THE CONTINENTAL GLACIERS OF POLAR REGIONS 289 



sures of the ice pack, stocked her with provisions sufficient for 

 five years, and by allowing the vessel to be frozen into the pack 

 north of the New Siberian Islands, he consigned himself and 

 his companions to the mercy of the elements. The world knows 

 the result as one of the most remarkable achievements in 

 the long history of polar exploration. The track of the Fram, 

 charted in Fig. 315, considered in connection with that of the 

 Jeannette, shows that the Arctic pack drifts from Bering Sea west- 

 ward until near the northeastern coast of Greenland. 



Special casks were for experimental purposes fastened in the 

 ice to the north of Behring Strait by Melville and Bryant, and two 

 of these were afterwards recovered, the one near the North Cape 

 in northern Norway, and the other in northeastern Iceland (see 

 map, Fig. 315). Peary's trips northward in 1906 and 1909 from 

 the vicinity of Smith Sound have indicated that between the Pole 

 and the shores of Greenland and Grant Land the drift is through- 

 out to the eastward, corresponding to the westerly wind. Upon 

 this border the great area of Arctic drift ice is in contact with 

 great continental glaciers bordered by a glacier fringe. Admiral 

 Peary has shown that instead of consisting of frozen sea ice, the 

 pack is here made up of great floes from 20 to 100 feet in thickness 

 and that these have been derived from the glacier fringe. 



Whenever the blizzards blow off the inland ice from the south, 

 leads are opened at the margin of the fringe and may carry strips 

 from the latter northward across the lead. With favorable con- 

 ditions these leads may be closed by thick sea ice so that with 

 the occurrence of counter winds from the north they do not entirely 

 return to their original position. A continuance of this process 

 may have resulted in the heavy floe ice to the northward of Green- 

 land, which, acting as an obstruction, may have forced the thinner 

 drift ice to keep on the European side of the Arctic pack. 



About the Antarctic continent there is a broad girdle of pack 

 ice which, while more indolent in its movements than the Arctic 

 pack, has been shown by the expeditions of the Belgica and the 

 Pourquoi-Pas to possess the same kind of shifting movements. 

 In the southern spring this pack floats northward and is to a large 

 extent broken up and melted on reaching lower latitudes. 



The Antarctic shelf ice. It has been already pointed out 

 that the inland ice of Antarctica is in part at least surrounded by 



