"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.
"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."
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.