We are also aware that the
sailing vessel which came to us found an entrance through this vast
ring-like continent, which entrance-way is only three hundred miles in
width, and is the only means of access to this inland sea, except a
narrower channel diametrically opposite to the broader one. The broader
opening, in its main part, is traversed by warm currents outward, which
remain warm until the continent is passed; and by one broad central warm
current inward, which is very swift, and the source of the great warmth
of which we have never been able to determine. The narrower passage,
generally completely frozen, or choked with ice, conveys to the central
sea only water at nearly the freezing temperature. The mainland consists
chiefly of volcanic mountains, is apparently covered with ice, and is
wholly impassable. Now, we have long thought ourselves safe from the
outer world, as we really are from the savages of the other islands
within this great sea. We know that in the first thousand years of our
history there came to us once two wrecked sailors, and at another time a
single sailor; then came the ship; and since then every ten to thirty
years we have had some token, animate or inanimate, from the great
beyond.
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