"Here," states the captain, "we disembarked at Thorshaven on May 13th. On the morning of the 12th we sighted Tindhölm, which is generally regarded as the barrier or point marking the end of the longest river in the world. We had begun our voyage at its source, and had traversed four thousand two hundred and twelve miles to its mouth, where the waters spread out into the great North Sea." [Illustration: APPROACH TO THE FÄRÖE ISLANDS--THE END OF THE GULF STREAM. _From a Photo._] Of the incalculable benefit to the climate of the British Isles and Western Europe which the Gulf Stream confers, one need not here pretend to speak. The river waters lose their warmth but slowly, and during winter they often have, off Cape Hatteras and the bank of Newfoundland, a temperature twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit above that of the ocean. Thus they become a source of heat to Western Europe. Owing to the warmth of its waters the lakes of the Färöe and Shetland Isles never freeze in winter. Great Britain is enveloped in fogs and the myrtle grows on Irish shores in the same latitude as icy Labrador. The western coasts of Ireland have five degrees higher temperature even than those of the eastern, and there the fifty-second degree of latitude corresponds to the thirty-eighth degree in America. All this is ascribed, and rightly, to the proximity of the world's greatest river. THE PHOENIX AND THE CARPET.[A] BY E. NESBIT X.--THE HOLE IN THE CARPET. Hooray! hooray! hooray! Mother comes home to-day; Mother comes home to-day, Hooray! hooray! hooray! Jane sang this simple song directly after breakfast, and the Phoenix shed crystal tears of affectionate sympathy. "How beautiful," it said, "is filial devotion!" "She won't be home till past bed-time, though," said Robert. "We might have one more carpet-day." He was glad that mother was coming home--quite glad, very glad; but at the same time that gladness was rudely contradicted by a quite strong feeling of sorrow, because now they could not go out all day on the carpet. "I do wish we could go and get something nice for mother, only she'd want to know where we got it," said Anthea. "And she'd never, never believe the truth. People never do, somehow, if it's at all interesting." "I'll tell you what," said Robert. "Suppose we wished the carpet to take us somewhere where we could find a purse with money in it--then we could buy her something." "Suppose it took us somewhere foreign, and the purse was covered with strange Eastern devices, embroidered in rich silks, and full of money that wasn't money at all here, only foreign curiosities, then we couldn't spend it, and people would bother about where we got it, and we shouldn't know how on earth to get out of it all." Cyril moved the table off the carpet as he spoke, and its leg caught in one of Anthea's darns and ripped away most of it, as well as a large slit in the carpet. "Well, now you _have_ done it," said Robert.