340 THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE chap. 



and with kind friends, is a joy never to be 

 forgotten. 



To the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Ocean 

 Northern Europe owes its mild climate. The 

 same latitudes on the other side of the Atlantic 

 are much colder. To find the same average 

 temperature in the United States we must go 

 far to the south. Immediately opposite us 

 lies Labrador, with an average temperature 

 the same as that of Greenland ; a coast 

 almost destitute of vegetation, a country of 

 snow and ice, whose principal wealth consists 

 in its furs, and a scattered population, mainly 

 composed of Indians and Esquimaux. But the 

 Atlantic would not alone produce so great an 

 effect. We owe our mild and genial climate 

 mainly to the Gulf Stream — a river in the 

 ocean, twenty million times as great as the 

 Rhone — the greatest, and for us the most 

 important, river in the world, which brings to 

 our shores the sunshine of the "West Indies. 



The Sea is outside time. A thousand, ten 

 thousand, or a million years ago it must have 

 looked just as it does now, and as it will ages 

 hence. With the land this is not so. The 



