r 

 I. 



238 Arctic Explorations. 



r 



Straits or Kane^s Sea (the scene of the adventures of the second 

 cruise), which joins that from Barrow Straits, thus making in all 

 a descending polar flow bv Eastern Greenland, Western Green- 

 land or Smith's Straits, Wellington Channel, and one or more 

 channels about Melville Island, besides that into the Pacific 

 Ocean by Behring\s Straits. The Behring's Straits current, 

 though not always noticed at the surface, shows itself in the cold 

 •waters that flow by the China coast far towards the equator, 

 making deep bends in the winter isothermal lines, and even 

 ushing south of its normal limit the heat equator of the ocean.* 

 t is well known that a current descending from the poles nec- 

 essarily hugs the eastern coasts of lands or takes the west side 

 of the ocean, it thus lagging westward because the motion of ro- 

 tation at the poles is at a less rate than farther south. It is 

 also understood that a flowing current will, by its own move- 

 ment, draw in waters from its sides, and especially, when, as 

 it descends a channel, the channel widens rather suddenly in- 

 to a bay, and hence while the great flow in Baffin's Bay passes 

 south along its western side, there is a counter current flowing 

 north on the eastern side. Dr. Kane speaks of this current to 

 the northward as made by the east Greenland current bending 

 around south Greenland and changing to a northerly course- 

 We should rather view it in the manner suggested, as a move- 

 ment produced by the great northern current, and fed by what- 

 ever w^aters lie along western and southern Greenland, including 

 of course part of those descending in the east Greenland current. 

 In the great expedition-drift the vessels made 170 miles in the 

 month of December, and 190 in that of May. 



Writers on physical geography, as Dove and others, correctly 

 attribute the supply of the polar seas with its superabundant 

 waters, to the great Atlantic flow or Gulf Stream. The ocean 

 pours north through the opening between Great Britain and Ice- 

 land, and streams out again by the various outlets which he 

 open before it. 



The magnitude of these movements shoAV that they belong to 

 the organixation of the earth, and as much to its geological past 

 as its present history. They are therefore correctly appealed to 

 by geologists in discussions of the origin of all marine strata; 

 and especially the ancient, which are more exclusively marine. 

 The Azoic b;ick-bone of the contment lying just east of the line 

 of lakes including Winnipeg and Slave lakes, and bending north- 

 east in Canada, so as to incTude Hudson's Bay in its two armsj 

 must have always had its northern currents hugging its eastern 

 side; and whenever the Eocky Mountains ruse as a burner 



See nn isothermal chart by Prof Dana in this Journal, vol. xvi, p. 153. 

 f See thid Juurnal, voL xxii, p. 335, 



