496 THE WELLMAN POLAR EXPEDITION 



moccasins upon his feet. Within these moccasins were from 

 three to five pairs of thick woolen stockings, these being sur- 

 rounded by loose dry grass to absorb the moisture. He never 

 once suffered from cold feet, and even after he had met with an 

 accident and the circulation in one of his. legs below the knee 

 was almost wholly stopped, he suffered no frostbites. Upon the 

 hands wool is better than skin. We usually wore two pairs of 

 ordinary woolen mittens. The inner pair was dry and warm, 

 while the outer pair was filled with frost, which could be shaken 

 out at intervals. 



February and March were our coldest months, and these were 

 the months of the sledge journey. The lowest temperatures 

 observed by us were a little under 50° Fahrenheit, not as great 

 a degree of cold as is observed every winter in Siberia and in 

 the interior of Alaska ; but it must be remembered that all of 

 our observations were taken at the sea-level, where the relative 

 humidity of the atmosphere is greater than upon the elevated 

 table-lands of Siberia or in the mountains of Alaska. Franz 

 Josef Land we found to be a region of storms, due probably to 

 its proximity to the comparatively warm Barents sea to the 

 south, where the influence of the Gulf Stream is quite marked, 

 and to the fact that it lies directly within the track of what 

 might properly be called the Arctic trade winds. 



This Arctic trade wind, result of the same causes as the 

 trade winds so well known to navigation in the southern hemi- 

 sphere, blows from northeast to southwest, as the trades of the 

 region below the equator blow from southeast to northwest. In 

 both cases the chief causes are the rotary motion of the -globe 

 and the flow of cooled air toward warmer zones along the sur- 

 face of the earth. It is this trade wind which produces the set 

 or current of the Arctic seas from the northern coasts of Siberia 

 to the great outlet of the ocean between Greenland and Spitz- 

 bergen — the same movement of waters that Dr Nansen relied 

 upon to bring the Fram through in safety. In Franz Josef Land 

 we had opportunity to observe not only the effects of this cur- 

 rent, pouring down through all the sounds and straits summer 

 and winter, either under the ice or breaking the ice-sheet and 

 carrying the debris with it, but also the meeting of two oppos- 

 ing forces, namely, the Arctic trades and the Gulf Stream. The 

 mighty ocean river that debouches from the Gulf of Mexico, 

 traverses the coast of North America, and crosses the Atlantic 

 to the shores of Great Britain, divides there into two branches. 



