Gulf of St. Lawrence

“ Lawrence increases in expanse, until, at length, after traversing a country where the traces of civilisation become gradually less and less visible, she finally merges in the gulf, from the centre of which the shores on either hand are often invisible to the naked eye; and in this manner is it imperceptibly lost in that misty ocean, so dangerous to mariners from its deceptive and almost perpetual fogs. ”

“ After having spent about six years in the wild Nor’ West, as a servant of the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company, I found myself, one summer—at the advanced age of twenty-two—in charge of an outpost on the uninhabited northern shores of the gulf of St. Lawrence named Seven Islands. It was a dreary, desolate spot; at that [Pg 528] time far beyond the bounds of civilisation. The gulf, just opposite the establishment, was about fifty miles broad. ”

“ How fine a blue the waters of the gulf are in this light! We seem to be upon the broad Atlantic. What a realm of seas and shores, islands, bays and rivers, is this St. Lawrence world, in the midst of which we now are, and of which our people know so little! Where are our young men, who have the time and money to skip, from summer to summer, in the fashionable rounds of travel, that they do not seek this virgin scenery? ”

“ The official individual shouts and waves, the old man backing his oars in the gulf below yells expostulation, the boat from the open carries off its prey, our ship begins slowly to puddle-puddle-puddle, working her screw, the man in the gulf of green water rows for his life—we are floating into the open basin. ”

“ Lawrence along the northern side of the Gulf may truly be so styled, as nothing scarcely is to be seen for hundreds of leagues but bare rocky mountains, capes and cliffs in various shapes and figures, some of which are dotted with a few spruce firs, while others present their bald pates deprived of covering by the unmerciful hand of time. ”

“ Lawrence River reaches the Gulf it broadens to ocean proportions, and at *Little Métis and *Matane, and along the Gaspé shores, bathing in pleasantly-warmed sea water may be enjoyed. Prince Edward Island enjoys a reputation for pleasant bathing at a moderate temperature, but as the outer waters near Cape Breton are reached, an increasing coolness is noticeable, until the outer Atlantic shore is gained, and here, of course, the tidal water is the coldest, and best suited for those of robust physique. ”

“ Lawrence increases to twenty miles across, at the Bay of Seven Islands to seventy, at the head of the large and unexplored island of Anticosti to ninety, and at the point where it may be said to enter the Gulf between Gaspé and the Labrador coast, reaches the enormous breadth of 120 miles. In mid-channel both coasts can be seen; the mountains on the north shore rise to a great height in a continuous range, their peaks capped with eternal snows. ”

“ Lawrence, occupies a great bay formed by New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton, and is somewhat larger than Northumberland. The coast-line is exceedingly broken, the surface low and undulating, and very fertile. The chief industry is agriculture, oats and potatoes are the best crops; decayed shells found in beds on the shore are an excellent manure; sheep and horses are raised with great success. The climate is healthy, milder and clearer than on the mainland, but with a tedious winter. Coal exists, but is not wrought. The fisheries are the best on the Gulf, but are not developed. ”

“ Wrecks of vessels strew the rocky shores, and four light-houses warn the mariner of danger. Once past the island the ship is well within the estuary of the gulf into which the St. Lawrence River flows, contributing the waters of the great lakes of the continent to the sea. As the north coast is approached the superstitious sailor is again alarmed if perchance, the compass-needle shows sympathy with some disturbing element, the cause of which he believes to exist in the mountains which rise along the shore. ”

“ "Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed; and then the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago."
So ends one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world, closing up its mystery and its tortured symbolism. It is an epic of the sea such as no man has equalled; and it is a book of exoteric symbolism of profound significance, and of considerable tiresomeness.
But it is a great book, a very great book, the greatest book of the sea ever written. It moves awe in the soul. ”

“ Lawrence, with Assumption Island [75] marked “L’Ascention.” He invariably makes this mistake.
ALLEFONSCE, FOL. 179.
The Gulf is called the Sea of Canada (Mer de Canada) . There are three inlets without names, representing Miramichi, Chaleur, and Gaspé. The Gaspé region is called “Terre Unguedor.” The mouth of the St. Lawrence is shown; and near the entrance, on the Labrador side, we find “La Terre de Sept Isles.” There is an opening intended for Cartier’s Bay of St. Lawrence; and farther eastward is “Cap de Thienot,” so named by Cartier on his first voyage, after the Indian chief found there. ”

“ Malo on the 3rd of May, but did not arrive at the Canadian Gulf until the 10th of August. This being the festival of St. Lawrence, they called the Gulf by the Saint's name, in thanksgiving for their safe arrival. Having entered the river with his little fleet, he sailed as far as the Jacques Cartier River, so named in his honor. ”

