311 



water from the roof above me ; and upon turning back my sleeping 

 bag, found it saturated by the melting of its previously condensed 

 hoar-frost. My eider-down was like a wet swab. I afterwards found 

 that the phenomenon of the warm south-east had come unexpectedly 

 upon us. The thermometers at the brig indicated +26, and, closer 

 as we were to the water, the weather was probably above the freezing- 

 point. When we left the brig how long before it was we did not 

 know the temperature was 44. It had risen at least seventy 

 degrees. * * * In the morning that is to say, when the combined 

 light of the noon-day dawn and the circumpolar moon permitted our 

 escape I found, by comparing the time as indicated by the Great 

 Bear with the increased altitude of the moon, that we had been pent 

 up nearly two days." 



It appears from these extracts, that although Dr. Kane did not 

 see open water, he was made aware of its neighbourhood by the in- 

 fallible sign of a "Water Sky." A rise of temperature to a few 

 degrees above frost would be quite insufficient to produce open water 

 by melting through the fields of ice in forty-eight hours ; but, on the 

 other hand, the breaking up of the fields of ice by a storm is an 

 adequate cause for a great rise of temperature ; for the water imme- 

 diately below the ice is at the temperature of sea-water at its freezing- 

 point, which is +28; so that when a storm comes and breaks up 

 the ice, the water comes into contact with air 70 or 80 colder, and 

 warms the air. 



There is no doubt of the power of a storm to break up the ice. 

 Sir James Ross speaks of " the almost magical power of the sea in 

 breaking up land-ice or extensive floes of from twenty to thirty feet 

 thick, which have, in a few minutes after the swell reached them, 

 been broken up into small fragments by the power of the waves." 

 The theory that these sudden rises of temperature are caused by storms 

 breaking up the ice and exposing the comparatively warm water below, 

 also harmonizes with the fact that the warm winds, as mentioned by 

 the officer of the ' Fox,' in different parts of Baffin's Bay come from 

 different points of the compass ; while on the same coast they come 

 from the same point. Thus Wrangell, as quoted above, mentions that 

 in the part of the Siberian coast which he explored, a S.E. by E. 

 wind sometimes raises the thermometer upwards of fifty degrees, while 

 a S.S.E. wind has no effect on the temperature at all. This proves 

 that the rise of temperature cannot be due to the transport of a mass 



