9. If this view be correct, it will remain an insuperable difficulty to reach the Pole with a ship. The penetrating to 82° or 83° exhausts, according to all past experience, the disposable time for navigation, and presupposes moreover the most favourable conditions for the attaining of such high latitudes. A ship which reaches 82° N.L. by the beginning of autumn must risk nothing more, should only navigate really open water, and the expediency of securing a winter harbour should then outweigh every other consideration. 10. He who expects with a ship of the present construction to reach the Pole in a single summer, necessarily believes in an ocean at the Pole. But even if an expedition should penetrate to 84° in Smith’s Sound, or should reach Cape Tcheljuskin on the north-east route, it would not follow that such an ocean exists, but only that the Polar Sea presents at different times and in different places open water-ways, which may enable a ship to advance beyond a point hitherto reached; but it is improbable that the circumstances which favoured this will be repeated the next summer, so as to permit the ships to penetrate still further—or to return. The last American expedition returned without being able to speak decisively as to the possibility of navigating Lincoln Sea, and since this has not yet been verified by fact, we must suspend our judgment on the matter. To the English expedition, which has taken this route to the Pole, is reserved the great work of throwing light on the region of Upper Smith’s Sound, and the whole civilized world will hail with joy any successes which a nation, so long conspicuous for its perseverance in the cause of discovery, may happily achieve. CHAPTER V. THE FUTURE OF THE POLAR QUESTION.