13. M’Clintock, who returned with the relics of the Franklin expedition, succeeded in perfecting a mode of discovery independent of the ship—that by means of sledging—admirably adapted for future Arctic expeditions. But the North-West passage for which six generations had toiled, though discovered, was shown to be utterly worthless for all material purposes—a dreary web of coast lines.
CHAPTER IV.
THE INNER POLAR SEA.
1. The Arctic Sea, in some of its features, forcibly impresses us with its resemblance to the glaciers of the Alps. In both cases, the ice presses from a region, colder and less favoured by climate, towards one warmer and more favoured. In the Alpine glaciers, the movement is from above downwards; in the Frozen Ocean, the movement is from a higher to a lower geographical latitude. In both cases, the tongues and spurs of the masses of ice formed by the configuration of the land or by currents of the sea, terminate, whenever they reach an isothermal curve of altitude or latitude, the mean temperature of which suffices to dissolve them or prevent their formation. Moraines also have their equivalent in the Arctic Sea; for it is an established fact that icebergs and ice-fields laden with the débris and rubbish of Arctic lands, deposit these burdens round the outer edge of the Frozen Ocean, and to this process, partially at least, the origin of the Newfoundland Banks is ascribed. If this comparison between the phenomena of high latitudes and great altitudes be just, then we should have as much reason to believe in the existence of the so-called open Polar Sea, as we should have to maintain, that in our glacier ranges ice ceases to be formed above a certain altitude.
2. The belief of past times[11] in such a sea shows how unsatisfactory is the simple to man’s mind, and how old is his tendency to clothe the remote and the uncommon with a garment of the marvellous. What was the open Polar Sea but the “Harz Sea” of the North, or the legendary zone of the ever-sunny Eden of the Hyperboreans, far beyond the land of the Anthropophagi over which was spread an atmosphere veiled in snow, and through which no light could penetrate! Who has ever seen this open Polar Sea? Do the accounts of navigators confirm its existence? Nay—their accounts are rather a series of counter-statements: Hudson, Baffin, Phipps, Tschitschagoff, Buchan, Franklin, Parry, Collinson, Scoresby, M’Clintock, Koldewey, Torell, Nordenskjöld, have all expressed their disbelief in its existence. If some have pretended that they have seen it, how strange it is that they never sailed on it! It has recently been attempted to make the great champion of the Polar question, Dr. Petermann, a supporter of this conception; but in the “Mittheilungen” of this highly meritorious geographer, there are many passages which most emphatically protest against it. His views extend only to an inner Polar Sea navigable under certain circumstances, and every one acquainted with those regions may adopt his point of view, though he refuses to admit the existence of the open Polar Sea.
3. In those centuries when the Natural Sciences were little cultivated, when the theories of the Trade Winds, of Equatorial and Polar sea-currents, were still unknown, and when as yet the processes in the Frozen Ocean had not been submitted to scientific investigation, we cannot be surprised at the preconceptions which were formed concerning its phenomena. In those times all beyond Norway was a chaos of ice-filled darkness; the necessity of a scientific investigation of those wastes was not felt; and down to the time of Sir John Ross, Polar navigators on their return home brought with them no kind of scientific knowledge of Nature in the Arctic regions. To reach India was the main if not the only end they had in view. The instructions which Willoughby, the first Polar navigator, received, give us an insight into the delusions of earlier times. These, for example, warned adventurers against men-eaters who swam naked in the sea, and in the rivers. It was the period of fables long since forgotten. Maldonado, de Fuca, Bernarda, Yelmer, Andrejew, Martinière, and the whale-fishers, brought home tales of passages to India discovered, of new continents, of the ascertained connexion of Novaya Zemlya with the northernmost point of Siberia (Yelmerland) or even with Greenland. Two centuries ago the failure of all attempts at a North-East passage was attributed to Russia’s commercial policy, inasmuch as it had been proved to the satisfaction of all, that the heat was greater in the north, that the seas there ceased to freeze, and that the country was covered with a luxuriant green!
4. There was, indeed, a certain logical consequence in the belief of an inner Polar Sea, as long as it was unknown that ice is formed on the open sea as well as on the coasts. There was also one argument, which made the existence of such a sea not altogether improbable. It might be assumed, that the formation of ice renewed every year in the Arctic regions, would necessarily produce eternal bulwarks of congelation and destroy all organic life, unless sea-currents modified these extremes of climate. The ice which is formed round the Pole—it was argued—is not of an unlimited but of a definite quantity. Since, then, this quantity of ice must be brought with tolerable uniformity from the innermost Polar region to lower latitudes by the action of sea-currents, there are at least one or two months of the summer when the ice is at a minimum, when no new formation takes place, and when a sea relatively ice-free may appear in the place of the sea which had been covered with ice. This sea would be the more open and navigable, just in proportion as less land might be found at the Pole. But in this assumption it is implied, that the ice moves with perfect regularity and in radial lines from a given point without any disturbance from winds, or counter-currents, or land, consequently with a quiet simplicity of hydrography, for which Nature, neither there nor elsewhere, shows any predilection. Dove makes the mean annual temperature of the North Pole, 2·5° F.; but it is probably still less. What, then, is the probability of an open Polar Sea, if this annual mean only be considered? All the accounts too of animal life increasing in exuberance as we advance northwards—from which a more favourable climate within the innermost Polar region and an open Polar Sea have been inferred—must be received with caution, for the appearance of numerous flocks of birds proves only that they remain where open water prevails for a time and that they change their abode with its change of place.
5. In more recent times great influence has been attributed to the Gulf Stream as a power influencing all the seas, known and unknown, of the whole Arctic region. Dr. Petermann, however, in a lately published work, endeavours to show that its effects are discernible only on the northern seas of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. Its action on the coasts of Spitzbergen has been indisputably established by the Swedes, who discovered there certain tropical plants (Entada gigalobium); but the penetration of the warmer waters of this current to the northern coasts of Novaya Zemlya has not been so positively ascertained. In the Austrian Expedition of 1873-4, we discovered no proofs of its existence. We found neither the constant current, nor the water of a higher temperature, which characterizes that renowned stream.
6. For a long time the “ice-holes,” seen by Wrangel and Morton, were regarded as indications of an ice-free Polar Sea. With regard to those seen by Morton in 81° 22′, Richardson very justly remarks: “The open water of the Kennedy Channel is not of greater extent in the month of June than the open spaces which have occasionally been seen in summer on the north of Spitzbergen by whale-fishers.” Wrangel, when he describes the “Polynjii,” which he saw on the east of the New Siberian Islands, accounts for them by the action of a local coast-wind; and yet Wrangel would have been the first to favour the notion of an inner Polar Sea, for he still thought, in opposition to Scoresby, that ice could not be formed on the open sea, because of the absence of land as a support for the ice in its formation.