THE SUKKERTOPPEN. 
CHAPTER IV. 
We were now drawing- near to Davis's Straits, and 
the names which recorded our progress upon the charts 
were full of Arctic associations. The Meta Incognita 
of Frohisher and the Cape of God's Mercy greeted us 
from the American coast : Cape Farewell was on our 
starboard quarter, and the " Land of Desolation" nearly 
abeam. 
A piece of drift-wood, a wanderer from the region of 
trees, passed us on its northward journey. The course 
of this drift-wood illustrates remarkably the benefi- 
cent adaptation of ocean currents to the wants of 
man. It is fonnd abundantly on the lower coasts 
of Greenland, and, passing round them from the At- 
lantic, floats along the eastern shore of Bafiin's Bay 
to the north, in opposition to the general tendency 
of its waters. 
The great counter-current, which in the North At- 
lantic borders the Gulf Stream, flowins: from the north- 
