The Ocean River | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 25, 1868

The Ocean River.

HOT-WATER springs are common, but there is but one hot-water river, and that runs through the ocean. If it did not run regularly, or if its waters were to get cold, the green island of Erin would change its nature even more than its name, and become a Greenland in title and a barren one in fact. In truth, any change in the course or character of this warm water stream would have so terrible a thermal influence as to utterly defy prediction or remedy result. It is, therefore, with no little apprehension that thinking men regard the announcement of the fact that the current of the Gulf Stream has nearly doubled its velocity. The occurrence of this phenomenon so soon after the earthquake in the Gulf Island, cannot but give rise to a surmise of some connection between the manifestations. The immediate result of increased force in the current has been to augment the dangers of navigation near the Florida Keys, even steam vessels finding it difficult to weather points easily passed previous to the increased velocity of the stream. This consequence is of itself important, but less alarming than the apprehension of further changes which may have a great bearing on the interests of all civilized humanity.