NATURE 



71 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1871 



ARCTIC EXPLORATION 



IN 1865 Captain Sherard Osborn proposed an explora- 

 tion of "tfie blanlc space around our Northern Pole," 

 by a route which he and his brother Arctic explorers, 

 from considerations based on the history of the subject 

 during three centur ies, and on their own experience in the 

 ice, were convinced was the best, and the most sure to 

 lead to useful scientific results. 



Their reasons for adopting the views then set forth, the 

 correctness of which has since been confirmed by Swedish 

 and German explorers, were as follows : — 



The immense tract of hitherto unvisited land or sea 

 which surrounds the northern end of the axis of our 

 earth, is the largest, as it is the most important field of 

 discovery that remains for this or a future gcnei-ation to 

 work out. The undiscovered region is bounded on the 

 European side by about the Soth parallel of latitude, ex- 

 cept where Parry, Scoresby, and a few others have slightly 

 broken through its circumference ; but on the Asiatic 

 side it extends south to 75° and 74^, and westward of 

 Behring's Strait our knowledge is bounded by the 72nd 

 parallel. Thus in some directions it is more than 1,500 

 miles across, and it covers an area of upwards of 2,000,000 

 square miles, with the North Pole towards its centre. 

 Unhke the ocean-girt region of the Southern Pole, the 

 northern Polar region is surrounded, at a distance of 

 about 1,000 miles from its centre, by three great con- 

 tinents, while the glacier-bearing mass of Greenland 

 stretches away towards the Pole for an unknown distance. 

 There are three approaches by sea to this land-girt end 

 of the earth, namely, through the wide ocean between 

 Norway and Greenland, through Davis Strait, and through 

 Behring's Strait. One wide portal and two narrow gates. 

 It was through the wide portal that men naturally 

 sought, in the first instance, to reach the mysterious region 

 of the Pole ; and they continued to persevere in that 

 direction until experience had taught those who were 

 capable of learning from it that, as in other cases, the 

 longest way round was the shortest way home. The first 

 true Arctic voyager was William Barents, who sailed from 

 the Te.Kel in 1594. He discovered all we now know re- 

 specting the Spitzbergen seas ; first, the open lane of 

 water which almost always enables vessels to sail up the 

 western side of that land ; second, the impenetrable 

 Polar pack to the north, and between Spitzbergen and 

 Novaya Zemlia ; third, tliat the young ice formed in the 

 early autumn and rendered the sea unnavigable ; and, 

 fourth, that winds and currents caused open water even 

 in the winter and early spring, but again drove the ice 

 upon the coast at every change of wind. Hudson, in two 

 voyages, explored the whole of the pack-edge from Green- 

 land to Novaya Zemlia, and found it to be impenetrable ; 

 and many others followed him with the same result. In 

 later years four expeditions sailed up the west coast of 

 Spitzbergen beyond the Soth parallel, and Dutch and 

 English whalers collected a vast mass of information, 

 which has been ably brought together by Scoresby and 

 Jansen, and which pretty well exhausts the subject. 



During the winter and early spring the ice extends in a 

 vou V. 



line from the east coast of Greenland to the northw.ard of 

 Jan Mayen Island, crossing the meridian of Greenwich 

 between the 71st and 72nd parallel, then passing up north 

 for several degrees, and leaving a deep bay, and finally 

 stretching away to Novaya Zemlia. The deep bay in the 

 ice, left to the eastward of the Greenwich meridian 

 in the winter, is probably caused by the so-called 

 Gulf Stream. It forms the route by which the whalers 

 proceed to their fishing-ground, and is known as " the 

 whale-fisher's bight." In the spring the Polar pack 

 begins to drift to the southward and westw.ird, so that 

 the western or lee sides of large masses of land, such 

 as Spitzbergen, are usually left with open navigable 

 lanes of water ; while the eastern or weather sides are 

 generally close packed with ice. The pack, consisting 

 of vast fields of thick ribbed ice, has never been pene- 

 trated, though whalers annually sail through streams 

 of lighter floes until they reach its edge. The Polar 

 pack is met with in ditferent parallels according to the 

 season and the meridian. Between Spitzbergen and 

 Novaya Zemlia it is usually in 75' or 76° ; but occasionally 

 vessels have reached as far as 81° without encountering it, 

 and in the very exceptional year when Parry attempted 

 to reach the Pole, he was only coning in sight of it at his 

 extreme point in 82' 43', although he had been travelling 

 for 92 miles over closely-packed floes of ice through 

 which no steamer could have forced her way. In another 

 exceptional year, that of 1S06, Scoresby sailed along th a 

 edge of the pack for 300 miles, between the parallels of 

 Si° and 82° ; and at his extreme point in 81° 30', on the 

 meridian of 19° E., the margin of the ice trended to 

 E.N.E., while to the eastward there was an open sea to 

 the horizon, with no ice blink. Farther east a latitude of 

 82^ or even 83' might possibly hive been attained in that 

 year, before arriving at the edge of the Polar ice. Analo- 

 gous conditions of the ice were found by J ames Ross in the 

 Antarctic sea. He sailed through pack ice met with in the 

 62nd parallel, which was drifting north, and then reached 

 the edge of the impenetrable Polar pack which he found 

 extending for 400 miles in a wall 150ft to iSoft. high in 

 the parallel of 78' 30' S. In the northern sea the Gulf 

 Stream flaws up until it meets the ice-laden Polar 

 current between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlia. It 

 keeps the ice off the shores of Norway and Lapland, but 

 the parallel on which the warm current meets the ice- 

 bearing stream, and is cooled down to 27°, .varies in dif- 

 ferent seasons. Even if it were possible, by extraordinary 

 luck, to force a steamer through the pack to the open water 

 supposed to be left by its southerly drift, the autumn 

 would be so far advanced by the time she reached it that 

 young ice would be forming on the surf ice, and all navi- 

 gation would be at an end. In 78' N. ice forms on the 

 sea during eight months in the year, and Scoresby often 

 saw it grow to a consistency capable of stopping the pro- 

 gress of a ship, even with a brisk wind blowing. 



These facts, the results of thousands of observations 

 extending over many years, proved that an attempt to 

 force a vessel through any pirt of the Polar pack be- 

 tween Greenland and Novaya Zemlia was not the best 

 way to explore the unknown region of the north. 



Sir Edward Parry was the discoverer of the true method 

 of Polar exploration, by sledge travelling. He proposed 

 to attempt to reach the North Pole, in 1827, by travelling 



