APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 237 



there"? The latter was certainly the more agreeable, and we think he 

 did right in adopting it. 



Before we take leave of Behring Strait, we have a few remarks to 

 oft'er on the information obtained by Kotzebne as connected with the 

 main object of the expedition, and which alone induced Count Koman- 

 zoft' to cause it to be undertaken. It may be recollected by some of 

 our readers that about the time when our ships were fitting out for the 

 Arctic exi)edition we were at some pains to assign grounds for the 

 probability of a communication between the Atlantic and Pacific 

 Oceans, on which alone the i^racticability of a north-west passage could 

 be maintained, and that one of the arguments in favour of the affirma- 

 tive was that a constant current being known to descend the Welcome 

 into Hudson's Bay, seemed to require a constant current on the oppo- 

 site side of America through Behring Strait to afford the necessary 

 supply of water. Every circumstance that we inquired into on the 

 side of the Pacific seemed to warrant this conclusion ; the drift wood, 

 the retiring of the ice to the northward, the temperature of the water, 

 were all in favour of such a current; and this led to another conclusion, 

 that the two continents of Asia and America could not be joined, as 

 had been fancied, on grounds almost too absurd for serious refutation. 



The observations of Kotzebne and Chaniisso are highly satisfactory 

 as to the ])erpetual current which sets to the northward through Beh- 

 ring Strait. They concur in affirming that it is this current which 

 brings such quantities of driftwood (some of it consisting of the trunks 

 of huge trees) to the shores of Saratcheff's Island and Kotzebue's 

 Sound. M. Chamisso says that on -'the breaking up of the ice in the 

 Sea of Kamtchatka, the icebergs and fiehls of ice do not drift, as in the 

 Atlantic, to the south, nor do they drive to the Aleutian Islands, but 

 into the strait to the north;" and Kotzebne asserts that "the direction 

 of the current Avas ahcaiis north-east in Behring Strait." Again, he 

 says, "the current, according to our calculation, had carried us 50 miles 

 to the north- north-east in twenty-four hours, that is, above 2 miles an 

 hour." When near the Asiatic side of the strait, tliey find it running 

 with a velocity of not less than 3 miles an hour, and they confidently 

 state that, even with a fresh nortli wind, it continued to run equally 

 strong from the south. Now, if this happens in the summer season, 

 when the melting of the ice is going on in the Polar Sea, which some 

 would persuade us was the cause of the currents in Hudson's Bay, we 

 have a right to ask them to explain the setting of the water from this 

 melted ice in a contrary direction through Behring Strait. 



M. Kotzebne thus concludes : 



The constant north-east direction of the current in Behring Strait proves that the 

 water meets with no opposition, and consequently a passage must exist, though per- 

 haps not adapted to navigation . Observations have long been made that the current 

 in Baffin's Bay runs to tlie south, and thus no doubt can remain that the mass of 

 water which flows into Behring Strait takes its course round America, and returns 

 through Baffin's Bay into the ocean. (Vol. I, p, 243.) 



We cannot omit recurring, on the i^resent occasion, to a subject we 

 have frequently noticed, but which, as we think, has never been satis- 

 factorily accounted for; we mean the vast difference of temperature 

 between the western and the eastern coasts of continents or large 

 islands. Though Humboldt has taken a philosophic view of the sub- 

 ject, and in particular situations has, to a certain degree, explained the 

 cause, yet his theory will not account for this extraordinary difierence 

 between two continents, separated only by a strait scarcely twice the 

 width of that between Calais and Dover, which was felt so sensibly 



