Mr.

few pounds in my chest, and, instead of re- been retained by the trustee at my old salturning to my loom, I went to the public- ary, to assist in winding up matters; so you house, where I sat and endeavored to forget may rely upon my information." my loss in the stupefaction of intoxication; Joy took possession of my mind; I told and day after day I continued this process, him of my regret at the mode of life I had till I sunk into the lowest stage of misery lately followed; my firm determination to and degradation. Repentance and good res- abandon my evil courses; and the shame I olutions would succeed in the morning, only felt in leaving the hospital in my present to be thrown aside in a few hours; for, as garb. He at once said he would lend me the effects of the debauch died away, the five pounds on the security of my dividend, craving became unbearable, and I renewed and I with pleasure accepted his friendly the intemperance of the day before. I was offer, and slept that night with a mind at ease. like a fascinated bird, whom the eye of the The first use I made of my recovering snake was upon. I knew my doom; I strength, was to call upon my friend Mr. mourned, and strove; but drink, the ser- Ross. The good old man was happy to see pent, had me completely under its power. me, as he was wont to be before my career was now far more wretched than when I of dissipation. I laid open to him the sorwandered through the streets with the good row I felt for my past conduct, and my reAnnie. I was then only poor, for I was in- solve to avoid it for the future; and in a few nocent and pious; now, I was equally poor, days, I was seated at my loom, and continbut without the innocence and peace I then ued steadily at my occupation without a enjoyed. Such was often my state of mind wish to alter it. At length I received from for I was now penniless and almost in the trustee on the bankrupt estate payment rags-that, in the delirium of intoxication, of my dividend; the amount was fifty-seven I went to the river to throw myself in and pounds, and I placed it in the bank with the end my misery: but before it came to this, few pounds I had saved since my reformamy constitution, naturally strong, gave way, tion. I once more enjoyed a tranquil mind, and I lost my senses for a time. and no longer thought of my loss. When I awoke to consciousness, I found Ross, who was now an old man, and had bemyself in the public hospital, weak as an in- come very frail, began to speak of giving up fant, and my mind calm and serene as if I business, and living upon what little money had awakened out of a sleep in childhood. he had saved, as he had no children of his My sight was so weak, I could not endure own alive. I inquired what sum he expected the light, and I closed my eyes, and began to for his looms and business. He asked reflect; the whole events of my life passing whether I knew any one likely to purchase in rapid succession before me, from the gar- them. I smiled, and said: "Perhaps I ret with good Annie, to the green by the may be the person myself." He looked at river-side where consciousness left me. Bit- me with amazement. "Say you so, Charter regret came upon me, but it was void of lie; where did you find the purse? the remorse I had felt before. I may now neither Mr. Ross, nor any one of my old say I first prayed, for it was the sincere out- shopmates, knew that I had saved money, or pourings of my heart. I made resolves of that the loss of it had been the cause of my future amendment, and to return to my backsliding. I told him I had some cash in loom, never more to taste the cause of my the bank, but I feared not sufficient. "I degradation. But how was I to get out of am happy to hear you say so," he replied. the hospital, and again appear in a decent "As I do not require the money to be paid manner in the streets? The thought of this all at once, get whom you please to value the depressed me much, for my clothes were in articles, and you shall have them at the rags, and my shoes deserved not the name. price named. If you have not sufficient, I With a bitter feeling, I at length put on my will not distress you for the balance; you almost mendicant garb, and was about to can pay it by installments, at your conveleave the hospital, when, to my surprise, I saw nience." Guthrie enter the ward. I blushed as he approached he did not cordially take my hand as he was wont, and I saw he eyed me with a cold look of pity. I felt humbled and abased - I could not look him in the face.

For

Thus was I set up at last, the master of a business, and escaped from that undercurrent of life where so many glide, and writhe, and perish. I don't know much yet about what are called the upper ranks; but it occurs to me, that even they will look with some curi"Graham," said he at length, "I am sor- osity, if not interest, on these details of ry for you, but I bring you good news. The what is going on in the depths below them. affairs of our house have been so far wound The things and persons I have described are up that there is a certainty of its paying all real, and all types of classes more or less above ten shillings in the pound. I have populous.

From Chambers' Journal.
THE GULF-STREAM.

waters, so reluctant are they to mingle with each other, that their line of junction is often distinctly visible to the eye one half of a ship may frequently be perceived floating in the cold ocean water, the other half in this warm current, known to mariners and geographers as the Gulf-stream.

