The principal branch of the great equatorial current takes a northerly course from off Cape St. Roque, and rushes along the coast of Brazil with such force and depth that it suffers only a temporary deflection by the powerful streams of the river Amazon and of the Orinoco. Though much weakened in passing among the West Indian islands, it acquires new strength in the Caribbean Sea. From thence, after sweeping round the Gulf of Mexico with the high temperature of 88° 52ʹ of Fahrenheit, it flows through the Straits of Florida, and along the North American coast to Newfoundland under the name of the Gulf-stream: it is there deflected eastward by the form of the land and the prevalent wind, and after passing Newfoundland by a current from Baffin’s Bay. From the Azores it bends southward, and aided by the north-east trade rejoins the equatorial current, having made a circuit of 3800 miles with various velocity, leaving a vast loop or space of water nearly stagnant in its centre, which is thickly covered with sea-weed. The bodies of men, animals, and plants of unknown appearance, brought to the Azores by this stream, suggested to Columbus the idea of land beyond the Western Ocean, and thus led to the discovery of America. The Gulf-stream is more salt, warmer, and of a deeper blue than the rest of the ocean, till it reaches Newfoundland, where it becomes turbid from the shallowness of that part of the sea. Its greatest velocity is 78 miles a-day soon after leaving the Florida Strait; and its breadth increases with its distance from the strait until the warm water spreads over a large surface of the ocean. An important branch leaves the current near Newfoundland, setting towards Britain and Norway; which is again subdivided into many branches, whose origin is recognized by their greater warmth, even at the edge of perpetual ice in the Polar Ocean; and in consequence of some of these branches the Spitzbergen Sea is 6° or 7° warmer at the depth of 200 fathoms than at its surface. Though the warmth of the Gulf-stream diminishes as it goes north, Lieutenant Murray says “that the quantity of heat which it spreads over the Atlantic in a winter’s day would be sufficient to raise the whole atmosphere that covers France and Great Britain from the freezing point to summer heat;” and it really is the cause of the mildness and of the damp of Ireland and the south of England.