THE OPEN POLAR SEA.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3098, 22 January 1879, Page 4

THE OPEN POLAR SEA.

A Captain who has Confidence in its Existence. The publication of the article on the Arctic Ocean in the Chronicle of the 17th has given rise to a good deal of speculative conversation among the old sea dogs at present in port who have braved the icy dangers of the frozen zone. While most of the whaling Captains were united in the opinion that an open Polar sea was but a mythical theory at best, one gentleman, whose experience has been such as to entitle his views to great weight, is firmly convinced that it is an absolute reality. Captain Barber, who was in command of the whaler Japan when she was lost in the fall of 1870, told a Chronicle reporter that from his own observation he was a believer in an open Polar sea. Captain Barker is a man of more than ordinary intelligence and evidently a very close observer. The Japan went ashore just off East Cape while he was trying to beat out of Behring strait, and he was obliged to winter among the natives with his crew and was* not rescued until the return of the whaling fleet in 1871. He says that early in February the current began to set very strongly to the north, and took* the ice from the shore far out to sea, in a northerly direction. Soon after this, while hunting.on top of the mountains along;the coast, he heard distinctly the roice of the surf breaking far to the northward. In that atmosphere a noise of any kind can be heard a long distance, and to a nautical ear the sound of breaking surf can never be misunderstood. Captain Barker \ says that the natives with whom he remained during the winter have a legend to the effect that many yean ago: a colony of their tribe went over to Wrangel's Land and have never returned. He has been close enough to the latter coast to see vegetation upon the mountain side, and the natives claim that they used formerly to cut trees there. Captain Barker has ' great faith that the Jeannette will solve the Polar problem. Captain Lewis Williams, of Oakland, another whaling captain, also contributed some valuable information regarding Wrangel's Land. He had been along its coast as high as 75 ° north latitude, and stated that northeast fronj Herald Island, which is the direction in which.the coast of Wrangel's Land extends, there is a deep canal-like passage, through, which the current flows rapidly to the north. He believes that , vegetation and a comparatively mild climate will be found on the west coast of this' terra incognita. All the facts gathered in regard to this subject are of interest and cannot fail to be of value to the explorer of the future.