GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1872. 331 



FROM PRIVATE SOURCES. 



Wonders of the Yoseinite Valley. By Knee- 

 California: A Book for Travellers and Settlers. 

 By Charles Nordhoff. 

 Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada. By Clarence 



Illustrated Library of Travels. Wonders of the 

 Yellowstone. By James Eichardson. 



Isthmus of Tehuantepec. By Skeel. 



Santo Domingo; Past and Present, with a Glance 

 at Hayti. By Samuel Hazard. 



Corals and Coral Islands. By James D. Dana, 

 LL.D. 



The Ocean, Atmosphere, and Life. By Elis4e 

 Reclus. 



Travels around the World. By Hon. W. H. 

 Seward. 



The Desert of the Exodus. By Prof. E. H. Palmer. 



Egypt and the Holy Land. By Eev. Harman. 



How I found Livingstone in Central Africa. By 

 H. M. Stanley. 



Illustrated Library of Travels : South Africa. 

 Edited by Bayard Taylor. 



Station Life in New Zealand. By Lady Barker. 



ATLASES AND MAPS. 



Asher and Adams's Commercial and Statistical 

 Gazetteer of the United States, etc. 



G. Watson's New Map (double) of the United 

 States and Territories. 



"The United States of America:" a collection 

 of facts, dates, and statistics, to go with the above. 



Monteith's Comprehensive Geography. 



Putnam's Mercantile Map of the World. 



Putnam's Student's Atlas of Physical Geography. 



Petermann's Map of Central Africa, and the Dis- 

 coveries from 1800 to 1872, including Livingstone's 

 Eoutes, Stanley's, Baker's, Grant and Speke's. 



MAGAZINES AND PERIODICALS. 



Illustrated Travels : Edited by H. W. Bates, As- 

 sistant Secretary of Eoyal Geographical Society. 



Scribner's Monthly : Geographical articles on the 

 Yellowstone, New Zealand, Virginia, and West Vir- 

 ginia, the New South, etc. 



Harper's Monthly : Numerous geographical articles. 



Appletons' Journal : Many geographical articles. 



Picturesque America: Giving views and letter- 

 press descriptions of all sections of the United States. 



Having thus indicated the growing interest 

 in geographical science in the United States, 

 we proceed with our usual brief narrative of 

 the explorations of the year : 



We begin, as heretofore, with the OCEANS, 

 and especially with the progress of explora- 

 tion and discovery in the Arctic Ocean. We 

 pause a moment, however, to allude to some 

 investigations prosecuted during the year by 

 Dr. W. B. Carpenter, relative to oceanic cur- 

 rents. In the ANNUAL CYCLOPAEDIA for 1871 

 a brief statement was made of Dr. Carpen- 

 ter's theories. He holds that the warmth 

 of the surface-water in high northern lati- 

 tudes is due, not to the action of the Gulf 

 Stream in the Atlantic and the Kuro-Siwo in 

 the Pacific, nor to the action of the trade- 

 winds in driving the heated waters of the 

 equator northward, but to what he terms the 

 true oceanic circulation, namely, the constant 

 underflow of intensely cold water from the 

 arctic region along the bed of the oceans, 

 which, in its course toward the equator, was 

 gradually warmed by the heat of the ocean- 

 bed below and the warmer water above, and 



thus constantly, by a vertical motion, ap- 

 proached the surface, which it reached near 

 the equator, and thus became the upper or su- 

 perficial layer of waters, which rushed toward 

 the pole to supply the place of the colder 

 waters which flowed in the contrary direction. 

 He believes that these waters flowing toward 

 the poles are deflected in their course east- 

 ward in the northern hemisphere, westward 

 in the southern by the earth's diurnal revolu- 

 tion on its axis. This theory was strongly 

 combated by Mr. Croll, a Scottish geologist, 

 and Captain Spratt, R. N., an experienced hy- 

 drographer. During the year 1872 Dr. Car- 

 penter has been engaged in further observa- 

 tions and experiments in the Mediterranean 

 Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, and very recently 

 in the Pacific Ocean, all of which, he contends, 

 confirm his theories. He has demonstrated 

 that the superficial layer of warm water is not 

 less than 500 fathoms (= 3,000 feet) in thick- 

 ness ; and, by his observations in the Mediter- 

 ranean, whose waters are cut off from com- 

 munication with the deeper stratum of the At- 

 lantic by the ridge at the entrance of the 

 straits of Gibraltar, he has shown that the 

 waters in that sea have a temperature of from 

 54 to 56 Fahr., at depths between 1,500 and 

 1,900 fathoms, at which depths the Atlantic, 

 under the same parallels, has a temperature 

 nearly twenty degrees lower. 



I. AEOTIO EXPLOEATIONS AND DISCOVERIES. 



As in former years, the record of polar ex- 

 peditions, in 1872, is one of great failures and 

 small successes. It is now two-thirds of a 

 century since Scoresby reached N. lat. 81 30' 

 at the north of Spitzbergen, and in that longi- 

 tude no other explorer has attained a higher 

 point since. Twenty-one years later, in 1827, 

 Captain Parry reached, by way of Smith's 

 Sound, the latitude of 82 45' N. lat., in longi- 

 tude 70 W. from Greenwich ; and, though 

 Kane and Hayes both approached this point, 

 neither they nor any one else has ever passed 

 it. Yet, every year, expedition after expedi- 

 tion sets forth, fully persuaded that they shall 

 be able to penetrate to the pole either by the 

 navigation of that open Polar Sea, in which 

 so many of them believe, or, if they have their 

 doubts of that, by dog-sledges, by reindeer- 

 teams, or by sealskin, birch, or rubber boats. 

 Each year, too, records their failure in their 

 great object, either from pack-ice, ice-floes, 

 icebergs, or pitiless storms ; and, though we 

 may admire the pluck Avhich has enabled 

 them to undergo such exposures and suffer- 

 ings, without attaining to the success of 46 

 or 67 years ago, we can hardly restrain 

 the inquiry, "What is gained by all these 

 toils and expenses? 1 ' Still, we must admit 

 that there is some gain. The great object 

 is never attained, but some contributions are 

 made to science by each expedition, and by- 

 and-by the oft-debated question will be solved 

 which is the best or most practicable route for 

 reaching the north-pole. During the year 



