Chap. I. INTRODUCTION. 9 



American travellers, had arrived at the northern 

 shore of North America, at different points and at 

 different times, and reported, somewhat doubting, 

 that they had seen the sea. 



From these circumstances, and, more particu- 

 larly, from the undoubted authorities I had suc- 

 ceeded in collecting, it was quite clear that a 

 current was constantly found setting down Davis's 

 Strait, and the Strait of Hudson's Bay, and also 

 along the shore of Spitzbergen, all to the south- 

 ward ; no doubt therefore could remain on my 

 mind, that there must be a water communication 

 between the seas of the Pacific and the northern 

 Atlantic; that the water supplied through the 

 strait of Behring (a well-established fact) into the 

 Polar Sea, was discharged, by some opening or 

 other, vet to be discovered, into the Atlantic. The 

 1 Edinburgh Review/ however, turned into ridicule 

 the idea of a Polar Basin ; and others endeavoured 

 to show that, if these currents existed, they must be 

 very temporary or occasional, as they would other- 

 wise drain this Polar Basin of its water. 



It may be worth the while, now that the shores 

 of this Polar sea have been visited and surveyed, 

 one part of them by our own navigators, and the 

 Asiatic part by the indefatigable Baron Wrangel 

 and others, to show to these would-be-wise gentle- 

 men what that sea really is — what are its inpour- 

 ings, its outpourings, and its dimensions. In the 

 first place, it is an immense basin of water, included 



