ACCESS TO A POLAR SEA. 
543 
F. 
Lecture on the Access to an O'Pen Polar Sea in connection with the Search after Sir 
John Franklin and his Companiotis, read before the American Geographical and 
SlalisLical Society at its regular monthly meetings by Dr. Kane, December 14, 
1853. 
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 sca-coast. 
The early settlements of Iceland, and their extension to Greenland, as far 
back as 900 A. I)., 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 Frol>isher, and the Cortereals did more than establish detached points 
of tliis line. The voyages, however, of the Basque and Biscayan hshermen, 
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 English 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 Elizabeth, the “ notable worthys of the Korthe 
Weste Passage,” spoke of a similar ice-raft up Baffin’s and Hudsoif s Bays, and 
the Russo-Siberians gave us vaguely a girdiug-Iiue 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^ AX' 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 iniluenced by winds, currents, 
and deflecting land masses, retains llirougli the corresponding period of each 
successive j^car a strikingly uniform outline. 
During the winter and spring, from October to May, or eight months of the 
year, it may he 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 rotaticjii, this ice accumulates toward the westward, 
leaving an uncertain passage along the eastern waters of Baffin’s Bay ; after 
which it resuuios 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- 
