Gulch

“ The rapid northern spring raises its waters and loosens the ice simultaneously; when the waters of the Gulf are at their usual level, the accumulated ice and water find an easy outlet down the broad and rapid Neva. But let a strong west wind heap up the waters of the Gulf just as the breaking up of Lake Ladoga takes place, and the waters from above and from below would suffice to inundate the whole city, while all its palaces, monuments, and temples would be crushed between the masses of ice, like “Captain Ahab's” boat in the ivory jaws of “Moby Dick.” ”

“ It elevates the mind and ennobles the man; for "His gentleness makes" it great. The Gulf Stream is now no longer, therefore, to be regarded by such a one merely as an immense current of warm water running across the ocean, but as a balance-wheel—a part of that grand machinery by which air and water are adapted to each other, and by which this earth itself is adapted to the well-being of its inhabitants— of the flora which deck, and the fauna which enliven its surface. ”

“ On the north side, coming down through a gorge, or 'the gulf,' as we used to call it, was a stream which, in the dry season of the year, was a little brook, trickling over the rocks, but which, in the spring freshets, or when the clouds emptied themselves on the mountain, was a wild, foaming, roaring, and resistless torrent. ”

“ By following down a little valley and its tiny rill of water, an immense gulf is unexpectedly seen through the trees which border the pathway, at the depth of perhaps 1500 feet. Walking on a few yards one stands on the brink of a vast precipice, and below is the grand bay or gulf (for I know not what other name to give it) , thickly covered with forest. The point of view is situated as if at the head of a bay, the line of cliff diverging on each side, and shewing headland behind headland, as on a bold sea coast. These cliffs are composed of horizontal strata of whitish sandstone ”

“ Its colour.—There is a river in the ocean: in the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows; its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm; it takes its rise in the Gulf of Mexico, and empties into Arctic seas; this mighty river is the Gulf Stream. There is in the world no other such majestic flow of waters. Its current is more rapid than the Mississippi or the Amazon, and its volume more than a thousand times greater. ”

“ Gulf Stream in each.—The Gulf Stream of each ocean has its genesis on the west side, and in its course it skirts the coast along; leaving the coast, it strikes off to the eastward in each case, losing velocity and spreading out. Between each of these Gulf Streams and its coasts there is a current of cool water setting to the south. On the outside, or to the east of each stream, and coming up from the tropics, is a broad sheet of warm water; it covers an area of thousands of square miles, and its drift is to the north. ”

“ The gulf that divides you from the distant mountain seems like a huge bite taken bodily out of the world by some voracious god; far away rise snowpeaks such as were not dreamt of in your Swiss tour; the bottomless valley at your feet is misty and gloomy with blackness, streaked with mist, while the peaks above shoot gladly to the sun and catch his broadside rays like majestic white standards. ”

“ Analogous to that wonderful Gulf Stream, once a myth and still a mystery, the strange current of human existence, four score and ten years long, bears each and all of us with a strong, steady sweep away from the tropic lands of sunny childhood, enamelled with verdure and gaudy with bloom, through the temperate regions of manhood and womanhood, fruitful and harvest-hued, on to the frigid, lonely shores of dreary old age, snow-crowned and ice-veined ”

“ The Great Gulf is a gigantic ravine between the huge eastern shoulder of Mount Washington, called the Chandler Ridge, and the three northern peaks of Madison, Adams and Jefferson. Mount Clay, the fourth of the north peaks, and the one next to Washington, is almost a part of the head wall of the Gulf. The Gulf sides are very precipitous, and as the boys looked across it to the shoulder of Jefferson, where the Six Husbands’ Trail ascends, Lou and Frank began to laugh. ”

“ The desert never looked more beautiful. The absence of severe wind storms during the spring and summer before had allowed the sand to remain smooth, just as it had been left beaten by the rains. Upon arising one morning, Gully noted far to the west, an occasional puff of dust, and then a spiral column of sand would mount heavenward and attain a height of several hundred feet, and scattering, would cause the air to become murky and hazy. ”

