250 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



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 

 northern night, when the ice is making all the time, could tear 

 from its fastenings and move 5i miles a day all through the 

 winter and spring a disc of ice seven feet thick* and 1800 geo- 

 graphical miles in diameter. Yet such seem to be the conditions 

 which the absence of open water would require ; for, when the 

 Advance was thawed out, there was a thousand miles of ice to 

 the northward of her, and between her and Wellington Channel. 

 This 1000 miles of ice had drifted out of the polar basin during 

 her journe}^ to the south ; for when she was liberated there was 

 doubtless a continuous sheet of ice between her in lat. 65°, and 

 Wellington Channel in lat. 75°. This tongue of ice is what the 

 whalemen call the " middle ice " of Baffin's Bay. When 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. Tlie drift exjplained. — Upon the supposition that the ice 

 which drifts out of the Arctic Ocean 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 known facts 

 which attended the celebrated drifts of De Haven M'Clintock,^ 

 and the Eesolute. Uj)on 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 Resolute 

 indicate that the whole icy covering — 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 towards 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, t 



* De Haven found the ice ujion which his vessel was brought out 7 feet 

 2 inches thick. 



t In tlie Fox, 1857-1858. 



l " The Fox accomplished another of those remarkable drifts which can be 

 explained upon no other hypothesis but that of an open water iu the Arctic 



