From this it appears that the waters of the Atlantic, between the eleventh and forty-third degrees, are constantly drawn by currents into a kind of whirlpool; and if a drop of these waters be supposed to return precisely to the place from which it commenced its motion, Humboldt has calculated, from the known velocity of the current, that it would require two years and ten months to complete its circuit of three thousand eight hundred leagues. ‘A boat,’ he observes, ‘which may be supposed to receive no impulsion from the winds, would require thirteen months from the Canary Islands, to reach the coast of Caraccas, ten months to make the tour of the Gulf of Mexico and reach the Tortoise Shoals, opposite the port of Havana, while forty or fifty days might be sufficient to carry it from the straits of Florida to the bank of Newfoundland. Estimating the velocity of the water at seven or eight miles in twenty-four hours, in their progress from this bank to the coast of Africa, it would require ten or eleven months for this last distance. Such are the effects of this slow but regular motion, which agitates the waters of the ocean.’ The Gulf Stream furnished to Christopher Columbus indications of the existence of land to the west. This current had carried upon the Azores the bodies of two men of an unknown race, and pieces of bamboo of an enormous size. In latitude forty-five or fifty degrees, near Bonnet Flamand, an arm of the Gulf Stream flows from the south-west to the north-east, towards the coast of Europe. It deposits upon the coasts of Ireland and Norway, trees and fruits belonging to the torrid zone. Remains of a vessel burnt at Jamaica were found upon the coast of Scotland. It is likewise this river of the Atlantic which annually throws the fruits of the West Indies upon the shore of Norway.