Search for Sir John Franklin. 3559 



the extraordinary example of Barentz, who, after abandoning his ship, 

 contrived to reach Lapland in open boats, a feat unexampled in the 

 history of navigation, he would never attempt so fool-hardy an enter- 

 prise. The question as to subsistence during six, or, indeed, any 

 number of years, is practically settled by the certain knowledge we 

 possess, that the highest northern latitudes abound in animals, and the 

 farther our researches have extended, the more does the land, the sea, 

 and the air, appear to teem with life. 



The difficulty of passing Cape Taimure, the most northerly point of 

 Asia, has been strongly urged by Captain Beatson, who projected an 

 expedition through Behring's Straits ; but this difficulty has evidently 

 arisen from the disposition to keep near shore, — of course a principal 

 object in all surveys. When neither surveying nor discovery is the 

 object to be obtained, there can be no objection to steer far north of 

 that obstacle through the open water of the Polynia, and perhaps sail- 

 ing over the pole itself, where constant daylight, probably accompa- 

 nied by a moderate temperature, lasts from the 21st of March to the 

 23rd of September. An expedition to be effectual should be steamed. 

 The movements of ice, and directions of currents, having been calcu- 

 lated from previous observations, two or three powerful steamers should 

 perform the passage in the shortest possible time. The speed, and 

 above all, the tractability of a steamer, would enable her to thread her 

 way through a sea of moving ice-bergs, among which a sailing vessel 

 would be useless ; and having passed the supposed ice-belt, and 

 reached the Polynia, nothing would remain but a six months' search 

 in an agreeable temperature, and in perpetual daylight. This would 

 set the matter at rest ; such a search would satisfy every reasonable 

 mind, whatever its result, for if we cannot succeed, it is ever a satis- 

 faction to know r that every human effort has been made to obtain 

 success.' 



An important element in the success of such an expedition, is the 

 assumed truth of the theory which we believe was first propounded by 

 Mr. Petermann, that an entrance into the polar Polynia may be much 

 more easily effected in winter than in summer. To us this seems suf- 

 ficiently plausible, from the facts which this enlightened geographer 

 has adduced leading, without exception, to this conclusion ; such, for 

 instance, as the known packing of the ice in shore during winter, and 

 its wandering propensities during summer : moreover, it seems to be 

 definitively settled, that many of the arctic currents are revolving cur- 

 rents, flowing southward from the pole during summer, northward to- 

 wards the pole during winter. It is a very remarkable circumstance, 



