24:8 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



ence, and extending quite down to the shores of Arctic America 

 and Asia. Such is the aspect presented by the polar sea without 

 an open water in winter ; and on the 2d of December — the mo- 

 ment before this remarkable drift commenced ; and when it did 

 commence — was the entire sheet of ice With which we have sup- 

 posed the Arctic Ocean to be covered put in motion, or was that 

 only put in motion which drifted out ? By the hypothesis there 

 is no open water in all the circumference of this sea into which 

 the ice might drift. We therefore may well ask the anti-polyni- 

 ans again, How did this drift commence ? for commence it did : 

 its movement was out of that sea, and from the pole toward the 

 equator, and so it continued for six months at the average rate of 

 5i miles a day. But whence — on what parallel — did it com- 

 mence? "Was the whole disc in motion from the shores of Sibe- 

 ria over across by way of the north pole toward Wellington Chan- 

 nel ? If one part of this disc be put in motion, either the whole 

 must be, or there must be a split or a rent with open water be- 

 tween. If, during the winter and spring — the coldest period — the 

 edge of this ice-disc nearest Wellington Channel be carried by 

 the currents a thousand miles toward the south, the edge along 

 the Kussian shores on the opposite side must have been drifted 

 toward the north a thousand miles also, and so leave an open wa- 

 ter behind. Now we simply know there was no such drifting up 

 from the Siberian shores, and the case is put simply to show that 

 in any case the northerly edge of the drifting ice must have come 

 from open water ; for if we deny the existence of an open water 

 in that direction, then we must go back and admit that at the be- 

 ginning of the drift there was ice all the way from Wellington 

 Channel to the north pole, and thence all the way from the north 

 pole to the nearest land beyond, which is supposed to be the Si- 

 berian shores of the Old World. But, on the other hand, we must 

 also admit the fact — for the Advance, the Rescue, the Fox, and the 

 Eesolute are witnesses of it — that a tongue of this ice 1000 miles 

 long was in each of these winters thrust out of the polar basin 

 down through Baf&n's Bay into Davis' Straits. These ships came 

 down upon it. It would be difficult for those who oppose the 

 existence of an open water here in the Arctic Ocean to discover 

 a force there which, during the extreme cold months of the north- 

 ern liight, when the ice is making all the time, could tear from 



