If we suppose that not the wind but Arctic currents carried the ice-field southwards, we must yet admit the probability—nay, almost the certainty—that such currents are only local, and occupy but a part of the breadth of the North Atlantic seas in those high latitudes. The general drift of the North Atlantic surface-water is unquestionably not towards the south but towards the north; and whatever part we suppose the Arctic ice to perform in regulating the system of oceanic circulation—whether, with Carpenter, we consider the descent of the cooled water as the great moving cause of the entire system of circulation, or assign to that motion a less important office (which seems to me the juster opinion)—we must in any case regard the Arctic seas as a region of surface indraught. The current flowing from those seas, which caused (on the hypothesis we are for the moment adopting) the southwardly motion of Parry’s ice-field, must therefore be regarded as in all probability an exceptional phenomenon of those seas. By making the advance from a more eastwardly or more westwardly part of Spitzbergen, a northerly current would probably be met with; or rather, the motion of the ice-field would indicate the presence of such a current, for I question very much whether open water would anywhere be found north of the 83rd parallel. In that case, a party might advance in one longitude and return in another, selecting for their return the longitude in which (always according to our present hypothesis that currents caused the drift) Parry found that a southerly current underlay his route across the ice. On the whole, however, it appears to me more probable that winds, not currents, caused the southerly drift of Parry’s ice-field. In 1868, a German expedition, under Captain Koldewey, made the first visit to the seas west of Spitzbergen in a steamship, the small but powerful screw steamer _Germania_ (126 tons), advancing northwards a little beyond the 81st parallel. But this voyage can scarcely be regarded as an attempt to approach the Pole on that course; for Koldewey’s instructions were, “to explore the eastern coast of Greenland northwards; and, if he found success in that direction impossible, to make for the mysterious Island of Gilles on the east of Spitzbergen.”