“ The bottom then sinks rapidly and forms a long valley parallel to the shore of America and the chalky walls of the Appalachian range. In this valley, hollowed to the east of the submarine basement of America, the Gulf Stream waters flow. Owing to the rotatory motion of the globe and also to the curve of the coasts, the Stream follows a constant direction to the north-east. Off New York and Cape Cod it deviates more and more to the east. It ceases to follow the coast-line, and rolls across the open Atlantic towards the shores of Western Europe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The third and last cruise of the Blake was for the purpose of sounding the depths of the Gulf Stream. They started from Newport in June and cruised until August, 1880, running seven lines of soundings off the coast between Charleston and George's Bank, which led to the discovery that a plateau covered by water not more than 600 fathoms deep extends from the Bahamas northward to Cape Hatteras, forming a vast triangular area of shallow water, the outer edge of which is from 300 to 350 miles out in the ocean from the coast of the Southern Atlantic States. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The greatest river in the world, then, begins in the vicinity of Key West, Florida. There is on the globe no such stupendous flow of waters. It defies the severest droughts; in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its current sweeps onward more rapidly than the Mississippi or the Amazon and its volume is a thousand times greater. Let us rid our mind of the idea of land. The banks and the bottom of this stupendous river are of cold, whilst its current is of warm, water. The name of it is the Gulf Stream. ”

“ While the Gulf Stream largely benefits the globe, it is at the same time the proximate cause of shipwreck and disaster, from the storms which it creates, in consequence of the irregularity of its temperature, and that of the neighbouring regions, both in air and water. Perhaps nowhere is a more terrific sea found than when a heavy gale meets the Gulf Stream, when running at its maximum rate. Many a ship has gone down beneath its waters. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sea-sand, in its industrious zeal in covering up memorials of man's art and industry, is often curiously assisted by the zoophytes and vegetation of the ocean, as well as guarded in its labor by abnormal monsters of piscine creation. An example of this occurred in an amusing venture after Lafitte's gold. While the Gulf coast of Western Louisiana is fortified, in its immature terre tremblante, by the coral reefs and islets, it has the appearance of having been torn into ragged edges by the hydrostatic pressure of the Gulf Stream. ”

“ After leaving Disaster Inlet, the coast was examined to the eastward, and at the distance of fifteen miles, in an East 5 degrees South direction, we came to a projection that we called Middle Point. The shore between fell back, forming a bight three miles deep, in latitude 17 degrees 44 minutes South, 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. ”

“ The summits of this range have been but seldom seen by white men, and have never been scaled. The river drains the whole territory, but loses itself in a terrific marsh before its tide reaches the Mexican gulf, toward which it runs. The current is exceedingly rapid; and, after passing for hundreds of miles under the land and under the sea, it unites its submarine torrent near the west end of Cuba, with that of the Orinoco and the Amazon, and thus forms that great oceanic river called the Gulf Stream. ”

“ They, however, as well as numerous bays and the mouths of many small rivers, can be entered by light vessels acquainted with the ground; and during the war small steamers and schooners frequently escaped through them, carrying cargoes of cotton, then of great value. There is but little rise and fall of the tide in the Gulf, from one to two feet, but the height of the water is much affected by the direction of the wind.
The principal ports on or near the Gulf are New Orleans [3] in Louisiana, Mobile in Alabama, and Galveston in Texas. ”

“ The coasts are low and sandy, with few good harbors, the best being New Orleans, Pensacola and Havana. Cuba is in the middle of the entrance to the gulf, dividing it into two straits, that of Florida, which connects it with the Atlantic and that of Yucatan, opening into the Caribbean. The largest river flowing into it is the Mississippi. The gulf-stream enters the gulf by the Yucatan Channel, flows round it and passes out by the Florida Strait. The gulf is visited by severe winds called northers. See Gulf-Stream. ”

“ The great warm ocean current called the Gulf Stream has, to most people, a more or less vague, mythical existence. The words sound familiar, but the thing itself is only an abstract idea; it lacks reality, for want of any personal experience or knowledge of its characteristic effects. To the navigator of the North Atlantic it is a reality; it has a concrete, definite existence; it is an element which enters into the calculations of his every-day life—sometimes as a friend, to help him on his course, sometimes as an enemy, to endanger, harass, and delay. ”

“ The influence of the Gulf Stream is felt powerfully even here. For here it is that the great ocean current practically dies, bequeathing to these fishermen of Hammerfest, for 113 their firewood, the treasures it has so long carried on its bosom, such as the trunks of palm-trees, and the vegetation of the tropics. It is an extraordinary fact that while the harbor of Christiania, one thousand miles farther south, is frozen over three months every winter, this bay of Hammerfest, only sixty miles from the North Cape, is never closed on account of ice. ”

“ The dangerous coral reefs of the Florida and Bahama shores would be avoided, and a land-locked channel of thirty thousand miles of navigable watercourses would be united in one system.
Lieutenant-Colonel Q. A. Gilmore's report on "Water Line for Transportation from the Mouth of the St. Mary's River, on the Atlantic Coast, through Okefenokee Swamp and the State of Florida to the Gulf of Mexico," in which the able inquirer discusses this water route, has recently been published. ”