The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-06-03

great ocean greyhounds shape their | course across the seas, which no longer is ''trackless ocean,, but, figuratively speaking, a familiarly blazed roadway, and gratefully remembered.
 l The means employed by these men who spent their lives in mapping the ocean is to a great extent a sealed book
 to the great mass of the people. The way the work is done is too multipleX l to be explained in all it's branches and l the object of this article is merely to tell of how an ordinary beer bottle,
 corked and sealed, with a note in it, in three hundred and fourteen days trav- teled nearly in direct line from off Fer 1 Kerry, coast of Ireland, a distance of overthirty-th hundred miles. l George E. Kuhnast, first officer of the
 steamship Comus, threw this bottle | which made the remarkable trip into | the Gulf of Mexico December 16, 1899,
 in a latitude thirty degrees and forty
 minutes north and longitude seventy
 nine degrees and ten minutes west, off
 the Florida coast, and, as said, in three hundred and fourteen days it made the | voyage directly across the Atlantic
 ocean to the coast of Ireland.
 l Singular to say, the letter to MT.
 Kuhnast from the person who found
 the bottle was nearly as long coming to him as the bottle was in making it's | transatlantic trip. The letter reached
 him few days ago through the New
 Orleans postoffice, and from it's appear
 ance it is veritable globe trotter. It 1 bears the postmark of one or two Ger
 man offices, the French postal stamp, as well as the postal stamp of the Dan- ish government
 I The supposed reason why the letter, which was covered by redirections from l to to bottom on both sides, was subjec- | ted to such a circuitous world-covering l journey, is that there are several we'll 1 known seamen by the name of kuhnast, | sailing in as many ships, flying as many different nations flags, and that when | the letter failed to reach the American sailor it was sent to some acquaintance to one of the other Kuhnasts in differ ent part of the world.
 Yesterday evening aboard the steam
 
 of the remarkable ocean, travelled bot tie and the equally remarkable land travelled letter. MT. Kuhnast said that the study of ocean currents, proving a subject of never-failing interest to him, he had frequently thrown bottles into the sea off the coast of various countries as we'll as in nid-ocean.
 q have heard from a number of these silent travellers continued MT. Kuh- mast, land one, by the way, did some rather remarkable missionary work in good man out of an unenlightened me- gro But I'm getting ahead of my sto- ry. I'll have to heave to and go slow CT.
 "Yes, I have figured out the route the bottle took to make it's voyage from the Florida coast to the Irish shore; that is, in a vague sort of way. You see, the bottle, thrown into the sea, as it was, off the Florida coast, got into the Gulf Stream, and it followed that stream clear across the Atlantic ocean, never leaving it during all the thousand miles it travelled The bottle was never nearer land than the Newfoundland Banks There the Gulf Stream, two hundred miles south of Newfoundland, forks. At this point, east of Grand Banks, where the Gulf Stream forks, one current running south forms what is known as the African current, while thex other runsnortheast,s striking the coast of Ireland and Norway. The bot tie took the latter route. This much Of the bottles route is known. But why it drifted into thecoast of Ireland, in- stead of the. coast of Norway, I can't explain.
 What was written on the note in the bottle? Well, the note only bore the name of the ship was on, the steam ship Louisiana, then my name and the longitude and latitude where the bottle was thrown overheard. I use, however, in these experiments, printed slip which is supplied me by the United States navy department. These slips are the same as those used by the Fly drographic department of the navy in bottles thrown by them into the sea. Printed on these slips in five different languages are the directions to any one
 finding the bottle how to fill in the blank space on the back, which shows just where the bottle was discovered. It is by this means that the hydro graphers of this and all other countries have been able to determine the route of the ocean currents.
 ''I started to tell you of what l call my missionary bottle. Tn 1892, I was an officer in the American bark E. w. Stetson of New York. On February g, when we were well out at sea returning home from a voyage to Rio Janeiro, l threw overheard a bottle which con- tained note bearing my name and ad- dress and a request to whoever found the bottle to write me. We were in Longitude three degrees, twenty-nine minutes north, and latitude twenty-five degrees nine minutes west when sent the bottle adrift. I remember the day as well as I do yesterday, for it was shortly after Christmas. I remember how depressed I was that I had been forced to spend the holidays away from home. Later, however, the incident passed out of my mind and I never thought of it again, except when l looked in my diary. You can imagine my surprise then, when, some months later I received a letter from the chief hydrographers office of the United States navy. telling me that the bottle