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THE maiden sleeps why mourn ye in this Ye glorious stars, bend down from heaven's

From The Edinburgh Review.
ARCTIC EXPLORATION.*

reality, the necessary recoil from the extreme tension which had been kept up for so many years; and it was quite certain that after a due period of repose the restlessness of mind and body, which seems the distinguishing characteristic of English energy, would again seek an outlet in geographical enterprise and maritime discovery.

After all, the problem, which for more than three hundred years had occupied men's minds, had been solved; useful, or not useful, the North-West Passage had been found; and when, to adopt the appropriate figure, we rounded to, it was

THE long series of English expeditions for Arctic exploration, commencing in 1818, came to an end, in 1859, with the return of the "Fox" and the certain knowledge of the fate of Sir John Franklin and his companions. The general feeling of the country was opposed to any further exploration of polar seas; it was maintained that such exploration had no object commensurate with the risk which it entailed; the mystery which had hung over the voyage of the "Erebus" and "Terror" had been painfully cleared up by McClintock and Hobson; the North-after we had carried through our venture, West Passage, the dream of centuries, had been found by McClure, and for all purposes of practical navigation and commerce had been proved useless; the mere determination of desolate coasts, of barren and uninhabitable lands, or of seas and straits which could not be sailed over, was a vain and idle fancy of mapmakers and geographers: the demands of science were misunderstood, her claims were scouted, and the North-West Passage, with all that belonged to it, was classed as a wild and chimerical delusion. This condition of the public mind was, in

and had triumphed over difficulties which had baffled all former ages and all other nations. If these latter, profiting by our experience and example, have been continuing on the course of polar exploration, it is not as completing any work which we had undertaken; if we now enter on a new voyage, it is not as again taking up a work which we had left unfinished; whether we succeed or do not succeed, the aims and objects now before us are totally distinct from those which we have had before us in times past: success or failure will belong to the present only. If the expedition now being fitted out should reach the North Pole, it will, none the less, be the first expedition which, within nearly fifty years, has left our shores with the avowed intention 2. The Threshold of the Unknown Region. By of seeking it; and it will, none the less, CLEMENTS MARKHAM, C. B., F.R.S., Secretary of the be the first expedition which any governRoyal Geographical Society. 8vo. London: 1873. 3. A Whaling-Cruise to Baffin's Bay and the Gulf of Boothia, and an Account of the Rescue of the Crew of the Polaris." By ALBERT HASTINGS MARKHAM, F.R.G.S., Commander, Royal Navy. 8vo. London: 1874.

1. Papers and Correspondence relating to the Equipment and Fitting-out of the Arctic Expedition of 1975, including Report of the Admiralty Arctic

Committee. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of her Majesty. 1875.

4. The German Arctic Expedition of 1869-70, and Narrative of the Wreck of the "Hansa" in the Ice. By Captain KOLDEWEY, Commander of the Expedition, assisted by members of the Scientific Staff. Translated and abridged by the Rev. L. MERCIER, M.A. Oxon, and edited by H. W. BATES, F.L.S., Assistant Secretary, Royal Geographical Society. 8vo. London: 1874.

5. Arctic Experiences; containing Capt. GEORGE E. TYSON's wonderful Drift on the Ice-floe: a His tory of the Polaris" Exped tion, with the Cruise of the "Tigress" and Rescue of the "Polaris" Survivors. Edited by E. VALE BLAKE. 8vo. New York: 1874

6. Mittheilungen über wichtige neue Erforschungen auf dem Gesammtgebiete der Geographie. Von Dr.

A. PETERMANN. 4to. Gotha: 1865-75.

ment has carefully and deliberately fitted out for that purpose.

It is right to state this clearly and explicitly at the outset; for during these last few years a great deal has been said about English rights and English duties; as if we had long ago pledged ourselves to find the North Pole, and are to be accounted recreant sluggards for not having ere now found it; or as if the Arctic was an English preserve, and any other people trying to explore it were intruding on our private domain. Of course, such an idea, even if correct, would be purely sentimental; but as the case stands, it is altogether ungrounded. We have as yet never seriously attempted to

find the North Pole; till now, we have | unknown space, and see and know what never pledged ourselves to look for it; it is.

and we greet those brave men of other A reference to the beautifully distinct countries Americans, Swedes, North- chart which has been published by the Germans or Austrians who have ven- hydrographic department of the Admitured on the perilous quest, as fellow-ralty will show that to enter this space labourers and honourable rivals in the there are only four ways to the west work of scientific exploration. of Greenland; to the east of Greenland,

crush through, and the strength of which can resist. So far as is yet known, ice of this nature disappears with the winter ; an extended sea, simply and permanently frozen over, has not yet been met with. Such ice is thus commonly enough called first-year ice; and we may understand that, so far as our present experience goes, first-year ice is not considered impassable, though it may be difficult.

