THE GULF STREAM. 29 
its stream. Bottles cast into the sea midway between the Old 
and the New Worlds, near the coasts of Europe, Africa, and 
America, at the extreme north or farthest south, have been found 
either in the West Indies, or within the well-known range of Gulf 
Stream waters. 
Of two cast out together in south latitude on the coast of Africa, 
one was found on the island of Trinidad ; the other on Guernsey, 
in the English Channel. » 
In the absence of positive information on the subject, the cir- 
cumstantial evidence that the latter performed the tour of the 
Gulf is all but conclusive. 
Another bottle, thrown over olf Cape Horn by an American 
master in 1837, has been recently picked up on the coast of Ire- 
land. An inspection of the chart, and of the drift of the other 
bottles, seems io force the conclusion that this bottle too went 
even from that remote region to the so-called higher level of the 
Gulf Stream reservoir. 
13. Midway the Atlantic, in the triangular space between the 
Azores, Canaries, and the Cape deVerd Islands, is the Sargasso Sea. 
(Plate VI.) Covering an area equal in extent to the Mississippi 
Valley, it is so thickly matted over with Gulf weed (fucus natans), 
that the speed of vessels passing through it is often much retard- 
ed. When the companions of Columbus saw it, they thought it 
marked the limits of navigation, and became alarmed. To the 
eye, at a little distance, it seems substantial enough to walk upon. 
Patches of the weed arg' always to be seen floating along the Gulf 
Stream. Now, if bits of cork or chaff, or any floating substance, 
be put into a basin, and a circular motion be given to the water, 
all the light substances will be found crowding together near the 
centre of the pool, where there is the least motion. Just such a 
basin is the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf Stream, and the Sargasso 
Sea is the centre of the whirl. Columbus first found this M^^eedy 
sea in his voyage of discovery ; there it has remained to this day ; 
and certain observations as to its limits, extending back for fifty 
years, assure us that its position has not been altered since that 
time. This indication of a circular motion by the Gulf Stream is 
corroborated by the bottle chart and other sources of information. 
If, therefore, this be so, why give the endless current a higher 
level in one part of its course than another ? 
