oes not, indeed,
absolutely prove the existence of an open arctic sea, but it does, we
think, prove the existence of at least an _occasionally_ open sea there,
for it is well known that whales cannot travel such immense distances
under ice.

But the most conclusive evidence that we have in regard to this subject
is the fact, that one of the members of Dr Kane's expedition, while in
search of Sir John Franklin, did actually, on foot, reach what we have
every reason to believe was this open sea; but not being able to get
their ship into it, the party had no means of exploring it, or extending
their investigations. The account of this discovery is so interesting,
and withal so romantic, that we extract a few paragraphs relating to it
from Kane's work.

After spending the dreary winter in the ice-locked and unexplored
channels beyond the head of Baffin's Bay, Kane found his little ship
still hopelessly beset in the month of June; he therefore resolved to
send out a sledge-party under Morton, one of his best men, to explore
the channel to the north of their position. After twelve days'
travelling they came to the base of the "Great Glacier," where Morton
left his party, and, in company with an Esquimaux named Hans, set out
with a dog-sledge to prosecute the journey of exploration.

They walked on the sea-ice in a line parallel with the glacier, and
proceeded twenty-eight miles that day, although the snow was knee-deep
and soft. At the place where they encamped a crack enabled them to
measure the ice. It was seven feet five inches thick! And this in
June. We may mention here, in passing, that Dr Kane never got his
vessel out of that frozen strait, which seems to be bound by perpetual
ice. He and his party escaped with their lives; but the vessel that
bore them thither is probably still embedded in that ice.

Next day Morton and Hans came to a region of icebergs, which had
arrested a previous sledging-party of the same expedition. "These
[icebergs] were generally very high, evidently newly separated from the
glacier. Their surfaces were fresh and glassy, and not like those
generally met with in Baffin's Bay,--less worn, and bluer, and looking
in all respects like the face of the Great Glacier. Many were
rectangular, some of them regular squares, a quarter of a mile each way;
others more than a mile long."

To pass amidst these bergs was a matter of labour, difficulty, and
danger. Sometimes the sides of them ca