Russian America; Message from the President of the United States, in Answer to a Resolution of the House of 19th of December Last, Transmitting Correspondence in Relation to Russian America (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 Excerpt: ... continent, says still more explicitly that "the climate of this coast appeared to him infinitely milder than that of Hudson bay in the same latitude, and that the pines which he had measured here were much larger." (Voyage, vol. 2, p. 187.) Langsdorf, when at Sitka in 1806, records that Mr. John U. Wolf, a citizen of the United States, who had passed the winter at the settlement, "is much surprised at finding the cold less severe than at Boston, Rhode Island, and other provinces of the United States which lie more to the south." (Voyages, vol. 2, p. 101.) All this is now explained by certain known forces in nature. Of these the most important is a thermal current in the Pacific, corresponding to the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. The latter, having its origin in the heated waters of the Gulf of Mexico, flows as a river through the ocean northward, encircling England, bathing Norway, and warming all within its influence. A similar stream in the Pacific, sometimes called the Japanese current, having its origin under the equator near the Philippines and the Malaccas, amid no common heats, after washing the ancient empire of Japan sweeps northward until, forming two branches, one moves onward to Behring straits, and the other bends eastward along the Aleutian islands, and then southward along the coast of Sitka, Oregon, and California. Geographers have described this "heater," which in the lower latitudes is as high as 810 of Fahrenheit, and even far to the north it is as high as 60. A chart now before me in Findlay's Pacific Ocean Directory portrays its course as it warms so many islands and such an extent of coast. An officer of the United States navy, Lieutenant Bent, in a paper before, the Geographical Society of New York, while...