Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery

We had a fine gale from the S. W., and made rapid progress to the S. E. under canvass. Although the most perfect satisfaction with the course I had determined on appeared to prevail throughout the ship's company, Mr. Slim came to me in my cabin, when relieved from his watch on deck, and told me, that, however satisfactory my account of the matter might have been to the other officers and the crew, it was not satisfactory to his mind; and he should be glad to be informed how I accounted for the vast bodies of ice which had invariably stopped the progress of navigators in high latitudes, if my notions of great heat at the poles were correct? "Take a chair, Mr. Slim, and we will talk about it. In the first place, we have no account of any navigator having sailed to a higher southern latitude than 71°, and 82° appears, from the most authentic accounts, to be the highest northern latitude that has been visited. Navigators to these high latitudes have always found ice between the parallels of 70° and 80°, which space that profound philosopher, John Cleve Symmes, denominates the 'icy hoop.' It is true he has not taken the trouble to explain to the world, in a satisfactory manner, why and wherefore this narrow strip of ice should exist in that region; which omission, I judge, must have arisen from the circumstance of its being obvious to his capacious mind, that such a 'hoop' must necessarily exist, 'according to the laws of matter and motion.' The causes of it appearing to him perfectly simple, he could not suppose it necessary to state them to 'the most enlightened people on the face of the globe.' Now, sir, I will explain the matter to you. At the pole, that is, ninety degrees from the equator, there is seven months summer, without any interval of night, as I stated on deck; and when the sun has twenty-three and a half degrees of south declination, its rays must strike the pole, allowing but three degrees for the effect of refraction, on an angle of 26-1/2° with the plane of the horizon, and must appear nearly as high as in Scotland in the months of March and September. It is true it does not continue at this extreme declination for any great length of time.