108 THE OCEAN RIVER 



the west, more and more pieces of the great mosaic of drift 

 and current fell into place. John White, once governor of the 

 colony of Roanoke, repeating Cabot's observation, wrote in 

 1590 of the satellite swirl which runs to the south and south- 

 west between the Gulf Stream and the shore, and which— as we 

 shall see in our next chapter — has been particularly puzzling 

 to modern oceanographers. He discovered this countercurrent 

 during a voyage from Florida to Virginia, when he found it 

 necessary to stand well out to sea in order to stay within the 

 Gulf Stream and avoid the contrary currents. Shortly after- 

 ward Lescarbot rediscovered the south-flowing Labrador Cur- 

 rent. The Cabot brothers had noticed this icy stream a century 

 earlier, but a strange result of its head-on collision with the 

 Gulf Stream was not described until Lescarbot wrote in 1612: 

 'T have found something remarkable upon which a natural 

 philosopher should meditate ... for the space of three days the 

 water very warm, whilst the air was cold as before, but on the 

 21st of June quite suddenly we were surrounded by fogs and 

 cold that we thought to be in the month of January and the 

 sea was extremely cold." The sudden sharp boundary between 

 the cold Labrador Current flowing to the southwest and the 

 warm Gulf Stream flowing to the northeast is a most striking 

 phenomenon to those who have witnessed it. 



Most of the larger drifts and currents that make up the 

 Atlantic swirl were now discovered; but they had not been 

 linked together and no chart had yet been printed to show 

 them. Even so, they were of increasing importance in determin- 

 ing the pattern of the colonization in North America during 

 the early seventeenth century. The northern colonies — what is 

 now New England — were reached by the northern route, 

 for the experienced sailor, in order to avoid the main east- 

 ward flow of the River, sailed westward at a latitude of about 

 40°. The southern colonies, from North Carolina and Chesa- 

 peake Bay to the colony of New York, were approached by 