Long before the discovery of America, the Gulf-stream, by carrying nuts, bamboos, and artificially carved pieces of wood to the shores of Europe, indicated the existence of a western continent. Columbus himself was told by a settler in the Azores, that even strange boats had been seen, constructed so that they could not sink, and managed by broad-faced men of foreign appearance. Without doubt, these men were Esquimaux Indians. Wallace, in his Account of the Islands of Orkney, tells us that, in 1682, an Esquimaux was seen in his canoe off the south side of the island of Edda by many persons, who could not succeed in reaching him; and another was seen, in 1684, off the island of Westram. Moreover, he says, "be the seas never so boisterous, these boats, being made of fishskins, are so contrived that they can never sink, but are like sea-gulls swimming on the top of the water." Two more of these current-drifted canoes were subsequently found on the shores of the Orkneys; one was sent to Edinburgh, the other hung up in the church of Burra.

It is a singular fact, that two of the most important of the industrial arts - the extraction of food from the soil, and the transportation of commodities to and from distant regions have, from time immemorial, been the occupations of the most ignorant and prejudiced classes of mankind. The sailor, who witnessed the wonders of the great deep, was as little impressed by its marvellous phenomena as the ploughman, who, amidst the wonderful and mysterious process of vegetation, whistled as he went for want of thought. The boon which astronomy conferred upon the navigator may be compared to that which chemistry subsequently afforded to the agriculturist. Yet neither was sufficient. Vegetable physiology next aided the tiller of the soil; but the plougher of the deep, ignorant of its prevailing winds and currents, still empirically followed the devious tracks of the old voyagers. At length Lieutenant Maury, of the United States' navy, by collecting and collating an immense number of journals and log-books, was enabled to produce the Wind and Current Charts, that have caused so marked a progress in the art of navigation. From these charts, in their turn, Lieutenant Maury has written the first Physical Geography of the Sea.* The aim of this work is, as the author tells As if determined to make its course and us," to present the gleanings from this new existence known to the most unobservant, the field in a manner that may be interesting Gulf-stream carried the main-mast of the and instructive to all, whether old or young, English ship Tilbury, that was destroyed by ashore or afloat, who desire a closer look into fire off the coast of St. Domingo, during the the wonders of the great deep." Gleaning Seven Years' War, to the coast of Scotland. principally from this most industrious of But, again, it carried to Scotland a number gleaners in the wide field of science, let us of casks of palm-oil, that were recognized, attempt to describe one of the most remark- by their marks and brands, to be part of the able of all known oceanic phenomena the cargo of a ship that had been wrecked near mighty current which ceaselessly flows from Cape Lopez, in Africa. How could this last west to east, across the bosom of the North remarkable drift come to pass? Simply Atlantic. The fountain-head of this ocean- thus the Gulf-stream, which we have comriver, as it may well be termed, is in the pared to a river, is in reality a part of a great Gulf of Mexico. From thence, it flows north-system of oceanic circulation. The branch easterly along the shores of the United States, that, as we have said, turns off from the until it reaches the banks of Newfoundland; British Islands, southwards to the Azores, then stretches across the Atlantic to the British Islands, where it divides into two parts-one flowing northward to the Arctic Sea, the other southward to the Azores. In the whole world, there is not so majestic a flow of water as this ocean-river. Its current is more rapid than the Amazon or the Mississippi. În the severest droughts, it never fails; in the greatest floods, it never overflows. Though its banks and bed consist of cold water, yet the river itself is warm; and so great is the want of affinity between these

*The Physical Geography of the Sea. London: 1855.

joins the great equatorial current, which, flowing to the westward from the coast of Africa, enters the Caribbean Sea, and emerges from the Straits of Florida as the Gulf-stream. The casks of palm-oil, then, had twice traversed the Atlantic-first from east to west, in the equatorial current, and secondly, from west to east, in the Gulfstream before they found a resting-place on the coast of Scotland.

