158 BRYANT — DRIFT CASKS IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. [Aprils, 



rendezvous, Herschel Island. Hence we find that some nine casks 

 were set adrift off Banks Land in 1899 and 1900 by the steam 

 whalers Alexander, Thrasher, Narwhal and Beluga. It seems to be 

 altogether reasonable to assume that quite a large percentage of the 

 water contributed to this part of the Arctic Ocean by the Macken- 

 zie River should find its outlet by means of the devious channels 

 which extend eastward among the islands of the American Archi- 

 pelago ; but just which route the drift casks will take, or how long it 

 will take them to reach the whaling grounds in Lancaster Sound, it 

 is idle to conjecture. Should any number of the casks be recovered 

 on the Atlantic side, however, the time occupied by them on the 

 journey between the known termini can be ascertained with some 

 accuracy, and the resulting data should throw some light on the 

 speed of the current in question. From the representatives of this 

 miniature flotilla which were cast adrift in the waters north of 

 Bering Strait, we may look for more definite results. 



It has been known for years that no appreciable amount of water 

 from the Polar Ocean escaped through the narrow, shallow outlet 

 of Bering Strait, while the knowledge gained from the drift of the 

 Jeannette and Fram point to the existence of a well-defined drift 

 across the circumpolar area to the shores of Franz Joseph Land, 

 Spitzbergen and East Greenland. The presence of quantities of 

 Siberian driftwood in the localities named can be explained by no 

 other intelligent hypothesis, while it is well known that Dr. Nansen 

 based the theory of his voyage primarily on the finding of the 

 Jeannette relics on the west coast of Greenland, three years after 

 the crushing of that vessel in the sea northeast of the New Siberian 

 Islands. Prince Krapotkin, the distinguished Russian writer, gives 

 due importance to the Jeannette's voyage as bearing on the solu- 

 tion of this problem, and commends Nansen for "embodying the 

 drift of the Jeannette and the East Greenland ice drift in one 

 mighty current. A formidable ice current, almost as mighty and 

 of the same length as the Gulf Stream, a current having the same 

 dominating influence in the life of our globe, has thus been proved 

 to exist." ^ Those who are interested in this experiment indulge in 

 the hope that these casks, which have been consigned to the sea 

 ice near the locality where the Jeannette began her drift, will pur- 

 sue their voyage across the Polar basin impelled by the same ele- 

 mental forces which carried the Jeannette so far on her journey, 



1" Recent Science," Nineteenth Century^ February, 1897, P- 259. 



