Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/400

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the rivers which flow northward. He will observe that the long line of coast which gives lodgment to these Arctic nomads is interrupted in three principal places; and that through these the waters of the Polar Sea mingle with the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,—these breaks being Baffin Bay, Behring Strait, and the broader opening between Greenland and Nova Zembla; and if he traces the currents on the map and follows the Gulf Stream as it flows northward, pouring the warm waters of the Tropic Zone through the broad gateway east of Spitzbergen and forcing out a return current of cold waters to the west of Spitzbergen and through Davis Strait, he will very readily comprehend why in this incessant displacement of the waters of the Pole by the waters of the Equator the great body of the former is never chilled to within several degrees of the freezing-point; and since it is probably as deep, as it is almost as broad, as the Atlantic between Europe and America, he will be prepared to understand that this vast body of water tempers the whole region with a warmth above that which is otherwise natural to it; and that the Almighty hand, in the all-wise dispensation of His power, has thus placed a bar to its congelation; and he will read in this another symbol of Nature's great law of circulation, which, giving water to the parched earth and moisture to the air, moderates as well the temperature of the zones—cooling the Tropic with a current of water from the Frigid, and warming the Frigid with a current from the Tropic. *