Читать книгу New lands within the Arctic circle - Julius Payer - Страница 12

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1. The failure of the second German Arctic expedition directed the future efforts of Polar exploration to the seas of Novaya Zemlya. Although the geographical position and political relations of Austria prevented its Government from taking any active part in the great geographical problems and questions of our times, an interest in Polar discovery had been excited in her statesmen, which gradually ripened into a determination to send its flag, renowned for its military fame, to consecrate struggles on the peaceful domain of scientific exploration. The magnanimous act of Graf Wilczek, contributing 40,000 florins towards the equipment of an Austro-Hungarian expedition, not only strengthened but also endowed the resolve. In order, however, to obviate the possibility of spending large sums on a plan which might be unfeasible, or if feasible, of little value, it was determined to despatch a pioneer expedition to the seas of Novaya Zemlya under the joint command of Lieutenant Weyprecht and myself. The knowledge and experience gained in that voyage—which is described in the following pages—induced the Austrian Government to send another and more powerful vessel to those seas, equipped to pass two or more winters in the ice.

2. It seemed to be established as the result of many expeditions, that almost invincible difficulties opposed the reaching of the central Arctic regions by the routes through Baffin’s Bay, Behring’s Straits, along the coast of Greenland, and from Spitzbergen, mainly because on them all we are met by the great Arctic currents, which act as channels to carry off the ice of the Polar basin. These currents carry with them vast masses of ice, which they deposit on all the coasts which they strike. On the results of many Norwegian, Russian, and German voyages, partly in the interests of science, partly in the interests of commerce, many geographers maintained that the traces of the Gulf Stream did not disappear at the North Cape, but rather that it exercised a considerable influence on places and in latitudes not before imagined, as, for instance, on the north-east coasts of Novaya Zemlya. An expedition, therefore, which followed the course of the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream would find fewer and less formidable obstacles, than on the routes exposed to the Arctic currents, carrying with them colossal masses of ice towards the south. On the east of Spitzbergen there is a land which has, indeed, been often seen, but never reached, or even attempted to be reached—Gillis’ Land—lying in the course of the Gulf Stream; and it is a probable assumption, that navigable water would be found under its western coast, as at Spitzbergen, where 80° N. Lat. can be reached every year without any difficulty. If, then, this stream extends still further to the north—which is probable according to the soundings taken by the Swedes—it is reasonable to expect that higher latitudes may be reached on this than on any other route.

3. It is remarkable, that the seas between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya were utterly unknown to science. No expedition had ever been sent thither, though many things seemed to invite and favour the venture, and Dr. Petermann had long endeavoured to organize a powerful and well-equipped expedition to explore higher latitudes on this route. At length Lieutenant Weyprecht and I undertook a voyage of reconnaissance to those waters, in order to ascertain whether the climate and the state of the ice were as favourable in reality, as they seemed to be in theory. No attempt was to be made to reach high latitudes or to make important geographical discoveries. The small means at our command forbade either. Our aims were more limited; they referred to the temperature of the water and the air, to the currents, to the state of the ice, to the probability of success in the following year (1872), and lastly, to opportunities for extended sledge journeys. We were to sail from Tromsoe about the middle of June, and return thither by the middle of September.

4. In order to diminish expenses, we chartered at Tromsoe a small sailing ship. A steamer would, indeed, have been more serviceable, but the cost would have been quadrupled, without any adequate advantage. The Isbjörn (i.e., Ice-bear) was a vessel of fifty tons, cutter-rigged, 55 feet long, 17 feet broad, with a draught of 6 feet. Her bows were protected with sheet-iron, two feet above, and two feet under, water. She was new and strong, and made with us her first voyage. We had also two small boats, and a so-called “Fang-boot”—whale-boat. She was commanded by Captain Kjelsen, and had as a crew a harpooner, four sailors, a carpenter, and a cook—all Norwegians. We were provided with the requisite instruments by the Imperial Geographical Institute, and were provisioned for four or five months. The Austrian Consul Aagaard aided us to the utmost of his ability in the equipment of the vessel. It must be observed, that we had no direct command or control over the vessel and its crew; the responsibility for the ship, and the immediate command over its crew, belonged to the skipper Kjelsen. Weyprecht was, however, the real commander.

