The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1870-02-26
The Gateways to the Pole.

can monthlies, and employs the pens OF some
of the highest literary talent of the United States,
among whom may be mentioned the names of
Messrs. j. G. Austin, Bayard Taylor, R. H. Stod-
dard, S. 5. Conant, and other writers of note.
The article which we propose briefly to notice, is
by Prot. T. b. Maury, a relative of Capt. NJ. F.
Maury, author of the system of {" Circle Sailing"
which has proved of SO much value to the science
OF ocean navigation.
Prof. Maury opens with the proposition-in
itself sufficiently startling to at once attract at
tention-that 90 there is reason to believe that
the perilous question of a way to the Pole has at
last been answered.
Capt. SiIas Bent, of the United States Navy,
who accompanied Com. Perry's Japan Expedition,
recently delivered n lecture before the Historical
Society and Mercantile Library Association of
st. Louis, in which ne laid down the theory,
long believed by many ge~ographers, that at the
Pole itself there is a large open sea, Gas seen by
DIR. Kane) always free from ice, in which the
temperature of the water and of the air is mild
at all seasons, (28o in winter and 42o in sum-
mer.) This, it is asserted, is caused by two
great ocean currents, flowing from the tropics to
the Pole,-the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic and
the kurO-&iloO in the Pacific. The existence of
the latter as a permanent stream, was first demon
strated by Capt. Bent in 1913, while on the
passage from China to Japan in the sloop-ofwar
PrebLe. Encountering a strong gale of wind
after doubling the southern end of Formosa, the
ship was laid to, under storm-sails, and thus re-
manned for three consecutive days. 1t would be
natural that a vessel so situated would drift to
leeward at the rate of about thirty miles per
day. But when the storm abated, the navigator
was not a little surprised to find that, instead OF
having drifted in the direction in which the wind
was blowing, the ship had been actually carried
by a current, known as the Kur0-Si,UO, ninety
miles to the northward against the wind. 1t also
appeared, during the cruise, that there existed,
on the opposite side Of FOrmosa, an equally
strong current rolling its waters southwark. Capt.
Bent demonstrates by his own observations, cor
roborated by the statement of a whaling master
with whom he conversed at Honolulu in 1913.
that the Kuro-Siwo, taking its rise in the Pacific
tropics, and pursuing its way northward and
eastward, enters the Arctic Ocean by the way of
Behring's Straits. In the Atlantic, the Gulf
Stream, pursuing the same course, finds its en-
trance to the same ocean by the way of Spitzber-
gen. The statements of our whaling masters are
fully sustained by Capt. John Rogers, of the
United States Exploring Expedition, who passed
to the northward of Bhering's Straits in l854-5,
and who states that g as far us he went to the
northward and eastward beyond the straits, he
had an open sea, with a current flowing to the
n%orthward and eastward, and with u temperature
of water much above that due to the latitude"
The same testimony in regard to the existence OF
the great Polar Sea, has been given by different
navigators who have at different periods pene-
trated to the north on the Atlantic side,-by
Kotzebue in 1915, and by Admiral Wrangell in
1893, who both state that /" the sea was open to
the northeast as far as the eye could reach"
According to the Transactions of the Royal Society
of London, for 1875, two Dutch whalers, having
got into the current of the Gulf Stream,
in 1865, penetrated to the Pole itself. 1t is to
be regretted that no account has been preserved
of what they saw in the unexplored sea which
undoubtedly surrounds the Pole, and is the resort
of innumerable whales, walruses, and focks of
brant geese and ducks.
Besides the two streams running north to the
Polar Sea, the Gulf and the Kuro-Siwo, there are
two counter currents in each ocean, issuing out
of the sea and running south,-that in the At
lanlic skirting along the coasts of Norway and
Great Britain, while that in the Pacific discharges
its waters into the China Sea.
1t being admitted then, that there does exist
an open Polar Sea, the temperature of which
according to Capt. Bent's theory is about go
in winter, and into and out of which there con-
stantly flows two warm currents,-let us see how
he proposes to make these facts available to the
commerce of the world.
1t is well known that in those high ATTITUDES,
the needle of the compass defects so much as to
1ften cease to be u guide to the mariner. Capt.
Bent proposes a new mode of reaching the Pole,
we will give in his own closing words in a
addressed to the President of the
Geographical Society of New York, in which he
states his convictions g that the Gulf Stream
md Kuro-Siwo are the prime and only cause of
the open sea about the Pole, with its temperature
SO much above that due to the latitude that the
only practicable avenues by which ships can
reach that open sea, and thence to the Pole, is
by following the warm waters of these streams
that sea and that to find and follow these
streams, the rater-thermometer is the only guide,
and that for this reason they may be justly
termed The Thermometric Gateways to the
If, by actual experiment, it shall DO proved
the theory here advanced is a correct one,
and that ships can safely pass from the Atlantic
to the Pacific by the route indicated, the fact
would become the event of the nineteenth century.
The dreams of Ross, Parry and Franklin, and of
the hosts of brave men who have lost their lives
in the vain attempt to solve the problem of a
northwest passage, will be realized, the course of
commerce will be revolutionized, and Capt. Bent
De hailed as a benefactor of his race. Whether
The theory is to live or die, remains to be seen.
rhe subject is before the Geographical Society of
York, which it is reported will devise means
IF shortly giving the proposition the fairest trial
by practical experiment. At the same time, it is
that Germany, Sweden, France, England
md Russia, have each in contemplation expedi-
ions to the Pole. DR.. Hayes, the distinguished =,
explorer, has also announced another :
expedition, to start in the spring of 1870 Thus
t appears there will be ample opportunity to test .
he new theory