Читать книгу The Circle of Knowledge: A Classified, Simplified, Visualized Book of Answers - Various - Страница 118

An extensive system of currents appears to arise in the Antarctic Ocean. A current of cold water flowing northward joins the equatorial current in the Pacific. Entering the Indian Ocean, it maintains its westerly course until it approaches the shores of Africa; then bending southward it rushes through the Mozambique Channel, and doubling the Cape of Good Hope travels northward until it arrives at the Bight of Benin. This current then joins the equatorial current, and crossing the Atlantic from the coast of Guinea to that of Brazil, it is divided into two branches by the projecting headland of Cape San Roque, one flowing southward and the other northward.

The Gulf Stream. After passing the Island of Trinidad, this great oceanic current enters the Gulf of Mexico, and there acquires a high temperature, and sweeping round that sea it again pours forth into the Atlantic, forming the most powerful of known currents, called the Gulf Stream. Issuing from the Gulf of Mexico, this current of warm water rushes with considerable force through the Bahama Channel; then taking a northerly course it travels along the eastern shores of North America, and at Newfoundland is turned to the eastward by an opposing cold current which sets in from Baffin’s Bay. It now maintains an easterly direction, and crossing the Atlantic arrives at the Azores in about twenty-eight days, and divides its waters on the coast of France and Spain: one portion goes southward and at length joins the grand current which sets from the coast of Guinea; and another portion travels northward and skirts the western coasts of Europe. These currents are seldom more than 500 feet deep.