THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 241 



liberated there was doubtless a continuous sheet of ice between her 

 in lat. 65°, and WeUington Channel in lat. 75°. This tongue of 

 ice is what the whalemen call the " middle ice " of Baffin's Bay. 

 Wlien the Advance was at Wellington Channel, this thousand miles 

 of ice must, according to the anti-polynians, have been to the north 

 of her; or, according to the other school, it must, as it drifted 

 towards the south, have been forming towards the north at the 

 edge of an open sea (§459). And towards the north De Haven 

 saw a water-sky, and towards the north Penny afterwards found 

 an open sea and sailed upon it. 



478. Upon the supposition that the ice which drifts out of the 

 The drift explained. AjTctic Occan in the dead of winter is formed on the 

 edge of an open water not far from the channel through which it 

 drifts, we can account for all the kno^^Ti facts which attended the 

 celebrated drifts of De Haven, M'Clintock,* and the Kesolute. 

 Upon no other theory can these well-known and well-authenticated 

 facts be reconciled. If there be no open water during this winter 

 drift, which there is reason to believe takes place annually, both the 

 Advance, Fox, and the Eesolute indicate that the whole icy cover- 

 ing — the frost-shell of the polar sea in winter — must have drifted 

 bodily far enough, on these three several occasions at least, to set 

 each vessel a thousand miles on her way tow^ards the south. And 

 thus, without bringing in again the long chain of evidence from 

 Chapter IX., the physical necessity of an open sea in the Arctic 

 Ocean is proved.! 



* In the Fox, 1857-1858. 



t " The Fox accomplished another of those remarkable drifts which can be ex- 

 plained upon no other hypothesis but that of an open water in the Arctic Ocean, and 

 that, too, not far from the entrance into it of some of the channels which connect it 

 with Baffins Bay on the polar side of 75^. The Fox was attempting to pass from 

 Melville Bay over to Lancaster Sound, in August, 1857, when, on the 18th day of 

 that month she fell in with ice, in which she was finally frozen up, and remained so 

 for 242 days, during which time she was drifted to the southward 1191: miles, 

 which gives an average rate of five miles a day. 



" This drift, the drift of the Kesolute, of the Advance, and Eescue, each upwards 

 of a thousand miles — appears to indicate that a similar drift takes place every 

 year. They show the existence of a polynia, and indicate that the open sea is to 

 be sought for at no greater distance from Kennedy's Channel on the one hand, and 

 Maury's on the other. This conclusion is reached by a process of reasoning of this 

 sort : 



"When each one of these vessels was released from her cold fetters, there was 

 doubtless behind her, and between her place of release and her place of original im- 

 prisonment, an uninterrupted reach of a thousand miles covered with ice ; which ice, 

 during the fall, the winter, and early spring, drifted out of the Arctic Ocean. Now 

 we have the choice of two suppositions, and of only two, in explanation of this phe- 

 nomenon, and they are : Either that the great body of all the winter-formed ice 



