Year: 1870




The truth is that, notwithstanding the


extraordinary degree of exemption from


disaster and calamity which has been
attained in the navigation of the north
/ ern Atlantic, through the vast advances
which have been made in modern times
| in nautical science and skill, there is
probably no other throughfare of com
merce or of human intercommunication


on the globe so beset with danger and


difficulties as the voyage from New York
to Liverpool The Gulf Stream brings
a current of warm water fifty miles wide
and a thousand feet deep-and flowing
at the ordinary rate of the current of
river from the tropical seas, and pours
It out in a vast expanding mass over and
beyond the Banks Newfoundland, where
it turns off eastward, and finally loses
itself in the northern seas; while, to the
westward of it, a counter current coming
down from Bafin's Bay-a current of
nearly equal magnitude and force
pours into it a stream of icebergs. ice
foes, and ice-cold water. The effects
of this confluence are, beneath the water,
the accumulation of vast deposits of
sand and rocky debris brought down by
the ice, and in the atmosphere above
an almost perpetual succession of fogs
and mist and driving rains accompan-
led by gales and squalls, and every 9TH
er possible meteorological commotion.
The region most disturbed by the con-
fiict between these opposing force and
temperatures is on the hither side the
Atlantic, and affects chiefly the first half
of the voyage; and the danger, more
over, is the greatest at that season Of
the year which would on other accounts
be the most convenient and the most
agreeable time for making the trip-name
" in the early months of summer. The
ice-fioes break up. and icebergs are.
detached from the great Greenland gla-
ciers crowding out from the land, in the
early simmer of one season; and as
they require about a year for their twelve
or fifteen hundred miles voyage, they


do not reach the track of the ocean
steamers until the early summer of the


next.


They drift very slowly at last, and
melt very gradually under the feeble
radiation of even June and July suns in
the latitude of Labrador. Some portions
both of the foes and of the icebergs
reach as far south as the Banks of New.
foundland, but few go much farther
south than this Their advance ceases
here, partly because the force of the cur
rent by which they are brought down
becomes wellnigh exhausted, and partly
because the masses of ice become by
this time so diminished and SO weakened
by the increasing heat, both Of the lati-
tude and the season, that they are easily
beaten TO pieces by the waves and dis
solved. Sometimes, however, mountains
of ice come down of such prodigious size
that it is long before they entirely dis
appear. Captain Price informed US that
on one of his voyages he passed two inn
mense icebergs, and on his return voy-
age, after sailing nearly fifteen hundred


miles to and fro. and making the usual
stay in port. he passed them again.


They had drifted during the interim
about forty miles. They had diminish
ed somewhat in size. but they were Of
such magnitude still. and their forms
were SO peculiar. that their identity coald
not be mistaken.-From ''the Ocean
Steamer, by Jacob Abbott, in Eszzbr2's S
Magazine fo5- 7aflt,.