24 FARTHEST NORTH 



this piece of evidence is of less importance than those 

 ah-eady named. 



" Piittinir all this toq-ether, we seem driven to the 

 conclusion that a current Jloivs at some point betiveen the 

 Pole a7id Franz Josef Land from the Siberian Arctic 

 Sea to the east coast of Greenla7id. 



" That such must be the case we may also infer in 

 another way. If we regard, for instance, the polar cur- 

 rent — that broad current which flows down from the un- 

 known polar regions between Spitzbergen and Green- 

 land — and consider what an enormous mass of water 

 it carries along, it must seem self-evident that this 

 cannot come from a circumscribed and small basin, but 

 must needs be gathered from distant sources, the more 

 so as the Polar Sea (so far as we know it) is remarkably 

 shallow everywhere to the north of the European, Asiatic, 

 and American coasts. The polar current is no doubt 

 fed by that branch of the Gulf Stream which makes its 

 way up the west side of Spitzbergen ; but this small 

 stream is far from being suflficient, and the main body 

 of its water must be derived from farther northward. 



" It is probable that the polar current stretches its 

 suckers, as it were, to the coast of Siberia and Bering 

 Strait, and draws its supplies from these distant regions. 

 The w^ater it carries off is replaced partly through the 

 warm current before mentioned whicli makes its way 

 through Bering Strait, and partly by that branch of the 

 Gulf Stream which, passing by the north of Norway, 



