THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 249 



the pole all around to the parallel of 75", as it was in early fall 

 when De Haven being near that parallel in AVellington Channel, 

 found his vessel fast bound with the fetters of the frost-king. 

 Wherefore we may suppose that these theorists would admit 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 circumference, 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; now, on the 2iid of December — the moment 

 before this remarkable drift commenced — was the entire sheet of 

 ice with which we have supposed 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-polynians again, How did this drift commence ? 

 for commence it did ; its movement was out of that sea, and from 

 the pole towards the equator, and so it continued to move for six 

 months at the average rate of 5i miles a da3\ But whence — on 

 what parallel — did it commence ? Was the whole disc in motion 

 from the shores of Siberia over across by way of the north pole 

 towards Wellington Channel ? If one part of this disc be put in 

 motion, either the w^hole must be, or there must be somewhere, 

 a split or a rent in it, with open water between. 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 towards the south, the edge along the Russian shores on 

 the opposite side must have been drifted towards the north a 

 thousand miles also, and so leave an open water behind. Now 

 we simplj^ 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 beginning of the 

 drift there was ice all the way from Wellington Channel to the 

 Korth Pole, and thence all the way from the North Pole to the 

 nearest land beyond, which is supposed to be the Siberian shores 

 of the Old World. But, on the other hand, we must also admit 

 the fact — for the Advance, the Eescue, 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 Baffin's Bay into Davis' Straits. These ships came 