5. The information we gathered concerning the state of the ice in the region of our projected exploration, was exceedingly contradictory. While, for example, Dr. Bessels, in the steamer Albert, of Rosendal, discovered a branch of the Gulf Stream with a temperature of 41° F. at the ice-barrier on the south of Gillis’ Land, Dr. Petermann sent us a letter of Lamont, in which he said: “Every year the ice appears to me more formidable.” The whalers of Tromsoe, who knew the ice of that region only from hearsay, and could give no positive information as to its limits, uttered many unfavourable prognostications as to the possibility of penetrating that frozen sea, or of approaching Gillis’ Land from the south. The region was utterly unknown, even to many skippers who sailed from Spitzbergen to Novaya Zemlya. The few attempts to penetrate to that land, first seen in 1707, and regarded by the Swedes as a continent, had been unsuccessful. So also their efforts to reach it from the south-west in 1864 and 1868. Captain Koldewey’s attempt also, which was made from the “Thousand Isles” three months before the last-named voyage, had been attended with the same want of success. None of these expeditions had passed beyond the ice-barrier, and their failures contributed greatly to strengthen the opinion, that the Novaya Zemlya seas were unnavigable.

6. All our inquiries were met also with the prediction of an exceedingly unfavourable year for the ice. The spring of 1871 had been unusually severe, and even to the middle of June the northern parts of Norway were covered with a mantle of snow reaching down to the sea. It was inferred, therefore, that there would be an excessive accumulation of ice in the seas further north. We heard even, that there was ice at the distance of about twenty (Norwegian) miles from North Cape. And it was certainly true, that the north winds, which prevailed for some weeks, kept a number of Norwegian fishing and seal-hunting vessels weatherbound off the “Scheeren.” All this notwithstanding, we determined to keep to our plan of sailing to Hope Island, and of following from thence the ice-barrier towards the east, our progress, of course, being dependent on favourable conditions of the ice, and perhaps on the influences of the Gulf Stream. As it was within the verge of possibility to make Gillis’ Land during the season of our operations, we considered it advisable not to pass beyond 40° E. Long. while we penetrated northward.

7. On the 20th of June we left Tromsoe during a drizzling snow-storm, and while we were sailing up the “Qualsund” without a pilot, we touched the ground—a danger we incurred from the desire of our married sailors to put their wives ashore, after leave-taking, as near the land as possible. At Rysoe we fell in with the fleet of the Tromsoe fishing-boats at anchor, waiting for a change of weather, and with them some vessels which, we thought, would have been by this time in the ice, having left Tromsoe four weeks before.

THE FIRST ICE

8. The rocky islands off the coast of Finnmark are surrounded by bleak cliffs, rising to the height of 2,500 feet, and upwards. Trees cease to grow there; occasionally the birch appears, but never in sufficient numbers to form a wood. The numerous islands of a gneiss formation show the same landscape which characterizes Norway—indescribably bleak table-lands, deep secluded valleys and gorges, interspersed with lonely mountain lakes. The bold, picturesque outlines of these islands are exceedingly striking, though their fertility is meagre in the extreme. The solitary rocky shores are inhabited by poor families, secluded from the world, and having little intercourse with each other. They live for the most part on the fish which they catch. The remains of fish round these settlements render their approach exceedingly disagreeable; on the Loffoden Islands a guano manufactory has been established, which turns this refuse to good account. Tromsoe or Hammerfest appears in their eyes as the glory and pride of the world. We were detained two days—June 24 and 25—by contrary winds, at Sandoe, an island covered with sea-sand full of small mussel shells, to the height of 600 feet. Ascending an elevated peak of this island, 2,000 feet high, we saw a panorama of countless cliffs of all sizes stretching down to Andeness, and opposite to us, the gloomy, rugged wastes of Norway, which show iron-bound walls, waterfalls, and bleak headlands, without woods, meadows, or habitations. For many hours we were mocked by an eagle, which, now soaring high, now darting down with rapid flight, gave his unwieldy pursuers a stiff and exhausting climb. We at last put to sea on the 26th of June, and passed the enormous rocky pile of Fugloe, down the precipitous face of which the inhabitants descend by means of ropes to get the down of the Eider-geese. Next day we were out of sight of land. The breeze freshened, and, as we sailed further to the north, we saw many whales. On the 28th of June we came on the first ice—a sight which reminds the Polar navigator that he has reached his home! Driven down by the north wind, its fragments lay thickly on the misty horizon like gleaming points. We were now south-east of Bear Island in 73° 40′ N. Lat. and 21° E. Long., and found the ice so broken up that we did not hesitate to penetrate it, in order to find out the latitude in which its closed masses would appear. We passed through forty miles of this loose drift-ice, and then came on the pack in 74° 30′ N. Lat. and 23° E. Long. Already, on the 30th of June, we had experienced the powerlessness of a small sailing vessel in such circumstances. The calms which had set in rendered it impossible to steer the ship, just when the ice was drifting in wild confusion. In spite of all our efforts to warp, the ship was inclosed by ice—in fact, beset. During our captivity of ten days, there was an alternation of fogs and gales with heavy sea-swells. The neighbourhood of floes sometimes small, sometimes large, which constantly shifted their places, kept us in a state of continual watchfulness. The Isbjörn, on some of these days, sustained such severe pressures from the ice, that her safety was imperilled. On the 4th of July we had heavy storms from the south-east, which packed the ice still closer, and, though the sea is generally quite calm within the ice, it was otherwise on this occasion. In the afternoon we heard through the dense fog the thunder of the ocean breaking on the outer edge of the ice, and the roar increased as the sea rose. Our attempts to haul further into the ice and still-water were fruitless; the ship was pressed too firmly, and was not to be moved from its place. Our position became more and more critical as the sea continued to rise. During the whole night the waves roared and boiled around us. The rudder groaned under the pressure of the floes, and had to be made fast to prevent its being broken off. A mass of ice grazing past the davits utterly destroyed one of our boats. The critical nature of such a situation is simply the uncertainty as to the amount of pressure which a ship can sustain. Towards evening the fog lifted and rolled away, presenting a spectacle of fearful grandeur. All round us lay the open sea dashing against the ice, which was itself in wild motion. Floes and icebergs were driven about by the waves, and their fragments strewed in all directions. At midnight our little ship sustained shock after shock, and her timbers strained and creaked. The “brash” of the crushed ice, which had gathered round the ship, prevented her destruction. As the storm abated, the larger masses of ice moved off to the edge of the horizon, so that in the morning we could not see open water from the deck. The day broke: what a change in the ice! The sea was calm, and a long swell died out on its outer edge. Piles of ice all round us—a weird and deathlike calm! The heavens were cloudless; the countless blocks and masses of ice stood out against the sky in blue neutral shadow, and the more level fields between them sparkled like silver as they shone in the sun. The movement of the sea beyond the ice abated, “leads” within the floes, hitherto scarcely perceptible, widened out. But again the sky was overcast, the sea assumed the colour of lead, though it continued quite calm and the “ice-blink” appeared on the northern horizon.

