3. Polar navigators have learnt in the school of experience to distinguish between navigation in the frozen seas remote from the land, and navigation in the so called coast-waters. The former is far more dangerous, entirely dependent on accident, exposed to grave catastrophes, and without any definite goal. It affords no certainty of finding a winter harbour for the long period when cold and darkness render navigation impossible. On the other hand, a strip of open water, which retreats before the growth of the land-ice only in winter, forms itself along coasts, and especially under the lee of those exposed to marine currents running parallel to them; and this coast-water does not arise from the thawing of the ice through the greater heat of the land, but from the land being an immovable barrier against wind, and therefore against ice-currents. The inconstancy of the wind, however, may baffle all the calculations of navigation; for coast-water, open as far as the eye can reach, may be filled with ice in a short time by a change of the wind. Land-ice often remains on the coasts even during summer, and in this case there is nothing to be done but to find the open navigable waters between the extreme edge of the fast-ice and the drift-ice. Should the drift become pack-ice, the moment must be awaited when winds setting in from the land carry off the masses of ice blocking the navigation, and open a passage free from ice, or at least only partially covered with drift-ice. It is evident that navigation in coast-waters must be slow and gradual, though it has always been attended with the greatest advantages. Barentz was the first who tested its value; but it was Parry, the most distinguished of all Polar navigators, who discovered its full importance, and from his day it has been accepted as an incontrovertible canon of ice-navigation. On this point he himself says: “Our experience, I think, has clearly shown, that the navigation of the Polar Seas can never be performed with any degree of certainty without a continuity of land. It was only by watching the openings between the ice and the shore that our late progress to the westward was effected; and had the land continued in the desired direction, there can be no question that we should have continued to advance, however slowly, towards the completion of our enterprise.”[5]