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found not to exist, opinions went to the other extreme, and the idea became current that the Polar sea was shallow, with many lands and islands, and that the Pole itself was covered with a thick, immovable ice mantle.

But all such ideas must now be abandoned in the light of the more recent explorations, and we are able to form a more clear and sober conception of the far North.

The expedition of the "Fram" has proved that the physical conditions in the vicinity of the Pole are very much the same as we find them in the better known regions of the Arctic sea. There was neither an open sea nor an immovable ice mantle, but the whole area is an extended deep basin covered by floating ice, constantly broken up and being carried across from the Siberian side towards the Greenland side. The average depth of this basin we found to be towards 2,000 fathoms along the whole route of the "Fram," and it is evidently a continuation of the deep North Atlantic trough, stretching northwards into the unknown between Spitzbergen and Greenland. The depth of this sea is filled with comparatively warm water, warmer than that in the