Norwegian seaboard.* According to Findlay it would take from one to two 

 years to reach Europe from Florida, while Petermann considers that a few months 

 would suffice. "When General Sabine was in Hammerfest in 1823, some barrels of 

 palm oil were recovered, belonging to a vessel which had been wrecked the 

 previous year at Cape Lopez, on the west coast of Africa, near the equator. These 

 barrels must have twice crossed the Atlantic within the twelvemonth. Floating 

 bottles containing messages from seafarers in distress, and picked up at various 

 points, enable us to fix approximately six months as about the time required for 

 the displacement of the waters from one to the other side of the Northern Ocean. 



But if the main current of the Eastern Atlantic be not detected by the velocity 

 of its waters, it is revealed plainly enough by its higher temperature. Hundreds 

 of thousands of observations made by such distinguished hydrographers as Maury, 

 Andrau, Wallich, Buchan, Irminger, Inglefield, and Mohn have supplied ample 

 materials for the preparation of a correct chart of this current from month to 

 month, and for tracing its shifting limits. In summer, when its outlines are 

 rendered most irregular by its struggle with the polar stream, it is strongly 

 deflected by the pressure of the cold waters flowing from Baffin's Bay. But after 

 passing this arctic stream, which continues to set southwards beneath the surface, 

 the southern current resumes its north-easterly course, so that the isothermal lines 

 revealing its presence are not deflected from their regular path. It strikes the 

 western shores of Iceland, skirting the north coast. But it meets a, second 

 polar stream about the eastern headlands of the island, causing it to flow back by 

 the south coast. Here the warm waters, being subjected to an enormous pressure, 

 are again deflected from their north-easterly direction. The polar stream does not 

 at once disappear beneath the surface strata to form a bed for the southern waters 

 moving in an opposite direction. It struggles long for the ascendancy, and the 

 two currents ramify into two parallel belts flowing side by side in contrary 

 directions. According to Irminger's observations, the whole area between 

 Iceland and Scotland is intersected by these alternating belts of warm and cold 

 water belonging to the two opposing currents. During his trip from Stornoway 

 in the Hebrides to Reykjavik in Iceland, in the month of June, 1856, Lord 

 Dufferin caused the temperature of the surface waters to be tested every two hours, 

 making altogether ninety observations, and detected no less than forty-four 

 changes from 2° to 9°, whereas at the two extremes the thermometer marked 

 exactly 48° Fahr. 



After crossing the polar current, whose normal direction seems to be from Jan 

 Mayen to the Frisian coast, the Gulf Stream continues to flow north-east, parallel 

 with the shores of Scandinavia, then rounding its northern limits in the direction 

 of Novaya Zemlya. But while the main volume follows the line of the continent, a 



* Petermann's Mittkeilungen, 1873, 1878. 



