his ice
too was of Siberian origin. For instance, I found quantities of mud on
it, which seemed to be of Siberian origin, or might possibly have come
from North American rivers. It is possible, however, to maintain that
this mud originates in the glacier rivers that flow from under the ice
in the north of Greenland, or in other unknown polar lands; so that
this piece of evidence is of less importance than those already named.

"Putting all this together, we seem driven to the conclusion that
a current flows at some point between the Pole and Franz Josef Land
from the Siberian Arctic Sea to the east coast of Greenland.

"That such must be the case we may also infer in another way. If we
regard, for instance, the polar current--that broad current which
flows down from the unknown polar regions between Spitzbergen and
Greenland--and consider what an enormous mass of water it carries
along, it must seem self-evident that this cannot come from a
circumscribed and small basin, but must needs be gathered from
distant sources, the more so as the Polar Sea (so far as we know
it) is remarkably shallow everywhere to the north of the European,
Asiatic, and American coasts. The polar current is no doubt fed by
that branch of the Gulf Stream which makes its way up the west side
of Spitzbergen; but this small stream is far from being sufficient,
and the main body of its water must be derived from farther northward.

"It is probable that the polar current stretches its suckers,
as it were, to the coast of Siberia and Bering Strait, and draws
its supplies from these distant regions. The water it carries off
is replaced partly through the warm current before mentioned which
makes its way through Bering Strait, and partly by that branch of the
Gulf Stream which, passing by the north of Norway, bends eastward
towards Novaya Zemlya, and of which a great portion unquestionably
continues its course along the north coast of this island into the
Siberian Arctic Sea. That a current coming from the south takes this
direction--at all events, in some measure--appears probable from
the well-known fact that in the northern hemisphere the rotation of
the earth tends to compel a northward-flowing current, whether of
water or of air, to assume an easterly course. The earth's rotation
may also cause a southward-flowing stream, like the polar current,
to direct its course westward to the east coast of Greenland.

"But even if these currents flowing in