NOTES. 571 
passage hitherto untried. He believed that the Polar centre was 
an open sea in summer and winter, surrounded by a belt of ice, 
and that the great difficulty in reaching the Pole was the penetra- 
tion of this belt. He believed this could be done by discovering - 
the channel traversed by the warm ocean current from the South. 
There were six entrances to the Polar Basin—those eastward, 
between this continent, Greenland, Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, 
were impracticable, because at a certain latitude powerful currents 
were encountered, sweeping down from the North and bringing 
ice with them, against which a ship could not be navigated. 
Through Behring’s Strait, however, a warm current flowed to the 
North, and a clear passage through the ice-belt to the open sea 
must there be discovered. r. Kane had come to the conclusion 
that the ice-belt which had barred his progress in Smith’s Sound, 
must have been the formation of not less than eighty years. All 
expeditions by the eastward had been stopped by impassable ice. 
The members of the Russian expedition, last year, had thought 
that they had reached the Polar Sea, but a comparison of their 
reckonings had shown that they had only entered a bight in the 
ice-belt created by the warmth of the Gulf Stream and already 
entered by navigators. The Gulf Stream, M. Pavy believed, 
sank as it expanded, and met the cold and heavy current from the 
North ; but that it came to the surface again on reaching the Polar 
Sea; and retaining its heat unimpaired, maintained an open polar 
Sea, and a moderate temperature at the Pole. In the latitude of 
80° and southward of that, land birds were rarely known to stay, 
` Consequence of the extreme cold; but they had been seen flying 
northward over the belt of ice; and in higher latitudes had been 
Seen in great numbers. M. Pavy then traced on the chart the 
Course which he intends to take. He said that passing through 
Behring’s Strait he would take a direction to the northeast, reach- 
ing Wrangle’s Land north of the coast of Siberia.. This land he 
believed to be a continent stretching away toward the Pole, and 
reaching into the milder climate which he expected to find. In 
1812 the Russian Government had started an expedition to explore 
Wrangle’s Land. Several attempts were made to cross it by 
sleighing over the ice, but on each occasion they were baffled by 
the ice becoming thinner as they went farther north, until they 
came to open water. The great eastern ocean current, flowing 
Upward through Behring’s Strait, and rounding the shores of this 
