The same high degree of volcanic activity must have formerly existed between Europe and America, for the traces of it are still visible. And not the traces alone, but a part of the same activity. And doubtless the shallowness of the waters between those continents hints at the same. More accurate explorations, then, will probably reveal multitudes of mountains, thrown up by these submarine forces, but not far enough to emerge and bear the name of islands. Yet many have emerged—those which fringe the shores of Norway, Scotland, and Ireland; the Orkneys, Shetland, and Hebrides islands; the Färoe group, with their blistered surface, their recesses, and volcanic rocks; Iceland, with its hot springs; and Mount Heckla; Jan Mayen, with its frightful craters, and the eastern coast of Greenland; one island, Sabrina, in the midst of the Azore group; which has had three upheavals within two hundred years, in 1638, 1723, and 1811,—all these plainly indicate the presence of tremendous forces, active in the past as well as in the present. We thus fix the character of the arctic polar lands to be a close drawing together. Europe has, fortunately for itself, the least share in those inhospitable regions; only her pointed northern shores fringe the shores of the polar sea, leaving the great bulk of the great land-mass of the north to the broad shores of Asia and North America, with their neighboring island groups. This polar world, as we may call it, in contradistinction to the Orient and the Occident, is not separated from more southerly regions by any great physical line of demarkation. The arctic circle is a mere mathematical line 66½° N. lat.; it has no geographical character whatever. The true polar world reaches in some places far beyond this mathematical barrier, bringing all its characteristics with it; while, on the other hand, it withdraws, at a few other places, nearer to the Pole. Were the polar world more broken up than it is by inland seas, and separated from the great land-mass by broad channels, it would be far more isolated in its whole character than it is. It is this immediate contiguity of the polar world with the great land-mass which opens it to whatever civilization it may be able to receive. And there is the same unity in the polar world that there is in the tropical world. The same phenomena which appear in one part of it are repeated in every other part. There are, of course, subordinate modifications found, but everything essential, which is discovered in one part, is discovered in every other part. There is no distinction into “new world” and no “old world;” the new world and the old coincide amid the arctic pole.