298 



I\Ir. E. W. Ginlger on the 



ill speakiu}? oP the j^eogiaphy of Britain, lie says : — "Thule 

 [Norway?] was also seen, previously hidden by snow and 

 winter ; l)ut the sea is said to he tough and hard tor the 

 rowers ;in<l to he little stirred by winds/^ 



Naiiseii, in his Nor\vef?ian North Polar Expedition (I8i)3- 

 189G), repeatedly notieed this phenomenon. On his return 

 he turned over this problem to V. W-aKrid Ekman for 

 explanation. Ekm m's jjuper may be found in the ' Seientific 

 Results' of the expedition, volume v. (1904-), and from it 

 the following interesting; data are taken. 



In order to ascertain the prevalenet; of this phenomenon, 

 Ekman published apjicals for information in thirty-six 

 foreign and in all available Scandinavian newspapers. From 

 the former he received nine answers citing the appearance of 

 " dead-water " in ten difi'erent localities, while from Scandi- 

 navian waters no less than thirty-two regions are reported 

 to abound in this phenomenon. From this data Ekman 

 concludes that " . . . . From some reason or other it (dead- 

 water) is comparatively seldom met with l)eyond Scandinavia 

 or appears in a less decided manner than in the Norwegian 

 Fjords." 



Foreign reports give dead-water as occurring off Taimnr 

 Island on the coast of northern Silesia, also in Kara Sea 

 and Bay in the same region, on the Murman coast of north- 

 west Russia, as very " troublesome of!^ the great river 



mouths of South America," while off the mouth of the 

 Orinoco a ship had to anchor to prevent drifting out of her 

 course. This phenomenon is reported from the Gulf of 

 Mexico and it has been experienced oft' the Baffin Bay coast 

 of Labrador, while the Saint Lawrence mouth is designated 

 by one Norwegian captain as one of the worst regions in the 

 world for dead-water. Two circumstantial accounts are 

 cited for this phenomenon off the mouth of Eraser River 

 and another near Vancouver Island, in which localities it 

 bears the familiar name used by Ekman. There are two 

 reports of its occurrence in the mouth of the Congo, one 

 for the mouth of the Loire River, and two for the Garonne 

 River and the basin of Arcachon near Bordeaux. 



These last instances, however, are not of such pronounced 

 dead-water as in the following report of its occurrence not 

 merely in the Mediterranean but between the island of 

 Cerigo and the southern part of Greece. This very circum- 

 stantial account is, because of its pertinence to the Myth, 

 given verbatim : — 



" On January 2, 1858, we were between Cape Matapan 

 and Cerigo and sailed eastward for the Archipelago. The 



