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depth of winter, when all nature has long been frozen, and the sound 

 of falling water has long been forgotten, rain will fall in torrents ; 

 and as rain in such a climate is attended with every discomfort, this 

 is looked upon as a most unwelcome phenomenon. It is called the 

 warm south-east wind. Now, if the Greenlanders at Upernavik are 

 astonished at a warm south-east wind, how much rather must the 

 seamen, frozen up in the pack, be astonished at a warm north-west 

 wind ! Various theories have been started to account for this phe- 

 nomenon; but it appears most probable that a rotatory gale passes over 

 the place, and that the rise of temperature is due to the direction from 

 which the whole mass of air may come, viz. from the southward, 

 and not to the direction of the wind at the time *." 



The cause here assigned appears to me quite insufficient : the rise 

 of the thermometer that we have to account for sometimes amounts 

 to 70 or 80, which is equal to the difference between very warm 

 summer weather and very hard frost in our climate ; and it is unex- 

 ampled, and I think inconceivable, that any motion of a mass of air 

 from warmer latitudes should produce so great an effect on the tem- 

 perature ; certainly the cyclones that come from the West Indian 

 Seas and pass over our islands have no effect in the slightest degree 

 approaching to it. 



What I regard as the true cause of the phenomenon is suggested, 

 though not distinctly pointed out, in Dr. Kane's Narrative, from 

 which I will make a few extracts : 



" January 29. A dark water sky extended in a wedge from Littleton 

 to a point north of the Cape. Everywhere else the firmament was ob- 

 scured by mist. The height of the barometer continued as we left it at 

 the brig, and our own sensations of warmth convinced us that we were 

 about to have a snow-storm. * * * We were barely housed before 

 the storm broke upon us. Here, completely excluded from the 

 knowledge of things without, we passed many miserable hours. 

 We could keep no note of time, and, except by the whirring of the drift 

 against the roof of our kennel, had no information of the state of the 

 weather. * * * We then turned in to sleep again, no longer heedful 

 of the storm, for it had buried us deep in with the snow. But in 

 the meantime, although the storm continued, the temperatures under- 

 went an extraordinary change. I was awakened by the dropping of 



* The writer in the ' Cornhill Magazine ' prints this second paragraph in inverted 

 commas, but does not state whence he has quoted it. 



