Note 894 — Chapter VIII · THE WATERS
Reading edition
For references to the Liver Sea and to classical allusions to a clotted sea, see Moritz, Geogr. Kenntnis, 1904, p. 24, note 2; Konrad Kretschmer, Die Entdeckung Amerika’s in ihrer Bedeutung für die Geschichte des Weltbildes, Berlin, 1892, p. 85, note 1; and more especially the full data in Graf, Miti, leggende, vol. i, 1892, p. 106 and notes on pp. 186–187, and in Nansen, Northern Mists, 1911, vol. i, pp. 181–182 and p. 182, note 1. Benjamin of Tudela places the clotted sea in the Far East (Itinerary, Adler’s transl., 1907, p. 66, and above p. 272). In early French literature the sea is often referred to as la mer betée (see Frahm, Das Meer, 1914, pp. 76–77).
Many theories have been adduced to explain the origins of this persistent rumor of a clotted sea. It may have arisen through distorted reports of floating masses of seaweed or of the Sargasso Sea. It has also been suggested that experiences in dead water such as that described by Fridtjof Nansen (Farthest North, New York, 1897, vol. i, p. 196) may have contributed to the formation of the legend. Such dead water, Nansen explains, is caused by the presence of a layer of fresh water from melted ice over the surface of the sea water. See Frahm, loc. cit.; Koch, Das Meer, 1910, pp. 21–22. For another explanation see Paul Masson, Pythéas et le poumon marin, in: Bulletin de la Section de Géographie, vol. xxxvii, Paris, 1923, pp. 55–66.