This is perhaps the most marked analogy between the perils of the two expeditions; so far as those of our own are yet known. But the scientific conclusions of Lieutenant Payer, as set forth in the general Introduction to his narrative, strikingly harmonize with the actual discoveries of the _Alert_ and _Discovery_. Already it is authoritatively announced, that there is no open Polar Sea; that this hypothesis is as baseless as the existence of President’s Land. In the fourth chapter of that Introduction (pp. 25-31), our author has analysed with great sagacity the various theories on which that hypothesis was made to rest, working up to the conclusion, that no such sea exists. The demonstration of experience now takes the place of enlightened argument and opinion; fact and theory are here at one.
Nor can we forbear to direct attention to another statement in the same chapter. Let our readers mark the prophetic spirit of the following passage: “All the changes and phenomena of this mighty network lead us to infer the existence of frozen seas up to the Pole itself; and according to my own experience, gained in three expeditions, I consider that the states of the ice between 82° and 90° N. L. will not essentially differ from those which have been observed south of latitude 82°; I incline rather to the belief that they will be found worse instead of better” (p. 30). And “worse instead of better” they have been found, as we cannot doubt, when we weigh the ominous significance of the designation the “Sea of Ancient Ice.”
History may or may not verify the position which the telegram so briefly resumes—“The Pole impracticable.” Impracticable no doubt it was, if the condition of the ice seen by our expedition in that awful sea be its normal condition. All that it was possible for men to dare and achieve, England will feel that her officers and sailors dared and achieved under the circumstances they encountered. It may be, that later experience will show, that even that Sea may present to future explorers an aspect less tremendous; yea, that in some seasons, which science may yet predict, when her theories of the sun-spots are matured and formulated, open water will be found, as perhaps it was found in the year of the expedition of the _Polaris_, where the heroic sledging parties from the _Alert_ and _Discovery_ saw nothing and found nothing, but piled-up barriers of ice rising to the height of 150 feet.