Gulf of Corinth

“ The direction of the Gulf is nearly north and south. I judge it to be about six leagues over. Many of the Cairo ships are lost in mistaking the entry of the Elanitic for that of the Heroopolitic Gulf, or Gulf of Suez; for, from the island of Tyrone, which is not above two leagues from the Main, there runs a string of islands, which seem to make a semicircular bar across the entry from the point, where a ship, going with a south wind, would take its departure; and this range of islands ends in a shoal with sunken rocks, which reaches near five leagues from the Main. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As we approached the ugly gape of the formidable Gulf, the waves increased in size, and coursed to all directions, as if distorted by the sunken reefs. The eastern jamb is formed by Tírán Island; the western by the sandy Ras Nasráni, whose glaring tawny slope is dotted with dark basaltic cones, detached and disposed like great ninepins. Beyond this cape the Sinaitic coast, as far as Ras Mohammed, the apex of the triangle, is fretted with little indentations; hence its name, El–Shurúm—“the Creeks.” ”

“ The Gulf Stream whipped into violent activity by the south east trade winds beats impetuously upon the islands of the West Indies, washes the beaches of Central America, and whirls its spinning tides within the Gulf of Mexico, and then, repulsed by the continuous shore lines of North America, returns to Europe bearing its mantle of verdure to be thrown over the hills, the capes, the valleys the western edges and islands of the Old World. ”

“ PERSIAN GULF.—From the charts lately published on a large scale by the East India Company, it appears that several parts, especially the southern shores of this gulf, are fringed by coral-reefs; but as the water is very shallow, and as there are numerous sandbanks, which are difficult to distinguish on the chart from reefs, I have not coloured the upper part red. Towards the mouth, however, where the water is rather deeper, the islands of Ormuz and Larrack, appear so regularly fringed, that I have coloured them red. There are certainly no atolls in the Persian Gulf. ”

“ Supposing the pressure of the waters that are forced into the Caribbean Sea by the trade-winds to be the sole cause of the Gulf Stream, that sea and the Mexican Gulf should have a much higher level than the Atlantic. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ At noon this day we found ourselves once more sailing on the Atlantic, and bade farewell to the Gulf of Florida without having heard any news of the dreaded Commodore Mitchell. The narrow and dangerous part of this Gulf is about two hundred miles in length, and fifty in breadth, bordered on one side by the coast of Florida, and on the other, first by Cuba, and then by the Bahama Islands, of which the Manilla reef forms the extremity, and which reef also terminates the Gulf. ”

“ In the foregoing pages of this work, attention has been drawn to the capabilities which East Africa offers, on its coast line, for the production of the finest cotton, by the fact of its whole sea-board being washed by that great ocean-current which subsequently, in its course on the east coast of America, obtains the name of the Gulf Stream. The wonderful effect which the heat contained in this great body of water has on the climate of England, and other more torridly-situated [259] countries, is a fact too well attested to be disputed. ”

“ On the other hand, we are all outlaws, and if we were to land on the mainland we should be hunted down and killed, sooner or later, or, worse still, taken and condemned to the galleys afresh. But outside the Gulf, some two hundred miles or more to the westward, there is a certain uninhabited island, at which this galley has often called for water. It is large enough to support four or five times our number, and although none of us are navigators we could easily find it by simply following the coast line. ”

“ They must consequently flow north. 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 30o and 40o 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 forces its overheated waters up to 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. ”

“ Coronation Gulf, the large estuary dotted with the islands forming the Duke of York Archipelago, which the party had now reached, was a sheet of water with irregular banks, let in, as it were, into the North American continent. At its western angle opened the mouth of the Coppermine; and on the east a long narrow creek called Bathurst Inlet ran into the mainland, from which stretched the jagged broken coast with its pointed capes and rugged promontories, ending in that confusion of straits, sounds, and channels which gives such a strange appearance to the maps of North America. ”

“ This is the case with all the harbours on the east-coast of the Red Sea, while those on the west are deep, without any banks or bars before them, which is probably owing, as I have already said, to the violence of the north-west winds, the only constant strong winds to be met with in this Gulf. These occasion strong currents to set in upon the east-coast, and heap up the land and gravel which is blown in from Arabia. ”

“ Boats, ice permitting, and our "Phantom Ship," of course, can coast all the way to Behring Strait. The whole coast has been explored by Sir John Franklin, Sir John Richardson, and Sir George Back, who have earned their knighthoods through great peril. As we pass Coronation Gulf—the scene of Franklin, Richardson, and Back's first exploration from the Coppermine River—we revert to the romantic story of their journey back, over a land of snow and frost, subsisting upon lichens, with companions starved to death ”

