1897.] KANSEN — POLAR EXPEDITION, 1893-96. 449 



see how it is carried across the polar regions from the Siberian side 

 toward the opening between Spitzbergen and Greenland, and also 

 toward the channel between the islands in the North American 

 archipelago. As, however, there is no such gap between these 

 islands as between Spitzbergen and Greenland, the ice there 

 seems to be very much blocked, and is stopped for years and gets 

 very much thicker than on the East Greenland and Spitzbergen 

 side. By snow being heaped upon it year after year it forms striae 

 similar to what we find in glacial ice; it is what has been called 

 the paleocrystic ice by the English and American explorers. 



You understand that our expedition has removed that extended 

 massive and immovable ice-cap, or mantle, which so many explorers 

 thought covered the polar region. Instead we have found a deep 

 sea covered with a comparatively thin layer of ice in constant mo- 

 tion from one side to the other, being one link of the eternal circu- 

 lation of the ocean. 



We had a very good opportunity to study the formation of this 

 ice. I shall mention here only the growth of it by the frost. A 

 good many people, I dare say, believe that the ice in the north 

 goes on growing forever, and that it gets thicker and thicker every 

 year it remains there. That is, to some extent, the case ; but it is 

 not quite so simple, and the growth is not so quick as one would 

 generally imagine. In the beginning, as long as the ice is thin, it 

 grows very rapidly. It was measured at certain intervals during 

 the whole expedition. Ice formed in November of the first year, 

 1893, had in April, 1894, attained a thickness of seven and a half 

 feet. On June 9, it was eight feet three inches thick. That is 

 about the growth of one year. In some parts it was nine feet 

 thick. In the last month of summer and in the autumn it melted 

 a little. At the beginning of the winter, in September, the same 

 floe was about six and a half feet thick. Then the growth began 

 again very slowly, and in May of the next summer, 1895, ^^"'^ same 

 ice had become nine feet ten inches thick. You see it does not 

 increase very much after the first year. The next year another floe 

 was measured. At the beginning of the winter, in November, it 

 was eleven feet thick. At the end of that winter, in May, 1896, it 

 had reached a thickness of thirteen feet six inches. This ice was 

 about three or four years old. The most of the ice that drifts 

 across that region will not grow much thicker directly by freezing, 

 as it is carried across the polar sea, at most, in five years. 