9. On the 10th of July the ship under full sail forced her way through the floes, which were still somewhat close, and reached open water. The masses of ice through which we pressed were of considerable size. We now continued our course, which had been interrupted in the manner described, along the ice-barrier in a north-easterly direction. After leaving the Norwegian coast, the depth of the sea decreased considerably. We were now on the bank of Bear Island, and we found bottom at 90 metres (49·213 fathoms). Our course was impeded by calms, currents and winds from the east, and even in the middle of July by severe storms. We were sometimes in drift-ice and sometimes outside of it. We soon discovered that the ice of these seas was not to be compared with the vast masses of the Greenland seas. The floes we saw were not more than one year old. As we sailed eastward, the icebergs were neither so numerous nor so large, and disappeared almost entirely at 40° E. Long., which we reached on the 21st of July, after we had followed the ice-barriers from 74° to 75° 30′ N. Lat. Here we penetrated within them. Though drift-ice lay on every side, a steamer would have found nothing to arrest her progress. But the prevalence sometimes of east winds, sometimes of calms, the constant occurrence of fogs, the defects of our vessel, the little authority we had over the crew when extraordinary labour was demanded, the great extent of the region to be explored—all these difficulties prevented our pressing on in this direction. We therefore turned, July 22, in a westerly direction, in order to explore another opening in the ice, into which we advanced for about fifteen miles, and found floes not more than a year old lying so loosely together, that our ship under full sail seemed to pass over them, much in the same fashion as a sledge glides over a snow-covered plain. But again our course had to be altered, and Weyprecht steered the vessel in a south-westerly direction to the ice-barrier. In 76° 30′ N. Lat. and 29° E. Long. we came on high and close masses of ice, and escaped with much difficulty (July 29) the danger of being again “beset.”

