CURRENTS AND WHALING. 495 



that branch of the Equatorial Current which pursues its way along 

 the northern coast of Brazil and Guiana to the West Indies. Be- 

 tween the noons of the 16th and 17th of July, she was set forty-four 

 and a half miles to the north, and forty-two and a half to the west ; 

 making a general effect, in the twenty-four hours, of N. 44° W., 

 sixty-two miles : probably more northerly in the first part of the 

 interval, and more westerly in the latter, than the general effect. 



" On the day after the Pheasant sailed from Maranham, she entered 

 the current, the full strength of which she had quitted to go to that 

 place, and it was then found to be running with the astonishing rapi- 

 dity of ninety-nine miles in twenty-four hours. On the 10th of Sep- 

 tember, at 10 a. m., while proceeding in the full strength of the current, 

 exceeding four knots an hour, a sudden and very great discoloration of 

 the water ahead was announced from the masthead : the ship being 

 in 5° 8' N., and 50° 28' W., (both by observation,) it was evident 

 that the discoloured water could be no other than the stream of the 

 Maranon, pursuing its original impulse at no less than three hundred 

 miles from the mouth of the river, its waters not being yet mingled 

 with the blue waters of the ocean, of greater specific gravity, on the 

 surface of which it had pursued its course. It was running about 

 sixty-eight miles in twenty-four hours." 



No current of the velocity here mentioned has ever been experi- 

 enced to the eastward. To what is this sudden increase and rapid flow 

 to be imputed? or to what other cause can it be imputed but to a 

 submarine stream, flowing directly on the shoal coast of Brazil, and 

 raising the level of the ocean on those banks which it endeavours 

 constantly to restore by flowing off rapidly in the opposite direction 1 



Before proceeding into the Southern Atlantic, I will recapitulate 

 our results in the Northern. 



Beginning at the equator, we find a great surface stream setting 

 to the westward across the ocean, which, passing along the coast of 

 Brazil, enters through the Windward Island passages the Caribbean 

 Sea, and thence into the Gulf of Mexico, whence the water flows in 

 the Gulf Stream, which although at first narrow, soon spreads itself, 

 crosses the Atlantic, and expends its force in mid ocean, or at times 

 upon the British Islands. This great stream, of moderate temperature 

 on the open ocean under the equator, becomes more heated on the 

 coast of Brazil, and opposite the coast of the United States retains, 

 both in summer and winter, a temperature approaching to or often 

 exceeding 80°. In the mean time, another great stream sets south- 



