Tlie Open Polar Sea. 



regions, and returned south-west from the pole and remain still a warm 

 wind. That warm wind was generated at the north pole or within ten 

 degrees of it. Parry and Boss and other navigators have mentioned 

 the same phenomenon, but not so emphatically, or with as much 

 detail as Dr. Hayes, and therefore he has been cited. 



4. All navigators record their having experienced at times furious 

 gales during the long Arctic winter. This, of course, means the neigh- 

 borhood of a portion of the earth's surface warmed by some influences 

 to a much greater degree than the sub-polar regions. There is no 

 wind without heat, and if the whole region inclosed in the Arctic 

 circle in midwinter were subject to the same intensity of cold as the 

 zone of hummock and floe ice to the south of it, then the calms of the 

 equator would prevail within that circle for nine months of the year. 



5. The testimony of Mr. Morton, of Dr. Kane's expedition, and of 

 Dr. Hayes, to the fact that leaving the zone of floe ice behind and to 

 the south of them, that they beheld a sea without a floe, or a berg, 

 breaking upon a rock-bound coast, fringed with shore ice. This testi- 

 mony is to a degree corroborative if not actual proof of the fact. It 

 has reference, doubtless, to Kennedy channel, which skirts land on the 

 east aud on the west, still further to the north than Morton and Hayes 

 were able to penetrate. But this Kennedy channel, there is every 

 reason to believe, is really an arm of the open polar sea, and partakes 

 of the warmth that keeps both sea and channel free from ice. 



Notwithstanding these facts there may be some who will say that 

 such a body of open water at that part of the earth's surface is con- 

 trary to natural law and to the natural condition of things in our daily 

 experience. The common law is, the nearer the pole the greater the 

 cold. This would indeed be true if there were but one law in opera- 

 tion in the domain of nature. But as her laws are manifold, and 

 many natural forces are at work simultaneously on land and sea and 

 in the atmosphere, we may still have the open water at the pole as a 



There is an ocean current generated by the unequal heating of the 

 waters, or by winds, or by the motion of the earth on its axis, or by all 

 combined, having its beginning at the equator and flowing -for a 

 while in a westerly direction. Before long it turns north, sweeps 

 around the north-east coast of South America into the Caribbean 

 sea and gulf, of Mexico, whence it issues through the strait south of 

 Florida, as the warm and rapid ocean-river, well known as the gulf- 

 stream. It is now, and for over a thousand miles, a magnificent u 

 river in mid-ocean, bounded on the west by the sharp slope to the 

 bed of the Atlantic. It is well known that the shore of the ocean 



