134 POLAR PROBLEMS 



Austrian Polar Expedition under Weyprecht's command with those 

 experienced by the Stella Polar e under the Duke of the Abruzzi. The 

 Tegetthoff was held fast in the ice and lost the possibility of independ- 

 ent movement, having been caught in the pack in latitude 76^° N., 

 and was finally abandoned by the members of the expedition at the 

 southeastern coast of Franz Josef Land. The Stella Polare, going 

 through British Channel on the western side of Zichy Land in the 

 Franz Josef Land archipelago, steamed north beyond 82° N. to a 

 point west of Crown Prince Rudolf Island and found the sea almost 

 free from ice. The same impassableness and inaccessibility for navi- 

 gation obtain on the outskirts of the Arctic Pack off the American 

 coasts, with its tendency to exert pressure on the shore. The rate 

 of motion of the Arctic Pack is only known in its Asiatic half. The 

 drifts of the Jeannette and Fram give reason to suppose that it would 

 require about five years for a piece of ice to cover the distance from 

 Herald Island to the longitude of the Greenland Sea, where it can 

 get into the East Greenland Current and be carried out of the Polar 

 Basin into the Atlantic Ocean. Probably only a part of the ice 

 cover of the Arctic Ocean is dischg.rged in this way to the south. 

 The other, possibly greater, part is carried farther to the west and 

 enters the region of constant shock and pressure north of the American 

 continent. As to how long and in what way it continues its motion 

 in this region nothing can be said because of lack of exploration.^^ 



Paleocrystic Ice, Floebergs, and Heaped-Up Ice Fields 



The only evidence confirmatory of this hypothesis of westward 

 movement is the character of the ice in the region of the Arctic Pack 

 abreast of eastern Asia. De Long, who first penetrated that region, 



1' One more circumstance may influence the direction of the motion of the pack — the deflection 

 caused by the rotary motion of the earth as expressed in Baer's Law. Assuming that a definite north- 

 ward drift of the ice exists off Siberia, one may suppose that with increasing latitude this drift, deviating 

 to the east, will take on a more northerly direction. Comparing the drift of the Jeannette between longi- 

 tudes 150° E. and i8o° with the drift of the Fram between 70° and 135° E. we seem to find the said 

 hypothesis confirmed. The drift of the Jeannette up to latitude 77° N. generally has a west-northwest 

 direction; the direction of the Fram drift between latitudes 79° and 85° N. on the average approximates 

 northwest. In any case, the importance of Baer's Law for the motion of the pack is not great since 

 this motion has no strictly definite character either in its direction or its speed. The Arctic Pack rep- 

 resents a hard and only slightly elastic cover in which through contact, so to speak, the motions pro- 

 duced by local causes, storms, for instance, may be propagated to considerable distances. The motion 

 of the ice masses, having started in some definite place, is transmitted to extensive areas, spending 

 itself partly on the breaking up and piling up of ice, partly on the imparting of speed to the masses of 

 ice. This circumstance undoubtedly much complicates the shifting of the ice fields in the interior of 

 the Arctic Pack. 



[The views here expressed should be read in the light of those set forth by Nansen in Chapter 5 

 of his "The Oceanography of the North Polar Basin" (The Norwegian North Polar Expedition 1893- 

 1896: Scientific Results, Vol. 3, No. 9) Christiania, 1902, especially the sections (cand e) dealing with 

 the effect of the earth's rotation on the drift of the ice and the deflection of currents with increasing 

 depth, to the latter of which subjects, as investigated by Valfrid Ekman. Dr. Nansen briefly refers in 

 his paper above (p. 11). For the standard survey and discussion of the different theories of ocean cur- 

 rents see Otto Kriimmel: Handbuch der Ozeanographie (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1907 and 1911). Vol. 2, 

 Ch. 3, Section 3. — Edit. Note. J 



