244 Aixtic Explorations. 



ft 



Tlie Polar /S^a.— The ''open polar sea" is the grand discovery 

 announced by Dr. Kane that has excited most attention. What 

 •\^as a mere matter of specnlation has passed into the sober nar- 

 ration of a cautious and credible Arctic voyager. Yet all natu- 

 rally receive the conclusion with a grain or more of doubt. It 

 is against old notions ; and moreover it is urged with reason, 

 that the sea was not seen by Dr. Kane himself but b;^' two of his 

 men ; that the whole extent of clear water claimed is but sixty 

 miles sq^uare (4000 miles), and that the mirage of those northern 



Kane 



ain 



nished 



an over-estmi 



■' 1 o — 



open water discovered. 



The excursion to the north, from the vessel at Eensselaer Bay, 

 was undertaken in June of 1854, after they had already been 

 ton months ice-bound. The party consisted of two men by the 

 names of Morton and Hans, the latter an Esquimaux, Dr. Kane 

 at the time being too much disabled to join them. Fifteen or 

 twenty miles north of the parallel of 80^, the water called Kane's 

 Sea narrows to forty or fifty miles, and here it has been named 

 Kennedy's Channel. Near the entrance to this channel, about 

 two degrees north of the vessel, they found open w^ater, the 

 temperature of which was 36^ F., with no solid ice beyond."* 

 Morton continued up Kennedy Straits with his companion, and 

 finally reached the parallel of 81° 20', on the Greenland side, 

 where he was stopped by a bold cape. Here, from a height of 

 480 feet, commanding a horizon of "almost forty miles," "his 

 ears were gladdened with the novel music of dashing waves, and 

 a surf breaking in among the rocks at his feet." About the ship 

 no birds of the returning season had been seen. But here on 

 the borders of the open sea, " the Brent goose {Anas hermda\ the 

 eider and the king duck, were so crowded together that bur Es- 

 quimaux killed two at a shot with a single rifle-balL The Brent 

 goose had not been seen before since entering Smith's Straits.' 

 The rocks were crowded too with swallows. There were also 

 four species of gulls ; and at the farthest point, Morton saw the 

 Arctic ^Qtid {Procellana ghcialis) "flitting and hovering over 

 the crests of the waves," a bird which was last seen, when the 

 vessel was on its way north the preceding season, 200 miles south 

 of where they then were ; and as it feeds on the life of the waters, 

 it is one that re^^uires an open sea. 



* Dr. Kane states, that in latitude 78^ 60^ near Rensselaer harbor, vlien tte 

 temperature at the 8urface of the ice-floes was -30*^ F., it was -8^ at a deptbol 

 two feet in the ice, -f-2° at four feet, and + 26** at eight feet. The freezing pomt 



of sea-water at Rensselaer harbor was 31° F. 



