180 NOTES OF KANE'S EXPEDITION. 



tions several instances of whales having been taken 

 near Behring's Straits, with harpoons in them 

 bearing the stamp of ships that were known to 

 cruise in the Greenland seas ; and the dates on the 

 harpoons were so recent as to preclude the supposi- 

 tion that the said whales had, after being struck, 

 made a voyage round the capes above mentioned, 

 even were such a voyage possible to them. All 

 this does not, indeed, absolutely prove the existence of 

 an open arctic sea, but it does, we think, prove the 

 existence of at least an occasionally open sea there, 

 for it is well known that whales cannot travel such 

 immense distances under ice. 



But the most conclusive evidence that we have 

 in regard to this subject is the fact, that one oi 

 the members of Dr. Kane's expedition, while in 

 search of Sir John Franklin, did actually, on foot, 

 reach what we have every reason to believe was 

 this open sea ; but not being able to get their 

 ship into it, the party had 110 means of ex- 

 ploring it, or extending their investigations. The 

 account of this discovery is so interesting, and 

 withal so romantic, that we extract a few para- 

 graphs relating to it from Kane's work. 



After spending the dreary winter in the ice- 

 locked and unexplored channels beyond the head 

 of Baffin's Bay, Kane found his little ship still 

 hopelessly beset in the month of June ; he therefore 

 resolved to send out a sledge-party under Morton, 

 one of his best men, to explore the channel to the 



