298 Mr. E. W. Gudger on the 



in speaking of the geography of Britain, lie says : — "Thnle 

 [Norway?] was also seen, previously hidden by snow and 

 winter j but the sea is said to be tough and hard for the 

 rowers and to be little stirred, by winds. " 



Nansen, in his Norwegian North Polar Expedition (1893- 

 1896), repeatedly noticed this phenomenon. On his return 

 he turned over this problem to V. Walfrid Ekman for 

 explanation. Ekman's paper may be found in the ' Scientific 

 Results' of the expedition, volume v. (1904), and from it 

 the following interesting data are taken. 



In order to ascertain the prevalence of this phenomenon, 

 Ekman published appeals for information in thirty-six 

 foreign and in all available Scandinavian newspapers. From 

 the former he received nine answers citing the appearance of 

 " dead-water " in ten different localities, while from Scandi- 

 navian waters no less than thirty-two regions are reported 

 to abound in this phenomenon. From this data Ekman 

 concludes that " . . . . From some reason or other it (dead- 

 water) is comparatively seldom met with beyond Scandinavia 

 or appears in a less decided manner than in the Norwegian 

 Fjords." 



Foreign reports give dead-water as occurring off Taimur 

 Island on the coast of northern Silesia, also in Kara Sea 

 and Bay in the same region, on the Murman coast of north- 

 west Russia, as very " troublesome off the great river 



mouths of South America," while off the mouth of the 

 Orinoco a ship had to anchor to prevent drifting out of her 

 course. This phenomenon is reported from the Gulf of 

 Mexico and it has been experienced off the Baffin Bay coast 

 of Labrador, while the Saint Lawrence mouth is designated 

 by one Norwegian captain as one of the worst regions in the 

 world for dead-water. Two circumstantial accounts are 

 cited for this phenomenon off the mouth of Fraser River 

 and another near Vancouver Island, in which localities it 

 bears the familiar name used by Ekman. There are two 

 reports of its occurrence in the mouth of the Congo, one 

 for the mouth of the Loire River, and two for the Garonne 

 River and the basin of Arcachou near Bordeaux. 



These last instances, however, are not of such pronounced 

 dead-water as in the following report of its occurrence not 

 merely in the Mediterranean but between the island of 

 Cerigo and the southern part of Greece. This very circum- 

 stantial account is, because of its pertinence to the Myth, 

 given verbatim : — 



" On January 2, 1858, we were between Cape Matapan 

 and Cerigo and sailed eastward for the Archipelago. The 



