THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



By M. Babinet, of the Academy of Sciences. 



[Traiislated for the Smithsonian Institiifion.'] 



Thanks to modern voyages, i^articularly since the many and praise- 

 worthy expeditions in search of Sir John Franldin, we have to-day the 

 assurance that the arctic pole is surrounded by a narrow and continu- 

 ous sea, bounded on one side by the eternally congealed polar space, 

 and on the other b}' Northern Europe, Siberia, or Northern Asia, and 

 lastly all of America in the higher latitudes. A navigator starting from 

 Dunkirk, on the meridian of Paris, might proceed straight to the pole 

 without encountering land, but stopped by the never melted barrier of 

 ice ; if he turned to the right toward the east, he would leave to the left 

 and north Spitzbergen, and to the left and south, North Cape. Passing 

 over the White Sea, he would leave the Polar Sea of Europe at Nova 

 Zembla ; then coasting along Siberia, he would come into the somewhat 

 less contracted basin beyond Behring's Strait. Then passing along 

 Northern America, and descending considerably in latitude, he would 

 at last arrive at Lancaster Sound, through which the American Polar 

 Sea empties into the great canal, separating Greenland from the New 

 World. There the navigator would be obliged to descend greatly to- 

 ward the south, in order to attain the point of Greenland, after having 

 traversed almost the entire polar circle. After passing through Davis 

 Strait he would enter the basin between Europe and America, termi- 

 nating the northern Atlantic, which has for its limits Labrador, New- 

 foundland, Great Brii:ain, Norway, the polar circle, Iceland, and lastly 

 Cape Farewell, at the extremity of Greenland. This northern basin of 

 the Atlantic, which communicates at the east and west with the glacial 

 seas, has for companion and analogue the northern part of the Pacific 

 Ocean, enclosed by Kamtchatka, Behring's Strait, Russian and 

 British America. It is not fully determined whether the Pacific sends 

 through Behring's Strait a current of temperate water into the 

 American glacial sea, as the Atlantic does to the glacial sea of the Old 

 World, through the passage separating Cape North from Spitzbergen. 

 As to the existence of a current, following the course we have just 

 described as pursued by the imaginary navigator, compassing the 

 polar regions and moving always to the east, it is an undoubted fact, it 

 seems to me, and at the seasons when the maritime regions traversed 

 by this current are frozen, it nevertheless continues its course under the 

 ice. It should be observed that a similar current flows from the west 

 toward the east, making the circuit of the other pole of the earth ; but 

 as the domain of the latter consists entirely of shoreless seas, it follows 

 its course without interriTption toward the east, and accomplishes its 

 revolution without change of distance from the pole, its direction un- 

 altered by projections of land, like that of Greenland, which greatly 

 complicate the mechanical circumstances, and modify tlie course of the 

 two great oceanic rivers (an expression of Homer) which I have added 

 to the five great currents noticed in the admirable work of M. Dupeny of 



