60 THE GREAT POLAR CURRENT. 



bight in which to moor the vessel. They have always, 

 too, the advantage of being able, when the ice is loose 

 and there is no wind, to tow their vessel along its 

 margin with the crew, steam being rarely used by the 

 whalers. 



The currents have much to do with the formation 

 of this barrier. The great Polar Current coming down 

 through the Spitzbergen Sea along the eastern coast 

 of Greenland, laden with its heavy freight of ice, and 

 bringing from the rivers of Siberia a meagre supply 

 of drift-wood to the Greenlanders, sweeps around Cape 

 Farewell and flows northward as far as Cape York, 

 where it is deflected to the westward. Joining here 

 the ice-encumbered current which comes from the 

 Arctic Ocean through Smith, Jones, and Lancaster 

 Sounds, it flows thence southward, past Labrador and 

 Newfoundland, receives on its way an accession of 

 strength from Hudson Strait, wedges itself in between 

 the Gulf Stream and the shore, gives cool, refreshing 

 waters to the bathers of Newport and Long Branch, 

 and is finally lost off the Capes of Florida. 



Now it will readily be seen, by the most casual 

 glance at any map of Baffin Bay, that this movement 

 of the current forms, where the middle ice is found, a 

 sort of slow-moving whirlpool, and this it is which 

 locks up the ice and prevents its more rapid move- 

 ment southward. It will also be readily understood 

 that, by the end of August, the pack has been very 

 materially shorn of its dimensions. The sun above 

 and the waters beneath have both eaten it away, until 

 much of it has disappeared altogether, and all of it 

 has become more or less rotten. The month of Au- 

 gust is necessarily the most favorable period of the 

 year for the navigation of this sea, so far as concerns 



