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trates into the Kara and Siberian Sea or not, has been much
debated. Petermann and Micldendorff1 are prone to assert
that the warm water of the Gulf-stream is spread beyond
Novaya Zemlya and the Taimur peninsula to the longitudes
of Cape Yakan and even to Behring strait. The remarkably
mild climate even in winter of the northern parts of these
countries compared to the rest of the North-Asiatic continent
makes this hypothesis by no means unacceptable.
Hedenström2 during his voyage to the Siberian Islands,
and Wrangel,2 on his sledging expeditions on the frozen sea
found, that the sea-ice became thinner and more corroded,
the more they proceeded northward, until it finally gave way
to open water »the polynia» extending northward beyond
eyesight. — Although a similar phenomenon has been observed
occasionally almost everywhere along the coast of the arctic
sea in winter [f. ex. in Smith’s Sound, in Austria Sound at
Franz Joseph Land, at Spitzbergen, Novaya Zemlya etc...] and
has ordinarily been found to be limited to short spaces of the
ocean, the »polynia» is often regarded as the southern part
of a polar sea, unfrozen even in winter, which is kept open 3
by a branch of the Gulf-stream undermining the arctic
drift-ice current etc...
Lately Lieutenant Hovgaard, one of the members of the
Vega-expedition, has propounded the hypothesis of the existence
of two polar continents north of Siberia, separated from each
other by a sound at the longitude of Cape Tclieljuskin, opening
from the Siberian Sea straightway into the polar basin.
I fear that the results of the Vega-expedition will not
contribute much to solve the mystery of these questions. We
can not reasonably expect, that the observations of a single
expedition will reveal to us all the secrets of the immense
ocean, which borders on the Siberian coast.
As for the polar continents north of Siberia, there is
scarcely to be found anything in the hydrographic
observations of the Vega, which could tend to corroborate the
hypothesis of Mr. Hovgaard. According to his theory the Franz
Joseph archipelago would extend eastward to the longitude
of Cape Tcheljuskin and be connected with the Taimur and
Yalmal peninsulse by a submarine plateau. Consequently the
1 Middendorff: Der Golfstrom östlich vom Nordkap. Geogr. Mitth. 1871.
2 Wrangel: Eeise längs der Nordküste von Sibirien see also: Erman’s
»Russisches Archiv», vol. XXIV, 1865.
3 Petermann: Der Golfstrom, Geogr. Mitth. 1870, page 229—230.
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