CANAL ACROSS THE ISTHMUS OF DARIEN. 
523 
Stream is the principal cause of the superiority of the climate 
of Western Europe over those of Eastern America and Eastern 
Asia in the corresponding latitudes. All the meteorological 
conditions of the former region are in a great measure regulated 
by it, and hence it is the grandest and most beneficent of all 
purely geographical phenomena. We do not yet know enough 
of the laws which govern the movements of this mighty flood 
of warmth and life to be able to say whether its current would 
be perceptibly affected by the severance of the Isthmus of 
Darien ; but as it enters and sweeps round the Gulf of Mexico, 
it is possible that the removal of the resistance of the land 
which forms the western shore of that sea, might allow the 
stream to maintain its original westward direction, and join 
itself to the tropical current of the Pacific. 
The effect of such a change would he an immediate depres¬ 
sion of the mean temperature of Western Europe to the level 
of that of Eastern America, and perhaps the climate of the 
former continent might become as excessive as that of the 
latter, or even a new “ice period” be occasioned hy the with¬ 
drawal of so important a source of warmth from the northern 
zones. Hence would result the extinction of vast multitudes 
of land and sea plants and animals, and a total revolution in 
the domestic and rural economy of human life in all those 
countries from which the Hew World has received its civilized 
population. Other scarcely less startling consequences may be 
imagined as possible ; but the whole speculation is too dreary, 
distant, and improbable to deserve to be long indulged in.* 
* “ If we suppose the narrow isthmus of Central America to be sunk in 
the ocean, the warm equatorial current would no longer follow its circuitous 
route around the Gulf of Mexico, but pour itself through the new opening 
directly into the Pacific. We should then lose the warmth of the Gulf 
Stream, and cold polar currents flowing farther southward would take its 
place and be driven upon our coasts by the western winds. The North 
Sea would resemble Hudson’s Bay, and its harbors be free from ice at best 
only in summer. The power and prosperity of its coasts would shrivel under 
the breath of winter, as a medusa thrown on shore shrinks to an insig¬ 
nificant film under the influence of the destructive atmosphere. Com¬ 
merce, industry, fertility of soil, population, would disappear, and the vast 
