The voyage to Australia and back,
carries the clipper ship along a route which, for more than three
hundred degrees of longitude, runs with the "brave west winds" of the
southern hemisphere. With these winds alone, and with their bounding
seas which follow fast, the modern clipper, without auxiliary power, has
accomplished a greater distance in a day than any sea-steamer has ever
been known to reach. With these fine winds and heaving seas, those ships
have performed their voyages of circumnavigation in sixty days.
[Footnote 62: Formerly an officer of the navy, eminent for his scientific
researches and writings on maritime subjects; a native of Virginia.]
* * * * *
=_251._= THE GULF STREAM.
As a rule, the hottest water of the Gulf Stream is at, or near, the
surface; and as the deep-sea thermometer is sent down, it shows that
these waters, though still far warmer than the waters on either side
at corresponding depths, gradually become less and less warm until the
bottom of the current is reached. There is reason to believe that the
warm waters of the Gulf Stream are nowhere permitted, in the oceanic
economy, to touch the bottom of the sea. There is everywhere a cushion
of cool water, between them and the solid parts of the earth's crust.
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