It is thus that the present seems a fit-between it and Spitzbergen; to the east of ting time to call attention to what these Spitzbergen, between it and Novaya Zemhave actually done, and how they have lya; or through Bering's Straits — and it done it; what they have sought and what is familiarly known that by each route the they have found; above all, to the aims difficulty in the way of advance is ice. and objects, to the hopes and fears, of Now ice, as it appears at sea, is of very the expedition which our own govern- different sorts, and presents obstacles of ment is now, after long and careful fore- very different natures and of very differthought, preparing to send out. ent degrees of impermeability. There First then, and foremost, of these ob- is, first of all, ice as it appears actually jects is geographical discovery. Within forming on the surface of the water, and the polar circle there is an enormous which is frequently spoken of as bay-ice; area, comprising at least two million this does not offer any serious difficulty square miles, of which we know simply to a stout ship, the weight of which can nothing. We shall have presently to speak of the various speculations regarding the nature of this vast extent of the world's surface; it is enough for our immediate purpose to say that we do not know anything whatever about it. Whether it is land, water, or ice; whether the climate is cold or warm; whether there are inhabitants, animals, plants, or whether it is a howling wilderness speculation has included almost every possibility, and almost every absurdity; but of knowledge, such as alone intelligent men can be content with, we have absolutely none. To attain some such knowledge is the first object now proposed in Arctic exploration. It is considered unfitting and unseemly, in the present state of scientific progress, that there should be this large area of our own earth's surface still so utterly unknown. The examination of it is loudly called for; it is a problem of universal interest, the solution of which appeals not to commercial profits, pecuniary advantage and increased facility of transport or communication, but simply, in the first instance, to those higher feelings and yearnings which, whatever our remote ancestry, now distinguish us from the brutes. We want to traverse this

But it is very seldom that ice is allowed to remain in this condition; the swell of the sea, transmitted sometimes through a great distance, or, still more, the rise and fall of the tide, break it up even as it forms; the pressure of the fragments, one against another, lifts them, tosses them, and piles them one over another, until they become heavy, solid, irregular masses, which are called floes; and a great number of floes driven together by wind, tide, or current constitutes pack. Pack, then, may be of very different degrees; if of light, or comparatively light, ice, loosely drifted together, a stout ship may pass through it, forcing the floes to one side or the other by a strongly defended bow; but if the floes are very heavy, and by the wind, or tide, or current, are pressed against a line of coast, or into a narrow channel, there

they freeze together, and that with a of the tides; and the persistency of the solidity which no ship that has hitherto pack in different places, as found by recrossed the Arctic circle can break peated experience in former Arctic voythrough. ages, has been in many instances satisIcebergs are necessary to complete factorily explained by reference to one the ideal picture of an Arctic sea; but, or other of these causes. It is thus, strange as it may sound to many, ice- according to Sir Leopold McClintock, bergs are not sea-ice. An iceberg is the that the pack which held to the death the lower end of a glacier which, forced by lost "Erebus " and "Terror" is primarily the downward flow into the sea, is broken due to the wide channel between Prince off by its unsupported weight, or torn off of Wales' Land and Victoria Land, which by the upward pressure of the water, and "admits a vast and continuous stream of so floats away. Such masses of ice are very heavy ocean-formed ice from the often, as is well known, of prodigious north-west, which presses on the western size; the weathering of the upper part face of King William's Island, and chokes forms them into fantastic shapes resem-up Victoria Strait." "I do not think," bling spires and arches and things beau- he adds, "the North-West Passage could tiful or grotesque; below the surface of ever be sailed through by passing westthe sea they extend a long way. Ice, it wards, that is to windward of King Wilwill be remembered, floats with about liam's Island."* A similar drift from the seven-eighths of its volume submerged; wide sea to the westward into the narrow and a huge hill of ice, such as an iceberg strait between Banks' Land and Melville is, draws a great deal of water; so much Island, may, to some extent, account for so, that they are frequently to be seen the heavy pack which has always been grounded in 70, 80, or even 100 fathoms, found there, which stopped Parry's progthat is to say, in from 400 to 600 feet.* ress to the westward in 1819. prevented It is by so grounding that they seriously McClure passing through Prince of impede navigation; if several large bergs Wales' Strait in 1850, and in the following ground near each other, they constitute year finally imprisoned him in the Bay of a nucleus round which drift-ice collects, Mercy. Professor Haughton has howpiles up, freezes together, and forms a ever urged that in both these localities pack of the worst kind. It was in such which we have instanced there is a meeta pack that the "Fox" was caught in ing of the tides from the east and the 1857, and held fast by it for eight west, and considers that the extraordimonths, whilst it drifted down Baffin'snary pack which remains there is due, in Bay and through Davis' Straits for a dis-a great measure, to this fact. This is tance of nearly 1,200 miles.

still a disputed point, and Professor Pack-ice, then, in its different forms, Haughton's meeting of the tides is, to is the one distinct impassable hindrance some extent, at least, hypothetical; but to navigation. First-year ice, or loose admitting it fully, it would only tend more drift, can, as a rule, be got through; ice-conclusively to show how geographical bergs can he evaded; but heavy pack, peculiarities, involving the trend of the closely pressed together, is as unyielding coast, the prevailing wind and the tidal as the solid rock, and is more dangerous, action, work together to cause the dense as being itself in motion. Now the na-pack which has given these places such ture of the pack depends, in a great a terrible notoriety. measure, on the conditions or circumstances of its formation as such; that is, on the shape of the land against which it is pressed, and on its relation to the prevailing winds, the currents, or the set

In the Antarctic, the icebergs attain still more gigantic dimensions; it would appear that in some instances they must draw nearly a thousand fathoms.

Geographers have thus been led to speculate on the existence or non-existence of pack in other places; and that with a freedom dangerous to the advance of accurate knowledge, and with an obstinacy unworthy of scientific inquiry.

Voyage of the "Fox." p. 314.