DOUBTFUL DISCOVERIES. 8 I 



current, do not freeze, even in the severest winter, although the 

 whole waters round them are covered with ice of two to four feet 

 thick, and Kane himself remarks, that in the most rigorous cold 

 he has found such stream-holes. As soon as the Spring commences 

 these stream-holes expand themselves, as the ice in their neighbour- 

 hood is always thinner and sooner thawed, either above, by the 

 sun, or below, by the under-current. 



Now, as Morton's expedition was undertaken at Midsummer, and 

 as he found such an opening in the ice, not more than 90 miles from 

 the place where they, the year before, had been able to navigate 

 the vessel, and as there was an unusually strong current running 

 in this opening, which just appeared where the Strait became 

 smaller, nothing is more probable than that this opening was just 

 such a stream-hole, in which opinion I must concur with Petersen, 

 until stronger proofs be adduced in favour of the hypothesis of 

 an Open Polar Sea kept open by a branch of the Gulf-stream 

 deflected from Nova Zembla to the Pole : a solution of a problem 

 which has occupied Geographers since 1 596, if not farther 

 back, &c, &C. 1 



Next, as to what concerns the lands that are said to surround 

 this enigmatical Sea with a coast of 90 to 130 miles in extent, 

 which Morton measured almost at a single glance, and wdiich Kane 

 has been able to lay down on his chart, even with an exact coast 

 margin, adorned with celebrated names, and accompanied in the 

 text with correct statements of the heights of mountains (Mount 

 Parry, &c, &c), I must express a well-founded doubt of the correct- 

 ness of all this. 



The ship, as stated, was frozen in on the coast of Greenland, in 

 78° 37' N. lat., in the beginning of September, 1853. Of the expe- 

 ditions that were sent out the same Autumn with boats or sledges, 

 one reached, as presumed, 79° 50' n. lat. along the same coast. In 

 March, 1854, Dr. Kane sent out a sledge expedition, which was 

 obliged to return without result ; the eight travellers who took 

 part in it were in the greatest danger of being frozen to death ; 

 three of them had a foot or toes amputated, and one died a few 

 days after his return. Of the later expeditions, the one under Dr. 

 I [ayes was directed towards the opposite, or American coast, which 

 he traversed to 79° 45' N. lat. under great sufferings from snow- 

 blindness. The others kept under the coast of Greenland, and did 

 not get farther than Humboldt glacier, or about 79£° N. lat. ; with 

 the exception only of the one undertaken by Morton and Hans, 



1 See Kane's 'Considerations,' rol. i. pp. 301-309, 



