Spencer — Improbability of Land at the North Pole. 339 



tides been referred to. This last has been ingeniously discussed 

 by Dr. R. A. Harris.* According to him, the currents set east- 

 ward and westward from Bering Straits, which he thinks is 

 caused by land to the north. The tides coming from the east 

 of Greenland (rising two feet) recur near Bennett Island, north 

 of the New Siberian, with the same range. The drift of the 

 Jeannette was accelerated on approaching this locality as if a 

 broad strait were situated here. On the coast of Alaska, the 

 tide is reduced to a few inches, caused, Dr. Harris thinks, by 

 the interference of a large land area. Now Bennett Island is 

 more than 100 miles within the border of the continental shelf. 

 Nansen crossed its edge 200 miles northwest of this point, so 

 there is room for an island of considerable size without the 

 shelf protruding beyond its general outline. Although the 

 outline of the shelf, north of Bering Straits, seems to have been 

 approximated, there may be in front of it a secondary platform, 

 on which remnants of a higher one, surmounted by land, occur 

 with characteristics resembling rather the New Siberian archi- 

 pelago than Spitzbergen, although this last mass partly rises 

 above a lower platform, as would be the case with part of the 

 hypothetical islands north of Bering Straits. It is only on an 

 extension of the continental shelf that the occurrence of land 

 could be expected, and any great extension of it would disturb 

 the symmetry of its outline, a point which should not be over- 

 looked. If the phenomena described by Dr. Harris really 

 demand a great land mass, physiographically there is no rea- 

 son why there should not be even a nearly continuous chain of 

 islands from near Bennett >Tsland extending towards Prince Pat- 

 rick's Land, though it could not occur in front of Beaumont Sea. 

 But 1 find no ground here for extending land nearer than ten 

 degrees of the Pole. Islands would satisfy the tidal currents off 

 Alaska according to Dr. Harris, though it might not explain the 

 tide rising two feet to Bennett Island. My conclusions agree 

 with those of Sir Clement Markham, quoted by Dr. Harris : — who 

 a does not believe in any land near the Pole, but believes there 

 is land probably in the form of large islands between Prince 

 Patrick's Land and the New Siberian Islands." I should limit 

 their occurrence to a line directly connecting these islands, with 

 no important additions, to the American archipelago, a theory 

 suggested by the enclosed fjords. An island may exist near 

 Simpson cove as suggested by Dr. Harris, perhaps constituting 

 the end of a chain from Bennett Island skirting the edge of the 

 continental shelf. 



If I were permitted to plan out an expedition for the pur- 

 pose of adding to our knowledge of Arctic physiography, it 

 would be somewhat on the following lines, so far as physical 

 *Nat. Geog. Mag., vol. xv, pp. 255-261, 1904. 



