Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/260

 very hard, so that we get about with as little difficulty as if we were walking upon the bare ice. It is pounded as hard as the drives in the Central Park.

All these unusual phenomena are, as has been hitherto observed, doubtless due to the close proximity of the open sea. How extensive this water may be is of course unknown, but its limits cannot be very small to produce such serious atmospherie disturbance. It seems, indeed, as if we were in the very vortex of the north winds. The poet has told us that the north winds

"Are cradled far down in the depths that yawn Beneath the Polar Star;"

and it appears very much as if we had got into those yawning depths, and had come not only to the place where the winds are cradled, but where they are born.

I have been making, all the winter through, a series of experiments which give me some interesting results. They show that evaporation takes place at the very lowest temperatures, and that precipitation often occurs when the air is apparently quite clear. To determine this latter, I have exposed a number of smooth and carefully measured ice-surfaces, and have collected from them the light deposit. These accumulations, after reducing them to the standard of freshly fallen snow, amount thus far to seven eighths of an inch. To determine the evaporation, I have suspended in the open air a number of thin ice-plates, made in a shallow dish, and some strips of wet flannel. The flannel becomes perfectly dry in a few days, and the ice-plates disappear slowly and steadily. I generally weigh them every second day, and it is curious to watch my little circular disks silently melting away