The Gulf Stream

One of the notable features of Scandinavia is that it carries civilization to a higher latitude than any other nation. This is made possible by "the Gulf Stream;" that wonderful river which runs from pole to pole, carrying the waters of the Antarctic Ocean around and through all other waters to the Arctic Ocean.

Many theories are advanced to explain its climatic action, but that which seems to be the most rational is based on the fact of the tendency of nature to establish equilibrium in the temperature of fluids. A vast body of gelid water is continually rising from the Antarctic to displace the overheated ocean water about the equator; in the Western Hemisphere this ascending stream, striking against the western coast of Sough America, is deflected in a westerly direction across the Pacific Ocean, under the name of "the Equatorial Current;" having encircled Australia, it enters the Indian Ocean, sweeps around the Cape of Good Hope, and crossing the Atlantic, rushes into the Gulf of Mexico. Here its energies are increased by the narrow limits into which it is so suddenly compressed; its temperature rises to 84 deg, and its velocity is so accelerated that, by the time it reaches the Atlantic Ocean again, it has become a mighty river, called the Gulf Stream. It is fifty miles wide, several hundred feet deep, and plows its resistless path northeast through the Atlantic at a speed of from four to five miles per hour. Its boundaries are distinctly marked by color, temperature, motion, sea-weed, fish, and even its surface is arched upwards by the pressure of the liquid banks through which it flows.

Crossing the Atlantic from the banks of Newfoundland, a wall of fog, caused by the warm vapors meeting a cooler atmosphere, often distinctly marks its course. The climatic effect of this great body of heated water is more noticeable in the higher latitudes, and the change of temperature is sometimes so sudden and great that a ship crossing the line has marked a difference of 30 deg. between its bow and stern. After touching the shores of the British Isles, the Gulf Stream still travels northward and eastward, hugging the coast-line and filling the Fiords of Norway even beyond the North Cape. This mighty force, ever at work yet never expending itself; this importation of the effect of tropical sunshine by sea, as it were, accounts for the golden grain and green meadows, and the consequent civilization of a land extending three hundred miles beyond the Arctic Circle.