“ The height of the Gulf is ninety-five feet and the distant sound of falling water is not reassuring. The walls are not smoothly worn away, but have the rough and weird appearance of having been torn by a torrent in a narrow mountain gorge, and are stained with the dark clay. ”

“ The lake which is of fresh water, as its name Dulce denotes, is a fine expanse of about thirty miles by twenty, so that it forms a beautiful object as you descend down to the coast: as the creek, which leads into the small gulf, or Golfeto, communicating with the Atlantic is very narrow, its mouth is not discernible, and the borders of the gulf are therefore, as far as they can be made out, composed of thickly wooded slopes rising gradually into a spacious verdant amphitheatre. ”

“ I know that you would love this Gulf as I do. The humid heat of the day oppresses me but little: I love the sparkling hours of dawn, the cool of the evenings; the great tangled stretches of green which clothe the slopes from sea to the edge of the mountains that loom gray in the distance, like the rim of the world. And I like the courageous planters, toiling that the world may have its hemp: the young-old wild tribes, emerging from their primitive mental shallows, a bit bewildered, pathetic. ”

“ The sun hides behind gray banks of cloud, the shining face of him a rare miracle bestowed upon the sight of men as a promise that bright days and blossoming flowers will come again. When they do come the coast is a pleasant country. The mountains reveal themselves, duskily green upon the lower slopes, their sky-piercing summits crowned with snow caps which endure until the sun comes to his full strength in July. The Gulf is a vista of purple-distant shore and island, of shimmering sea. And the fishermen come out of winter quarters to overhaul boats and gear against the first salmon run. ”

“ A mere inspection of the plate is sufficient to make obvious the fact that the warm waters which are found east of the usual limits assigned the Gulf Stream, and between the parallels of 30° and 40° north, do not come from the Gulf Stream, but from this great equatorial caldron, which Cape St. Roque blocks up on the south, and which dispenses its overheated waters up towards the fortieth degree of north latitude, not through the Caribbean Sea and Gulf Stream, but over the broad surface of the left bosom of the Atlantic Ocean. ”

“ One sees at what a height one was in that plain of Roncesvalles, and one sees how the main range dominates the world; for down below one an enormous cleft into the stuff of the mountains falls suddenly and almost sheer, and you see unexpectedly beneath you the approach from France into Spain. The gulf at its narrowest is tremendous; but, more than that, when the floor of the valley is reached, that floor itself slopes away down and down by runs and by cascades towards the very distant plains of the north, upon which the funnel debouches. ”

“ During the south-west monsoon the ocean waters are forced by powerful winds up the Gulf of Cutch to a considerable height, overspreading the Rann, which for a time is turned into a shallow lake. When dry weather comes, the water vanishes, partly retiring, partly evaporating; and a salt-strewn desert is left, varied by sand-ridges, green spots, and little lakes, but covered principally by “sheets of salt crust.” My father, when there many years ago with his Regiment, noted down his impressions of the scene. ”

“ Each gulf is ensconced between two mountains; each mountain is flanked by two gulfs, and nothing can equal the beauty of those vast green slopes rising almost in a straight line out of the sea. The hills have rounded tops and flattened bases, and describe a wide, curved chain which joins the plateaux with the graceful sweep of a Moorish arch; following so closely upon one another, the colour of their foliage and their formation are almost exactly alike. Propelled by the sea-breeze, the breakers dashed up against the foot of these hills, and the sun, falling on them, made them gleam ”

“ The hot and salt waters of the tropics are carried north by the Gulf Stream. There are here two counteracting agents at work. Heat inclines the Gulf Stream to rise; saltness inclines it to sink. During the first part of its journey, as we know, its great heat prevails over the other influence, and it flows as a surface-current. But, at a certain point in its northward route, it meets with the cold, brackish, ice-bearing currents that flow out of the arctic basin. ”

