98 FRIDTJOF NANSEN. M.-N. Kl. 



The above-mentioned drift of the cask, in five years, is much shorter, 

 considering that the cask was deposited on a floe off Point Barrow, and 

 that its drift could not be shortened, like that of a ship, by working its 

 way out of the ice on the Greenland side. The cask had consequently a 

 longer and more time-wasting distance to travel. If anything, the drift of 

 this cask would thus rather favour the existence of an unobstructed polar 

 basin. But of course we do not know by which way the casks may have 

 travelled, whether near to the routes of the Jeanette and the Fram, or 

 much farther north. These casks cannot therefore tell us anything as to 

 the possible existence of land or shallow sea in the unknown north. 



Mr. Harris also mentions that "the westerly direction taken by the 

 Jeanette, especially during the last five months of her drifting, does not 

 suggest unobstructed deep water to the northward of eastern Siberia". In 

 accordance with what has already been said before (pp. 94 et seq.}, this 

 evidence seems to the writer to be of somewhat more value than the 

 others stated by Mr. Harris. But before any conclusions of weight could 

 be -drawn from it, it would be necessary to know the velocities and direc- 

 tions of the winds during the drifting of the Jeanette, in order to see 

 whether the drifting ice met with any special resistance towards the north 

 which prevented its course from being deflected towards the right of the 

 wind. As far as I know, however, there is not sufficient observation- 

 material for such an investigation. We cannot therefore conclude anything 

 of much importance in the above respect from the drifting of the Jeanette. 



It may perhaps only be pointed out that the cask that required less 

 than five years to drift across the North Polar Basin from Alaska, cannot 

 possibly have come by the same way as the Jeanette and the relics from 

 the Jeanette, found off the south-west coast of Greenland; for if so the 

 cask would necessarily have required a much longer time for its drifting; 

 it would require a very long time to reach the starting point of the 

 Jeanette-drift from the place where it was deposited off Point Barrow. 



Hence it follows that the cask must have travelled along a much 

 quicker route across the unknown sea, somewhere far to the north of the 

 track of the Jeanette, where the ice drifted more freely. This circumstance 

 may just indicate the probability of more unobstructed and deeper water 

 there than along the track of the Jeanette. 