10. We had meantime been convinced that, though the state of the ice was on the whole so favourable, we could not, with the means at our command and with a crew not trained to habits of obedience, do more than carry out our original intention. We could not make up for the defects of our sailing craft by any special exertion on the part of the crew. Could we have done this, we might have penetrated further in a northerly direction; though at this late period of the summer we could not calculate on being able to return, and by the end of October our provisions would have been exhausted. We could only, therefore, attempt to reach Gillis’ Land, and ascertain whether it possessed the importance attributed to it by the Swedes. A safe harbour had therefore to be sought, in which the ship might be left, while a party in a boat should make for the mysterious land. Such a harbour we expected to find at Cape Leigh-Smith. We therefore held to the westward, towards the Stor-Fiord. It is an extremely hazardous thing, demanding incessant attention, to tack and cruise at the ice-barrier during the continuance of fogs and with heavy seas and unfavourable winds. Not unfrequently, the ice-blink is seen all round the horizon, and we discover that we have come into a great “ice-hole,” or a calm makes it impossible to steer the ship, just when a strong current is bearing her into the thickest of the ice-masses. We had our share of these and other risks till we suddenly beheld, while sailing in a fog among icebergs a hundred feet high, the long stretching plateau of Hope Island. According to Weyprecht’s observations, there is an error of 40′ in latitude in the position of this island on the Swedish maps. The real position of the south-west cape of Hope Island is 76° 29′ N. Lat., and 25° E. Long. Seduced by a great opening in the ice, and deviating from our course for a short time, we advanced in a northerly direction to the east of the island, in the hope of reaching Gillis’ Land from thence. But after sailing in a fog for a whole day among icebergs lying close to the cliffs of the island, we were driven further westward, and coming suddenly on the ice—Lat. 76° 30′—with an exceedingly high sea, escaped being dashed to pieces as by a miracle. To penetrate here was an impossibility. We therefore altered our course again for Walter-Thymen’s Straits. A dense girdle of ice several miles deep, and a strong current setting towards the south-west, frustrated every attempt to land on Hope Island. To the west of this we found the ice-barrier in 76° N. Lat., formed of heavy pack-ice, and small icebergs. Our passage to the South Cape (Cape Look-out) of Spitzbergen (76° 30′ N. Lat.) was comparatively quick. Numerous cliffs and rocks on which the waves were breaking, not marked on any chart, rose in the night of August 4 out of the fog at the distance of a few ships’ lengths from us, and it was with the utmost difficulty that we could tack with the heavy sea and strong north-east wind.

11. The day after, when the heavy storm-clouds lifted from the table-land of Cape Look-out, we made the unpleasant discovery, that we were to the south-west of it. Hitherto we had been sailing in dense fog, but after passing this Cape we had almost unbroken sunshine, which illuminated the whole western side of Spitzbergen up to Prince Charles’s foreland. A current one or two miles wide, which flows southward, turns at Cape Look-out and flows in a northerly direction. At this Cape, which is the apex of the current, besides many rocks on which the waves break, there are twenty islands, some of them of considerable size. This promontory, which has been of great importance to navigators for more than 200 years, is erroneously represented in the charts I have seen. Many ships, therefore, have been wrecked at this place, chiefly those of the Spitzbergen whalers and sealers, who base their sailing on making this headland, though they are ignorant of its exact geographical position. Thrice we tried at the beginning of August to reach the Stor-Fiord from the western side of Cape Look-out, and thrice we were driven back by this current, though the wind was in our favour. This, however, gave us an opportunity we had not expected, of seeing something of the west coast of Spitzbergen with its fiords and glaciers as far as Horn Sound. A fog, as dense as coal smoke, floats almost always over “Hornsundstind” (4,500 ft. high) and the pyramid of Haytand. The slopes, clothed in dull green, running down to the coast, make Spitzbergen seem scarcely an Arctic land when compared with the cold grandeur of Greenland. The rocky shores of the northern parts of Norway are more dreary, and wear more the aspect of Arctic regions than Spitzbergen. Hence General Sabine, comparing Spitzbergen with Greenland, called it “a true paradise.”

12. On the 10th of August the ice began to move out from the Stor-Fiord. It pushed on with great velocity from the north-east, turned round Cape Look-out, and deposited itself along the west coast, covering it with thick layers in sixteen hours. On the 12th of the month, in consequence of the fog and strong current, we found ourselves between the heavy drift-ice and the reefs of Cape Look-out. According to our reckoning we should have been twenty-five miles to the east of it. It was only by boldly charging the drift-ice, with the vessel under full sail, that the Isbjörn escaped the danger of being beset. On the 13th the wind chopped round, and, standing away to the south, we succeeded, after cruising about for ten days, in running into Wyde-Jans Water. Our involuntary detention off Cape Look-out enabled us to land twice. During one of these visits we built a cairn, in which we deposited a notice of the course we had steered. The hasty survey we made enabled us to correct some very gross errors in the maps. On the evening of the 14th we sighted Edge Island, and cruised in the drift-ice, which was becoming gradually more dense in that direction. Here we fell in with two ships from Finland, engaged in the capture of the walrus, and learnt from their skippers some particulars concerning the state of the ice, which induced us to give up the direct course to Cape Leigh-Smith, and to prefer coasting along the west side of the Fiord.

13. The ice was now more packed. The ship, weakened by numerous ice-pressures and countless shocks, and making much water, was in so bad a condition, that part of the bows under the water-line was shattered, and some timbers of the hull were forced in. In order to give some notion of the force of the shocks to which we had been exposed in forcing our course through the ice, let it suffice to say, that the iron plating an inch thick, with which the bows had been strengthened at Tromsoe, had been broken off like so many chips.

