2 44 



NATURE 



[yan. 14, 1886 



be carried out at a loss, which loss is the reason for an 

 endowment. It is hard to say whether the perusal of 

 such a Report as now lies before us impresses most with 

 admiration for American activity or regret for English 

 supineness. John Wrightson 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[ 7 he Editor doss not hold himself responsible/or opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscript: , 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. 



\_Tke Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 

 as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great 

 that it is impossible otherwise to insure the appearance even 

 of communications containing interesting and no7jei facts. "[ 



Major Greely on Ice, &c. 



In the long and interesting address of Major Greely at the 

 special meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, held ten 

 days ago, with the object of hearing an account of some of his 

 proceedings during his painfully memorable Arctic expedition, 

 the traveller dwelt so largely upon the conditions of the ice on 

 the open Polar sea, &c., that one was led to believe that he was 

 talking at opinions — spoken or written — by some one adverse to 

 his own ; possibly those given by myself in the communication 

 published in Nature of December 10 last may have been 

 meant. Should this be so, anything that Major Greely has 

 said does not in the slightest degree aifect the statements made 

 by me in the above-mentioned letter. 



Major Greely tells us that Hayes, as well as Kane (it should 

 be Morton), saw " an open Polar basin." Payer, in as high or 

 a higher latitude at Franz Josef Land, saw, at a much earlier 

 date in spring than Hayes and Morton did, a larger pool of 

 open water, with "myriads" of water-fowl, but did not think 

 of calling it an " open Polar basin," or part of one. 



This idea of a great open Polar sea is almost, if not wholly, 

 confined to our American cousins, where it seems to have taken 

 firm root for at least thirty years past, and has, I should imagine, 

 a spiritualistic origin, for Dr. Kane was a believer in spiritualism. 



With the fear of appearing tedious, I shall quote briefly the 

 perfect meaning, if not the exact words, of part of a letter which 



a distinguished spiritualist, Major • , sent to me prior to one 



of my Arctic expeditions. In this letter I was told that Frank- 

 lin was still alive (clear proof had been obtained that he had 

 been dead some years before the date of a part of this letter), 

 and was residing at 132 (?), St Peter Street, in a seaport town 

 called Joppa, having a population of more tlian 100,000 persons, 

 on one of the lauds near the Pole ! 



There was a large population, the Government Republican, 

 and a fine, healthy, and salubrious climate. " These people were 

 descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel" ! 



The postscript was curious, and written at a later date than 

 the letter itself, immediately after the death of Dr. Kane, as 

 follows : — " Have just had communication with the spirit of Dr. 

 Kane, whose first visit after death was paid to Franklin in 

 Joppa, where he was still alive and well, but praying to get 

 home." 



Major Greely seems to confound two forms of ice having very 

 difl'erent origins — namely, the floeberg, of which I have already 

 said enough elsewhere, and the freshwater-ice, which, he says, 

 is derived from the ice-caps of far northern lands, a mass of 

 which he saw, having very considerable extent and "a thickness 

 of one-sixth of a mile I with a deep valley containing a number 

 of boulders." 



This great mass of ice, 8S0 feel thick, with valley and rounded 

 stones, may ha\e been readily formed on the shores of one of 

 the high headlands — one of which is named as having an alti- 

 tude of nearly 3000 feet — along the northern portions of which 

 Lieut. Lockwood skirted during his sledge journey on the coast 

 of Greenland. 



True, I was never in these high latitudes, but a person may 

 sometimes be permitted to reason from analogy, as I shall 

 attempt to do. 



In 1848 I saw on the northern shore of America, in lat. 

 68" 40', not far from the Coppermine River, a snowdrift against 

 a cliff about 100 feet high, and in 1S49 I and my party were 

 detained at the same place for a good many days, during which 

 we had ample time and opportunity to examine this snowdrift. 



nearly all of which was converted into ice that seemed per- 

 manent, except when parts broke off and floated away. 



The slope of this snowdrift tapered towards the sea with "so 

 gentle a descent that our boat was easily hauled upon it to pro- 

 tect it from the ice-pack, and we with great facility carried our 

 baggage up the ascent, and pitched our tent on the top of the 

 cliff. A part of this snow-drift ice had broken oft' and drifted 

 away, showing a very distinct stratified section, similar to that 

 described by Dr. Moss and Major Greely. 



The heiglit of this section above sea-level was only, as far as I 

 can remember, about 10 or 12 feet, for the water is shallow on 

 this coast,' but. if Major Grcely's measurements are correct, the 



L headland north of Coppermine 



water close to the Greenland shore must be pretty deep— at 

 least 100 fathoms — so as to float ice one-sixth of a mile thick. 



My contention is that, if in latitude 69° a drift-bank of snow 

 and ice is kept up from year to year against a cliff 100 feet 

 high, the same thing may take place in latitude 82° to a far 

 larger extent, where the shore is 2coo feet high, steep or pre- 

 cipitous, and the sea deep, so that masses of ice 800 or 900 feet 

 thick may break ofiT and float away. 



That such great sloping snowdrifts do occur on the northern 

 Greenland coast was proved by the difficulty met with by one 

 of the officers of the English Expedition in travelling along 

 them in 1S76 with sledges, being forced to do so in many places 

 by the rough ice outside, which stopped the way along the level 

 floe. 



As regards boulders, they are to be found of various sizes, 

 more or less numerous, almost eveiywhere on Arctic lands high 

 above the present sea-level, and they might have been trans- 

 ported to the " valley " spoken of by Greely in other ways than 

 that supposed by him. They may have been moved downwards 

 very slowly, by the alternate freezings and thaws of the snow 

 and ice round them, by storms and snowdrifts, then down the 

 slope of the valley to its lowest level, or they may have been 

 carried by one of those streams of water similar to that men- 

 tioned as running down over the snow-caps of Grant Land. In 

 fact, all that is wanted for this purpose would be two high. 



Fig. 2. — Supposed headland on the northern part of Greenland, about 

 1503 feet high. Greely says these headlands (or one of them) are nearly 

 3000 feet, having a northern or north-eastern aspect. 



steep bluffs, with a deep narrow ravine between. The bluflis 

 would give the thick masses of snow and ice-drift, and the ravine 

 might form the bed of a stream carrying stones into the valley. 



Neither Dr. Moss nor Major Greely, as far as I have noticed, 

 have accounted for the very distinct stratification seen in the 

 form of ice described. In all parts of Arctic America where I 

 have been, a fall of snow is usually either accompanied or fol- 

 lowed by a gale of wind more or less strong, chiefly from one 



I In the very rough sketch sent, the water is made to appear much too 

 deep ; in fact, there is no pretence at correct proportion of heights and 

 distances. — J. R. 



