Bounding Up Against The West Side Of South America, The Ascending Stream Skirts The Coasts Of Chili And Peru, And Is Then Deflected In A Westerly Direction Across The Pacific Ocean, Where It Takes The Name Of The Equatorial Current.

Having completely encircled Australia, it enters the Indian Sea, sweeps up round the Cape of Good Hope, and, crossing the Atlantic, twists into the Gulf of Mexico.

Here its flagging energies are suddenly accelerated in consequence of the narrow limits within which it finds itself compressed. So marvellous does the velocity of the current now become, so complete its isolation from the deep sea bed it traverses, that by the time it issues again into the Atlantic, its hitherto diffused and loitering waters are suddenly concentrated into what Lieutenant Maury has happily called - "a river in the ocean," swifter and of greater volume than either the Mississippi or the Amazon. Surging forth between the interstices of the Bahamas, that stretch like a weir across its mouth, it cleaves asunder the Atlantic. So distinct is its individuality, that one side of a vessel will be scoured by its warm indigo-coloured water, while the other is floating in the pale, stagnant, weed-encumbered brine of the Mar de Sargasso of the Spaniards. It is not only by colour, by its temperature, by its motion, that this (Greek) "ron Okeanuio" is distinguished; its very surface is arched upwards some way above the ordinary sea-level toward the centre, by the lateral pressure of the elastic liquid banks between which it flows. Impregnated with the warmth of tropic climes, the Gulf Stream-as it has now come to be called, - then pours its genial floods across the North Atlantic, laving the western coasts of Britain, Ireland, and Norway, and investing each shore it strikes upon, with a climate far milder than that enjoyed by other lands situated in the same latitudes. Arrived abreast of the North Cape, the impetus of the current is in a great measure exhausted.

From causes similar (though of less efficacy, in consequence of the smaller area occupied by water) to those which originally gave birth to the ascending energy of the Antarctic waters, a gelid current is also generated in the Arctic Ocean, which, descending in a south-westerly direction, encounters the already faltering Gulf Stream in the space between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. A contest for the mastery ensues, which is eventually terminated by a compromise. The warmer stream, no longer quite able to hold its own, splits into two branches, the one squeezing itself round the North Cape, as far as that Varangar Fiord which Russia is supposed so much to covet, while the other is pushed up in a more northerly direction along the west coast of Spitzbergen. But although it has power to split up the Gulf Stream for a certain distance, the Arctic current is ultimately unable to cut across it, and the result is an accumulation of ice to the south of Spitzbergen in the angle formed by the bifurcation, as Mr. Grote would call it, of the warmer current.

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