THE OPEN SEA IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN! 147 
as Plate IX. shows, led to the discovery that the tropical regions 
of the ocean are to the right whale as a sea of fire, through which 
he can not pass, and into which he never enters. The fact was 
also brought out that the same kind of whale that is found off 
the shores of Greenland, in Baffin's Bay, &c., is found also in the 
North Pacific, and about Behring's Strait, and that the right whale 
of the northern hemisphere is a different animal from that of the 
southern. 
280. Thus the fact was established that the harpooned whales 
did not pass around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, for 
they w^ere of the class that could not cross the equator. In this 
way we were furnished with circumstantial evidence affording 
the most irrefragable proof that there is, at times at least, open 
water communication through the Arctic Sea from one side of the 
continent to the other, for it is known that the whales can not 
travel under the ice for such a great distance as is that from one i 
side of this continent to the other. 
But this did not prove the existence of an open sea there ; it 
only established the existence — the occasional existence, if you 
please — of a channel through which whales had passed. There- 
fore we felt bound to introduce other evidence before we could 
expect the reader to admit our proof, and to believe with us in the 
existence of an open sea in the Arctic Ocean. 
281. There is an under current setting from the Atlantic through 
Davis's Strait into the Arctic Ocean, and there is a surface cur- 
rent setting out. Observations have pointed out the existence of 
this under current there, for navigators tell of immense icebergs 
which they have seen drifting rapidly to the north, and against a 
strong surface current. These icebergs were high above the wa- 
.ter, and their depth below was seven times greater than their 
height above. No doubt they were drifted by a powerful under 
current. 
282. Now this under current comes from the south, where it is 
warm, and the temperature of its waters is perhaps not below 
32° ; at any rate, they are comparatively warm. There must be 
a place somewhere in the Arctic seas where this under current 
ceases to flow north, and begins to flow south as a surface cur- 
rent ; for the surface current, though its waters are mixed with 
the fresh waters of the rivers and of precipitation in the polar 
