UNDISCOVERED LAND IN THE ARCTIC 



OCEAN l 



By R. A. Harris 



Of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey 



FROM the behavior of the tides, it can be shown that a deep Arctic 

 basin cannot extend without interruption from the region of deep 

 waters traversed by the "Fram" and embracing the Pole itself, 

 to the known waters lying along the Arctic coasts of British America, Alaska 

 and eastern Siberia. Moreover, this interruption lying between the Arctic 

 Archipelago and the New Siberian Islands must be tolerably complete so 

 far as the greater depths are concerned. For were this not the case, the 

 Arctic basin would be well suited to the production of diurnal or daily 

 tides, which would be much in evidence along the coasts just mentioned. 

 Wherever adequate observations have been made along these coasts, they 

 show that the diurnal tides have less than one-half of the rise and fall which 

 the diurnal tidal forces of the moon and sun acting over the uninterrupted 

 Arctic basin would produce; and again, the diurnal tide actually occurs 

 earlier at Point Barrow than at Flaxman Island while the tidal forces acting 

 over the uninterrupted basin require that the reverse should be the case. 



The ratio of the amplitudes of the two principal constituents of the 

 diurnal tide or wave does not have even approximately its theoretical value, 

 a fact which implies for this tide a comparatively complicated origin. 2 

 It may be noted in passing that it is because the free period of a deep Arctic 

 basin is but a fraction of twenty -four hours in duration that we are enabled 

 to say that approximately equilibrium tides would be the result of the 

 action of the diurnal forces. Moreover these same conditions would reduce 

 the effect of the deflecting force of the earth's rotation to a quantity rather 

 small in comparison with the direct effect of the tide-producing forces, not- 



1 The substance of this article is, in a large measure, included in previous articles by 

 the Author upon the same subject, to which the following are references: 



National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 15 (1904), pp. 255-261; 



Coast and Geodetic Survey Report, 1904, pp. 381-389; 



Report of the Eighth International Geographic Congress, 1904, pp. 397-406; 



The North Pole by R. E. Peary. New York: Stokes, 1910, pp. 337-346; 



Arctic Tides; a special publication by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1911, pp. 

 103. Arctic Tides consists of a detailed study of the tides north of the 60th paraUel; it 

 includes a cotidal chart of the Arctic regions, upon which is a hypothetical outline of the 

 obstructing mass of land. This is the outline or hypothetical boundary which appears upon 

 the less detailed map accompanying the present article. In the light of more recent observa- 

 tions and discoveries, some of the data used and conclusions reached in the three articles 

 published in 1904 have turned out to be erroneous, as can be seen upon comparison with the 

 later articles. No attempt is here made to go into the history of the question of undiscovered 

 land in the Arctic. References to some of the writings of individuals who prior to 1904 had 

 expressed their views upon this subject are given in the three articles just referred to. 



2 The intensities of the two constituent diurnal forces are, at the Pole, 0.00000004466 g 

 and 0.00000003175 g, respectively, g being the intensity of the force of gravity. These 

 numerical coefficients multiplied by the distance of a point from the center of gravity of the 

 surface of a deep basin, give the respective amplitudes of the two constituents of the diurnal 

 tide • 57 