To compare small things with great if we were to place little pieces of cork, chaff, or other light bodies, in a basin of water, and give the water a circular motion, the light

substances would crowd together in the cen- Sea and Gulf of Mexico, the boilers; the tre, where there is the least motion. So it is Gulf-stream, the conducting-pipe; from the in the great basin of the Atlantic, where the Banks of Newfoundland to the shores of Sargasso Sea forms the centre of the whirl Europe is the great hot-air chamber, spread caused by the circular motion of the equa- out so as to present a large surface. Here torial current and the Gulf-stream. This sea, the heat, conveyed into this warm-air chamsituated about midway in the Atlantic, in ber of mid-ocean, is taken up by the prevailthe triangular space between the Azores, ing west winds, and dispensed over our own Canaries, and Cape de Verd Islands, covering and other countries, where it is so much rea space equal in extent to the valley of the quired. Such, in short, is the influence of Mississippi, is so thickly matted over with a the Gulf-stream upon our climate, that Irepeculiar weed (Fucus natans), that the speed land is clothed in robes of evergreen grass; of vessels passing through it is often greatly while in the very same latitude, on the retarded. To the eye, at a short distance, it American side of the Atlantic, is the frostseems substantial enough to walk upon, and bound coast of Labrador. In 1831, the harcountless hosts of small crustacea dwell on this bor of St. John's, Newfoundland, was closed curious carpet of the ocean. Columbus sailed with ice so late in the season as June; yet through it, on his first voyage of discovery, the port of Liverpool, two degrees further in spite of the terrors of his less adventurous north, has never been closed by frost in the companions, who believed that it marked the severest winter. The Laplander cultivates limits of navigation; and its position has not barley in a latitude which, in every other altered since that time. This Sargasso, or part of the world, is doomed to perpetual Sea of Lentils, as the Spaniards first termed sterility. The benefit thus conferred on our it, has a historical interest. In the celebrated country by the Gulf-stream is a remarkable bull of Pope Alexander VI. in 1493, when he accident in our condition. It obviously dedivided the world between the Spaniards and pends on the Gulf of Mexico continuing to be the Portuguese, he decreed that the Sargasso a gulf, which, however, it might easily cease Sea was to be their mutual boundary to all to be. A subsidence of the Isthmus of Paneternity! ama to the extent of a couple of hundred feet The waters of the Gulf-stream do not, in-and such subsidences have taken place in any part of their course, touch the bottom geological times all over the world-would of the sea. They are everywhere defended from so comparatively good a conductor of heat by a cushion of cold water, one of the best of non-conductors. Consequently, but little heat is lost, and the genial warmth is carried thousands of miles to fulfil its destined purposes.

On a winter-day, the temperature of the stream, as far north as Cape Ilatteras, is from twenty to thirty degrees higher than the water of the surrounding ocean. Even after flowing 3000 miles, it preserves in winter the heat of summer. With this temperature it crosses the fortieth degree of north latitude, and there overflowing its liquid banks, spreads itself out, for thousands of square leagues, over the cold waters around, covering the ocean with a mantle of warmth, to mitigate the climate of our high northern latitude. Moving now more slowly, but dispensing its genial influence more freely, it at last meets the British islands. By these it is divided, one part going into the polar basin of Spitzbergen, the other entering the bay of Biscay; but each with a warmth considerably above the ocean temperature.

allow the equatorial current of the Atlantic to pass through into the Pacific, instead of being reflected back to our coasts. Britain would then become a Labrador, and cease to be the seat of a numerous and powerful people.

While the Gulf-stream is covering our shores with verdure, ripening the harvests of England and the vintage of France, its influence is equally beneficial at its fountainhead in the western world. The Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico are encompassed on one side by the chain of West India Islands, and on the other by the Cordilleras of the Andes, contracting with the Isthmus of Darien, and again expanding over the plains of Central America and Mexico. On the extreme summits of this range are the regions of eternal snow; next in descent is the tierra templada, or temperate region; and lower still is what the Spaniards truly and emphatically have termed tierra caliente, the burning land. Descending still lower is the level of the sea, where, were it not for this wonderful system of aqueous circulation, the peculiar features of the surrounding country Modern ingenuity has suggested a well- assure us we should find the hottest and most known method of warming buildings, by pestilential climate in the world. But as means of hot water. Now, the north-western the waters become heated, they are carried parts of Europe are warmed, in an exactly off by the Gulf-stream, and replaced by similar manner, by the Gulf-stream. The cooler currents entering the Caribbean Sea. torrid zone is the furnace; the Caribbean The surface-water flowing out is four degrees

warmer than the surface-water entering to supply its place.

