ESQUIMAUX DRIFTED TO SHETLAND. 5» 



On the 16th of April, 1853, another bottle cast into the 

 waters in the vicinity of the Bank of Newfoundland, on the- 

 15th of March, 1852, was found near Bayonne, not far from the 

 mouth of the Adour. 



On the coasts of Orcadia, a sort of fruit, commonly known by 

 the name of Molucca, or Orkney beans, are found in larg& 

 quantities, particularly after storms of westerly wind. 



These beans are the produce of West Indian trees (Anacar- 

 dium occidentale), and find their way from the woods of Cuba 

 and Jamaica, to the Ultima Thule of the ancients, by means of 

 the Gulf-stream. 



Large quantities of American drift-wood are transported by 

 the same current to the dreary shores of Iceland, — a welcome gift 

 to the inhabitants of a region where the highest tree is but a 

 dwarfish shrub, and cabbages of the size of an apple are raised,, 

 as a great rarity, in the governor's garden. 



A short time before Humboldt visited the island of Teneriffe, 

 the sea had thrown out the trunk of a North American cedar-tree 

 (Gedrela odorata), covered with the mosses and lichens that had 

 grown upon it in the virgin forest. 



The Gulf-stream has even contributed to the discovery of 

 America, for it is well known that Columbus was strengthened' 

 in his belief in the existence of a western continent, by the 

 stranding on the Azores of bamboos of an enormous size, of 

 artificially carved pieces of wood, of trunks of a species of 

 Mexican pine, and of the dead bodies of two men, whose features, 

 resembling neither those of the inhabitants of Europe nor of 

 Africa, indicated a hitherto unknown race. But not only life- 

 less and inanimate objects find their way across the wide At- 

 lantic by means of the Gulf-stream and its spreading waters ;. 

 the living aborigines of the distant regions of America have also- 

 sometimes been driven towards the coasts of Europe by the 

 combined action of the currents and the winds. Thus, Jame? 

 Wallace tells us that, in the year 1682, a Greenlander in hi* 

 boat was seen by many people near the south point of the- 

 island of Eda, but escaped pursuit. In 1684 another Green- 

 land fisherman appeared near the island of Wistram, An Es- 

 quimaux canoe, which the current and the storm had cast ashore, 

 is still to be seen in the church of Burra. In Cardinal Bembo's 

 " History of Venice," it is related that, in the year 1508, a small 



