CURRENTS OF THE SEA. 
137 
the climate of California (State) resembling that of Spain'; the 
sandy plains and rainless regions of Lower California reminding 
one of Africa, with its deserts between the same parallels, &c. 
Moreover, the North Pacific, like the North Atlantic, is envel- 
oped, where these warm waters go, with mists and fogs, and streak- 
ed with lightning. The Aleutian Islands are as renowned for fogs 
and mists as are the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. 
258. A surface current flows north through Behring's Strait 
into the Arctic Sea ; but in the Atlantic the current is from, not 
into the Arctic Sea : it flo*vs south on the surface, north below ; 
Behring's Strait being too shallow to admit of mighty under cur- 
rents, or to permit the introduction from the polar basin of any 
large icebergs into the Pacific. 
259. Behring's Strait, in geographical position, answers to Da- 
vis's Strait in the Atlantic ; and Alaska, with its Aleutian chain of 
islands, to Greenland. But instead of there being to the east of 
Alaska, as there is to the east of Greenland, an escape into the 
polar basin for these warm waters, the Pacific shore-line inter- 
venes, and turns them down through a sort of North Sea along the 
western coast of the continent toward Mexico. 
260. These contrasts show the principal points of resemblance 
and of difiference between the currents and aqueous circulation in 
the two oceans. The ice-bearing currents of the North Atlantic 
are not repeated as to degree in the North Pacific, for there is no 
nursery for icebergs like the frozen ocean and its arms. The seas 
of Okotsk and Kamtschatka alone, and not the frozen seas of the 
Arctic, cradle the icebergs for the North Pacific. 
There is, at times at least, another current of warm water from 
the Indian Ocean. It finds its way south midway between Africa 
and Australia. The whales (Plate IX.) give indications of it. 
Nor need we be surprised at such a vast flow of warm water as 
these three currents indicate from the Indian Ocean, when we rec- 
ollect that this ocean (§ 255) is land-locked on the north, and that 
the temperature of its waters is frequently as high as 90° Fahr. 
261. There must, therefore, be immense volumes of water flow- 
ing into the Indian Ocean to supply the waste created by these 
warm currents, and the fifteen or twenty feet of water that obser- 
vations (^ 33) tell us are yearly carried off from this ocean by 
evaporation. 
