130 CRUISE OF STEAMER CORWIN IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 



form the sludge along the shore. Many of the plates are an inch or more in diameter, but so fragile that a breath 

 destroys them. The bays are sometimes covered with a foot of this sludge, under which the swell or roll of the sea 

 travels 3 or 4 miles, but a fall in the temperature over night consolidates the mass. Ice formed in this way is 

 generally rough, but a rapid and extended fall of the temperature directly after the oily spots appear sometimes 

 throws a thin sheet of glossy ice over the sea for many miles in a single day. 



Arctic ice may be divided into two classes, the first comprising tbat found in the Polar Ocean, 

 or palajocrystic sea of Nares, and tbe second, the ice found within the channels, sounds, and bays 

 of the Arctic Archipelago. The latter seldom exceeds the thickness attained by direct freezing — 

 18 feet. It is generally much less, and may be classed as navigable, although its navigation is 

 difficult and often attended with great danger, while the former, as has been shown, attains a 

 much greater thickness — estimated at from 20 to 100 feet, and, according to the best Arctic 

 authorities, is not navigable. " When once fairly beset by the great polar pack," says Lieutenant 

 Payer, of the Austrian Expedition, " they are in fact uo longer discoverers but passengers against 

 their will on the ice." 



Captain Nares, who has the honor of having sailed his ship nearer to the North Pole than any 

 other explorer, after describing a narrow escape of the Alert from the pack, says : 



After our late escape, all could appreciate Captain Buddington's recommendation, when the Polaris was placed in 

 precisely similar circumstances, to get out of the polar pack as quickly as possible. 



Captain Nares further says : 



It is either affectation or want of knowledge that can lead any one seriously to recommend any attempt being 

 made to navigate through such ice. No ship has been built which could stand a real nip between two pieces of 

 heavy ice. 



Referring to the report of open water having been seen towards the north from the deck of the 

 Polaris when she attained her highest latitude, Nares says : 



It is perfectly evident that the report meant merely that disconnected water pools were observed, but not that a 

 water channel fit for navigation existed. In Lancaster Sound or Baffin's Bay a water pool in the pack may, under 

 favorable circumstances, be expected to open out and become navigable; here, with this decided polar pack, it is out 

 of the question that any commander should leave the shelter of the land and force his way into the pack without in- 

 suring a retreat if necessary. 



An admiring friend of Captain McClure, of the Royal Navy, in describing that officer's discovery 

 of the Northwest Passage, says : " He was last seen, after passing through Bering Strait, carrying 

 a hard press of canvas on the Investigator, and standing gallantly for the heart of the polar pack." 

 McClure's own account of it, however, shows that he did nothing of the kind. He carefully avoided 

 the polar pack, fully realizing that his only hope lay in keeping in tbe land water. At one time, 

 when near the Pelly Islands, the appearance of clear water to the eastward and a slight roll of the 

 sea induced Captain McClure to steer a course for Banks Land. After running some hours with a 

 fresh westerly breeze and thick, snowy weather, tbe discovery was made that the Investigator had 

 run into a blind lead in the main pack for a distance of 90 miles, and was compelled to beat out. 

 In his private journal Captain McClure refers to this as " an escape which all were truly grateful 

 for, there being no two opinions on the ship as to what would have been her fate had the ice closed 

 upon the Investigator." 



When the enormous thickness of this ice is considered it does not appear necessary to produce 

 evidence to show tbat it is not navigable. If any were needed, however, we have, in addition to 

 that already quoted, the well-known experience of the Jeannette and the TeghetofF, which should 

 be sufficient to convince the most enthusiastic Arctic theorist that a ship once fairly beset is no 

 longer an explorer. 



The earliest date on which I find any reference to the ice in the Arctic Ocean north of Bering 

 Strait and the coast of Asia is in the year 1610, when a party of Russian fur hunters descended the 

 Yenisei River in boats, with the view of penetrating the coast of the Polar Sea for the purpose of 

 levying tribute upon the native tribes. But their plans were frustrated by encountering ice. In 

 1646 Cossack fur hunters made expeditions along the coast to the eastward from the Kolyma, and 

 reported the sea filled with ice, with a warm lead of open water next the land, in which the ex- 

 plorers sailed two days. The following year an expedition sailed from the Kolyma for the purpose 

 of searching for the mouth of the Anadyr, which the Russians supposed emptied into the Arctic 