14. Tacking up against the north wind we came, in the night of August 16, on broken ice off Whale’s Bay, in 77° 30′ N. Lat. The expected free coast-water was not to be found, and the prevailing winds from the north took away any hope of reaching Cape Leigh-Smith in less than a week. Our plan of a boat expedition, for which three weeks would have been necessary, from Cape Leigh-Smith to explore Gillis’ Land, had now to be renounced; and as the southern extremity of Stor-Fiord is generally blocked up at the end of August by an accumulation of ice brought from the east, we were constrained to leave the fiord at once, and return to the ice-barrier we had left.

15. The geological formation of the western coast of this fiord has never been explored. From a visit to the land and the ascent of a mountain 2,000 feet high, we learnt some interesting facts concerning its Jurassic formation, which appeared to extend far to the south. We found traces, at some distance apart, of the more recent brown coal, and fossil remains (Bivalves in ferruginous chalk-marl); we gathered also some plants still in flower, and brought away some red snow. This excursion enabled us also to examine the beautifully-developed glaciers of Spitzbergen. Hornsundstind (4,500 feet high) is a most imposing mountain, and viewed from the east resembles a sugar-loaf. The other mountains on the coast of the fiord rise to heights varying from 2,000 to 4,000 feet. Noble glaciers slope down both sides of the main ridge, which runs in a southerly direction through the island. Some of these, when they reach the sea, are three or four miles wide, and their terminal fronts are about 80 feet high. The snow-line of those which debouch on the Stor-Fiord is at an altitude of 1,000 feet, and their surface is little broken by crevasses. None of these glaciers are of sufficient size to shed icebergs, properly speaking. The sea close to the coast is shallow, and the detachments from the glaciers are merely larger or smaller blocks of ice.

16. On the evening of August 16, sailing before the wind, we forced our way through the ice of the Stor-Fiord, and two days afterwards arrived at Hope Island, the steep, rocky walls of which rose out of the fog just as we were close under it. We found the icebergs still firmly grounded, precisely as we had observed them three weeks before. As an unusually strong current was running towards the south-west at the rate of two miles an hour, great caution was needed when we landed in the whale-boat amid rocks and cliffs not marked on any chart. The geological formation of the island was identical with that of the mountainous region on the south of Whale’s Bay. We found brown coal, but the shortness of our visit did not permit us to inspect the beds of it. Drift-wood of Siberian larch and pine lay in great quantities on the shore.

17. It was surprising to observe the change which meanwhile had taken place; the ice both to the west and east of us had disappeared. We were eager to find it, and again penetrated as far as possible into it. We tacked about on the 19th, 20th, and 21st of August—the weather being stormy—with little success against the north wind, which had prevailed for some weeks. A current from the north drove us constantly southwards. After leaving the Stor-Fiord the temperature of the water exceeded the temperature of the air. On the 22nd of August, in 76° 45′ N. Lat. and 28° 30′ E. Long. we found very little drift-ice, which standing out but a few inches above the water-level presented no impediment to navigation. Nothing but contrary winds stood in the way of our penetrating in a northerly direction, except, indeed, the doubts and fears raised by our skipper and his crew at our attempting higher latitudes at so late a period of the year. König Karl’s Land lay only forty miles to the north—still invisible on account of the mists. Fresh traces of Polar bears announced the neighbourhood of land. We therefore bore away to the east in 32° E. Long. on the 24th of August—the day on which the sun set for the first time. The number of icebergs constantly increased from this date, while some weeks previously, in the same region, we had scarcely seen one. This, perhaps, is to be explained from the fact, that their appearance is irregular, depending on the varying movement of the glaciers, and also on the time and manner in which the icebergs clear out from the bays and fiords. On the 26th we had stormy weather, rain, and snow. On the 27th, amid a dense fog, and with the sea running high, we came close to an iceberg, against which the sea was dashing itself in foam and spray, just in time to avert a collision. On the 29th of August we perceived that the ship had been carried 1° 30′ eastward in a short time by a current. The further we sailed in this easterly direction, the further northward the ice retreated, and we began to hope that we should come nearer the Pole than any ship ever had in this sea. The southern limit of the ice-barrier in the Novaya Zemlya seas, towards the end of summer, is usually placed at 76° N. Lat., but we had reached 78° N. Lat., with 42° E. Long., without seeing (August 30th) a fragment of ice. The Isbjörn had, therefore, penetrated 100 miles in seas hitherto unknown. There was still a long heavy swell from the north, but the temperature of the water had fallen 4½° within twenty-four hours, and it was no longer of an ultramarine, but of a dirty green colour; so that, notwithstanding the sanguine expectations we had cherished, we expected every moment to come on pack-ice. Already, too, the “ice-blink” was visible here and there on the horizon.

