On the north the _White Sea_, so called from the ice and snow which bind
it up for more than half the year, reaches in from the Arctic Ocean.
From the Atlantic, the shallow _North Sea_, or German Ocean, and the
_English Channel_ (called _La Manche_, or “The Sleeve,” by the French)
break in to separate the British Isles from the mainland; and from the
former the _Skager Rak_, “the crooked and boisterous strait,” leads
through the _Kattegat_, the “Cat’s Throat,” and the “Belts” of the
Danish islands, to the _Baltic_, or the “East Sea” of the Germans, and
its continuations, the Gulfs of Bothnia, Finland, and Riga.
Farther southward, the stormy _Bay of Biscay_, named from the Basque
province of Vizcaya, sweeps in along the northern coast of Spain, and
beyond the Peninsula the narrow _Strait of Gibraltar_ leads into the
great _Mediterranean_, which stretches eastward for twenty-three hundred
miles.