The direction of the Gulf-stream explains to us how the productions of tropical America are so frequently found on the shores of the Eastern Atlantic. Humboldt relates that the main-mast of the "Tilbury," a ship of the line, wrecked during the seven years' war on the coast of San Domingo, was carried by the Gulf-stream to the North of Scotland; and cites the still more remarkable fact, that casks of palm oil belonging to the cargo of an English vessel, which foundered on a rock near Cape Lopez, likewise found their way to Scotland, having thus twice traversed the wide Atlantic; first borne from east to west by the equatorial current, and then carried from west to east, between 45° and 55° N. latitude, by means of the Gulf-stream.
Major Rennell ("Investigation of Currents") relates the peregrinations of a bottle, thrown overboard from the "Newcastle," on the 20th of January, 1819, in lat. 38° 52″, and long. 66° 20″, and ultimately found on the 2nd of June, 1820, on the shore of the Island of Arran.
On the 16th of April, 1853, another bottle cast into the waters in the vicinity of the Bank of Newfoundland, on the 15th of March, 1852, was found near Bayonne, not far from the mouth of the Adour.
On the coasts of Orcadia, a sort of fruit, commonly known by the name of Molucca, or Orkney beans, are found in large quantities, particularly after storms of westerly wind.
These beans are the produce of West Indian trees (Anacardium occidentale), and find their way from the woods of Cuba and Jamaica, to the Ultima Thule of the ancients, by means of the Gulf-stream.
Large quantities of American drift-wood are transported by the same current to the dreary shores of Iceland,—a welcome gift to the inhabitants of a region where the highest tree is but a dwarfish shrub, and cabbages of the size of an apple are raised, as a great rarity, in the governor's garden.
A short time before Humboldt visited the island of Teneriffe, the sea had thrown out the trunk of a North American cedar-tree (Cedrela odorata), covered with the mosses and lichens that had grown upon it in the virgin forest.
The Gulf-stream has even contributed to the discovery of America, for it is well known that Columbus was strengthened in his belief in the existence of a western continent, by the stranding on the Azores of bamboos of an enormous size, of artificially carved pieces of wood, of trunks of a species of Mexican pine, and of the dead bodies of two men, whose features, resembling neither those of the inhabitants of Europe nor of Africa, indicated a hitherto unknown race. But not only lifeless and inanimate objects find their way across the wide Atlantic by means of the Gulf-stream and its spreading waters; the living aborigines of the distant regions of America have also sometimes been driven towards the coasts of Europe by the combined action of the currents and the winds. Thus, James Wallace tells us that, in the year 1682, a Greenlander in his boat was seen by many people near the south point of the island of Eda, but escaped pursuit. In 1684 another Greenland fisherman appeared near the island of Wistram. An Esquimaux canoe, which the current and the storm had cast ashore, is still to be seen in the church of Burra. In Cardinal Bembo's "History of Venice," it is related that, in the year 1508, a small boat with seven strange-featured men, was captured by a French vessel in the North Sea. The description given of them corresponds exactly with the appearance of the Esquimaux; they were of a middle-size, of a dark colour, and had a broad face with spreading features, marked with a violet scar. No one understood their language. They were clothed in seal-skins. They ate raw flesh, and drank blood as we do wine. Six of these men died on the journey; the seventh, a youth, was presented to the King of France, who at that time was residing at Orleans.
The appearance of so-called Indians on the coast of the German Sea, under the Othos and Frederic Barbarossa, or even, as Cornelius Nepos, Pomponius Melas, and Pliny relate, at the time when Quintus Metellus Celer was proconsul in Gaul, may be explained by similar effects of the current and continuous north-easterly winds. A king of the Boians made a present of the stranded dark-coloured men to Metellus Celer. Gomara, in his "General History of the Indies," expresses a belief that these Indians were natives of Labrador, which would be doubly interesting as the first instance recorded in history of the natives of the Old and the New World having been brought into contact with each other. We can easily account for the appearance of Esquimaux on the North European coasts in former times; as during the eleventh and twelve centuries, their race was much more numerous than at present, and extended, as we know, from the researches of Rask and Finn Magnussen, from Labrador to the good Winland, or the shores of the present State of Massachusetts and Connecticut.