assertion, he cites the legend of some Dutch | the North Cape of Cook, to enter among whalemen who pretended to have navigated the floating ice, to penetrate into the Polythis sea. This is not, it must be confessed, nia or free sea, and thence to sail towards

the serious side of the argument of the celebrated geographer of Gotha, for some of these whalemen, to be more sure of having reached the pole, pretended also that they had gone some degrees beyond it.

Thanks to the incessant efforts of Doctor Petermann, the German expedition left Bergen in Norway in the month of May last, under the command of Captain Ch. Koldewey. The lieutenant's name is Hildebrandt; a

the pole. The considerations on which this project is based are of two kinds. First, a series of facts ascertained by observation or deduced from theory inclines us to believe that the mean temperature, instead of falling in a continuous manner to the pole, is, on the contrary, higher there than beneath the polar circle, that is to say, at about 67° latitude. There would result from this the possibility of meeting a

pilot and thirteen Bremen sailors compose free sea at the pole even, surrounded by a the rest of the crew. The vessel, which barrier of ice which closes completely only bears the name of Germania, is only 80 tons during the coldest months of winter. In burthen. It is quite new, and has been the second place, the attentive examination bought and equipped at Bergen. This of the polar currents and the ice which they

modest expedition, but animated with a strong will, will first try to reach the eastern coast of Greenland, above 74° latitude, touch at Sabine Island, and then follow the coast to enter the polar sea, and leave it, if possible, by Behring's Straits, which separate America from Siberia. If the expedition cannot penetrate beyond Spitzbergen, it will undertake explorations in Gillis's Land, situated further east: the Germania carries provisions for a year. At the end of July, news has been received of this expedition; the ship was entangled in a field of icebergs and completely arrested in its progress, as might have been expected. A

drift has just confirmed in a striking manner this hypothesis of a vast open sea rolling its waves round the boreal pole. The accounts of Hedenstroem, Wrangel, Anjou, who have seen an immense sheet of free water to the north of Siberia, the reports of Morton and of Dr. Hayes, who have met with an open sea to the north of Smith's Strait, acquire therefore a meaning thoroughly clear and precise, which hardly permits us to preserve a doubt on the reality of a polar sea.

It is known since a long time that the temperature of a place is not regulated by the position merely which it occupies be

little while since, a Swedish expedition has tween the equator and the pole; this is

also set out in search of the pole, following the route Parry indicated in 1827. Would it not be time to make a last effort to permit the French expedition to hasten its departure? We are going to set forth the chances of success which the French project seems to offer, and to explain the reasons which justify the choice of the route by which M. Gustave Lambert proposes to try the access to the boreal pole.

M. Lambert, hydrographer and navigator, an old pupil of the Ecole Polytechnique,

proved by the isothermal lines which Alexander von Humboldt has taught us to trace on the maps of the globe. It results that the poles or points at which terminates the axis of rotation of the earth are not necessarily the coldest points. In 1821, Sir David Brewster concluded from the direction of the isothermal lines that there existed two poles of cold, situated the one in Siberia, the other in North America; the mean temperature will, therefore, be sensibly higher at the pole properly so called

has already visited the places where he than in some points of the polar circle. wishes to conduct the expedition he is pre- In 1864, an illustrious Italian geometer, paring. Leaving Havre on board of a ship Plana, submitted to calculation the distriequipped for the whale fishery the 12th bution of the solar heat on the surface of June, 1865, he passed Behring's Straits to the earth, and demonstrated that starting

advance to the 72nd degree of north lati-
tude, and during three months, in the midst
of icebergs, he has been able to study on
the spot the formidable problem which he
desires to-day to face. M. Gustave Lam-
bert has fixed his choice on a way of which
only one trial has yet been made, that of
Cook. In the month of July, that is to
say at the great breaking up of ice in the
polar regions, crossing Behring's Straits, he
would double on the west Cape Serdze and | ferent epochs of the year.

from the polar circle the mean tempera-
ture will increase up to the pole, a result
which it was difficult to foresee theoreti-
cally, although it is in accordance with
the testimony of observations. More re-
cently, M. Gustave Lambert has arrived
himself at an analogous conclusion in in-
vestigating the laws by which insolation, or
the quantity of heat furnished by the sun,
will vary from one place to another at dif-