18. Whales, secure from persecution in this remote sea, seemed to abound; we saw many “blowing” and spouting. They came sometimes in pairs close to the ship. Their chase and capture might have been carried on here with every hope of success. On the morning of the 31st of August we saw six Eider-geese, the precursors of near land. A blue shadow on the eastern sky arrested the attention of us all for a long time. We felt as if we were on the brink of great discoveries. But, alas! the supposed land dissolved into mist. The poverty of our equipment prevented us from penetrating further. We might easily have been driven onwards by unknown currents, and the ice closing behind us might have cut off return to Europe. We could not be assured that we had not come upon a bight, or cul-de-sac, stretching far to the north, and which might quickly change its character. On the night of August 31, in 78° N. Lat., the ice lay in some places loose and widely dispersed, in others it was more compact, but nowhere was it in great masses; it scarcely rose above the horizon, and it was entirely without icebergs. There was nothing to prevent a vessel with steam power from penetrating further.

19. Still following the ice-barrier as it retreated northwards, we passed beyond 78° 30′ N. Lat. in the night of August 31. The influence of the high latitudes we had reached, on the duration of light, was unmistakable. For some days, however, the temperature had fallen below 32° F., a coating of snow lay on the deck, and the rigging was covered with ice like glass. The morning of the 1st of September broke; about half-past three o’clock fresh breezes from the north drove off the mist, and revealed one of those pictures peculiar to the high north from its dazzling effects of colour—the beams of the sun in glowing splendour were piercing through heavy masses of clouds, while the moon shone on the opposite side of the heavens. An ice-blink resembling an Aurora lay on the north.

20. We had reached 78° 38′ N. Lat., and yet the ice around us presented no serious impediment—none at least as far as we could see. Should we then venture further with our ship in its weakened condition? We might still follow up an opening within the ice running northward, though, in doing this, we should expend the time needed for the exploration of the eastward-lying Novaya Zemlya seas. We determined therefore to bear away to the east before some currents of loose drift-ice. But fog and a high sea from the north-west caused us to alter our course more and more to the south-east. For the first time in these high latitudes we observed drift-wood, and we found ourselves in a sea, the temperature of which at the surface did not materially exceed the temperature of the air. Whenever, however, the temperature of the air rose, a thaw suddenly set in. The colour of the sea alternated between blue and a dull green. A few days previously we had passed over a sea extraordinarily rich in the ribbed Medusæ (Beroë), and where the Rorqual (whale) abounded.

21. The great question now arose, whether the open water found in these high latitudes were only an accidental bight in the ice or a connected sea. It seemed bold to assume the latter, since 76° 30′ N. Lat. had never before been passed in that region. In order, therefore, to arrive at some positive conclusion on this point, we stood away from the ice at noon of the 1st of September, and ran down in open water to 75° 52′ N. Lat. and 51° 44′ E. Long., intending to return to the north again, in order to explore the state of the ice to the north-east. Overcoming with much difficulty the opposition of our skipper, we returned to the edge of the ice, which we found, September 5th, in 78° 5′ N. Lat. and 56° E. Long. Though there was not much wind, a high sea running on the ice compelled us to leave it. In our course to the south-east we crossed 77° 30′ N. Lat. and 59° E. Long.; here, also, to the south of 78°, there was no ice. To penetrate further to the east formed no part of our plan, and since another attempt to return to the ice would have been objectless, for the reasons above stated, we proposed to run into a bight on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya to take in fuel and water, which we urgently needed. The longer nights now made it almost impossible to manœuvre a ship in the ice when the winds were high, though a good steamer might have persisted for some time longer. The temperature of the sea on the 5th of September was 39° F. in Lat. 77° 30′, and on the 8th of the month, when we were in sight of Cape Nassau, it reached 41° F.

22. Storms compelled us to keep to sea. As a current constantly set us to the north-east, we found it not possible to land on Novaya Zemlya, scarcely even to see it. On the night of September 12th we came into the region where the equatorial and Polar air-currents meet, and had an opportunity of observing the hurricane-like effects of their conjunction. The barometer fell about two inches, and the sea was so broken that the ship could hardly be steered, even with a fresh wind. On September 14th we were off Matoschkin Schar, and could not anchor, a snow-storm from the north-east completely hiding the coast. The change, which meantime had taken place in the sky, was strange and remarkable. Heavy thunder-clouds lay over our heads, just as they do in the region of the trade-winds, and every moment threatened to discharge themselves. On the 13th of September we saw the first Aurora, in the shape of an arch, passing through, our zenith. The want of fuel and water, from which we began to suffer, and the end of the season for navigation, compelled us to avail ourselves of the favourable wind which had set in, and begin our voyage home, without landing on Novaya Zemlya. On this same day three of our crew of seven men fell ill, one of them with scurvy. A heavy storm from the north-east compelling us to heave to, we lay close under the coast of Lapland for a whole day. On the 20th of September we ran into Tana Fiord on the east of North Cape, the most northerly point of Europe, and took in water. The gloomy cliffs of Tanahorn and the rocky iron-bound coasts were not at all behind the lands we had left in their terrible desolation. On the 24th of August the Isbjörn passed North Cape; on the 4th of October she anchored in Tromsoe. Weyprecht had remained on board while, with a Lapland sailor who could speak Norwegian, I left the ship in Tana Fiord and went on to Tromsoe through Lapland, sometimes by means of a small boat on the shallow rivers and sometimes by means of reindeer sledges.

