Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/335

Rh rent found between the northeastern point of extreme Asia and the very jagged promontories of the northwestern coast of North America. This was the route chosen by the Frenchman Gustave Lambert for that gigantic expedition, the preparations for which were followed with great interest by the learned world; but his unexpected death caused the abandonment of the enterprise. A second route, by Baffin's Bay, opens between the western shores of Greenland and the vast archipelago that commences at Hudson's Bay. This double entrance to the arctic seas has been for a long time the favorite course for English and American sailors. Europe, at the present time, seems to prefer two routes nearer its own territory, passing, the one, along the eastern coast of Greenland, the other between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla.

These last-mentioned routes were formerly much frequented by the Dutch navigators like BarentzBarents [sic], but they have since been abandoned. Dr. Petermann, the director of the Geographische Mittheilungen, has succeeded in bringing once more into popular favor these desirable paths to the Polar Sea. Extensive and long-continued study gave to this geographer the conviction that the great warm current that issues from the Gulf of Mexico, between Florida and the island of Cuba, and takes a northern course, passing along the coast of Europe, must have a northern extension more considerable than had been heretofore supposed. In the month of July, 1865, Dr. Petermann for the first time developed this theory before the German Geographical Society in session at Hamburg. Supporting his argument by numberless experiments in soundings and measurements of temperature, he demonstrated the probable presence of the Gulf Stream in very high latitudes, and concluded that, after leaving Spitzbergen, the barrier of ice once overcome, a navigable ocean would be found. The routes that we have described would then be openings conducting to a kind of arctic Mediterranean, to which navigators could sail in a direct course, instead of wasting their lives in perilous and useless searches in the windings of the great circumpolar labyrinth. These bold deductions did not fail to meet with energetic opposition, especially in America and England; but five years later, in 1870, Dr. Petermann, returning to the charge with the data gained from a still more complete research, surmounted all controversy. He established the fact that the warm current advances as far as Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, beyond the eightieth degree of latitude, and that, aside from some lateral branches, it sends its principal mass toward the northeast. At this latitude the temperature of the current descends to three degrees below zero, Centigrade. Experiments made by Dr. Bessels, of Heidelberg, in the course of one of the latest explorations, prove that the influence of the warm current is still perceptible beyond Bear Island. The real extent of the Gulf Stream is, however, a problem that has never been satisfactorily solved.