North Atlantic

“ Could the waters of the Atlantic be drawn off, so as to expose to view this great sea-gash, which separates continents, and extends from the Arctic to the Antarctic, it would present a scene the most rugged, grand, and imposing. The very ribs of the solid earth, with the foundations of the sea, would be brought to light, and we should have presented to us at one view the empty cradle of the ocean.... ”

“ The result of all these operations is, that we know the contours and the nature of the surface-soil covered by the North Atlantic, for a distance of seventeen hundred miles from east to west, as well as we know that of any part of the dry land.
It is a prodigious plain—one of the widest and most even plains in the world. If the sea were drained off, you might drive a wagon all the way from Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland, to Trinity Bay, in Newfoundland. ”

“ The North Atlantic, waste of waters though it appears, is really a country crossed and divided by countless tracks as familiar to the seaman as though they were roads marked by trees and milestones. Latitude and longitude, which to a landsman seem mere mathematical abstractions, represent to [63] seamen thousands and thousands of definite points which, in their relation to sun and stars and the measured lapse of time, are each as familiar and as accessible as any spot on a main road is to a landsman. ”

“ It follows that any change in the distribution of land and water must affect climate, more especially if it changes the character or course of the ocean-currents.
At the present time the North Atlantic presents some very peculiar and, in some respects, exceptional features, which are most instructive with reference to its past history. The great internal plateau of the American Continent is now dry land; the passage across Central America between the Atlantic and Pacific is blocked; the Atlantic opens very widely to the north; the high mass of Greenland towers in its northern part. ”

“ When we think of the conditions which now obtain in Europe, can we conceive of any stronger contrast than that which is suggested by the few facts which are here summarized? Instead of the splendid navies of war-ships, ocean-liners, and other craft which now crowd its waters, the English Channel had formerly its fleets of ice-floes, and the walrus haunted the coasts of Northern France. When such extreme conditions obtained, it can hardly be doubted that the Gulf Stream, as we know it now, had no existence in the North Atlantic. ”

“ The transatlantic steamers, that every season bear so many of our fellow-countrymen from our own shores directly to the ports of Italy, pass, as all travelers know, through the Gibraltar Straits. Those who have sailed this course undoubtedly recall with a thrill of pleasure the morning when, after eight days upon the broad Atlantic, they waked to find on either hand the shores of a great continent,—the hills of Spain upon the north, and opposite, the grim forbidding mountains of Morocco. ”

“ The Atlantic Ocean is traversed by a series of main currents, which are of great importance on account of their powerful influence on the physical conditions of the surrounding regions of sea and atmosphere. By its oceanographical investigations in 1910 and 1911 the Fram expedition has made important contributions to our knowledge of many of these currents. We shall first speak of the investigations in the North Atlantic in 1910, and afterwards of those in the South Atlantic in 1911. ”

“ Even if we reduce this estimate one half, the stoppage of the Gulf Stream would still deprive the Atlantic of a quantity of heat equal to one fourth of all that is received directly from the sun by that area.
It is beyond doubt, therefore, that the passage of so great a body of heated water into the North Atlantic, over the surface of which it spreads for so many thousands of square miles, must have a most powerful influence on the climate of those regions to which its heat is brought by prevalent winds. ”

“ With these astounding facts before us, due wholly to the transference of a portion of the warm currents of the Atlantic to the shores of Europe, even with all the disadvantages of an icy sea to the north-east and ice-covered Greenland to the north-west, how can we doubt the enormously greater effect of such a condition of things as has been shown to have existed during the Tertiary epoch? ”

“ They are pretty regular in the North Atlantic, as far as 5° N., where calms may be expected, or the south-east trade may reach across, depending on the season; but when near land they yield to the land and sea breezes. ”

“ From this route taken by the great navigator, he crossed the ocean in its widest part. Had he, instead, followed the track of the Northmen, who crept around from Iceland to Greenland and Labrador; or had he sailed straight to the Azores, and then borne away to the north-west, he would much sooner have descried land from the mast-head. But steering in darkness, he crossed the Atlantic where it is broadest and deepest; where, as submarine explorers have since shown, it rolls over mountains, lofty as the Alps and the Himalayas, which lie buried beneath the surface of the deep. ”

“ Atlantic Ocean.—On the Atlantic there are more ships than on any other ocean, because Europe and North America, which lie on either side of it, carry on more trade than the other continents. Ships, carrying passengers and goods, are constantly crossing this ocean. ”

“ A marked difference exists in this respect between the Atlantic half of the polar regions north of Europe and eastern North America, where disturbance and divisions of the land are the rule, and the Pacific side, north of Siberia and western America, where quiet prevails, with regular coast forms and few islands. The lands on the Atlantic side have, moreover, been gradually rising for an in-calculable length of time, and are still rising, while those on the opposite side have until very recently been subsiding. ”

“ The Atlantic occupies a long, winding, comparatively narrow trough, that measures about ten thousand miles north and south, from the ice of the Antarctic to the ice of the Arctic ocean, and has only a few islets south of Iceland, the Faroes and the Shetlands, which rise from a plateau stretching from Labrador to Great Britain, the higher points of which were probably above the water within comparatively recent geological times, possibly since man appeared upon the globe. ”

“ While the prevalence of certain winds, and the form of the coast of South-America, are favorable to a direct trade with the continent of North-America, they are such as to compel the commerce with Europe to pass along our shores, and thus constitute our Atlantic seaports so many stopping places at which the ships of the old world may touch in their voyages to and fro. ”