23. It had formed no part of our plan, either to make discoveries, or to reach high latitudes. Our object was to investigate whether the Novaya Zemlya seas offered greater facilities, either from the influence of the Gulf Stream, or from any other causes, for penetrating the unexplored Polar regions. Many arguments, derived from the scientific results of our voyage, would seem to favour this idea, and in contradiction to the discouraging views of our predecessors, whose failures are explained by their defective equipment and the choice of the most unfavourable season for navigation, we ventured to draw the following inferences:

(1.) The Novaya Zemlya Sea is not filled with impenetrable ice, rendering navigation impossible; on the contrary, it is open every year, probably up to 78° of N. Lat., and is connected with the Sea of Kara, which is also free from ice in autumn, and even, it may be, with the “Polynjii,” in the North of Asia. If this inference should not be admitted, the following remarks of Lieutenant Weyprecht, in anticipation of objections, are put forward as worthy of consideration:—“In all probability the open condition of the ice in 1871 will be ascribed to chance, or to an especially favourable ice-year. With respect to the latter alternative, the accounts given by the walrus-hunters of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya should convince us, that the year 1871 was not only not a favourable, but a most unfavourable year in the ice. It was almost impossible to navigate Wyde-Jans Water, and the Sea of Kara could only be reached through the most southerly straits—the Jugorsky Straits. There remains, therefore, only the other objection, that the accident of favourable winds was the cause of our penetrating so far. But our meteorological journal shows North, or at any rate Northerly winds, and often, too, blowing freshly, from August 4th to September 5th, with the exception of twelve watches, i.e. two days. But in no case could these winds have driven the ice to the north. With respect to the loose character of the ice we encountered, it might be said, that we saw only the outer ice. But, in the first place, we were often so far within the barrier that it would be inadmissible to speak of it as the outer ice; and, in the second place, the ice-barrier shows the state of the ice behind it. Whenever the wind lies against the ice, there the ice is always the most dense and packed, and we find open places only when we have worked our way through the outer ice.”

(2.) The time most favourable for navigation in this sea falls at the end of August, and lasts—though rendered hazardous by storms, the formation of young ice, and the darkness which supervenes at that season—till the end of September, and during this period the ice may be said to be at its minimum.

(3.) The Novaya Zemlya Sea is a shallow sea—a connection and continuation of the great plains of Siberia. In the extreme north, its depth was 600 feet, and south-east of Gillis’ Land about 300 feet.

(4.) Gillis’ Land is not a continent, but either an island or a group of islands. Whereas, from the circumstance that in the highest latitudes—in 79° N. Lat.—we found drift-wood covered with mud, sea-weed, creatures which live only near the land, decreasing depths of the sea, sweet-water ice and icebergs laden with dirt, it may be inferred, with great probability, that there exist masses of land to the north-east of Gillis’ Land.

(5.) The appearance of Siberian drift-wood, only in the most northern seas reached in our voyage, seems to point to an easterly current there.

(6.) The Russian expeditions in the past and present centuries, which attempted to penetrate by the north-west coast of Novaya Zemlya, miscarried, because they sailed before the favourable season for navigation, and also because they had not the advantage of steam.

(7.) How far the Gulf Stream has any share or influence in the favourable conditions for the navigation of the Eastern Polar Sea which have been described, cannot as yet be positively determined. The state of the ice, the observations which were made on the temperature of the sea, its colour and the animal life found in it, seem to speak in favour of the action of this current in that region. It is possible that the Gulf Stream may exercise its culminating influence on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya only at the beginning of September; for while the temperature of the sea in the months of July and August gradually fell from 45° F. to 36° F. in Lat. 75° N., and to zero and below it, still more to the north, we observed 39° F., September 6, in Lat. 78°, and 41° F., September 10, in Lat. 75° 30′. The temperature of the air was in all these cases considerably less than that of the water. If the unusually favourable state of the ice on the east of Spitzbergen should be ascribed to warm southerly currents of air, it may be replied that our observations specify the almost uninterrupted occurrence of north winds. It is also possible, that at the beginning and middle of summer the Gulf Stream may move slowly in a northerly direction along the coasts of Novaya Zemlya, and that towards autumn it spreads itself more and more to the west. Our observations proved the existence, in the eastern Novaya Zemlya seas, of a band of warm water, from thirty-six to forty feet deep, beneath which lies, without gradation, a colder stratum. It is evident that the unequal density of these strata prevents their mingling. This band of warmer water near North Cape is about 150 feet deep, with a temperature of nearly 45° F., but diminishes as it flows northward. The frequency of fogs and mists in the Novaya Zemlya Sea, and the squalls unknown to other Arctic regions, which are characteristic of a more southerly region, indicate also a current of warm water. How this warm current gradually cools towards the north, and becomes shallower, and how distinctly it divides into those strata of water of equal temperature, so characteristic of the Gulf Stream, is shown by three series of observations taken by Weyprecht at different latitudes, with the maximum and minimum thermometer of Casella:—

