GENERAL A. W. GREELY, U. S. ARMY.

height, rectangular shape, nearly flat surface, perpendicular cliffs, and especially from its laminated structure. Whenever a palæocrystic iceberg is seen in the far north, before its face has suffered much from the melting action of the sun, a close observer notes that it presents along its front a series of faint blue lines, separated by interspaces of opaque white. These lines show a stratification due to yearly accumulations of snow upon a nearly level surface, which are transformed gradually into ice, and each line also represents the limit of the accumulation of a single year. In a similar manner are formed the glaciers of the Alps and Greenland; but these latter ice-sheets are torn, distorted, and re-formed a thousand times in their descent down rapid slopes and through confining valleys of greater or less width. Floebergs, then, are parts of great ice sheets which, formed from successive snowfalls over a land area of no great elevation and very gentle gradients, flow downward from its highest level in the direction of least resistance. The slope being gentle, the ice moving gradually seaward, with its structure unchanged and its stratification unbroken, passes slowly into the ocean, whence eventually its buoyancy causes it to rise and disrupt in a

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vast mass from the main sheet. floeberg formation being of fresh water, which freezes at 32° Fahr., descends into polar sea water of a temperature varying from 27° 5' to 29° Fahr., and thus remains unmelted in its oceanic environment.

It is quite well settled that the Antarctic ice barrier, as observed first by Wilkes and Ross, and later by Nares and Carpenter, is the margin of a polar ice-cap, whose thickness is about two thousand feet at its edge, and of unknown thickness near its polar centre.

The presence of floebergs, or palæocrystic icebergs, in the Arctic Sea indicates, then, a North Polar ice-cap, and no doubt exists in my mind that the neighborhood of the North Pole is occupied by an ice-covered land, over which it is probable that the feet of man will never tread, until flyingmachines or dirigible balloons are successfully operated.

Where then is this polar ice-cap situated, and what is its extent? The area covered by this ice-cap must be considerable, since a floeberg that averaged six hundred feet in thickness, and in places attained a thickness of nine hundred feet, was observed by the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition in Kane Sea, whence it had floated from the polar ocean through Robeson and Kennedy Channels. As the average accretion of the ice-cap, as indicated by observations of many floebergs, is from three to four inches a year, it is reasonable to assume that the formation of this berg took from two thousand five hundred to three thousand years; i.e., the lower strata of this most perishable of solids were probably being formed in the time of the construction of Solomon's temple. As a very gentle slope is required in order to prevent distortion of its annual accretions in its movement seaward, it is safe to assume that this floeberg must have travelled several hundred miles from the centre of the polar icecap before it was born by disruption in the Arctic Ocean.

It is well determined that the islands conjoining with Greenland do not extend northwards much beyond the point reached by Lockwood and Brainard,

for the tide of Robeson Channel is an Atlantic tide, flowing around the north of Greenland; and, as the tidal hour is exactly known, it is also certain that either the Arctic Ocean to the north of Greenland must be considerably deeper than is supposed, or else that continent does not extend much farther northward. Again, the shallowness of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia has been fully demonstrated by De Long in his long drift from Bering Strait, no deep water being found, while in places the lead showed only seventeen to twenty fathoms.

To produce floebergs, however, a land must be comparatively level; hence a polar ice-cap which sheds the floebergs of the Arctic Ocean is presumably nearer to the low, shelving coast of Siberia than to the high precipitous lands which are characteristic of the Arctic Circle from Franz Josef Land in the east to Grinnell Land in the west.

For these reasons, therefore, I am inclined to believe that the North Polar ice-cap lies almost directly to the north of Bering Strait, with its centre somewhere between the eightysixth and eighty-eighth parallels of latitude and the one hundred and fiftyfifth and one hundred and seventyfifth meridians of west longitude. From this locality one would expect floebergs on the Siberian coast, which, however, the shallow sea forbids. We find them on the west coast of Banks Land, along the northern coast of Grinnell Land, and in the waterways connecting the polar ocean and Smith Sound, where scores of floebergs are seen yearly, from those of the average thickness, about one hundred feet, to a very few of the largest that the water will carry, about eight or nine hundred feet thick.

The bergs of Franz Josef Land are probably of home manufacture, offshoots from the glaciers to the north of Cape Fligely; while the scarcity or absence of them in the Spitzbergen sea arises from the land to the north of Greenland, which was discovered by Lockwood in 1882, projecting so far to the eastward as to catch all bergs drifting from the polar ice-cap. We

might expect floebergs from Northeast Land or Franz Josef Land to drift south in the Spitzbergen current, if it played the part assigned it by Nansen. He believes it to be simply the method by which is discharged from the polar ocean the excess of water flowing therein from the great Siberian rivers, and through the northerly surface currents (the so-called Gulf Stream, etc.) from the Atlantic.

I am of the opinion that the southerly flowing surface currents-the western current through the Greenland sea, and the eastern one passing along the shores of eastern Spitzbergen and Bear Islands become feebler to the northward, and cease or become wind currents, and thus variable at or near the point of equilibrium between the warm Atlantic surface water flowing northward and the general vertical oceanic circulation, wherein the coldest and densest water creeps from the Poles towards the Equator by all accessible communications at the bottom of the sea.

Around the North Polar ice-cap grinds and groans the impenetrable and irresistible ice-pack, in ceaseless motion under the impelling action of constant tides, shifting currents, and varying winds. Here and there projecting and widely separated headlands hold fast between them, for a few months, some thousand square miles of solid embayed ice, which constitute the "great frozen sea" of Markham. Again, hundreds of thousands of square miles of huge ice-floes, acted on by contrary forces, temporarily present large openings, which are the polynia of Wrangel, the water spaces of Parry, and the open polar sea of Hayes.

