Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/205

Rh against the north end of Novaya Zemlya, this southern pack sweeps westward across the northern portion of the Barents Sea, and, bringing up against the east coast of Spitsbergen, is forced past South Cape, and, during some summers like that of 1910, round South Cape, filling up Bell Sound and other western fiords in Spitsbergen with ice. On the other hand, if there is a prevalence of south-east winds in the Barents and Greenland seas, this pack is driven back, and the coasts of Spitsbergen, and even the southern shores of Franz Josef Land, are free of ice. This was the case in Franz Josef Land during the summer of 1897, and even during the previous midwinter, when there was open water to within a quarter of a mile of Cape Flora, on the 24th of December, 1896. On the contrary, the wreck of Leigh Smith's yacht, the Eira, off Cape Flora in 1881, was due to a change of balance between the easterly and westerly system of winds, which caused the polar pack rapidly to close in upon the vessel, and crush it against the land floe. Leigh Smith had foreseen this, for he well knew how the movements of the pack depended on the wind, and, had his instructions been carried out, the Eira would not have been lost.

That part of the current which passes to the north of Franz Josef Land from east to west, and which is largely dependent on the wind,