“ But the cold water which underruns the Gulf Stream is probably furnished by the arctic waters which move down Davis Strait and the east coast of Greenland. The Gulf Stream, as it widens and becomes more shallow, is, through its exposure to the westerly winds, gradually converted into a drift current; and in this way its surface waters are forced over abreast the shores of Western Europe, where it imparts its warmth to a wide region, and also causes a high sea-level. ”

“ The whole area, covered by the Gulf water, is estimated by Rennell at 2000 miles in length, and, at a mean, 350 miles in breadth; an area more extensive than that of the Mediterranean. The warm water has been sometimes known to reach the Bay of Biscay, still retaining five degrees of temperature above that of the adjoining ocean; and a branch of the Gulf current occasionally drifts fruits, plants, and wood, the produce of America and the West Indies, to the shores of Ireland and the Hebrides. ”

“ Viewed from within the Gulf, it is a slope of sand which has been blown in sheets up the backing hills. The ground plan, as seen from a balloon, would represent a round head to the north, a thin neck, and a body rudely triangular, the whole measuring a maximum of five miles in length: the sandy northern circlet, connected by the narrowest of isthmuses, sweeping eastward, forms the noted port. The material is the normal Secondary formation, sulphates and carbonates of lime supporting modern corallines and conglomerates of shell. ”

“ We plunged our eyes down into the Great Gulf, and lifted them to the shattered protuberances of Clay, which seemed to mark the route where the glacier crushed and ground its way through the very centre of the chain. A second time we descended Jefferson to the deep dip, opening like a trough between two enormous sea-waves, where we first saw the little Storm Lake glistening. Following now the long, rocky ridge, rolling downward toward the hamlets of Jefferson and Randolph, the mountains yawned wide at our feet. We were looking over into King’s Ravine—to its very bottom. ”

“ After leaving Disaster Inlet, the coast was examined to the eastward, and at the distance of fifteen miles, in an E. 5° S. direction, we came to a projection that we called Middle Point. The shore between fell back, forming a bight three miles deep, in lat. 17° 44' S., the most southern shore of the Gulf. A growth of mangroves prevented our landing at high-water, and at low, soft mud flat fronted the shore for the distance of a mile and more. Five miles from Disaster Inlet there was a small creek; with others, three, four, and six miles westward of Middle Point. ”

“ It is its immense width, sharply defined by precipitous walls plunging suddenly down from a flat plain, declaring in terms instantly apprehended that the vast gulf is a gash in the once unbroken plateau, made by slow, orderly erosion and removal of huge beds of rocks. Other valleys of erosion are as great—in all their dimensions some are greater—but none of these produces an effect on the imagination at once so quick and profound, coming without study, given at a glance. ”

“ The Allier and its tributaries were making full gallop for the Atlantic; you see at once torrents racing down gorges to fling themselves into the Mediterranean in which no Greenland icebergs ever float to chill alike the currents and the air. Gulfs open beside the line clothed in chestnuts, mulberries, almonds, vines; oleanders appear, and the kermes oak with its varnished leaves covering the slopes.
The line does not descend the first valley entered, but bores its way through spur after spur of the mountain chain till it reaches the furrow through which flows the Gardon d'Alais. ”

“ That part of the Gulf Stream that passes our shores has a course directly north and a little west, is deflected slightly toward the east by the coasts of South and of North Carolina, and thence turns more to the north again, when it is deflected by the cold current returning from the pole. ”

“ The Gulf Stream impinges full upon the mouths of its long bays. Every tide carries the flood of warm water forty miles inland, and the vegetation consequently is rarely or never checked by frost even two thousand feet above the sea-level. ”

“ Lakes form where rainfall or meltwater in interior drainage basins is sufficient. Desert lakes are generally shallow, temporary, and salty. Because these lakes are shallow and have a low bottom gradient, wind stress may cause the lake waters to move over many square kilometers. When small lakes dry up, they leave a salt crust or hardpan. The flat area of clay, silt, or sand encrusted with salt that forms is known as a playa. There are more than a hundred playas in North American deserts. ”