754 T. C. CHAMBERLIN 
swept the surface of the sea, the ice-fields should rotate in the 
opposite direction with a centrifugal tendency which should carry 
the ice outwards and press it against the adjacent continents and 
give a voluminous discharge down the north Atlantic. An 
attempt to drift foward the pole in such a system would be an 
absurdity, and Nansen’s feat would be inexplicable. 
Observed ice-drift—Neither of these are the phenomena 
observed. On the contrary, as now abundantly demonstrated, 
particularly by the remarkable drifts of the Jeannette and the 
Fram, the average movement near the coast of northern Asia 
and Europe is westward and slightly northward. This course 
is held until Greenland imposes itself as a barrier. The outer 
margin of the ice flow is then forced southward, but immediately 
it reaches Cape Farewell it curves closely about the point (at least 
during the summer months) and flows northward and westward 
to the vicinity of the arctic circle. It here encounters a new 
barrier in the islands of the American Arctic Archipelago and 
again moves southward. 
On the north coast of Greenland, so far as known,. the ice 
presses hard upon the land, as though its normal course were 
southward. It flows persistently into the channel between Green- 
land and Grinnell Land, and gives rise to that strenuous ice-pack 
which has again and again been assailed by arctic navigators 
with such great daring and such little success. The recent 
adverse experiences of the Windward and the Fram are but a 
renewed expression of the persistence of this south-southwestward 
drift of the ice. currents: 
On the north side of the Arctic Archipelago, west of Green- 
land, the ice crowds hard against the shore, and has thus far pre- 
vented the full penetration of Jones Sound or any of the other 
straits between the northern range of islands. The blocking of 
Jones Sound appears to be the result of an eastward as well as 
southerly crowding of the ice. 
Farther to the west Banks Strait and McClintock Chan- 
nel together form a continuous and rather broad water way, 
beginning in longitude 130° west and stretching southeasterly to 
