THE OPEN POLAR SEA.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I have just received the Spectator of November 11, contain- ing an article on the open Polar Ocean. It may interest you to know that early in the summer I heard a lecture from Commander Silas Bent, U.S.N., upon the two great ocean currents—the Gulf Stream and the Kuro Siwo of the Japanese—in which he stated, explained, and enforced his firm opinion that an open sea does exist at the Pole, and that the way, and the only practical way, of reaching it is to follow one of these great warm-water currents, either the Kuro Siwo, through Behring's Straits, and onwards north and east ; or the Gulf Stream, in the same north-east direc- tion, as these two German discoverers have so successfully done.
In November I had the pleasure of dining with Mr. Bent at St. Louis, when he showed me a telegram which he had just received from the world-known Captain Maury at Washington, congratulat- ing him heartily upon the corroboration of his theory in the success of Messrs. Payer and 'Weyprecht, who, as you know, followed the north-east flow of the Gulf Stream, and so carried comparatively warm water and animal organisms with them to the open Polar
Previous page
