CURRENTS AND WHALING. 
459 
different from those which are usually considered to be the only ones 
in action. 
In order to obtain precision of language, I have chosen to dis¬ 
tinguish between streams and currents , employing the former term to 
express the movements of water by which the circulation of the great 
mass of the ocean is maintained, and confining the latter to those less 
extensive in their influence, or local in their effects; and the direction 
from whence the great streams are derived as polar and equatorial. 
I shall now proceed to speak of the streams which we met with on 
our voyage, citing, whenever it is necessary, such facts derived either 
from general experience, or the authority of individual observers, as 
may be useful to extend the inferences, or verify our own observations. 
Immediately after our departure from the capes of Virginia, we felt 
the influence of a stream setting to the southward, and parallel to the 
coast. The existence of this was apparent from our first observation 
of latitude. It may, however, often escape notiee, as the navigator is 
apt to ascribe the effect of this stream rather to an error in taking his 
departure, than to a set of current. In order that the fact may be 
clearly perceived, it is necessary that the distance of the vessel from 
the lighthouse, or other object on shore with which the dead reckon¬ 
ing begins, should be determined by precise observations, instead of 
being merely estimated, as is the usual mode. Notwithstanding the 
inaccuracy growing out of this cause, it has been long known to 
seamen that a counter-current is setting close to the inner edge of the 
Gulf Stream, and has been distinguished by them as its eddy. That 
it cannot be of the nature of an eddy of that heated body of water, is 
evident from the great difference of temperature, which falls suddenly 
fifteen or twenty degrees, in passing from the Gulf Stream into that 
which flows in an opposite direction. The latter is also five to ten, 
and even fifteen degrees colder, according to the season, than the 
waters of our bays or rivers. 
The inner stream flowing to the southwest is now well known to 
exist along our whole eastern coast and that of Nova Scotia, and the 
masters of our packet-ships have by experience discovered the value 
of which it may be to them in their homeward passage. This they 
do by keeping to the north of the forty-second parallel until off Cape 
Sable. 
Tracing this stream in a direction opposite to its course to the most 
distant part of Nova Scotia, it is found to be a part of one that flows 
southwards along the shore of Labrador, and which is well known by 
the name of that country. The Labrador Stream therefore flows along 
the coast of the New Continent, from Davis’s Straits as far to the south 
