The weekly Minnesotian. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1852-1858, 1855-11-17

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| From the Chicago Democratic Press.
{ bra An Open Sea Around the North Pole.
/ The world is SO very wise and wide awake
and its sight SO wonderfully sharpened by
grubbing with the moles, that discoveries
and prophets on their first advent are gener.
ally set down as lunatics. Our caption r.
minds us of an illustration. Some thirty
years since, one Capt. Symmes, of Ohio
made the then astonishing announcement
that after arriving at high latitude north
the temperature grew warmer thence onward
to the Pole in fact there was no pole as
generally understood, bat hollow entrance
to the interior of the earth, through which
there was plain sailing to most delightful
region, inhabited by men, animals and plants,
and somehow mysteriously warmed and
lighted, and all things kept in their place by
attraction toward the circumference of the
earth, the centre of gravity being somewhere
between its centre and surface
Capt. Symmes supported his theory by a
great variety of alleged facts, some of which
are now known to be authentic. The Esqui-
maux Indians, he said, all told stories of a
warm climate at the north; tropical plants
were found floating southwark which must
have originated at the north several species
of birds were known to fly northward on
the approach of winter, and various other
corroborative circumstances were stated.
The Captain took the usual methotls of
gaining the public ear-wrole articles for the
newspapers, lectured, &c..-and was laughed
at for his pains. Then he memorialized
Congress, asking an appropriation to test the
soundness of his theory. The ''assembled
wisdom" regarded the whole thing as an ex-
cellent joke, and laughed at poor Symmes
more loudly and with less good breeding
than the public at large and so the man
finally died, martyr to his faith, and made
no further sign. 4tt
On one point Capt. Symmes may have
been at fault-his theory in relation to the
hollowness of the earth-but the late expe-
ditions to the Arctic region show that he
was right about there being much warmer
temperature around the pole than is to be
found twenty degrees south of it. DIR. Kane
bears testimony to the existence of an open
Polar Sea for hundreds of miles in extent
around the Pole. 1t has been found that the
range of the thermometer is lower in an
almost regular ratio as you proceed from the
temperate regions northward, until you ar
rive within a few degrees of the Pole, when
suddenly the order is reversed, and the tenn
pei'ature increases, probably to the Pole it
self. The ice regions prove to be vast belt,
extending northward only a little beyond
the point where the temperature begins to
increase, and beyond which stretches vast
open sea. 1t is also Said that near this iso
thermal line the compass is no longer to lie
depended upon, the needle exhibiting ten
dency to a reverse act on, which has led to
the conjecture that the heat and cold near
the Pole depends more upon the angle of the
Magnetic Pole to that of the earth than that
of the latter to the ecliptic.
A correspondent of the New York Times
conjectures that the cause of the open sea
around the Pole is due to the centrifugal force
and the internal heating power of the earth,
but chiefly to the former lie supposes that
the heaping up of water on the equator
by the centrifugal tendercy, causes a back
ward under-current of a much higher tenn
perature, producing warm and open sea on
its approach to the Pole.
Lieutenant Maury, in his physical Geog
raphy of the Sea-" upon the hypothesis that
there is an open sea around the Pole, gives
the following explanation of the causes which
combine to produce that result:
"There is an under-current setting from
the Atlantic through Davis's Strait into the
Arctic Ocean, and there is a surface current
setting out. Observations have pointed out
the existence of this under-current, for nav
igators tell of immense icebergs which they
have seen drifting rapidly to the north and
against strong surface current. These ice
bergs were high above the water, and their
depth below was seven times greater than
their height above. No doubt they were
drifted by powerful under-current
Now this under-currcnt comes from the
South, where it is warm, and the tempera-
ture of its waters is, PERHAPS, not below 80
degrees; at any rate, they are comparatively
warm. There must be a place somewhere in
the Arctic Sea where this under-current cea-
ses to flow North, and begins to flow South
as a surface current; for the surface current,
though it's waters are mixed with the fresh
waters of the rivers and of precipitation in
the Polar Basin, nevertheless bears out vast
quantities OF salt, which is furnished neither
by the rivers nor the rains.
These salts are supplied by the under
current, for as much salt as one current
brings in, other current must take out, else
! the Polar Basin would become basin of salt,
and where the under-current transfers its
waters to the surface, there is, it is supposed
basin in which the waters as they rise to
the surface, are at 80 degrees, or whatever
be the temperature of the under-current,
which we know must be above freezing point
for the current is of water in fluid, not in a
solid state.
An arrangement in nature, by which ba-
sin of considerable area in the frozen ocean
could be supplied by water coming in at the
bottom and rising up at the top, with tenn
perature not below 30, or even % degrees
the freezing point of sea water-would go
far to mitigate the climate in the regions
round about.
And that there is a warmer climate some
where in that inhospitable sea, the observa-
tons of many of the explorers who have Wis
tied it indicate. Its existence may be in
ferred also from the we'll known fact that
the birds and animals are found in certain
seasons migrating to the North, evidently in
search of milder climates. The instincts Of
these dumb, creatures are unerring, and we
can imagine no mitigation of the climate in
that direction, unless it arise from the prox-
unity or the presence there of a large body
of open water"
Whatever may be the explanation, the
fact of an open sea is now well established.