CHAPTER XXXII.
THE OPEN POLAR SEA.—WIDTH OF THE POLAR BASIN.—BOUNDARIES OF THE POLAR BASIN.—POLAR CURRENTS.—POLAR ICE.—THE ICE-BELT.—ARCTIC NAVIGATION AND DISCOVERY.—THE RUSSIAN SLEDGE EXPLORATIONS.—WRANGEL'S OPEN SEA.—PARRY'S BOAT EXPEDITION.—DR. KANE'S DISCOVERIES.—EXPANSION OF SMITH SOUND.—GENERAL CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM MY OWN DISCOVERIES AND THOSE OF MY PREDECESSORS.
THE OPEN POLAR SEA.—WIDTH OF THE POLAR BASIN.—BOUNDARIES OF THE POLAR BASIN.—POLAR CURRENTS.—POLAR ICE.—THE ICE-BELT.—ARCTIC NAVIGATION AND DISCOVERY.—THE RUSSIAN SLEDGE EXPLORATIONS.—WRANGEL'S OPEN SEA.—PARRY'S BOAT EXPEDITION.—DR. KANE'S DISCOVERIES.—EXPANSION OF SMITH SOUND.—GENERAL CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM MY OWN DISCOVERIES AND THOSE OF MY PREDECESSORS.
Let us pause here a few moments, in order that we may take a brief survey of the Polar Basin and arrive at a correct understanding of what is meant by the term, "Open Polar Sea," so often used.
BOUNDARIES OF THE POLAR BASIN.
By referring to the circumpolar map, the reader will be able to form a more accurate judgment than he could from the most elaborate description. He will observe that about the North Pole of the earth there is an extensive sea, or, more properly, ocean, with an average diameter of more than two thousand miles. He will observe that this sea is almost completely surrounded by land, and that its shores are, for the most part, well defined,—the north coasts of Greenland and Grinnell Land, which project farthest into it, being alone undetermined. He will note that these shores occupy, to a certain extent, a uniform distance from the Pole, and are everywhere within the region of perpetual frost. He will remember that they are inhabited everywhere by people of the same race, to whom the soil yields no subsistence, who live exclusively by hunting and fishing, and confine their dwelling-places either to the coast or to the banks ofthe rivers which flow northward. He will observe that the long line of coast which gives lodgment to these Arctic nomads is interrupted in three principal places; and that through these the waters of the Polar Sea mingle with the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,—these breaks being Baffin Bay, Behring Strait, and the broader opening between Greenland and Nova Zembla; and if he traces the currents on the map and follows the Gulf Stream as it flows northward, pouring the warm waters of the Tropic Zone through the broad gateway east of Spitzbergen and forcing out a return current of cold waters to the west of Spitzbergen and through Davis Strait, he will very readily comprehend why in this incessant displacement of the waters of the Pole by the waters of the Equator the great body of the former is never chilled to within several degrees of the freezing-point; and since it is probably as deep, as it is almost as broad, as the Atlantic between Europe and America, he will be prepared to understand that this vast body of water tempers the whole region with a warmth above that which is otherwise natural to it; and that the Almighty hand, in the all-wise dispensation of His power, has thus placed a bar to its congelation; and he will read in this another symbol of Nature's great law of circulation, which, giving water to the parched earth and moisture to the air, moderates as well the temperature of the zones—cooling the Tropic with a current of water from the Frigid, and warming the Frigid with a current from the Tropic.[11]
[11]The temperature of the air at the North Pole has furnished a fruitful theme of speculation, both in connection with the influence of the sea and of the sun. I have before me a highly instructive paper on the climate of the North Pole, read before the Royal Geographical Society of London, April 10th, 1865, by W. E. Hickson, Esq., from which I extract the following:—"It had always been supposed that the immediate areas of the Poles must be the coldest regions of the globe, because the farthest points from the equator. Hence the argument that the higher the latitude the greater must be the difficulties and dangers of navigation. Quite an opposite opinion, however, had begun to prevail among meteorologists on the publication, in 1817, of the Isothermal system of Alexander Von Humboldt, which showed that distance from the equator is no rule for cold, as the equator is not a parallel of maximum heat. The line of maximum heat crosses the Greenwich meridian, in Africa, fifteen degrees north of the equator, and rises, to the eastward, five degrees higher, running along the southern edge of the Desert of Sahara. In 1821, Sir David Brewster pointed out, in a paper on the mean temperature of the globe, the probability of the thermometer being found to range ten degrees higher at the Pole than in some other parts of the Arctic Circle. No new facts have since been discovered to invalidate this conclusion—many, on the contrary, have come to light tending to confirm it."
