Page:The ocean and its wonders.djvu/75

 invigorated and refreshed with the genial warmth about him, he realizes out there at sea the fable of Antæus and his mother Earth. He rises up and attempts to make his port again, and is again, perhaps, as rudely met and beat back from the northwest; but each time that he is driven off from the contest, he comes forth from this stream, like the ancient son of Neptune, stronger and stronger, until, after many days, his freshened strength prevails, and he at last triumphs, and enters his haven in safetythough in this contest he sometimes falls to rise no more, for it is terrible."

The power of ocean currents in drifting vessels out of their course, and in sweeping away great bodies of ice, is very great; although, from the fact that there is no land to enable the eye to mark the flow, such drifts are not perceptible. One of the most celebrated drifts of modern times, and the most astonishing on account of its extent, was that of the Fox in Baffin's Bay in the year 1857, a somewhat detailed account of which will be found in a succeeding chapter.

The Gulf Stream is the cause of many of the most furious storms. The fiercest gales sweep along with it, and it is supposed that the spring and summer fogs of Newfoundland are caused by the immense volumes of warm water poured by it into the cold seas of that region. We are told that Sir Philip Brooke found the temperature of the sea on each side of this stream to be at the freezing-point, while