The quantity of heat which a point of proved in an unanswerable manner by the the earth receives at a given moment de- transportation of the ship Resolute, which pends on the obliquity of the rays; it in- was found in Davis's Strait in 1865, when creases in proportion as the sun rises; but Kellett had abandoned her in May 1854, a when we would appreciate the effect which thousand miles from that point, in the the sun can produce during a period more north, near Cape Cockburn. In Behring's or less long, it is not enough to consider Straits, a very strong current, which flows

the direction of the rays: the relative length of the days and nights must be taken into account. The nocturnal radiation makes the earth lose a considerable portion of the caloric which it has absorbed during the day, and it results that the length of the nights can counterbalance up to a certain

along the coasts of Asia, seems to present
a semi-annual character; it goes by turns
from the south to the north and from the
north to the south. The third current
descends from the north to the south be-
tween Spitzbergen and Nova-Zembla; the
force of impulsion of these waters is such

point the effects of very hot days. Now at that they sometimes break the ice-floe,
the pole the sun, during six months, does which facilitates the navigation of these
not set; the heat which it emits accumulates parts. The vast space of sea comprised be-
and concentrates incessantly during the tween the west coast of Spitzbergen and
long day of more than a hundred and eighty Greenland gives also passage to a current
common days. It may be conceived then which breaks up the ice, while preventing
that towards the middle of summer the po- it however from melting. It is this current
lar temperature can reach a degree more which in 1827 carried away the floe under
than sufficient to produce the fusion more Parry's feet, and did not permit him, in
or less complete of the ice formed during
the long night of winter.

spite of superhuman efforts, to go beyond
82° latitude. All these polar streams seem
to proceed directly from a vast reservoir,

M. Gustave Lambert has succeeded in constructing a curve representing the pow- from a sea surrounding the boreal pole.

er of insolation for the different places of the earth and the different days of the year. In examining the direction and the inflections of this curve. he has ascertained that at the moment of the solstice (21st June) the North Pole will receive in twenty-four hours a quantity of heat greater by onefifth than that which a point situated under the tropic of Cancer receives at the same moment. In this calculation, no account is made of the atmospheric absorption, of which the influence is much stronger at the pole, where the sun is very low, than under the tropic, where it rises very high at the hour of noon; the loss which the rays suffer in crossing the inferior beds of the atmosphere modifies necessarily the result which is arrived at in considering simply the position of the sun from its relation to the polar horizon. We may nevertheless affirm that the summer heat is much more considerable at the pole than is commonly admitted, and in any case that it is more than sufficient to explain the melting of the ice above the 84th or 85th parallel of latitude. The existence of an open sea at the boreal pole is rendered still probable by the consideration of the currents which navigators meet in those parts. The polar currents are very numerous. From the west coast of Greenland, a first current directs itself to the south-east and accumulates the ice in the straits of Banks, of McClintock, and of Queen Victoria. The direction of this considerable mass of water is moreover

In the austral regions, the currents seem
on the contrary to affect circular directions
and to flow around the icebergs, which
gives rise to the supposition that a conti-
nent exists at the South Pole.

Other proofs in favour of this hypothesis
can be drawn from the study of the masses
of ice which are met with at the two poles.
At the south are observed all the phenome-
na which characterize glaciers properly so
called, or masses of ice raised on a fixed
base, earth or rock. There renews itself
every year in gigantic proportions the labor
which geologists have observed in the Alps,
the Himalayas, and the Cordilleras of the
Andes. When the colds of winter arrive,
the watery vapor with which the air has
been saturated by the powerful evapora-
tions of summer condenses into thick snow,
and falls in large flakes to accumulate dur-
ing all the gloomy season of the six months
of night. At the first fires of spring, when
the sun begins to diffuse its heat over these
terrible countries, the ice begins to melt.
The water flows then between the fissures
of the ice and in the interstices of the rocks,
where it congeals again, increasing in vol-
ume and repelling with incredible force the
obstacles which inconvenience it.
It is
not at a few points that this labor takes
place, it is in every sense and on all parts
of the glacier, to which during summer this
internal labor gives a sort of life and irre-
sistible movement of progression. At the
approach of winter, when the first signs of

