THE SECRET OF THE NORTH POLE. 115 



before the problem had been solved, it had become well 

 known that no profit could be expected to accrue to 

 trade from the discovery of a passage along the peril- 

 ous straits and the ice-encumbered seas which lie to 

 the north of the American Continent. But Sir Edward 

 Parry having traced out a passage as far as Melville 

 Island, it seemed to the bold spirit of our arctic ex- 

 plorers that it might be possible, by sailing through 

 Behring's Straits, to trace out a connection between 

 the arctic seas on that side and the regions reached by 

 Parry. Accordingly, McClure, in 1850, sailed in the 

 " Investigator," and passing eastward, after traversing 

 Behring's Straits, reached Baring's Land, and event- 

 ually identified this land as a portion of Banks's Land, 

 seen by Parry to the southward of Melville Island. 



It will thus be seen that the unexplored parts of the 

 arctic regions are limited in this direction by sufficient- 

 ly high latitudes. 



Turn we next to the explorations which Russian 

 voyagers have made to the northward of Siberia. It 

 must be noticed, in the first place, that the coast of 

 Siberia runs much farther northward than that of the 

 American Continent. So that on this side, indepen- 

 dently of sea explorations, the unknown arctic regions 

 are limited within very high latitudes. But attempts 

 have been made to push much farther north from these 

 shores. In every case however, the voyagers have 

 found that the ice-fields, over which they hoped to 



