90 DOUBTFUL CONCLUSIONS. 



and the incessantly-propelled land-ice extend itself over the sur- 

 rounding land. 



After having passed the icebergs, they came to the place where 

 the sea-ice on which they drove became thinner and thinner, so 

 that the dogs trembled, and at last they durst not drive farther on 

 it, but sought the land, or rather the firmer ice-edge that lay imme- 

 diately along the shore. At last the ice gave place for quite open 

 water, and here it is stated, at page 288, that — 



" The tide was running very fast ; the ice-pieces of heaviest draught floated 

 by nearly as fast as the ordinary walk of a man, and the surface pieces passed 

 them much faster, at least four knots." 



Kane has already given an excellent description of a stream-hole ; 

 but had it been the margin of the Open Sea moved by the swell, 

 the ice would have kept its thickness, at least to some extent, just 

 as one approached it, but it would have been broken, screwed up, 

 and thus more or less in drift. In short, such a margin of ice is 

 cut off sharper, with respect to thickness, whereas a successive 

 transition from ice to water is found around a stream-hole, for which 

 reason it is so dangerous to approach such places. The above-mentioned 

 tide-stream of four knots is even so strong, that one (particularly as 

 it was in a pretty large sound, and not in a narrow pass of some few 

 yards in breadth) can already conclude that in such a place no ice 

 would be able to hold in the month of June, even to a considerable 

 circumference. Even farther up Morton observed that the ice-pieces 

 drifted at the rate of four miles an hour, and that the stream varied 

 first from north to south and then from south to north, just as is 

 the case everywhere in the inner navigable waters along the coast 

 of Greenland, originating from the ebb and flood. {See vol. ii., p. 

 376.) 



The last-mentioned observation was made by Morton on the 22nd 

 of June, consequently there was not until that moment the most 

 remote reason to suppose an Open Polar Sea. The Sound had like- 

 wise a direction north, and there was thus no sign whatever that 

 the coast under which they found themselves turned towards the 

 east, or that they found themselves at the end of Greenland. We 

 will now consider the adventures of the two following days, after 

 Morton's own description (vol. ii., pp. 377, 378). These adventures 

 form the main foundation for the ideas about the end of Greenland 

 — the Open Polar Sea— the Gulf-stream, which warms up the Pole 

 — the solution of that problem which has occupied the geographical 

 world since 1596, &c. &c. ; and with these must stand or fall the 

 whole of that splendid building, of which Kane has sketched a 

 drawing in vol. i., pp. 301-309. 