“ When the Gulf Stream drift approaches the eastern side of the Atlantic it splits into two parts, one going southwards along the north-west coast of Africa, the Canaries current, and another turning northwards and passing to the west of the British Isles. Most of the Canaries current re-enters the northern equatorial, but a certain proportion keeps to the African coast, unites with the equatorial return currents, and penetrates into the Gulf of Guinea. ”

“ The salt gives it its peculiar deep indigo-like colour. It runs at the rate of between three and five miles an hour. It is roof-shaped—that is, higher in the centre than on either side. This is proved by placing a boat on either side of the centre, when it drifts off towards the edge nearest to which it is cast loose. Another peculiarity exists in connection with it. Water radiates heat far more slowly than does the earth. If, therefore, the Gulf Stream swept along the ground, it would speedily lose its heat. ”

“ Cornwall, being so surrounded by the sea, and so peculiarly under the influence of the Gulf Stream, may be looked upon as possessing a local "insular" climate in a marked degree. The south-west wind almost invariably brings rain and warmth together, for the high cold granitic moorlands are naturally calculated to arrest these warm airs and chill them, causing thereby a downfall of the suspended water. But Cornwall does not enjoy the amount of sun heat to ripen fruit that is obtained on the east coast of England, and it is exposed to furious gales from the west. ”

“ John, is much more to the south, and on the north side of Cape Meric. The inlet, which was perceived during the ceremony of the tropic, which was a little tardy, is the gulf of St. Cyprian, into which the currents appear to set. Early in the morning, and to the north of this gulph, they passed a little island, very near the coast, and the black colour of which, owing doubtless to the marine plants that cover it, made a striking contrast with the whiteness of the sandy downs of the great desert, the abode of the Moors, and of wild beasts.—Tellus leonum arida nutrix. ”

“ It was only on May 1 that the Nautilus openly resumed its northbound course, after raising the Bahamas at the mouth of Old Bahama Channel. We then went with the current of the sea’s greatest river, which has its own banks, fish, and temperature. I mean the Gulf Stream.
It is indeed a river that runs independently through the middle of the Atlantic, its waters never mixing with the ocean’s waters. It’s a salty river, saltier than the sea surrounding it. Its average depth is 3,000 feet, its average width sixty miles. In certain localities its current moves at a speed of four kilometers per hour. ”

“ Straight for the centre of the passage between the middle and the most easterly island steered Dyer, and when presently the ship entered the passage and her sails were almost becalmed by the intervention of the high land to windward, the amazed seamen found themselves entering a magnificent land-locked gulf so deep and so wide that they could not determine the limits of it. ”

“ In the severest of 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. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Seas. It 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. ”

“ Of all these currents none is as well marked as the Gulf Stream. Its blue water is in such contrast to the darker, greenish hue of the remainder of the ocean that sailors can often tell when they enter the edge of the current, half their vessel being in and half out of the stream. If you approach from the west you find that the water at first shows a warmth of only fifty or sixty degrees near the surface; but as you sail on, this increases until, opposite Sandy Hook, you may get as high a reading on the thermometer as eighty degrees, and opposite Florida above one hundred degrees. ”

“ The Gulf of Carpentaria, situated in the north, is enclosed on the east by the projection of Cape York, and on the west by Arnheim Land, and forms the principal bay on the whole coast, measuring about 6° of long. ”

“ Flowing into the Atlantic Ocean between Florida and Cuba, the warm Gulf Stream traverses the sea from west to east, and although about the middle of its course it partly turns to the south, yet a considerable portion of its waters flows onward to the north-east, and streaming through the wide portal between Iceland and Great Britain, eventually reaches the coasts of Norway. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gathered in full force, the Gulf Stream flows northward close along the coast of our Southern States at the rate of eighty or ninety miles a day until Cape Hatteras gives it a swerve away, when it strikes out to sea and pushes straight across to Spain, where a branch leaves it and runs northward between Iceland and the British Islands, while the main body turns southward to mingle again with the equatorial current from Africa and repeat its journey all over again. ”

“ From the junction of the Ohio, there are one hundred and twenty-five numbered islands from Cairo to Bayou la Fourche, in Louisiana, and besides these there are nearly as many more which bear the names of the owners. Many of these islands are grown up with impenetrable thickets or show only deserted fields.
In proceeding down the great river the boys had kept on only sufficient power to gain steerway, as they were in no haste to reach the Gulf of Mexico, which was their final destination on that trip. They decided that day to travel nights no more. ”