NATURE OF THE STREAM 



IT IS evident from the legends of seafarers long before the 

 time of Christ that men sensed a movement and often a 

 direction in the vast unknown of oceanic waters. We read how 

 men feared the Maelstrom at the edge of the north and the 

 hot coagulated waters south of the Gates of Hercules. In the 

 previous chapter we traced how various currents gradually 

 became known, and saw historical reporting pick up speed 

 with the accumulation of transatlantic discovery, until by the 

 eighteenth century the general idea of the Ocean River as a 

 systematic sweep of water was accepted as a fact. But it was 

 not till after the time of Franklin that any serious study of the 

 nature of the Stream and of the forces driving it was projected. 

 As the currents became better known, several remarkable 

 theories were put forward to explain the forces behind the 

 Ocean River. A few of these anticipated by guess and intuition 

 some of our modern findings and theories — but not because 

 of any co-ordinated knowledge or disciplined reasoning. Co- 

 lumbus himself, who knew only of the southern portion of the 

 immense Atlantic gyre, was comparatively restrained. He 

 merely suggested that the westerly course of the equatorial 

 waters was due to the primum mobile, a bond between the 

 ocean water and the heavenly bodies. It was a contemporary 

 notion that the stars and the air revolved to the westward 



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