Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/74

48 131. The high temperature and drift in the western half of North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.—In studying the Gulf Stream, the high temperature and drift of the waters to the east of it are worthy of consideration. The Japan current (§ 80) has a like drift of warm water to the east of it also (Plates VI. and IX.). In the western half, reaching up from the equator to the Gulf Stream, both of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, the water is warmer, parallel for parallel, than it is in the eastern half. On the west side, where the water is warm, the flow is to the north; on the east side, where the temperature is lower, the flow is to the south—making good the remark (§ 80) that, when the waters of the sea meet in currents, the tendency of the warm is to seek cooler latitudes; and of the cool, warmer.

132. 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. Between the northern drift on the one side of the ocean and the southern set on the other, there is in each ocean a Sargasso (§ 88), into which all drift matter, such as wood and weeds, finds its way. In both oceans the Gulf Streams sweep across to the eastern shores, and so, bounding these seas, interpose a barrier between them and the higher parallels of latitude, which this drift matter cannot pass. Such are the points of resemblance between the two oceans and in the circulation of their waters.

133. Their connection with the Arctic Ocean.—A prominent point for contrast is afforded by the channels or water-ways between the Arctic and these two oceans. with the Atlantic they are divers and large; with the Pacific there is but one, and it is both narrow and shallow. In comparison with that of the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream of the Pacific is sluggish, ill-defined and irregular. Were the water-ways between the Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean no larger than Behring's Straits, our Gulf Stream would fall for below that of the Pacific in majesty and grandeur.

134. The sargassos show the feeble power of the trade-winds upon