LS THERE AN OPEN POLAR SEA ? 263 
drifting north of Nova Zembla for months, fast in the ice, over an unknown sea, 
they came at last (about latitude 79°) on a new land, which was traced by Payer 
above 82°, and the extreme vision of the Austrians was bounded on the north not 
by water, but by land, whose nothern limit and dimensions no one knows. Again, 
it is well known that Arctic explorers of experience find in the reports of the 
English expedition of 1875—76 reason for belief in the existence of land beyond 
the eighty-fourth parallel. The tremendous character of ice of the so-called 
paleocrystic sea, and the great hummocks which baffled Markham’s sledge party, 
together with shailowness of the sea at the extreme point reached by Markham, are 
regarded as very strong proofs of the existence of land very much further north 
than any yet known. It is to this land to which Howgate’s colony scheme looks in 
jarge measure for success, since it may offer a coast line trending north and reach- 
ing to or near the Pole. No one also yet knows the extreme northerly extent of 
Greenland and adjacent lands. The extreme vision of the English saw only the west 
Greenland coast losing itself in the mystery of the Arctic snows and ice north of 83°. 
And finally DeLong’s expedition itself is proof of land in the extreme north in yet 
another quarter than those named. ‘That Wrangell Land exists north of Siberia 
is known. How great it may be and how far north, no one knows. Dr. Hayes 
himself admits it may reach to the Pole. 
It then remains true that whithersoever men have gone in the far north they 
have found not sea only, but land also. It seems a fair deduction from the past 
history of exploration that wherever they may hereafter go, there they will still 
find land. If, now, this is so, until we know accurately the amount and disposi- 
tion of these Arctic lands all conjectures based on their presence or absence must 
be idle. Suppose these lands to be grouped anywhere about the course of the 
Jeannette, will we not have then just the conditions of coasts approaching one 
another sufficiently near to allow the ice to form and accumulate and pile itself 
up in the enormous masses of Nares’ palzocrystic sea or of those whose tumult 
seemed pandemonium let loose around the Tegethoff, while her navigators were 
yet, as they supposed, in the midst of a boundless sea? 
In the introductory chapters of his book, Payer, reviewing the history of Arc- 
. tic explorations through three centuries, remarks on the doctrine of the open po- 
lar sea and demonstrates, it seems to me, the groundlessness of that opinion by 
showing how, as men have approached, as they supposed, the northern boundary 
of that ice belt which they believed to girdle the open sea, that boundary has 
ever receded and the ice has ever grown heavier, the climate more severe, the 
nearer they have drawn to the Pole. If, then, there is virtue in the consistency of 
reasoning we must assume that beyond where man has reached, the same law 
_ holds true—that the further north we go, the thicker the ice becomes and the se- 
verer the climate. Any other conclusion is contrary to the known facts, and the 
_ belief in the open polar sea would seem to be born solely of splendid enthusiasms, 
high courage and desire to pierce the fascinating mystery of the far north. 
D. W.B. 
