Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/212

10 their low temperature to precipitate on the island and 12 miles west to seaward. The wind then passes on to the southern coast of China, relieved of most of its moisture, and does not there hamper the clear pleasant winter sky with never-ceasing clouds of rain. Though an apparent curse to the island of Formosa, the beneficial advantages of the Kurosiwo, as the Pacific current is called, in many respects no one can gainsay. Its continual northerly flow on the east of Formosa enables the mariner to defy the persistent severity of the winter monsoon. It tempers the climate of Japan much as our northern British climate is tempered by the Gulf Stream from Mexico; and spreading its warm currents along the western coasts of America, it renders them so much more free from the severity of winter than the eastern coasts of that continent in the same latitude. To Captain Maury, late of the U.S. Navy, is due most of what we know relating to the Atlantic Gulf Stream; and for the first concise account of the Pacific Gulf Stream, the thanks of science are due to Commodore Perry’s work on his Expedition to Japan. In this work (vol. ii., p. 364) the two streams are considered as starting on their course from nearly the same latitude. The Kurosiwo is made to take its source from the Bashee Channel off the south cape of Formosa, and passing up the east coast of Formosa, between it and the Madgico-sima Islands, to increase in breadth, with a central interval of cold water, to bend a little easterly, touching the south point of the Japanese island Kinsin on its northern edge, and thence to continue eastwards, spreading its volume, and including numerous intervening streams of cold water. Much praise is assuredly due for what has already been done in determining the bounds and proportions of this stream; but doubtless much remains to be done, for shipmasters assert that the warm stream flows up the back of Luzon, and has probably its source in much lower latitudes. This would certainly appear to be the case, from the fact of the winter climate of Luzon being attended with almost incessant rain, as at Formosa. I was informed by Captain Meincke, of the Typhoon, that there was a current setting down south, close to the east coast of Formosa, and that the line of demarcation between the deep blue Gulf Stream and the muddy coastwater, bound in a different direction, was very well defined. This line of division I had myself previously observed and noted in my report on the circumnavigation of Formosa, but without being then able to assign a cause for the phenomenon. This would naturally be the cushion of cold water that one would expect to find analogous to what Captain Maury speaks of as forming the landward bank on the coast of Florida to his “river in the ocean.” I was also informed by the same enlightened merchant-captain