[1] A late French biography of Columbus, a work of profound research and erudition, by M. Roselly de Lorgues, proves beyond a cavil the accuracy of this assertion. The work in question was published under the auspices of the Pope.
[2] This tract, so thickly matted with Gulf-weed, and covering an area equal in extent to the Mississippi Valley, has since been called by the Portuguese the Sargasso Sea. It still exists in the same spot, and if we now hear very little of it, it is because navigators have learned to avoid it. Lieut. Maury accounts for its existence in the following manner:—"Patches of this weed are always to be seen floating along the Gulf Stream. Now, if bits of cork, or chaff, or any floating substance, be put in a basin, and a circular motion be given to the water, all the light substances will be found crowding together near the centre of the pool, where there is the least motion. Just such a basin is the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf Stream, and the Sargasso Sea is the centre of the whirl. Columbus found this weedy sea in his voyage of discovery, and there it has remained to this day."
