SS ee 
of reaching the North Pole. 313 
I give these facts without comment or opinion, and will con- 
tent myself with grouping them with other observed phe- 
nomena, 
The water to the S.W. of us was open throughout the winter 
as well as summer. I saw, in December , a large watery 
area off Cape Alexander, and as late as the 29th of the following 
month, Dr. Kane discovered a broad sheet, nearly free from ice 
stretching out from Cape Hatherton, forty-five miles to the SW 
of Rensselaer Bay. This water was frozen over during February, 
but we have the testimony of the Esquimaux that to the south of 
Cape Alexander, at a point opposite Ak-oot-loo-nik, latitude 77° 
30’, there was an open sea as late as the middle of March, and 
in closing his journal entry of the fact, Dr. Kane “ questions very 
much, if such extensive areas as the so-called north water ever 
close completely ;” and this “north water,” as the whalers call 
that portion of Baffin’s Bay lying to the northward of the “mid- 
dle ice,” has a superficial area of less than eighty thousand 
(80,000) square miles. The Esquimaux inhabiting its shores are 
dependent upon its remaining open throughout the winter for 
their existence. A sudden or long continued closure would be 
the signal for their total destruction by starvation, for these im- 
provident creatures have rarely reserved stores sufficient to last 
them during two weeks. sit 
will not hazard any opinion as to the mid-winter condition 
of the sea to the north of Rensselaer Harbor—in whic 
the mist bank was seen; but we know, that one hundred miles 
in a due north line from it, there was an open sea in June, 1854, 
,h 
lopic, and in their able handsI leaveit =, 
I cannot, however, wholly abandon the subject without eiting 
a few observations, and calling attention to the g tendency: 
ation 
a SECOND SERIES, Vor. XXVI, No. 78,—_NOV., 1858. 
41 : : 