1

twilight show themselves, the power of im- | lastly be invoked. The expeditions which pulsion is subdued by the cold, and dimin- have entered into this dangerous labyrinth ishes by degrees to lose itself in the long of islands which stretches to the west of sleep of winter. This life of the glaciers Greenland speak of it more than once. At is one of the most dangerous obstacles for the same time one may notice a remarkable

and the water is covered with a thin sheet would render this route excessively dangerof ice, partly clear and partly flecked or ous. "Any ship dragged to the north and agglutinated snow. "As soon as the wind the east of Parry's Islands into the polar rises," says M. Gustave Lambert, "everything breaks up, crumbles, and presents one of the most wonderful spectacles that can be seen. Every little morsel of ice in melting surrounds itself with a regular footbath of soft water which does not mix with the sea-water; the rays of the sun, which is very low, give to all these pools of water the colors of the rainbow, reproducing on an enormous scale the phenomenon of the from Greenland to Spitzbergen will appear

309

na

"The route

a depth which has not yet been determined. | that it was inhabited, which would accord Moreover, if it is true that have formerly ventured beyond the 82d de- tives of the Siberian coast. some vessels with the traditions preserved among the gree, it is only to the hazard of an excep- which I should recommend," says Captain tional breaking up that this success must be Long in a letter published by the Moniteur attributed, for these coasts of Nova-Zembla, into which in 1839 the Recherche penetrated pretty far, had been, so M. Charles Martins tells us, inaccessible during several summers. Consequently, so long as the great States do not have men and more especially ships to sacrifice to the dangerous and continual endeavor to make a breach

in these thick floes, it is not by a route exceptionally free that one should try to reach the North Pole, but by a road which is only rarely encumbered.

Commercial of Honolulu of the 18th of January last, "would be the following. The Asiatic coast should be followed from Behring's Straits to Cape Recouanaï or Cape Chelagskoï. It is towards the coast that the ice first melts, and the numerous currents of water produced by the melting such a manner as to form along the land a of the snow drive the ice to the north, in free passage which a vessel can traverse very easily, especially if it is aided by rects itself from the land towards the north, steam. Beyond Cape Yakan the ice di

For this reason, the choice of Behring's Straits imposes itself as a necessity. One and is carried by these currents, which discannot invoke against this route either an- perse in Wrangel's free sea in fragments terior checks or the innumerable difficulties sufficiently apart from one another to per

which the other ways present at the first mit a ship to circulate in it without danger. view. We have neither icebergs here, nor From a certain point between Capes Recouangerous currents. The voyage of Wran- anaï and Chelagskoï, the direction to folgel proves that in many points the floe is, low would be that from the north to the so to speak, only a thin screen, scarcely north-west, as the ice would permit, to the separating during some months the free north of the islands of Laakhow, where one waves of the Polynia from the waters of would begin to undergo the effects of the Behring's Sea, frequented every year by numerous whalers. Resting on these indi- Northern Asia. Thence it would be neccurrents which proceed from the rivers of cations of Wrangel, and after having made essary to go straight to the pole or the himself a reconnoitring campaign into these islands of Spitzbergen, according to cirparts, M. Gustave Lambert has fixed his cumstances. choice on the route which is to conduct him the Pacific to the Atlantic will be accomto the pole. After having crossed Behring's plished by one of the routes indicated That the passage from Straits at the earliest in westerly direction, passes beyond Cape lieve in an event to come." July, he takes a above, I believe as firmly as one can beSerdze, then the North Cape of Cook, the extreme point reached by that navigator. from Honolulu to the President of the A letter of Captain Long's, addressed He then finds himself in the midst of the Geographical Society of France under date movable debris of the floe, between which of June 15, 1868, confirms the preceding dethe ship is steered, the more extended bar- tails, and contains very exact indications riers being blown up with powder or cut on the state of the sea to the north of Siwith saws; he penetrates into the free sea, beria. crosses in his vessel the points where Wrangel's sledge was stopped by pools of water separating fragments of thin and flat ice, and at length reaches the North Pole.

very favorable to polar explorations; the "Last season," he says, "has been sea near the coast, going from Behring's Straits towards the east, was free from ice. Cape Chelagskoï, not a vestige of ice was When we were 40 miles to the north of perceived from the top of the masts in the directions comprised between the north and tiful, the sky in that direction was of a dark the west. The weather was clear and beauwatery appearance. The absence of whales in those parts rendered the continuation of the voyage little profitable; I returned then towards the east, and I passed at less than ten miles this side of the point where WranMarch. To the north of this position, there

