Now here we approach a critical part of our subject. It is admitted by all that off Newfoundland the Gulf Stream loses its special characteristics. As Dr. Hayes remarks, 'its strength diminishes; the air of a higher latitude brings its temperature down to that of the North Atlantic generally' (not, however, without raising the temperature of the North Atlantic to some extent); ' the water loses all its Gulf Stream character as to course, warmth, and flow' (and as to colour also); ' and it dies away into the sluggish Atlantic drift which sets from a westerly to an easterly direction.' It is not so generally noticed, but will scarcely, I suppose, be disputed, that the Gulf Stream water strengthens, and that appreciably, this sluggish Atlantic drift. Then it is reinforced by the portion which has travelled outside the West Indian Islands; and we may assume (without giving rise to objections) that the general prevalence of south-westerly winds will further strengthen the eastward motion of the combined mass. At any rate, let the causes be what they may (and presently we shall have a further cause to take into account), it is admitted by all physical geographers that a great, though slow current, or drift, does pass eastwards from the neighbourhood of Newfoundland. Moreover, it is admitted by all that the southern part of this current (which the Edinburgh Reviewer actually regards as identifiable with the Gulf Stream1) traverses the Atlantic until, nearing the Azores, it joins the southwardly Guinea current; while the northern part passes on a north-easterly course, which carries it between Britain and Iceland, between Sweden and Spitzbergen, onwards, even as far as the very neighbourhood of Nova Zembla. Lastly, it is admitted by all that, directly or indirectly, this great north-easterly current causes the climate of Great Britain, and of the north-western parts of Europe generally, to be milder than that of North American regions in corresponding latitudes.
It might appear, then, that all these things being admitted, no question of any importance remains, so far as the actual facts of the oceanic surface-circulation are in question. "We shall presently see that a question has arisen as to the cause of the observed facts; but as to their nature everything that seems worth discussing at all appears to be satisfactorily disposed of.
Let those readers who in their simplicity have adopted this notion hasten to dispossess themselves of it by reading some remarks by Dr. Hayes, the American
1 He says that the great equatorial current is partly supplied ' by the return of a portion of the Gulf Stream.' explorer, quoted with approval by the Edinburgh Re-viewer. The latter having repeated from 'Lothair' "a sneer at the shallow nonsense which has been talked about the Gulf Stream, and at the exaggerated estimates of its potency which have been put forward by men (as well as women) who ought to have known better" (these are the reviewer's words, not Mr. Disraeli's), proceeds as follows: 'As Dr. Hayes truly remarks, "Weather predictors without end have launched upon it their stupidities; meteorologists have deluged the world (sic) with their assumptions respecting it; theorists of all kinds have floated their notions upon it. One whirls it away into the arctic regions, and opens a passage to the pole with it; another compels it to give a climate to countries where otherwise there would be no climate worth mentioning; while still another spins it round the Atlantic Ocean, and its wide-spread arms close upon a stagnant sea. . . . Through means such as these mankind has come to look upon the Gulf Stream with a certain degree of awe. It is a 'breeder of storms'; the giver of heat; it might become the father of pestilence. Will it always continue to do its duty as hitherto? or will it start off suddenly with some new fancy, and pursuing some new course, upset the physical and moral status of the world?"'
Now we have seen that the writer who thus endorses
Dr. Hayes' diatribe, is among those who hold that a southern offset from the Gulf Stream circles round the Sargasso Sea to join the Guinea current. He says farther on that he 'entirely accords' with the opinion of Buchan, the meteorologist, that the north-easterly current above referred to produces an afflux of warmth brought to the British Isles by the water that laves our western coasts.' He proceeds: 'There is ample evidence that the cold of some parts of the north polar area is greatly mitigated by an afflux of water bringing with it the comparative warmth of temperate seas. It has long been known that cocoa-nuts, tropical seeds, trunks of tropical trees, timbers and spars of ships wrecked far to the south, and sometimes portions of their cargo, are found on the shores of the Western Hebrides, the Orkney, Shetland, and Faroe Islands, the north of Norway, and even Spitzbergen; and since their trans-sport has taken place just in the course of the Gulf Stream if prolonged to the north-east, their arrival has been accepted almost without question as evidence of its agency. The evidence furnished by the surface temperature of that north-eastern portion of the Atlantic Ocean which intervenes between Iceland and the North Cape, and then stretches away to the eastward between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, seems at first sight conclusive to the like effect. A large amount of additional thermometric evidence has been collected of late years; and this has been most ably digested by the eminent German geographer, Dr. Petermann, who has recently put forward a series of maps for different periods of the year, in which these observations are embodied, and their results made obvious to the eye by the course of the ' lines of equal temperature,' which in the summer pass between Iceland and the Shetland Islands, a little to the east of north towards Spitzbergen, and thence with more of an easterly bend even beyond the seventy-fifth degree of north latitude. The existence of a warm stream in this direction has been confirmed still more recently by two adventurous officers-Lieutenant Julius Payer, of the Austrian army, and Lieutenant Wey-precht, of the German army - who followed its path last summer in a small sailing vessel hired by themselves, and state that they found open water from east longitude 42° to east longitude 60°, even beyond the seventy-eighth parallel of north latitude, the highest point they reached being north latitude 79°, in east longitude 43°. A Russian expedition under Prince Alexis Alexandrovitch, of which the distinguished savant, Von Mildendorf, had the scientific charge, was about the same time exploring the Polar Sea between Nova Zembla and Iceland; and Von Mildendorf has stated to the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg that 'the corvette Wajag has proved the extension of the Gulf Stream to the west coast of Nova Zembla, and that we find it on the meridian of Banin Noss (in east longitude 43 1/2°) still of a width equal to two degrees of latitude, and of a temperature of fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit, cooling down only four or six degrees at depths of thirty and fifty fathoms.'