It is chiefly to the expeditions of Drs. Kane and Hayes that we owe the important knowledge we have respecting the northerly portions of the straits which lie to the west of Greenland. Each of these explorers succeeded in reaching the shores of an open sea lying to the north-east of Kennedy Channel, the extreme northerly limit of those straits. Hayes, who had accompanied Kane in the voyage of 1854-5, succeeded in reaching a somewhat higher latitude in sledges drawn by Esquimaux dogs. But both expeditions agree in showing that the shores of Greenland trend off suddenly towards the east at a point within some nine degrees of the North Pole. On the other hand, the prolongation of the opposite shore of Kennedy Channel was found to extend northwards as far as the eye could reach. Within the angle thus formed there was an open sea ‘rolling,’ says Captain Maury, ‘with the swell of a boundless ocean.’
But a circumstance was noticed respecting this sea which was very significant. The tides ebbed and flowed in it. Only one fact we know of—a fact to be presently discussed—throws so much light on the question we are considering as this circumstance does. Let us consider a little whence these tidal waves can have come.
The narrow straits between Greenland on the one side, and Ellesmere Land and Grinnell Land on the other, are completely ice-bound. We cannot suppose that the tidal wave could have found its way beneath such a barrier as this. ‘I apprehend,’ says Captain Maury, ‘that the tidal wave from the Atlantic can no more pass under this icy barrier, to be propagated in the seas beyond, than the vibrations of a musical string can pass with its notes a fret on which the musician has placed his finger.’
Are we to suppose, then, that the tidal waves were formed in the very sea in which they were seen by Kane and Hayes? This is Captain Maury’s opinion:—‘These tides,’ says he, ‘must have been born in that cold sea, having their cradle about the North Pole.’
But if we carefully consider the theory of the tides, this opinion seems inadmissible. Every consideration on which that theory is founded is opposed to the assumption that the moon could by any possibility raise tides in an arctic basin of limited extent. It would be out of place to examine at length the principle on which the formation of tides depends. It will be sufficient for our purposes to remark that it is not to the mere strength of the moon’s ‘pull’ upon the waters of any ocean that the tidal wave owes its origin, but to the difference of the forces by which the various parts of that ocean are attracted. The whole of an ocean cannot be raised at once by the moon; but if one part is attracted more than another, a wave is formed. That this may happen, the ocean must be one of wide extent. In the vast seas which surround the Southern Pole there is room for an immensely powerful ‘drag,’ so to speak; for always there will be one part of these seas much nearer to the moon than the rest, and so there will be an appreciable difference of pull upon that part.
The reader will now see why I have been so careful to ascertain the limits of the supposed north-polar ocean, in which, according to Captain Maury, tidal waves are generated. To accord with his views, this ocean must be surrounded on all sides by impassable barriers either of land or ice. These barriers, then, must lie to the northward of the regions yet explored, for there is open sea communicating with the Pacific all round the north of Asia and America. It only requires a moment’s inspection of a terrestrial globe to see how small a space is thus left for Captain Maury’s land-locked ocean. I have purposely left out of consideration, as yet, the advances made by arctic voyagers in the direction of the sea which lies between Greenland and Spitzbergen. We shall presently see that on this side the imaginary land-locked ocean must be more limited than towards the shores of Asia or America. As it is, however, it remains clear, that if there were any ocean communicating with the spot reached by Dr. Kane, but separated from all communication—by open water—either with the Atlantic or with the Pacific, that ocean would be so limited in extent that the moon’s attraction could exert no more effective influence upon its waters than upon the waters of the Mediterranean—where, as we know, no tides are generated. This, then, would be a tideless ocean, and we must look elsewhere for an explanation of the tidal waves seen by Dr. Kane.
We thus seem to have primâ facie evidence that the sea reached by Kane communicates either with the Pacific or with the Atlantic, or—which is the most probable view—with both those oceans. When we consider the voyages which have been made towards the North Pole along the northerly prolongation of the Atlantic Ocean, we find very strong evidence in favour of the view that there is open-water communication in this direction, not only with the spot reached by Kane, but with a region very much nearer to the North Pole.
So far back as 1607, Hudson had penetrated within eight and a half degrees (or about 600 miles) of the North Pole on this route. When we consider the clumsy build and the poor sailing qualities of the ships of Hudson’s day, we cannot but feel that so successful a journey marks this route as one of the most promising ever tried. Hudson was not turned back by impassable barriers of land or ice, but by the serious dangers to which the floating masses of ice and the gradually thickening ice-fields exposed his weak and ill-manned vessel. Since his time, others have sailed upon the same track, and hitherto with no better success. It was reserved to the Swedish expedition of 1868 to gain the highest latitudes ever reached in a ship in this direction. The steamship ‘Sofia,’ in which this successful voyage was made, was strongly built of Swedish iron, and originally intended for winter voyages in the Baltic. Owing to a number of delays, it was not until September 16 that the ‘Sofia’ reached the most northerly part of her journey. This was a point some fifteen miles nearer the North Pole than Hudson had reached. To the north there still lay broken ice, but packed so thickly that not even a boat could pass through it. So late in the season, it would have been unsafe to wait for a change of weather and a consequent breaking-up of the ice. Already the temperature had sunk sixteen degrees below the freezing-point; and the enterprising voyagers had no choice but to return. They made, indeed, another push for the north a fortnight later, but only to meet with a fresh repulse. An ice-block with which they came into collision opened a large leak in the vessel’s side; and when after great exertions they reached the land, the water already stood two feet over the cabin floor. In the course of these attempts, the depths of the Atlantic were sounded, and two interesting facts were revealed. The first was that the island of Spitzbergen is connected with Scandinavia by a submarine bank; the second was the circumstance that to the north and west of Spitzbergen the Atlantic is more than two miles deep!
We come now to the most conclusive evidence yet afforded of the extension of the Atlantic Ocean towards the immediate neighbourhood of the North Pole. Singularly enough, this evidence is associated not with a sea-voyage, nor with a voyage across ice to the borders of some northern sea, but with a journey during which the voyagers were throughout surrounded as far as the eye could reach by apparently fixed ice-fields.
In 1827 Sir Edward Parry was commissioned by the English Government to attempt to reach the North Pole. A large reward was promised in case he succeeded, or even if he could get within five degrees of the North Pole. The plan which he adopted seemed promising. Starting from a port in Spitzbergen, he proposed to travel as far northward as possible in sea-boats, and then, landing upon the ice, to prosecute his voyage by means of sledges. Few narratives of arctic travel are more interesting than that which Parry has left of this famous ‘boat-and-sledge’ expedition. The voyagers were terribly harassed by the difficulties of the way; and after a time, that most trying of all arctic experiences, the bitterly cold wind which comes from out the dreadful north, was added to their trials. Yet still they plodded steadily onwards, tracking their way over hundreds of miles of ice with the confident expectation of at least attaining to the eighty-fifth parallel, if not to the Pole itself.