Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/407

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eastward being now supplanted by the great glacier of Humboldt; that lying to the westward now bearing the name of Kennedy Channel.

With the warm flood of the Gulf Stream pouring northward, and keeping the waters of the Polar Sea at a temperature above the freezing point, while the winds, blowing as constantly under the Arctic as under the Tropic sky, and the ceaseless currents of the sea and the tide-flow of the surface, keep the waters ever in movement, it is not possible, as I have before observed, that even any considerable portion of this extensive sea can be frozen over. At no point within the Arctic Circle has there been found an ice-belt extending, either in winter or in summer, more than from fifty to a hundred miles from land. And even in the narrow channels separating the islands of the Parry Archipelago, in Baffin Bay, in the North Water, and the mouth of Smith Sound,—everywhere, indeed, within the broad area of the Frigid Zone, the waters will not freeze except when sheltered by the land, or when an ice-pack, accumulated by a long continuance of winds from one quarter, affords the same protection. That the sea does not close except when at rest, I had abundant reason to know during the late winter; for at all times, as this narrative frequently records, even when the temperature of the air was below the freezing point of mercury, I could hear from the deck of the schooner the roar of the beating waves.

It would be needless for me to detain the reader with the conclusions to be drawn from the condition of the sea as observed by me at the point from which the last chapter left us returning, as the facts speak for themselves. It will not, however, be out of place