orms me, to the direction and to the length of the course
of this river, which runs from south to north, so that the sources of
the stream lie in much warmer latitudes than its mouths. In the country,
therefore, where the sources are situated, the frost breaks up at an
earlier season, while yet the waters in the lower part of its course are
ice-bound. Hence the current of water, rushing down northward, reaches a
point where the thaw has not begun, and, finding the channel of the
river blocked up with ice, it overflows the banks, sweeping through
forests of pines, and carrying away thousands of uprooted trees.

_Drift-timber on coasts of Iceland, Spitzbergen, &c._--The ancient
forests of Iceland, observes Malte-Brun, have been improvidently
exhausted; but, although the Icelander can obtain no timber from the
land, he is supplied with it abundantly by the ocean. An immense
quantity of thick trunks of pines, firs, and other trees, are thrown
upon the northern coast of the island, especially upon the North Cape
and Cape Langaness, and are then carried by the waves along these two
promontories to other parts of the coast, so as to afford sufficiency of
wood for fuel and for constructing boats. Timber is also carried to the
shores of Labrador and Greenland; and Crantz assures us that the masses
of floating wood thrown by the waves upon the island of John de Mayen
often equal the whole of that island in extent.[1063]

In a similar manner the bays of Spitzbergen are filled with drift-wood,
which accumulates also upon those parts of the coast of Siberia that are
exposed to the east, consisting of larch trees, pines, Siberian cedars,
firs, and Pernambuco and Campeachy woods. These trunks appear to have
been swept away by the great rivers of Asia and America. Some of them
are brought from the Gulf of Mexico by the Bahama stream; while others
are hurried forward by the current which, to the north of Siberia,
constantly sets in from east to west. Some of these trees have been
deprived of their bark by friction, but are in such a state of
preservation as to form excellent building timber.[1064] Parts of the
branches and almost all the roots remain fixed to the pines which have
been drifted into the North Sea, into latitudes too cold for the growth
of such timber, but the trunks are usually barked.

The leaves and lighter parts of plants are seldom carried out to sea, in
any part of the globe, except during tropical hurricanes among