THE ARCTIC PACK 141 



Smith Sound into Baffin Bay, polynyas are formed in these straits and 

 basins during the whole winter, and the deep Kane Sea, in spite of 

 its small dimensions, does not become covered by an immovable ice 

 sheet, these polynyas having an entirely local character. As to the 

 region of the Arctic Ocean situated opposite the American Arctic 

 Archipelago and the coast of Alaska, the masses of the Arctic Pack in 

 this region are solidly crowded together, and the direction of their 

 motion produces shock and pressure of the ice. In connection with the 

 hypothesis here presented one cannot expect to find there anything 

 similar to the Asiatic polynya along the edge of the Arctic Pack with 

 its general offshore motion. 



In any case the Asiatic polynya does not appear to be a strictly 

 rigid phenomenon, because it is completely dependent on the shifting 

 of the Arctic Pack, which is generally very irregular and complicated 

 in its direction and rate of motion in different seasons of the year. 

 Thus the polynya may have greater or less breadth and sometimes dis- 

 appear completely when the edge of the pack moves close to the coastal 

 fast-ice. The conditions in the Asiatic sector are favorable to its devel- 

 opment; the opposite is the case in the American sector, where, if the 

 polynya exists, it is only as a temporary, coastal phenomenon pro- 

 duced by local conditions, as for instance by a storm, and where it 

 scarcely even develops to an extent similar to that of the Kolyma and 

 New Siberian polynyas. The problem of the existence of polynyas 

 within the Arctic Pack itself is beyond the limits of the present work. 

 The drifts of the Jeannette and of the Frani and the Parry, Nansen, 

 Cagni, and Peary expeditions offer material for the basis of a judgment 

 as to the nature of the Arctic Pack in various latitudes from the 

 longitude of Lincoln Sea (60° W.) to the east as far as the longitude 

 of Bering Strait (170° W.). There remains an absolutely unexplored 

 region situated north of the American continent and the American 

 Arctic Archipelago, and final deductions about the nature of the Arctic 

 Pack cannot be drawn until exploration of the ice cover in that region 

 has been made. 



