AMELIORATIONS OF PRESENT ARCTIC CLIMATES 381 



tent ice blockade thus formed which has rendered futile so many- 

 attempts to force a ship through what would be — but for the ice — 

 a convenient "Northwest passage," though the attempt has been 

 bravely renewed again and again for two centuries. As these polar 

 waters, projected across the Bafl&n tract, curve about in Melville 

 Bay and begin to move south, they veer to the right, because of the 

 earth's rotation, and so follow the west side of Baffin Bay, leaving 

 opportunity for the rise of warm waters on the east side, where not 

 prevented by the intrusion of these polar streams. Like the other 

 polar streams, these that occupy Melville Bay are surficial; the 

 warm currents that give ameHoration to the oasis north of it pass 

 under it. 



The degree of amelioration of the northern oasis. — Among the 

 famihar evidences of amelioration, it may be noted that the tract 

 north of the inhospitable Melville Bay long ago acquired from 

 explorers the title, "The North Open Water." There is Httle 

 doubt that the striking nature and persistence of this open water, 

 so far north, gave rise to the dream of an "open polar sea," which 

 for a long time was confidently entertained by some of the early 

 explorers. The freshest testimony as to the openness of this region 

 in winter, from a scientific source, is given incidentally in the dis- 

 cussion of icebergs by Lauge Koch in a recent number of this Jour- 

 nal.'^ Koch defines his second class of icebergs as those which 

 break off from glaciers "on an open coast where no sea ice is formed 

 in winter, so that there is no hindrance to the formation of bergs. 

 Of this type are the glaciers of Cape Alexander, in 78° North lat."^ 

 Cape Alexander lies near the northern edge of the oasis under dis- 

 cussion. Near by it on the north is Etah, an Eskimo settlement 

 that has become widely known from the part it has played in Arctic 

 exploration. 



Admiral Peary speaks of this region as "one of the most inter- 

 esting of all Arctic localities"; and also as "a little oasis amid a 



wilderness of ice and snow Here, in striking contrast to 



the surrounding country, is animal and vegetable life in plenty, 



' L. G. Koch, "Some New Features in the Physiography and Geology of Green- 

 land," Jour. ofGeoL, Vol. XXXI (1923), No. i, pp. 42-65. 

 ' Ibid., p. S3- 



