TRANSACTIONS OP THE SECTIONS. 93 



first noticed the records of advances into extremely high latitudes collected by the 

 Hon. Dairies Barrington, — If these records were facts, or if a small portion of them 

 could be so established, of an open sea being found by many whalers up to latitudes 

 82° and 83°, and in certain specified cases, to 86°, 88°, 89° and 89i°, then might it 

 be difficult to controvert the popular theory. But none of these records. Dr. Scoresby 

 beUeved, had the authority of actual celestial observations registered in and de- 

 rived from the journals of intelligent navigators kept at the time. On the contrary, 

 they were mainly — the more remarkable asserted advances perhaps wholly — derived 

 from hearsay testimony, or recollections of the adventurers after intervals of many 

 years. As to the utter unsatisfactoriness, or delusiveness, of evidence of this kind, 

 where a great or remarkable adventure was sought to be established. Dr. Scoresby 

 gave some curious examples, — showing, on the one part, the almost inevitable ten- 

 dency to assume an extreme conclusion ; or, on the other part, — from the peculiar 

 defectiveness in calling up, by special effort, long-faded memorial impressions, — the 

 doubtfulness and the proneness to inaccuracy of such recollections. And in support 

 of this tendency to error, instances were not wanting, in the records referred to, 

 where the statements could be actually disproved, — as in regard to the asserted 

 advance of a whaler, in 1773, to the latitude of 82°, the very year when the rigidly 

 examined condition of the Greenland ices by Capt. Phipps demonstrated the im- 

 possibility of advancing beyond 80° 48'. 



2. As to mild weather being found at Cherie Island, and other places, far northward, 

 contiguous to the open ocean, in winter. — This fact, which is by no means a general 

 one*, is distinctly due to the prevalence of southerly winds, or winds coming from 

 the proximate open ocean, on the occasions referred to — an incident which had a 

 striking parallel during the early part of a recent winter in our own island. An 

 effect, then, derived from a source operating to the southward, can obviously yield 

 no evidence of the condition of the climate near the Pole, any more than the fact of 

 the water of a river flowing past us, which might happen to be warm, could justify 

 the inference that the temperature of the sea into which it flows must also be 

 warm ! 



3. The finding of open sea on the northern coasts of Siberia and Nova Zembla, in 

 winter. — To the application of this fact by Mr. Petermann, in reference to his project 

 of the practicability of a winter passage eastward along these shores. Dr. Scoresby 

 ■was not called upon to remark, but only to object to any conclusion being drawn 

 from such a fact,— on certain occasions experienced, — with respect to the condition 

 of the Polar Sea far northward. The open water discovered, incidentally in winter, 

 in these situations, was probably due to a previous prevalence of southerly gales 

 setting the ice off the land. For as the polar ices afford, on their seaward margins 

 especially, innumerable spaces amid the separate pieces, either open or occupied 

 only by thin and easily crushable masses, there is always a yielding of the ice, in 

 regions not confined by land, to the influence of whatever gales may blow heavily 

 and continuously. For by reason of the hummocky character of a great proportion 

 of the ices, — the hummocks having, in many cases, large surfaces, with an elevation 

 often rising to 20, 30, or even 50 feet, and so acting as sails — the wind exerts a 

 powerful influence in drifting the general body of ice away from land, or sections of 

 lighter ice from heavier, whenever the wind blows in the proper direction. Under 

 such an action of wind, and under like circumstances, he. Dr. Scoresby, had often 

 witnessed the drifting away of great bodies of ice from land, or drift-ice from field- 

 ice, with a result in opening out a cZear navigable sea of the most surprising cha- 

 racter. In some cases, a heavy field, previously pressed upon by a pack of drift-ice, 

 has thus been cleared on its leeward side by a gale blowing off it, so as, in 24 to 48 

 hours, to leave a clear sea to leeward as far as the eye could discern from the mast- 

 head. 



Hence no conclusion in favour of the theory of a navigable Polar Sea can be main- 

 tained on the occurrence of open water to the utmost extent of vision on the face, 

 whether northward or otherwise, of any particular coast. A southerly gale blowing 

 hard off a Siberian or Nova Zemblan shore, might suffice, after two or three days' 

 continuance, to clear away all ice not affixed to the shore, to the distance of very 

 many leagues. For a pack of drift-ice, if of great extent, is always capable of com- 

 pression under the force of heavy gales, even when containing no considerably 

 * See Account of Arctic Regions, vol. i. 335-8. 



