174 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



also brought out that the same kind of whale that is found off the 

 shores of Greenland, in Baffin's Bay, etc., is found also in the 

 North Pacific, and about Behring's Strait, and that the right 

 whale of the northern hemisphere is a different animal from that 

 of the southern. 



476. Thus the fact was established that the harpooned whales 

 did not pass around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, for 

 they were of the class that could not cross the equator. In this 

 way we were furnished with circumstantial evidence affording the 

 most irrefragable proof that there is, at times at least, open water 

 communication through the Arctic Sea from one side of the con- 

 tinent to the other, for it is known that the whales can not travel 

 under the ice for such a great distance as is that from one side of 

 this continent to the other. 



477. But this did not prove the existence of an open sea there; 

 it only established the existence — the occasional existence, if you 

 please — of a channel through which whales had passed. There- 

 fore we felt bound to introduce other evidence before we could 

 expect the reader to admit our proof, and to believe with us in the 

 existence of an open sea in the Arctic Ocean. 



478. There is an under current setting from the Atlantic through 

 Davis's Strait into the Arctic Ocean, and there is a surface cur- 

 rent setting out. Observations have pointed out the existence of 

 this under current there, for navigators tell of immense icebergs 

 which they have seen drifting rapidly to the north, and against a 

 strong surface current. These icebergs were high above the wa- 

 ter, and their depth below, supposing them to be parallelepipeds, 

 was seven times greater than their height above. JSTo doubt they 

 w^ere drifted by a powerful under current. 



479. Now this under current comes from the south, where it is 

 warm, and the temperature of its waters is perhaps not below 32° ; 

 at any rate, they are comparatively warm. There must be a place 

 somewhere in the Arctic seas wdiere this under current ceases to 

 flow north, and begins to flow south as a surface current ; for the 

 surface current, though its waters are mixed with the fresh waters 

 of the rivers and of precipitation in the polar basin, nevertheless 

 bears out vast quantities of salt, which is furnished neither by the 

 rivers nor the rains. 