The choice of Behring's Straits has, more-
over, just been justified in a manner as strik-
ing as unexpected. In the month of August,
1867, Captain Long, an
manding the whaler Nile, entered the Polar
American, com-
Sea, and was able, without meeting any se-
rious obstacles, to approach to within ten
miles of the point where Wrangel had per-
ceived a sheet of free water in the month
of March, 1823. On his return, he discov-
ered, at about 70 miles to the north of Cape gel had seen the free sea in the month of

Yakan, a vast land covered with verdure, on
which walruses and seals were playing. were some sheets of ice at considerable in-
The aspect of this land seemed to indicate tervals, and I believe that a ship could have

advanced very far without meeting any ob- all classes and of opposite tendencies was

stacle. With a well-equipped vessel I would not have hesitated to attempt the passage through the Polar Sea to Spitzbergen; but with my barque, which was not prepared for the pressure of the ice, and with provisions for four months only, it would have been folly." Captain Long insists afterwards on the well-ascertained fact that the winds of the north and the north-west bring to Cape North fogs and an elevation of temperature which seem to indicate the presence of a free sea in the direction of the north. - Such is the last phase of the question and the summary of what is known to-day of the mysterious regions which surround the boreal pole. Every

nigh at hand. The Dean of Cork avoided both of these mistakes. His copious Irish eloquence, and a powerful voice, might easily have tempted him to indulge in impassioned rhetoric, but this temptation was severely resisted, and, with one or two momentary exceptions, the sermon was a fine example of logical precision in the use of language, even though it was delivered without written notes. His theme was, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." There was a sense, he said, in which these words might serve as the motto for all true teachers in all ages of the world. The final cause and aim of all science and all

thing gives us reason to hope that in a little philosophy is the enrichment of human life, while a fortunate and hardy ship will trace the making of the life of humanity in some its furrow in this unexplored sea, will re- way or other a nobler, a cleaner, a fairer connoitre these lands, inhabited, perhaps, thing than it was before. And as that and of which we did not even know the exist- great Association moved about from city ence yesterday, will affirm at length at the to city, investigating the conditions, the extremities of the world the power and the resources, and the philosophy of existence,

energy of man. Theoretical science expects great results from the observations which can be made at the pole, and when theory advances, practice always feels the effects. Will not moreover the expedition which will make us acquainted with the last point of our domain, until now withdrawn from our investigations, mark an important date in the history of humanity?

From The Spectator.

THE DEAN OF CORK AT THE BRITISH AS-
SOCIATION.

ONE of the most noteworthy incidents in the brilliant and busy week just spent by the savans at Norwich was the delivery of a sermon on Sunday in the cathedral by Dr. Magee. Such an occasion seldom occurs in a preacher's life, for in the vast

"We

and bringing to light such truth as was at-
tainable in relation to the world in which
men lived, it might, with greater signifi-
cance and without the least irreverence,
adopt for itself the language of the Found-
er of the Christian religion, and say,
are come among you that ye might have
life, and that ye might have it more abun-
dantly." In discussing the sense in which
these words had been first used, he ob-
served that the Christian religion differed
from all other ancient faiths in the profes-
sion which it made to impart a new and
divine life to man. Christ did not come
to be the teacher and helper of man's life
only. He claimed to be the author and
the giver of it. He does not merely say
that He is the discoverer of that life or the
teacher of its laws, but He says, "I am
that life. I am essential to it. It cannot
be without Me." The writings of His fol-
lowers, and notably of Paul, are filled and

congregation which filled every cranny of saturated with this idea of a Christ whose the building, there were the President and life is in them, who lives in them. No principal officers of the Association, be- Jew ever said that he lived in Moses, no sides conspicuous representatives of all | Mussulman that the life of Mohammed was those forms of modern thought and inquiry imparted to him or reproduced in him. It on which Christian preachers too often is the distinctive mark of Christianity that look with jealousy if not with avowed hos- it alone professes to give the life of its tility. It was an occasion on which weak Founder to men: that it is not merely a men of one school would have vented creed, or a system of doctrine, or a code of vague denunciations of the aggressive and laws, or a scheme of philosophy; but a sceptical spirit of modern science; while new vital force in the world - a life having still weaker men of another type would its own phenomena, its own conditions of have flattered their hearers by making light existence, its own laws of manifestation, a of the conflict between science and reli- life as real as any of those forms of life gion, or by expressing a dim belief that a which science arranges and classifies, a life reconciliation between "truth-seekers" of which it was said had been supernaturally