Through all these slight changes, for slight they are by comparison, this pack always abides, and will always dominate the polar ocean. With ceaseless motion it carried the "Jeannette" thirteen hundred miles to her destruction, as it has also scores of too venturesome whalers; and it ever acts with such power, majesty, and certainty as to be beyond the comprehension of one who has not dared its terrors and seen a part of its mysteries.

"But think how small he is," said the black panther, who would have spoiled Mowgli if he had had his own way. "How can his little head carry all thy long talk?"

"Is there anything in the jungle too little to be killed? No. That is why I teach him these things; and that is why I hit him very softly when he forgets."

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'Softly! What dost thou know of softness, old iron feet?" Bagheera grunted. "His face is all bruised today by thy-softness. Ugh!"

"Better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him, than that he should come to harm through ignorance," Baloo answered, very earnestly. "I am now teaching him the master words of the jungle, that shall protect him with the birds and the snake people, and all that hunt on four feet-except his own pack. He can now claim protection, if he will only remember the words, from all in the jungle. Is not that worth a little beating?"

"Well, look to it then that thou dost not kill the man cub. He is no treetrunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what are those master words? I am more likely to give help than to ask it "-Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue talons at the end of it-"still I should like to know."

"I will call Mowgli, and he shall say them if he will. Come, little brother!"

"My head is ringing like a beehive," said a sullen little voice over their heads, and Mowgli slid down a treetrunk very angry and indignant, adding as he reached the ground: "I came to Bagheera and not to thee, fat old Baloo!"

"That is all one to me," said Baloo, though he was hurt and grieved. "Tell Bagheera, then, the master words of the jungle that I have taught thee today."

"Master words for which people?" said Mowgli, delighted to show off. "The jungle has many tongues. know them all."

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"A little thou knowest, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never thank their

teacher. Not a wolf has come back to thank old Baloo for his teachings. Say the word for the hunting people, then, great scholar."

"We be all of one blood-ye and I," said Mowgli, giving the words the bear accent, which all the hunting classes

use.

"Good! Now for the birds."

Mowgli repeated, with the kite's whistle at the end of the sentence. "Now for the snake people," said Bagheera.

The answer was a perfectly indescribable hiss, and Mowgli kicked up his feet behind, clapped his hands together to applaud himself, and jumped on to Bagheera's back, where he sat sideways, drumming with his heels on the glossy skin, and making the worst faces he could think of at Baloo.

"There there. That was worth a little bruise," said the brown bear tenderly. "Some day thou wilt remember me." Then he turned aside to tell Bagheera how he had begged the master words from Hathi, the wild elephant, who knows all about those things, and how Hathi had taken Mowgli down to a pool to get the snake word from a water snake, because Baloo could not pronounce it, and how Mowgli was now reasonably safe against accidents in the jungle, because neither snake, bird, nor beast would hurt him.

"No one then is to be feared," he wound up, patting his big furry stomach with pride.

"Thou hast been with the monkey people-the gray apes-the people without a law-the eaters of everything. That is a great shame."

"When Baloo hurt my head," said Mowgli (he was still on his back), "I went away, and the gray apes came down from the trees and had pity on me. No one else cared." He snuffled a little.

"The pity of the monkey people!" Baloo snorted. "The stillness of the mountain brook! The cool of the summer sun! And then, man cub?"

"And then, and then, they gave me nuts and pleasant things to eat, and they they carried me in their arms up to the top of the trees, and said I was their blood brother and should be their leader, some day."

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They have no leader," said Bagheera. "They lie. They have always lied."

"They were very kind, and bade me come again. Why have I never been taken among the monkey people? They stand on their feet, as I do. They do not hit me with hard paws. They play all day. Let me get up! Bad Baloo, let me up! I will play with them again."

"Listen, man cub," said the bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on a hot night. "I have taught thee all the law of the jungle for all the peoples of the jungle, except the monkey folk, who live in the trees. They have no law. They are outcasts. They have no speech of their own, but use the words they overhear when they listen and creep and wait up above in the branches. Their way is not our way. They are without leaders. They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter, and pretend that they are a great people, about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter, and all

is forgotten. We of the jungle have no dealings with them. We do not drink where the monkeys drink, we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die. Hast thou ever heard me speak of the bandar-log till to-day?"

"No," said Mowgli in a whisper, for the forest was very still now Baloo had finished.

"The jungle people put them out of their mouths and out of their mind. They are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if they have any fixed desires, to be noticed by the jungle people. But we do not notice them, even when they throw nuts and branches on our heads."

He had hardly spoken when a shower of nuts and twigs spattered down through the branches; and they could hear coughings and howlings and angry jumpings high up in the air among the thin branches.

"The monkey people are forbidden," said Baloo, "forbidden to the jungle people. Remember."

Forbidden!" said Bagheera, "but I still think Baloo should have warned thee."

"I—I ? How was I to guess he would play with such dirt? The monkey people. Faugh!"

A fresh shower came down on their heads, and the two trotted away, taking Mowgli with them. What Baloo had said about the monkeys was perfectly true. They belonged to the tree tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the jungle people to cross each other's path. But whenever they found a sick wolf or a wounded tiger or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the jungle people to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over nothing among themselves and leave the dead monkeys where the jungle people would see them. They were always just going to have a leader and laws and customs of their own, but they never