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ACCESS TO A 
The migrations of animal life. At the utmost limits of northern travel at- 
tained by man, hordes of animals of various kinds have been observed to be 
traveling still further. 
The Arctic zone, though not rich in species, is teeming with individual life, 
and is the home of some of the most numerous families knovpn to the naturalist. 
Among birds, the swimmers, drawing their subsistence from open water, are 
pr-edominant ; the great families of ducks. Auks, and procellarine birds (AnaiincB, 
Alcinoi, and Procdlanna), throng the seas and passages of the far north, and 
even incubate in regions of unknown northernness. The eider duck has been 
traced to breeding grounds as high as 78° in Baffin's Bay, and in conjunction 
with the brent goose, seen by us in Wellington Channel, and the loon and little 
auk, pass in great flights to the northern waters beyond. The mammals of the 
sea — the huge cetacea, in the three great families, BelinidcB, Ddphinidce, and 
Phocidos, represented by the whale^, the narwhal and the seal, as well as that 
strange marine pachyderm, the tusky walrus, all pass in schools toward the 
northern waters. I have seen the white whale (Delphinopterus beluga) passing 
up Wellington Channel to the north for nearly four successive days, and that 
too while all around us was a sea of broken ice. 
So with the quadrupeds of this region. The equatorial range of the polar 
bear (i7. maritimus) is misconceived by our geographical zoologists. It is fur- 
ther to the north than we have yet reached ; and this powerful beast informs 
us of the character of the accompanying life, upon which he preys. 
The ruminating animals, whose food must be a vegetation, obey the same im- 
pulse or instinct of far northern travel. The reindeer {Cervus tarandus), al- 
though proved by my friend. Lieutenant M'Clintock, to winter sometimes in the 
Parry group, outside of the zone of woods, comes down from the north in herds 
as startling as those described by the Siberian travelers, a " moving forest of 
antlers." 
The whalers of North Baffin's Bay, as high as 75"^, shoot them in numbers, 
and the Esquimaux of Whale Sound,, 77°, are clothed with their furs. Five 
thousand skins are sent to Denmark from Egedesminde and Holsteinberg alone. 
Before passing from this branch of my subject, I must mention, also, that the 
POLAR DRIFT-ICE comcs llrst from the north. The breaking up, the thaw of the 
ice-plain, does not commence in our so-called warmer south, but in regions to 
the north of those yet attained. Wrangell speaks of this on the Asiatic Seas, 
Pai-ry above Spitzbergen ; and my friend, Captain Penny, shrewd, bold, and ad- 
venturous, confirms it in his experience of Wellington Sound. 
In addition to all this, we have the observations op actual travel ; although 
tills, confirmatory as it is, must, like the theoretical views, be received with cau- 
tion. Barentz saw an opening water beyond the northernmost point of Europe ; 
Anjou the same beyond the Siberian Bear Islands ; and Wrangell, in a sledge 
journey from the mouth of the Kolyma, speaks of a "vast illimitable ocean," 
illimitable to mortal vision. 
To penetrate this icy annulus, to make the "northwest passage" the north- 
east passage to reach the pole, have been favored dreams since the early days 
of ocean navigation. Yet up to this moment complete failure has attended 
every attempt. One voyager, William Scoresby, known to the scientific world 
for the range and exactness of his observation, passed beyond the latitude of 
81° 30', But after discarding the apocryphal voyages of the early Dutch, whose 