[11]The temperature of the air at the North Pole has furnished a fruitful theme of speculation, both in connection with the influence of the sea and of the sun. I have before me a highly instructive paper on the climate of the North Pole, read before the Royal Geographical Society of London, April 10th, 1865, by W. E. Hickson, Esq., from which I extract the following:—
"It had always been supposed that the immediate areas of the Poles must be the coldest regions of the globe, because the farthest points from the equator. Hence the argument that the higher the latitude the greater must be the difficulties and dangers of navigation. Quite an opposite opinion, however, had begun to prevail among meteorologists on the publication, in 1817, of the Isothermal system of Alexander Von Humboldt, which showed that distance from the equator is no rule for cold, as the equator is not a parallel of maximum heat. The line of maximum heat crosses the Greenwich meridian, in Africa, fifteen degrees north of the equator, and rises, to the eastward, five degrees higher, running along the southern edge of the Desert of Sahara. In 1821, Sir David Brewster pointed out, in a paper on the mean temperature of the globe, the probability of the thermometer being found to range ten degrees higher at the Pole than in some other parts of the Arctic Circle. No new facts have since been discovered to invalidate this conclusion—many, on the contrary, have come to light tending to confirm it."
POLAR CURRENTS
Bearing these facts in mind, the reader will perceive that it is the surface-water only which ever reaches so low a temperature that it is changed to ice; and he will also perceive that when the wind moves the surface-water, the particles which have become chilled by contact with the air mingle in the rolling waves with the warm waters beneath, and hence that ice can only form in sheltered places or where the water of some bay is so shoal and the current so slack that it becomes chilled to the very bottom, or where the air over the sea is uniformly calm. He will remember, however, that the winds blow as fiercely over the Polar Sea as in any other quarter of the world; and he will, therefore, have no difficulty in comprehending that the Polar ice covers but a small part of the Polar water; and that it exists only where it is nursed and protected by the land. It clings to the coasts of Siberia, and springing thence across Behring Strait to America, it hugs the American shore, fills the narrow channels which drain thePolar waters into Baffin Bay through the Parry Archipelago, crosses thence to Greenland, from Greenland to Spitzbergen, and from Spitzbergen to Nova Zembla,—thus investing the Pole in an uninterrupted land-clinging belt of ice, more or less broken as well in winter as in summer, and the fragments ever moving to and fro, though never widely separating, forming a barrier against which all the arts and energies of man have not hitherto prevailed.
THE ICE-BELT.
If the reader would further pursue the inquiry, let him place one leg of a pair of dividers on the map near the North Pole (say in latitude 86°, longitude 160° W.), and inscribe a circle two thousand miles in diameter, and he will have touched the margin of the land and the mean line of the ice-belt throughout its wide circuit, and have covered an area of more than three millions of square miles.
Although this ice-belt has not been broken through, it has been penetrated in many places, and its southern margin has been followed, partly along the waters formed near the land by the discharging rivers of the Arctic water-sheds of Asia and America, and partly by working through the ice which is always more or less loosened by the summer. It was in this manner that various navigators have attempted the northwest passage; and it was after following the coast line from Behring Strait to Banks Land, and then pushing through the broken ice that Sir Robert McClure finally succeeded in effecting this long-sought-for passage—not, however, by carrying his ship completely through, but by traveling over the winter ice three hundred miles to Wellington Channel, whence he returned home through Baffin Bay in a ship that had come from the eastward. And it was in thissame manner that Captain Collinson, passing from west to east, reached almost to the spot where perished Franklin, who had entered the ice from the opposite direction. And it is thus, also, that the Russians have explored the coasts of Siberia, meeting but two insurmountable obstacles to the navigation from the Atlantic to the Pacific side, namely, Cape Jakan, against which the ice is always jammed, and which Behring tried in vain to pass, and Cape Ceverro Vostochnoi, which the gallant young Lieutenant Prondtschikoff made such heroic efforts to surmount. And it was by the same method of navigation that the Amsterdam pilot, earnest old William Barentz, strove, in 1598, to find by the northeast a passage to Cathay.
ICE NAVIGATION.
The efforts to break through the belt, with the expectation of finding clear water about the Pole, have been very numerous, and they have been made through every opening from the southern waters to the Polar Sea. To follow the history of those various attempts would not fall within my present purpose. It is but a long record of defeat, so far as concerned the single object of getting to the Pole. Cook, and all who have come after him, have failed to find the ice sufficiently open to admit of navigation northward from Behring Strait, as Hudson and his followers have through the Spitzbergen Sea; and all the efforts through Baffin Bay have been equally futile. The most persevering attempts to break through the ice-belt have been made to the west of Spitzbergen, and in this quarter ships have approached nearer to the Pole than in any other. The highest well-authenticated position achieved by any navigator was that of Scorsby, who reached latitude 81° 30´,although it is claimed that Hudson had gone still further; and if the stories which Daines Barrington picked up from the fishermen of Amsterdam and Hull are to be relied on, then the old Dutch and English voyagers have gone even beyond this, seeking new fishing-grounds and finding everywhere an open sea. There is, however, as before observed, no well-authenticated record of any ship having attained a higher latitude than that of Scorsby.
WRANGEL'S OPEN SEA.
Failing to get through the ice, explorers have next tried to cross it with sledges. In this the Russians have done most. Many enterprising officers of the Russian service, using the dog-sledges of the native tribes inhabiting the Siberian coast, have, in the early spring, boldly struck out upon the Polar Sea. Most conspicuous among them was Admiral Wrangel, then a young lieutenant of the Russian Navy, whose explorations, continued through several years, showed that, at all seasons of the year, the same condition of the sea existed to the northward. The travelers were invariably arrested by open water; and the existence of aPolyniaor open sea above the New Siberian Islands, became a fact as well established as that the rivers flow downward to the sea.
