Matthew Fontaine Maury, Lieutenant, U.S.N.

“ To the philosopher, the places which supply the vapors are as suggestive and as interesting for the instruction they afford, as the places are upon which the vapors are showered down. Therefore, as he who studies the physical geography of the land is expected to make himself acquainted with the regions of precipitation, so he who looks into the physical geography of the sea should search for the regions of evaporation, and for those springs in the ocean which supply the reservoirs among the mountains with water to feed the rivers ”

“ It is not the fury of the storm alone that they dread, but it is the “ugly sea” which these storms raise. The current of the stream running in one direction, and the wind blowing in another, creates a sea that is often frightful. In the month of December, 1853, the fine new steam-ship San Francisco sailed from New York with a regiment of United States troops on board, bound around Cape Horn for California. She was overtaken, while crossing the Gulf Stream, by a gale of wind, in which she was terribly crippled. ”

“ The few facts which we hive bearing upon this subject seem to suggest it as a point of the inquiry to be made, whether the habitat of certain fish does not indicate the temperature of the water; and whether these cold and warm currents of the ocean do not constitute the great highways through which migratory fishes travel from one region to another. Navigators have often met with vast numbers of young sea nettles (meduse) drifting along with the Gulf Stream. They are known to constitute the principal food for the whale ”

“ The habitual dampness of the climate of the British Islands, as well as the occasional dampness of that along the Atlantic coasts of the United States when easterly winds prevail, is attributable also to the Gulf Stream. They come to us loaded with vapors gathered from its warm and smoking waters. It carries the temperature of summer, even in the dead of winter, as far north as the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
71. One of the poles of maximum cold is, according to theory, situated in latitude 80o north, longitude 100o west. ”

“ Throughout this whole distance, the world does not afford a more abundant or excellent supply of fish. Yet out in the Pacific, at the Society Islands, where coral abounds, and the water preserves a higher temperature, the fish, though they vie in gorgeousness of coloring with the birds, and plants, and insects of the tropics, are held in no esteem as an article of food. ”

“ The plan of our work takes us necessarily into the air, for the sea derives from the winds some of the most striking features in its physical geography. Without a knowledge of the winds, we can neither understand the navigation of the ocean, nor make ourselves intelligently acquainted with the great highways across it. As with the land, so with the sea; some parts of it are as
PAGE 65 INFLUENCE OF THE GULF STREAM UPON COMMERCE.
untraveled and as unknown as the great Amazonian wilderness of Brazil, or the inland basins of Central Africa. ”

“ He now perceives that when the main-spring was fashioned and tempered, its relation to all the other parts must have been considered; that the cogs on this wheel are cut and regulated — adapted — to the rachets on that, &c.; and his conclusion will be, that such a piece of mechanism could not have been produced by chance; the adaptation of the parts is such as to show it to be according to design, and obedient to the will of one intelligence. ”

“ Such, at the present day, is the degree of perfection to which nautical tables and instruments have been brought, that the navigator may now detect, and with great certainty, every current that thwarts his way. He makes great use of them. Colonel Sabine, in his passage, a few years ago, from Sierra Leone to New York, was drifted one thousand six hundred miles of his way by the force of currents alone; and, since the application of the thermometer to the Gulf Stream, the average passage from England has been reduced from upward of eight weeks to a little more than four. ”

“ They are seen, especially in the autumn, sweeping along the roads and streets, raising columns of dust, leaves, &c., which rise up like inverted cones in the air, and gyrate about the centre or axis of the storm. ”

“ Perhaps the best indication as to these cold currents may be derived from the fish of the sea. The whales first pointed out the existence of the Gulf Stream by avoiding its warm waters. Along our own coasts, all those delicate animals and marine productions which delight in warmer waters are wanting ”

“ Instances are numerous of vessels navigating the Atlantic in those times being 6o, 80, and even 10o of longitude out of their reckoning in as many days from port.
77. Though navigators had been in the habit of crossing and recrossing the Gulf Stream almost daily for three centuries, it never occurred to them to make use of it as a means of giving them their longitude, and of warning them of their approach to the shores of this continent. Dr. Franklin was the first to suggest this use of it. ”

“ These storms, for which the Gulf Stream has such attraction, and over which it seems to exercise so much control, are said to be, for the most part, whirlwinds. All boys are familiar with miniature whirlwinds on shore. ”

“ Take it to pieces, and show him each part separately; he will recognize neither design, nor adaptation, nor relation between them; but put them together, set them to work, point out the offices of each spring, wheel, and cog, explain their movements, and then show him the result; now he
PAGE 54 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA.
perceives that it is all one design ”