Starting from its caldron in the Gulf of Mexico, it carries a freight of caloric towards the North Atlantic. Owing partly to the diurnal motion of the Earth on its axis, its flow trends towards the east; hence its warm waters embrace our favoured coasts, and ameliorate our climate, while the eastern sea-board of North America is left, in winter, to the rigour of unmitigated frost. But besides the powerful influence of this current on climate, it exerts a very considerable influence on navigation. In former times, when men regarded the ocean as a great watery waste--utterly ignorant of the exquisite order and harmonious action of all the varied substances and conditions which prevail in the sea, just as much as on the land--they committed themselves to the deep as to a blind chance, and took the storms and calms they encountered as their inevitable fate, which they had no means of evading. Ascertaining, as well as they could from the imperfect charts of those days, the position of their desired haven, they steered straight for it through fair weather and foul, regarding interruptions and delays as mere unavoidable matters of course. But when men began to study the causes and effects of the operation of those elements in the midst of which they dwelt, they soon perceived that order reigned where before they had imagined that confusion revelled; and that, by adapting their operations to the ascertained laws of Providence, they could, even upon the seemingly unstable sea, avoid dangers and delays of many kinds, and oftentimes place themselves in highly favourable circumstances. Navigators no longer dash recklessly into the Gulf Stream, and try to stem its tide, as they did of yore; but, as circumstances require, they either take advantage of the counter-currents which skirt along it, or avail themselves of the warm climate which it creates even in the midst of winter. There is a certain spot in the Atlantic known by the name of the Sargasso Sea, which is neither more nor less than a huge ocean-eddy, in which immense quantities of sea-weed collect. The weed floats so thickly on the surface as to give to the sea the appearance of solid land; and ships find extreme difficulty in getting through this region, which is rendered still further unnavigable by the prevalence of long-continued calms. This Sargasso Sea is of considerable extent, and lies off the west coast of Africa, a little to the north of the Cape Verd Islands.