REGENT POLAR EXPLORATIONS, 321 



rent found between the northeastern point of extreme Asia and the 

 very jagged promontories of the northwestern coast of North America. 

 This was the route chosen by the Frenchman Gustave Lambert for 

 that gigantic expedition, the preparations for which were followed 

 with great interest by the learned world ; but his unexpected death 

 caused the abandonraent of the enterprise. A second route, by Baffin's 

 Bay, opens between the western shores of Greenland and the vast 

 archipelago that commences at Hudson's Bay. This double entrance 

 to the arctic seas has been for a long time the favorite course for 

 English and American sailors. Europe, at the present time, seems to 

 prefer two routes nearer its own territory, passing, the one, along the 

 eastern coast of Greenland, the other between Sj)itzbergen and Nova 

 Zembla. 



These last-mentioned routes were formerly much frequented by 

 the Dutch navigators like Barentz, but they have since been aban- 

 doned. Dr. Petermann, the director of the Geographische Mitthei- 

 lungen, has succeeded in bi'inging once more into popular favor these 

 desirable paths to the Polar Sea. Extensive and long-continued study 

 gave to this geographer the conviction that the great warm current 

 that issues from the Gulf of Mexico, between Florida and the island 

 of Cuba, and takes a northern course, passing along the coast of Eu- 

 rope, must have a northern extension more considerable than had 

 been heretofore supposed. In the month of July, 1865, Dr. Petermann 

 for the first time developed this theory before the German Geograph- 

 ical Society in session at Hamburg. Supporting his argument by 

 numberless experiments in soundings and measurements of tempera- 

 ture, he demonstrated the probable presence of the Gulf Stream in very 

 high latitudes, and concluded that, after leaving Spitzbergen, the 

 barrier of ice once overcome, a navigable ocean woiild be found. The 

 routes that we have described would then be openings conducting to 

 a kind of arctic Mediterranean, to which navigators could sail in a 

 direct course, instead of wasting their lives in perilous and useless 

 searches in the windings of the great circumpolar labyrinth. These 

 bold deductions did not fail to meet with energetic opposition, espe- 

 cially in America and England; but five years latei", in 1870, Dr. 

 Petermann, returning to the charge with the data gained from a still 

 more complete research, surmounted all controversy. He established 

 the fact that the warm current advances as far as Spitzbergen and 

 Nova Zembla, beyond the eightieth degree of latitude, and that, 

 aside from some lateral branches, it sends its principal mass toward 

 the northeast. At this latitude the temperature of the current de- 

 scends to three degrees below zero. Centigrade. Experiments made 

 by Dr. Bessels, of Heidelberg, in the course of one of the latest ex- 

 plorations, prove that the influence of the warm current is still per- 

 ceptible beyond Bear Island. The real extent of the Gulf Stream is, 

 however, a problem that has never been satisfactorily solved. 



VOL. VII. 21 



