§ 477. THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 247 



De Haven found himself, with the Advance, frozen in her tracks, 

 as M'Clintock did the Fox,* in August, 1857, who tried to reach 

 the shore, but he was fast bound, and drifting to the west. De 

 Haven, after having been carried as far as 75° 25', and M'Clintock 

 as far as 75° 30', say within nine hundred miles of the pole, their 

 northerly course was arrested, and then commenced with each 

 that celebrated drift of a thousand miles to the south, and which 

 from December lasted, the one till June, the other till April 

 25th. These vessels were not drifted through the ice, but with 

 the ice ; for in lat. Qb° 30', when De Haven was liberated on the 

 9th of June, he had the same " hummocks," the same snow-drifts, 

 and the same icy landscape which set out with him on December 

 2d, when he commenced his drift from the parallel of 75° 25'.f 



477. Now, upon the theory of no open water, and upon the 

 An anti-poiynian suppositlou of an icc-covercd sca that seals up in 

 ^''^'''' winter all the unexplored regions of the north, let 



us, in imagination, take a survey of that sea just as the anti-polyn- 

 ians, according to their theory, would have it. Let the time of 

 the survey be at the beginning of winter, when De Haven com- 

 menced his southwardly drift. From the Advance to the pole — 

 a distance of 900 miles — no water is to be seen ; the frost has 

 bridged it all over. From the pole to the distance of 900 miles 

 beyond, and all around, it is one field of thick-ribbed ice. The 

 flat, and tame, and dreary landscape may be relieved here and 

 there, perhaps, by islands, capes, and promontories dotting the sur- 

 face, but nevertheless it is now at least as cold — being winter — 

 from the pole all around to the parallel of 75°, as it was in 

 early fall when De Haven, being near that parallel in Wellington 

 Channel, found his vessel fast bound with fetters bv the frost- 

 king. Wherefore we may suppose that these theorists would ad- 

 mit the whole to be frozen by December. So that, according to 

 the anti-polynian view, we have, measuring from the pole as a 

 centre, a disc of ice more than five thousand miles in circumfer- 



* A screw yacht of 177 tons. 



t De Haven was frozen in lat. 74° 40', long. 92° 55' ; was carried up to 75° 25' 

 N., and thence down to 66° 15' N., 58° 35' W., when he was liberated. The Fox 

 was frozen in 75° 30' N., 64° W. ; was carried west to 69° in the same latitude, 

 and thence down to 63° 50' N., and 57° W., when she was liberated. The Resolute 

 was abandoned in lat. 74° 40', long. 101° 20', and was picked up afloat off Cape 

 Mercv in 05° N. 



