1893.] Geography and Travels. 263- 
known depthsin the Mediterranean. Between Candia and Alexandria 
3,310 metres was found twenty miles south-east of Grandes Bay, and 
this depth gradually diminished to the east, to 2,120 metres near Alex- 
andria. : 
The Polar Regions.—Dr. Naxsex’s Voyace.—The opening 
article of the Geographical Journal for this month is a reprint of the 
address read before the Royal Geographical Society on November 14, 
1892, by Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, the adventurous traverser of Greenland, 
and the daring aspirant to the honor of reaching the North Pole by 
drifting with the currents. 
Of the existence of these currents ample proofs were adduced i in the 
course of Dr. Nansen’s speech, but of their sufficiency, their regular- 
ity, as well as of the character of the region to be traversed, whether 
largely open ocean, or whether cut up into intricate channels by a 
maze of islands, the bold argonaut could not say anything convincing. 
As proofs of the general course of the currents, Dr. Nansen stated 
that ships turned back by floe ice drifting southward were carried 
between Greenland and Spitzbergen, through which passage he estima- 
ted that in every twenty-four hours a startlingly enormous quantity of 
water passed southward; also that other southward currents ran 
through Smith, Jones and Lancaster Sounds; and that undoubted 
relics of the unfortunate Jeannette were picked from a floe at Juliane- 
haab three years after she sank near the New Siberian Islands. He 
believes the regions around the pole to act like an enormous pump, suck- 
ing in the water from Bering’s Strait and East Siberia, and returning it 
by the Greenland Seas. Among other facts, he mentioned that several 
years ago, a throwing-stick of a peculiar form used only by the natives 
of Port Clarence, Norton Sound, Alaska, was found near Goathaab on 
the west coast of Greenland, also that the driftwood which reaches every 
year the shores of Greenland and Spitzbergen, is the timber of Ameri- 
can and Siberian species. At the NewSiberian Islands the ice is thin, 
while on the east coast of Greenland it is thick, and the speaker main- 
tained that it grew in bulk as it drifted across the pole. 
Specimens of mud, collected by Nansen from floes between Iceland 
and Greenland, had been examined by Dr. Tornebohm, of Stockholm, 
who had come to the conclusion that it consisted of mud from the great 
Siberian rivers. Dr. Cleve, of Upsala, had also examined the dust from 
the snow of these floes, and had identified sixteen species of diatoms, 
all of which were known to be found at Cape Wankarena, near Behring 
Strait, and twelve of which were only known from there. The pumice 