“ In these generally tranquil seas, the wind sometimes blows with great violence; though, as every sailor knows, a spicy gale in the tropic latitudes of the Pacific is far different from a tempest in the howling North Atlantic. ”

“ If, therefore, we take what obtains in the Atlantic as the type of what obtains entirely around the earth, as it regards the trade-winds, we shall see that the southeast trade-winds keep in motion more air than the northeast do, by a quantity at least proportioned to the difference between the circumference of the earth at the equator and at the parallel of latitude of 9o north. ”

“ Referring to the chart, we find that the North Sea is surrounded with land, excepting at two inlets or apertures, the one extending about 100 leagues, between the Orkney Islands and the Norwegian coast, and the other between Dover and Calais, which is of the width of seven leagues. The aggregate waterway of these two passages forms the track for the tidal waters, and also for the surplus waters produced during storms which affect the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. ”

“ When men learned that instead of finding a short route to China they had come upon two great continents that shared the Western Ocean, they turned their thoughts to discovering what was known as the Northwest Passage. They hoped to find a way by which ships might sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean north of America. The great English explorers in particular were eager to find such an ocean route, and this search was the real beginning of the fur-trading around Hudson's Bay, the cod-fishing of Newfoundland, and the whale-fishing of Baffin Bay. ”

“ The evidence that has been so fully and judiciously stated in the introduction, amounts to the highest degree of probability that a north-west passage from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean, cannot exist to the southward of 65° of latitude. If then there exists a passage, it must be either through Baffin’s Bay, or round by the north of Greenland, in the western hemisphere; or else through the Frozen Ocean, to the northward of Siberia, in the eastern; and on which ever side it lies, the navigator must necessarily pass through Beering’s Straits. ”

“ An important adjunct to the present highly favourable geographical conditions pointing to a great future for civilization on the Atlantic coast is the construction of a ship-canal across the isthmus uniting North and South America. ”

“ Every physical geographer who has written upon the Atlantic has noticed the curious parallelism between its eastern and its western borders, their salient and retiring angles corresponding very closely to each other. Thus, beginning at the north we see that the projection formed by the British Islands (which extends much further westwards at 100 fathoms below the surface than it does above the sea-level) , answers to the wide entrance to Baffin s Bay ; whilst, on the other hand, the projection of the American coast at Newfoundland answers to the Bay of Biscay. ”

“ Consequently, between America and Europe, vast territories will be revealed, which the United States, Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal can annex pro rata to their Atlantic coast-lines, or otherwise, as they may think fit. But it must be remembered that as the waters are lowered, so will the air be. The coast of Europe and America will be lifted to such an extent, that towns placed twenty or even thirty degrees from the point of maximum, will have no more air than is now available at three miles from the surface of the sea. ”

“ He might also observe that the northern girdle is cut across, so that the Atlantic opens by a wide space into the Arctic Sea, while the Pacific is contracted toward the north, but confluent with the Antarctic Ocean. The Atlantic is also relatively deeper and less cumbered with islands than the Pacific, which has the highest ridges near its shores, constituting what some visitors to the Pacific coast of America have not inaptly called the "back of the world," while the wider slopes face the narrower ocean. ”

“ They could not fly over from Europe, nor could they now cross Behring Strait, with the Arctic climate there existing. Imaginative persons have supposed a submerged Atlantic Continent, which bridged the chasm in a remote geological period. The myth of the Atlantis has been recently furbished up under the facts supplied by the deep-sea soundings of the English steamer Challenger, and the discovery of a plateau at the bottom of the ocean, between North America and Europe. But, if it ever existed, it probably did so at a time before the ancestors of our present moths came into being. ”

“ The strong southeast trades blow up from Southern Africa, cross the equator, and drive the waters of the South Atlantic into the Caribbean Sea. The lighter northeast trades, blowing between North Africa and the West Indies, assist and give direction to this movement, which finally impels through the Straits of Florida a tide of tropical waters a hundred times greater than the outflow of all the rivers in the world. ”

“ Germany and Austria between the North Sea, the Baltic, and the Adriatic. Some states are situated on the coast, occupying a bordering position; others occupy an intermediate location. And the more isolated situations are all fundamentally different, according to whether they are insular, peninsular, or continental. Situations in respect to the oceans are even more various. How different are Atlantic locations in Europe from those on the Mediterranean, the Baltic, or the Black Sea! Only a few nations occupy a position fronting on two great oceans. ”

“ In America it is more common, and of a more severe type an the Atlantic sea-board than on the Pacific; in the last hundred years its northern limit is said to have retreated in the centre of the continent, though some observers think it is creeping further north in the Eastern States. ”

“ The weather door of the smoking-room had been left open to the North Atlantic fog, as the big liner rolled and lifted, whistling to warn the fishing-fleet. ”

“ The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.
They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area. ”

“ Until recently the mere expression of belief in the former existence of an Atlantic continent has been the signal for criticism, and has called forth the smile of pity, if not of contempt. Such, however, is no longer true, since scientific investigation, consisting chiefly in deep-sea soundings and the study of the fauna and flora of the opposite shores of the Atlantic, call for the respectful attention of all who are interested in the ancient history of this continent. Prominent among the men of science who have expressed confidence in this hypothesis is Prof. ”