THE OPEN SEA IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN 147 



as Plate IX. shows, led to the discovery that the tropical regions 

 of the ocean are to the right whale as a sea of fire, through which 

 he can not pass, and into which he never enters. The fact was 

 also brought out that the same kind of whale that is found ofi' 

 the shores of Greenland, in Baffin's Bay, &c., is found also in the 

 North Pacific, and about Behring's Strait, and that the right whale 

 of the northern hemisphere is a different animal from that of the 

 southern. 



280. Thus the fact was established that the harpooned whales 

 did not pass around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, for 

 they w^ere of the class that could not cross the equator. In this 

 way we were furnished with circumstantial evidence affording 

 the most irrefragable proof that there is, at times at least, open 

 water communication through the Arctic Sea from one side of the 

 continent to the other, for it is known that the whales can not 

 travel under the ice for such a great distance as is that from one 

 side of this continent to the other. 



But this did not prove the existence of an open sea there ; it 

 only established the existence — the occasional existence, if you 

 please — of a channel through which whales had passed. There- 

 fore we felt bound to introduce other evidence before we could 

 expect the reader to admit our proof, and to believe with us in the 

 existence of an open sea in the Arctic Ocean. 



281. There is an under current setting from the Atlantic through 

 Davis's Strait into the Arctic Ocean, and there is a surface cur- 

 rent setting out. Observations have pointed out the existence of 

 this under current there, for navigatqrs tell of immense icebergs 

 w^hich they have seen drifting rapidly to the north, and against a 

 strong surface current. These icebergs were high above the wa- 

 ter, and their depth below was seven times greater than their 

 height above. No doubt they were drifted by a powerful under 

 current. 



282. Now this under current comes from the south, where it is 

 warm, and the temperature of its waters is perhaps not below 

 32° ; at any rate, they are comparatively warm. There must be 

 a place somewhere in the Arctic seas where this under current 

 ceases to flow north, and begins to flow south as a surface cur- 

 rent ; for the surface current, though its waters are mixed with 

 the fresh waters of the rivers and of precipitation in the polar 



