38o T. C. CHAM BERLIN 



show that the north Eurasian rivers find their ultimate exit from the 

 Polar Basin through it. The procession of ice-floes in the season 

 favorable to it is very compact, and usually hugs the coast of Green- 

 land as far south as Cape Farewell, about which it wraps closely — 

 unless forced off by winds — and, swinging to the northward, crosses 

 the open mouth of Davis Strait and joins a similar ice-bearing cur- 

 rent coming from the northward along the coast of Baffin Land. 

 This latter carries ice-floes from the inlets that join Baffin Bay at 

 the north and on its western side, as already stated, together with 

 the local ice of the bay, and the icebergs discharged into it from the 

 Greenland glaciers. These usually move in stately processions 

 southwestwardly across the bay. This Baffin Land current and the 

 great East Greenland current join at the south to form the Labrador 

 current, which is felt as a pronounced cooling influence as far south 

 as the coast of Maine, and less markedly beyond. 



It thus appears that the climatic oases under study lie in the 

 fork between two great streams of polar ice-floes and icebergs, while 

 beyond lies the polar ice-field itself. 



It is not necessary to urge that the relative mildness under study 

 is due to warm waters coming from somewhere and reaching these 

 oases somehow. That scarcely requires discussion. It appears that 

 such warm waters could ordinarily reach these areas of cHmatic 

 ameHoration only by passing under the currents that discharge the 

 polar ice-floes. It does not seriously affect the general truth of this 

 that there may be occasional or seasonal conditions under which 

 warm currents may reach the Danish Colony as surface currents 

 along the coast of Greenland as represented on some charts. I 

 know of no claim that even these reach the northern oasis. 



The icy harrier between the northern and the southern oases. — The 

 inhospitable tract which separates the two ameliorated areas appar- 

 ently owes its origin to the projection into and across Melville Bay 

 of streams of cold waters from the Polar Sea through Lancaster and 

 Jones sounds, which join Baffin Bay on the west opposite Melville 

 Bay (see map. Fig. i). As already noted, these sounds reach back 

 through connecting channels to the great ice-fields of the Polar Sea, 

 and their mouths in that direction are persistently choked by ice- 

 floes driven into them from the west and north. It is the persis- 



