ACCESS TO A POLAR SEA. 
543 
F. 
Lecture on the Access to an Open Polar Sea in connection with the Search after Sir 
John Franklin and his Companions, read before the American Geographical and 
Statistical Society at its regular monthly meeting, hy Dr. Kane, December 14, 
1852. 
The north pole, the remote northern extremity of our earth's axis of rotation, 
is regarded, even by geographers, with that mysterious awe which envelops the 
inaccessible and unknown. 
It is shut out from us by an investing zone of ice ; and this barrier is so per- 
manent, that successive explorers have traced its outline, like that of an ordin- 
ary sea-coast. 
The early settlements of Iceland, and their extension to Greenland, as far 
back as 900 A.D., indicated a protruding tongue of ice from the unknown north, 
along the coast of Greenland. I must express a doubt if the early voyages of 
Cabot, and Frobisher, and the Cortereals did more than establish detached points 
of this line. The voyages, however, of the Basque and Biscayan fishermen, 
about 1575, to Cape Breton, made us aware of a similar ice-raft along the coasts 
of Labrador to the north ; and the commercial routes of the old Muscovy com- 
pany, aided by the Dutch and Enghsh whalers, extended this across to Spitz- 
bergen, and thence to the regions north of Archangel, in the Arctic Seas. The 
English navigators of the days of EUzabeth, the " notable worthys of the Northe 
Weste Passage," spoke of a similar ice-raft up Baffin's and Hudson's Bays, and 
the Russo-Siberians gave us vaguely a girding-line of ice, which protruded irreg- 
ularly from the Asiatic and European coasts into the Polar Ocean. Lastly, 
Cook proved that the same barrier continued across Behring's Straits as high 
as 70° 44' north. 
From all this it appeared that the approaches to the pole were barricaded with 
solid ice. We owe to the march of modern discovery, especially stimulated by 
the search after its great pioneer. Sir John Franklin, our ability accurately to de- 
fine nearly all the coasts of a great polar sea, if not to lay down the no less in- 
teresting coast of a grand continuous ice-border that encircles it. 
It is worthy of remark, that this ice, although influenced by winds, currents, 
and deflecting land masses, retains through the corresponding period of each 
successive year a strikingly uniform outline. 
During the winter and spring, from October to May, or eight months of the 
year, it may be found traveling down the coast of Labrador almost to Newfound- 
land, blockading the approaches into Hudson's Bay, and cementing into one great 
mass the numberless outlets which extend from it and Baffin's Bay to the un- 
known coasts of the north. 
Influenced by the earth's rotation, this ice accumulates toward the westward, 
leaving an uncertain passage along the eastern waters of Baffin's Bay ; after 
which it resumes its march along the eastern coast of Greenland, shutting in 
that extensive region appropriated to the interesting legend, or that meteoro- 
logical myth, as it has been designated by Humboldt, of " Lost Greenland." Its 
next course is to the northeast, sometimes enveloping Iceland ; and thence, ex- 
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