i 



* 



I 



Arctic Explorations. 237 



ice wliicli had enclosed them. The vessels after revisiting the 

 Grreenland coast, reached New York in September. 



The second expedition, under Dr. Kane, left New York on 

 the 30th of Maj, 1853, reached Fiskernaes, Greenland, on the 

 1st of July, passed up the west side of Greenland across Mel- 

 ville Bay, and so on north through Smith's Straits some forty 

 miles wide at the head of this bay, into Kane's Sea its con- 

 tinuation sixty to eighty miles in width ; and near the en- 

 trance of this sea on the Greenland side, in lat TS"" 37', Ion. 

 70^ 40', at Kensselaer harbor as they named it, the vessels came 

 to winter quarters, in the latter part of August, 1853. Here 

 they remained through the winter and a following summer and 

 winter, making occasional excursions on foot or with sledges 

 to the east, west, and far north. The recital of their arctic life 

 is a tale of constant adventure and suffering, but also of suc- 

 cessful defiance of nature's fiercest rigors; and this display of 

 man's nobility gives a charm to the pages that are otherwise an 

 array of dismal scenes in long gloomy succession. On May 20, 

 1855, the party left the vessel, and made its hazardous way 

 over the ice and by water to the Danish settlement of Upperna- 

 vik, in lat. 72° 40', where they arrived after a journey of ex- 

 traordinary perils, early in August A Danish vessel, in Sep- 

 tember, took them to Godhavn, where they joined Capt, Hart- 

 stene, IT, S. K, who had been sent to their rescue. 



1. Oceanic Currents, — The oceanic currents, as illustrated b 

 the Arctic cruisers, arc well exhibited in a map prepared by 

 A. Schott, Esq., of the U. S. Coast Survey, published with the 

 journal of the first expedition. The grand point brought out is 

 the general oceanic movement by all accessible channels south- 

 ward from the polar sea. It is like the discharge of an over-full 

 polar basin, sending its majestic outflows by eyevj place of exit 

 that offers. The waters pass down through Barrow Straits from 

 the channels about Melville Island and from Wellington Chan- 

 i»el, and pour themselves into Baffin's Bay, and thence down Da- 

 vis Straits to the Atlantic. Another stream goes by Hudson's 

 Straits to join the former in its southerly course, and the two 

 ^nite with the great fio^x of cold water that comes down by 

 eastern Greenland. These currents are not made known for the 

 fii^t time by the American expeditions, but their results have 

 added to the definiteness of our knowledge on the sid)ject. The 

 remarkable drift of the vessels, in the first cruise, for 1000 miles, 

 from Wellington Channel to lat. QQ"" and Ion. 58° in Baffin's Bav, 

 is the most rernarkable current experiment that any of the world's 

 explorers has made, and it is none the less important, that it was 



^^iplanned and involuntary. 



In addition to the flows mentioned, there is also a stream de- 

 scendiurr from the far north by Baffin's Bay, through Smith's 



t 



