The great river just touches the southern extremity of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. This bank of Newfoundland, an enormous plateau surrounded on all sides by abysses five to six miles deep, is chiefly due to the contact of the Arctic current with the Gulf Stream. For here is the chief graveyard of icebergs. On entering the tepid waters of the river the frozen mountains gradually melt and let fall the fragments of rock and loads of earth they bear into the sea. The bank, which rises gradually from the bottom, is the work of the Greenland glaciers and the floes of the Polar Sea. It is the presence of the Gulf Stream in these latitudes which is the cause of the prevalent fogs not only here, but in the islands off Europe. From here onward a sailor can always tell whether or not he is in the Stream by plunging a thermometer overboard. Capt. Westrup found that it crosses the Atlantic with a mean speed of twenty-four knots a day. This had previously been ascertained, according to Maury, by direct measurement at different parts of the ocean, or by means of notes, which, having been thrown overboard in bottles, carefully closed, have floated for weeks or months at the will of the waves, and then been fished up in other latitudes or found on some seashore. In its long journey this mighty river transports hardly any other alluvium than the living frustules of animalculæ which fill the tepid waters of the current, and are constantly falling like snowflakes to the bottom of the ocean. However, during the whole distance across the _Miosen_ constantly met with the trunks and branches of trees, cane stalks, and woody flotsam, much of which finally reaches the coasts of Europe, even as far as Spitzbergen. "It was," says M. Reclus, "these remains which our ancestors of the Middle Ages believed to come from the fabulous island of St. Brandan or from Antilia, and which furnished matter for thought to daring navigators like the great Columbus. Seeds carried from the New World by the current have found a favourable soil on the shores of the Azores, and, although many thousands of miles from their native land, have germinated and borne fruit. Frequently the Gulf Stream brings to Europe the damaged products of human industry and the timber of wrecked ships. During the Seven Years' War the main-mast of an English man-of-war, the _Tilbury_, which had been burnt near San Domingo, was found on the northern coasts of Scotland. Also, a river-boat laden with mahogany was once driven to the Färöe Islands. The remnants of vessels wrecked in the latitude of Guinea have reached the British Isles on the Gulf Stream, and Esquimaux canoes have often been carried on its waves to the Orkneys." The Färöe Islands formed the temporary stopping-place of the _Miosen_.