and badly-manned vessels, to say nothing of the extra distance between London and Falmouth. He accordingly consulted a Nan

As in a hot-water apparatus for warming a building to keep up the simile the tucket whaling-captain named Folger, who water cooled in the hot-air chamber flows back to the boiler; so one part of the waters of the Gulf-stream, after giving out their heat, flow towards the equatorial current, the other to the polar basin of Spitzbergen. The secrets of the arctic regions are hidden by impenetrable ice; but we know that a returncurrent, bearing immense icebergs, comes down from the dreary north, through Davis' Strait, and meets the Gulf-stream at the banks of Newfoundland. Scoresby counted at one time six hundred icebergs starting off on their southward journey by this current, which, pressing on the waters of the Stream, curves its channel into a "bend," in shape resembling a horse-shoe, and some hundreds of miles in area. This bend is the great receptacle or harbor of the icebergs which drift down from the north, and are here melted by the warm waters of the Stream. Who dare say that, in the course of ages, the Banks of Newfoundland have not been formed by the earth, stones, and gravel carried down to that spot by these very icebergs?

Such is the distinctness kept up between the warm and cold water, that, though the northern current forms a large bend or indentation in the Gulf-stream, it does not commingle with it; the former here divides into two parts- one actually under-running the stream, the other flowing south-westerly between it and the coast of America. It is this last branch of the cold current that affords the citizens of the United States a refreshing sea-bathing in summer, and an unlimited supply of the finest fish. In all parts of the world, the most plentiful supply and most delicious quality of fish are found in cold water. The habitat of certain kinds of fish unerringly indicates the temperature of the water; and it is highly probable that cold currents are the great pathways along which migratory fishes travel from one region to another.

happened to be in London at the time. Folger immediately explained the mystery by stating, that the Rhode Island trading-captains were acquainted with the course of the Gulf-stream, while those of the English packet-service were not. The latter kept in it, and were set back from sixty to seventy miles per day, while the former merely ran across it. At the request of Franklin, the Nantucket whaler traced the course of the stream, and the doctor had it engraved, and sent copies to the Falmouth captains, who treated the communication with contempt. This course of the Stream, as laid down by Folger, has been retained in our charts almost to the present day. Who, we might ask, taught this unscientific Nantucket whaler so correct a course of this mighty current, then so little known? It was the whales, the gigantic prey he followed in the ocean. The right whale (Balæna mysticetus), as seamen term it, never enters the warm water of the Gulf-stream: it, as well as the warm waters of the torrid zone, is as a wall of fire to these creatures. But they delight to congregate, seeking for food, along the edges of the Stream; and thus Folger, through the experience of many voyages, was enabled so correctly to denote its course.

Our space warns us to conclude, ere we have scarcely passed the threshold of this interesting subject. But we must observe, that the Gulf-stream of the Atlantic has its counterpart in the Pacific. The latter flows out of the Straits of Malacca, just as the Atlantic current flows out of the Straits of Florida. The coast of China is its United States; the Philippines, its Bermudas; the Japanese islands, its Newfoundland. The climates of the Asiatic coast correspond with those of America along the Atlantic; and those of Columbia, Washington, and Vancouver, are duplicates of those of Western Europe and the British islands; the climate of California reThough the Gulf-stream was noticed by sembles that of Spain; and the sandy plains Sir Humphrey Gilbert in the sixteenth cen- and rainless regions of Lower California retury, we are indebted to the celebrated Dr. mind us of Africa. The course of this China Franklin for the first chart of its course. Stream has not yet been traced out, but it Being in London in 1770, his attention was sets southwardly along the coast of Califorcalled to a memorial which the Board of Cus- nia and Mexico, as the Gulf-stream does along toms at Boston had sent to the Lords of the the west coast of Africa to the Cape Verd IsTreasury, stating that the Falmouth packets lands. This current, too, has its Sargasso were generally a fortnight longer on their Sea; to the west, from California, of the voyage to Boston than common trading-vessels southwardly set, lies the pool in which the were from London to Rhode Island. They drift-wood and sea-weed of the North Pacific therefore begged that the Falmouth packets are gathered. Inshore of, but counter to, should be sent to Providence instead of to the China Stream, along the eastern shores Boston. This appeared very strange to of Asia, is found a current of cold water, reFranklin, as the traders were deeply-laden sembling that between the Gulf-stream and