Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/405

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then Dr. Kane's. The latter's vessel could not be forced further into the ice than Van Rensselaer Harbor; and, like the Russians, he continued the work with sledges. After many embarrassments and failures in his attempts to surmount the difficulties presented by hummocked ice of the Sound, one of his parties succeeded finally in reaching the predicted open water; and, to quote Dr. Kane's words, "from an elevation of five hundred and eighty feet, this water was still without a limit, moved by a heavy swell, free of ice, and dashing in surf against a rock-bound shore." This shore was the shore of the land which he named Washington Land.

Next, after Dr. Kane's, came my own undertaking; and the last chapter leaves me with my sledge upon the shores of that same sea which Dr. Kane describes, about one hundred miles to the north and west of the point from which one of his parties looked out upon the iceless waters. My own opinion of what I saw and of the condition of this sea, which Wrangel found open on the opposite side from where I stood, and which Kane's party had found open to my right, and which Parry's journey showed to be open above Spitzbergen, may be inferred from what I have already briefly stated, and may be more briefly concluded.

The boundaries of the Polar Basin are sufficiently well defined to enable us to form a rational estimate of the unknown coast-lines of Greenland and Grinnell Land,—the only parts of the extensive circuit remaining unexplored. The trend of the northern coast-line of Greenland is approximately defined by the reasonable analogies of physical geography; and the same process of reasoning forbids the conclusion