Sir Edward Parry tried the same method above Spitzbergen, using, however, men instead of dogs for draft, and carrying boats for safety in the event of the ice breaking up. Parry traveled northward until the ice, becoming loosened by the advancing season, carried him south faster than he was traveling north; and after a while it broke up under him, and set him adrift in the open sea.
KANE'S OPEN SEA.
Next came Captain Inglefield's attempt to get into this circumpolar water through Smith Sound; andthen Dr. Kane's. The latter's vessel could not be forced further into the ice than Van Rensselaer Harbor; and, like the Russians, he continued the work with sledges. After many embarrassments and failures in his attempts to surmount the difficulties presented by hummocked ice of the Sound, one of his parties succeeded finally in reaching the predicted open water; and, to quote Dr. Kane's words, "from an elevation of five hundred and eighty feet, this water was still without a limit, moved by a heavy swell, free of ice, and dashing in surf against a rock-bound shore." This shore was the shore of the land which he named Washington Land.
Next, after Dr. Kane's, came my own undertaking; and the last chapter leaves me with my sledge upon the shores of that same sea which Dr. Kane describes, about one hundred miles to the north and west of the point from which one of his parties looked out upon the iceless waters. My own opinion of what I saw and of the condition of this sea, which Wrangel found open on the opposite side from where I stood, and which Kane's party had found open to my right, and which Parry's journey showed to be open above Spitzbergen, may be inferred from what I have already briefly stated, and may be more briefly concluded.
EXPANSION OF SMITH SOUND.
The boundaries of the Polar Basin are sufficiently well defined to enable us to form a rational estimate of the unknown coast-lines of Greenland and Grinnell Land,—the only parts of the extensive circuit remaining unexplored. The trend of the northern coast-line of Greenland is approximately defined by the reasonable analogies of physical geography; and the same process of reasoning forbids the conclusionthat Grinnell Land extends beyond the limit of my explorations. I hold, as Inglefield did before me, that Smith Sound expands into the Polar Basin. Beyond the narrow passage between Cape Alexander and Cape Isabella, the water widens steadily up to Cape Frazer, where it expands abruptly. On the Greenland side the coast trends regularly to the eastward, until it reaches Cape Agassiz, where it dips under the glacier and is lost to observation. That cape is composed of primitive rock, and is the end of a mountain spur. This same rock is visible at many places along the coast, but is mostly covered with the deposit of sandstone and greenstone, which forms the tall cliffs of the coast-line, until it crops out about thirty miles in the interior into a mountain chain, which, (in company with Mr. Wilson), I crossed, in 1853, to find themer de glacehemmed in behind it. Further to the north themer de glacehas poured down into the Polar Sea, and pushing its way onward through the water, it has at length reached Washington Land, and swelled southward into Smith Sound. That the face of Humboldt Glacier trends more to the eastward than is exhibited on Dr. Kane's chart, I have shown; and that Washington Land will be found to lie much farther in the same direction, I have sufficient grounds for believing. According to the report of Morton, it is to be inferred that this island is but a continuation of the same granitic ridge which breaks off abruptly at Cape Agassiz, and appears again above the sea at Cape Forbes, in a line conformable with the Greenland range. It is probable then that at some remote period this Washington Land stood in the expansion of Smith Sound, washed by water on every side,—that lying to theeastward being now supplanted by the great glacier of Humboldt; that lying to the westward now bearing the name of Kennedy Channel.
THE OPEN POLAR SEA.
With the warm flood of the Gulf Stream pouring northward, and keeping the waters of the Polar Sea at a temperature above the freezing point, while the winds, blowing as constantly under the Arctic as under the Tropic sky, and the ceaseless currents of the sea and the tide-flow of the surface, keep the waters ever in movement, it is not possible, as I have before observed, that even any considerable portion of this extensive sea can be frozen over. At no point within the Arctic Circle has there been found an ice-belt extending, either in winter or in summer, more than from fifty to a hundred miles from land. And even in the narrow channels separating the islands of the Parry Archipelago, in Baffin Bay, in the North Water, and the mouth of Smith Sound,—everywhere, indeed, within the broad area of the Frigid Zone, the waters will not freeze except when sheltered by the land, or when an ice-pack, accumulated by a long continuance of winds from one quarter, affords the same protection. That the sea does not close except when at rest, I had abundant reason to know during the late winter; for at all times, as this narrative frequently records, even when the temperature of the air was below the freezing point of mercury, I could hear from the deck of the schooner the roar of the beating waves.
THE OPEN WATER.
It would be needless for me to detain the reader with the conclusions to be drawn from the condition of the sea as observed by me at the point from which the last chapter left us returning, as the facts speak for themselves. It will not, however, be out of placeto observe that no one whose eye has ever rested upon the Arctic ice or witnessed the changes of the Arctic seasons, could fail to realize that in a very short time, as the summer advanced, the open water would steadily eat its way southward, through Kennedy Channel, into Smith Sound.
A Sketch