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tiiad another sort of wood, very white, soft and sweet-scented, 
are occasionally found. Kotzebue found Asiatic wood among 
the Aleuts of Unalaska.” — Davidson. 
Hon. Charles Sumner, in his speech on the cession of Alaska, 
in demonstrating the thermal current in those regions, asserted: 
u All this is now explained by certain known forces in nature ; 
of these the most important is a thermal current in the Pacific 
corresponding to the gulf stream in the Atlantic; the latter, 
having its origin in the heated waters in the Gulf of Mexico, 
flows as a river through the ocean northward, encircling England, 
bathing, Norway and warming all within its influence. A simi¬ 
lar stream in the Pacific, sometimes called the Japanese current, 
having its origin under the equator near the Phillipines and the 
Malaccas, amid no common heat, after washing the ancient em¬ 
pire of Japan, sweeps northward until forming two branches, 
one moves onward to Behring Strait, and the other bends east¬ 
ward along the Aleutian islands, and thence southward along the 
coast of Sitka, Oregon and California.” 
Intelligent people remote from the regions here described, are 
prone to doubt and unwilling to acknowledge the superiority of 
our climate along the north-west coast. For the purpose of 
removing doubt on this very important subject we have quoted 
very fully from Messrs. Davidson and Sumner, in the fond hope 
and conscious faith that this important truth so indispensable to 
the development of the vast latent resources in those regions, 
may be fully understood and appreciated. "With all due respect 
to the opinions of the above named gentlemen, or any other 
man, we maintain that the “ Japanese thermal current” does not 
extend southward of Vancouver island. During our voyaging 
in those waters we have failed to notice any indication of such 
a current on the coasts of Oregon or California, and have never 
met a practical navigator on that coast advocating such a theory. 
It is a well established fact among the coasters that the climate 
along the coasts of California and Oregon is much colder and 
more frigid than that on Puget Sound and the waters washing 
the coast of British Columbia. A very strong current runs con¬ 
stantly to the northward along those states, otherwise the anti¬ 
quated, slow lumber vessels beating up those shores against the 
stiff north-west trade winds prevailing in those regions, would 
make very long passages. We have witnessed trees and logs of 
redwood from the coast forests of California beached on the 
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