72° 30′ lat., 44° long.	77° 26′ lat., 44° long.	76° 40′ lat., 55° long.
12 to 114′	+	4·8° C.	6′ to 30′	+	2·2° C.	6′ to 39′	+	2·5° C.
144	+	2·5	36	+	1·8	48	+	1·0
174	+	2·0	45	+	0·3	60	-	0·0
204	+	1·5	60	+	0·3	72	-	0·6
234	+	1·3	75	-	0·9	90	-	0·6
264	+	1·0	90	-	0·8	120	-	1·3
294	+	0·5	120	-	1·6	180	-	1·2
360	+	0·5	180	-	1·8	300	-	1·2
450	+	0·0	360	-	1·6
600	-	0·4
800	-	1·3

24. These inferences rendered the despatch of a well-equipped expedition to the Novaya Zemlya seas very desirable, either to penetrate towards the north, or to pursue the direction of the north-east passage. To this idea a most gracious reception was given by the Emperor of Austria. Hence arose the Austro-Hungarian expedition of 1872. The promoters of this undertaking assumed neither the existence of an open Polar Sea, nor the possibility of reaching the Pole by sledge or boat expeditions. Their object, simply and broadly stated, was the exploration of the still unknown Arctic regions, and it was their belief, that a vessel could penetrate further into this region by the route between Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen, where the Isbjörn in her pioneer voyage found the ice more loose and navigable than had been imagined possible. But in addition to the causes already specified, the influence of the warm currents, produced by the great rivers of Siberia discharging themselves into a shallow sea, was also supposed to co-operate in producing this phenomenon. Of these rivers, the Obi and Jenisej alone discharge into that shallow sea a body of water as great as the waters of the Mediterranean or the waters of the Mississippi. The course of the current produced by these mighty rivers is as yet unknown; but it was natural to suppose, that old and heavy pack-ice could not be formed on a coast submitted to such an influence. This is confirmed by the observations of the Russians, who in the coldest period of the year always find open water in the Siberian seas. Middendorf, August 26, 1844, found the Gulf of Taimyr quite free from ice; our own observations, made in 60° E. Long., and those of the Norwegian Mack, who advanced to 81° E. Long. (75° 45′ N. Lat.), support the supposition of a still navigable sea. Of the region between Cape Tscheljuskin and the ice-free spaces asserted to exist by Wrangel, and others, we know but little; but it is probable that the character of the ice in those seas does not greatly differ from the character of the ice in contiguous seas. Of the seas between Novaya Zemlya and Behring’s Straits, at the distance of a few miles from the Asiatic coast, nothing is known. No ship has ever navigated this enormous Eastern Polar Sea.

25. It was the plan of the Austro-Hungarian expedition to penetrate in an E.N.E. direction, in the latter half of August, when the north coast of Novaya Zemlya is generally free from ice. The places at which the expedition was to winter were left undetermined; these might, possibly, be Cape Tscheljuskin, the new Siberian islands, or any lands which might be discovered. A return to Europe through Behring’s Straits, however improbable it might be, lay among the possibilities of the venture. Minor details were left to circumstances. In the event of the loss of the ship, the expedition was to endeavour to reach the coast of Siberia by boats, and, on one of the gigantic water-courses of Northern Asia, penetrate into more southern regions. The depôt of provisions and coals which it was Graf Wilczek’s intention to deposit on the north coast of Novaya Zemlya, was to be the nearest refuge for the crew in the event of disaster to the ship. Stone cairns were to be erected on all prominent localities, and in these were to be laid accounts of the course of the expedition. Till its return at the end of the autumn of 1874, its members were to be cut off from all intercourse with Europe. The motives of an undertaking so long and so laborious cannot be found in the mere love of distinction or of adventure. Next to the wish to serve the interests of science by going beyond the footsteps of our predecessors, we were influenced by the duty of confirming and fulfilling the hopes which we ourselves had excited.