the best both to enter and return by; and
had the author not already smarted enough by having his professions
derided, he would have submitted these views to the patrons of that
expedition before it sailed.

The scientific world is, in reality, chargeable with the disastrous
results of Franklin's expedition. The polar basin is hemmed in by the
coast line of Europe, Asia, and America, in about latitude 70d north,
for the greatest part of the entire circumference. And this coast line,
and the islands adjacent, will cause the polar ice to accumulate and
form a frozen belt along these shores, in consequence of the constant
tendency of the earth's rotation to press the ice to the southward. The
fact that an open passage exists between this belt and the shore in
summer time, is no objection, as the tides, river currents, and warm
land breezes, may very well explain this. The learned have insisted, and
do yet insist, that the earth's rotation can produce no motions in the
Arctic sea, and, under this delusion, Franklin has passed into the
comparatively open waters inside the pack, perhaps has lost his ships;
yet it is very possible that the party may have escaped, and derived a
subsistence from the more genial waters of the central portion of that
ocean unto this day.

We have already alluded to the difference of level between the Atlantic
and Pacific waters. It is well known that the currents in the
Spitzbergen and Greenland seas is to the southward, and that Parry, in
his attempt to reach the pole, was foiled by this very current,
frequently setting him back in twenty-four hours more than his party
could travel in the same time over the ice. Through Baffin's and
Hudson's bay the northern waters are also continually bearing their
frozen freight southward. We are, therefore, entitled to ask, what
supplies this immense drain? Behring's straits are only about sixty
miles wide, and twenty-five fathoms deep; the supply, therefore, through
this channel is totally inadequate, yet there is no other channel into
the Arctic sea where the current is inward. We have already explained
the reason why the current through Behring's straits is an exception to
the general rule, yet still confirming the principle by referring it to
the configuration of the land enclosing the Pacific ocean. The whole
south Pacific lies open to the pole, and the inertia of the immense mass
of mobile waters pressing northward, and continually contracted by the
f