south, where it is warm, and the temperature of
its waters is perhaps not below thirty degrees; at
any rate, they are comparatively warm. There
must be a place somewhere in the Arctic
seas where this under-current ceases to flow
north, and begins to flow south as a surface-
current. Where the under-current transfers its
waters to the surface, there is, it is supposed,
a basin in which the waters, as they rise to the
surface, are at thirty degrees, or whatever may be
the temperature of the under-current, which we
know must be above the freezing-point; for the
current is of water in a fluid, not in a solid state.
An arrangement in nature, by which a basin of
considerable area in the frozen ocean could be
supplied by water coming in at the bottom and
rising up at the top, with a temperature not
below thirty degrees, or even 27·2 degrees—the
freezing-point of sea water—would go far to
mitigate the climate in the regions round about.

And that there is a warmer climate somewhere
in the inhospitable sea, the observations
of many of the explorers who have visited it
indicate. Its existence may be inferred also from
the well-known fact that the birds and animals
are found at certain seasons migrating to the
north, evidently in search of milder climates.
The instincts of these dumb creatures are
unerring; and we can imagine no mitigation of
the climate in that direction, unless it arise from
the proximity, or the presence there, of a large
body of open water. It is another furnace, in
the beautiful economy of Nature, for tempering
climates there.

The hydrographic basin of the Arctic Ocean
there is large, and it delivers into that sea annually
a very copious drainage. Such an immense volume
of fresh water discharged into so small a sea as
the Arctic Ocean is, must go far towards
diluting its brine; and thus, water that is cool
and light—because not so salt—may be made
to cover and protect, as with a mantle, a sheet
of warmer, but salter and heavier water below.

Lieutenant De Haven, when he went in
command of the American expedition in search of
Sir John Franklin and his companions, was told
in his letter of instructions, to look, when he
should get well up into the Wellington Channel,
for an open sea to the northward and westward.
He looked, and saw in that direction a " water
sky." Captain Penny afterwards went there,
found open water, and sailed upon it. The
open sea in the Arctic Ocean is probably not
always in the same place, as the Gulf Stream is
not always in one channel, though always
running in the same direction, its trough wavering
about in the ocean not unlike a pennon in the
breeze, and having its prescribed limits for
March and September. The open sea is
probably always where the waters of the under-
currents are brought to the surface. Exploring
parties may have been near this open sea without
perceiving the warmth of its climate; for,
every winter, an example of how very close
warm water in the sea and a very severe climate
on the land, or the ice, may be to each other, is
afforded to us in the case of the Gulf Stream
and the Labrador-like climate of New England,
Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. In these
countries, in winter, the thermometer frequently
sinks far below zero, notwithstanding that the
tepid waters of the Gulf Stream may be found
with their summer temperature within one day's
sail of these very, very cold places.

Dr. Kane reports an open sea north of the
parallel of eighty-two degrees. To reach it, his
party crossed a barrier of ice eighty or a hundred
miles broad. On the borders of this ice-bound
sea they found subsistence—another proof of
the high temperature and comparative mildness
of its climate. But, before gaining the open
water, he found the thermometer to show the
extreme temperature of sixty degrees. Travelling
north, he stood on the shores of an iceless sea,
extending in an unbroken sheet of water as far as
the eye could reach towards the pole. Its waves
were dashing on the beach with the swell of a
boundless ocean; the tides ebbed and flowed in it.

These tides, therefore, must have been born
in that cold sea, having their cradle about the
North Pole. We must infer that most, if not
all the unexplored regions about the pole, are
covered with deep water; for, were this
unexplored area mostly land or shallow water, it
could not give birth to regular tides. Whale-
men have always been puzzled as to the place of
breeding for the right whale. It is a cold-water
animal; and the question is prompted: Is not
the nursery for the great whale in this polar
sea, which has been so set about and hemmed
in with a hedge of ice that man may not
trespass there? Whence comes the food for the
young whales there? Do the teeming waters
of the Gulf Stream convey it thither, in channels
so far down in the depths of the sea that no
enemy may waylay and spoil it? Seals were
sporting and water-fowl feeding in this open
sea of Dr. Kane's solitude, the cold and boundless
expanse and the mysterious heavings of its
green waters, lent their charm to the scene.
The temperature of its waters was only thirty-six.
degrees! Such warm water could get there from
the south only as a current far down in the
depths below. The bottom of the ice of this
eighty miles of barrier was no doubt many—
perhaps hundreds of—feet below the surface
level. Under this ice there was doubtless also
water above the freezing-point.

Nor need the presence of warm water within
the Arctic circle excite surprise, when we recollect
that the cold waters of the frigid zone are
transferred to the torrid without changing their
temperature perhaps more than seven or eight
degrees by the way. The thermal laws of "deep-
sea" temperatures for fresh and for salt water
are very difficult.

Seamen tell us of "red fogs" which they
sometimes encounter, especially in the vicinity
of the Cape de Verd Islands. In other parts of
the sea also they meet showers of dust. What
these showers precipitate in the Mediterranean
is called "Sirocco dust;" in other parts "African
dust," because the winds which accompany them
are supposed to come from the Sirocco desert,