For a whole hour was I deep in these reflections,
seeking to pierce this mystery so interesting to me.
Then my eyes fell upon the vast planisphere spread upon the table,
and I placed my finger on the very spot where the given latitude
and longitude crossed.
The sea has its large rivers like the continents. They are
special currents known by their temperature and their colour.
The most remarkable of these is known by the name of the Gulf Stream.
Science has decided on the globe the direction of five principal currents:
one in the North Atlantic, a second in the South, a third in the North
Pacific, a fourth in the South, and a fifth in the Southern Indian Ocean.
It is even probable that a sixth current existed at one time or another
in the Northern Indian Ocean, when the Caspian and Aral Seas formed but
one vast sheet of water.
At this point indicated on the planisphere one of these currents
was rolling, the Kuro-Scivo of the Japanese, the Black River, which,
leaving the Gulf of Bengal, where it is warmed by the perpendicular
rays of a tropical sun, crosses the Straits of Malacca along the coast
of Asia, turns into the North Pacific to the Aleutian Islands,
carrying with it trunks of camphor-trees and other indigenous productions,
and edging the waves of the ocean with the pure indigo of its warm water.
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