TORELL AND NORDENSKIOLD 43 



During the last few days he had been drifting south 

 in the day almost as far as he had advanced north in 

 the night, and, having used up half his provisions, he 

 reluctantly abandoned the struggle as hopeless. " As 

 we travelled," he says, " by far the greater part of our 

 distance on the ice, three, and not infrequently, five 

 times over, we may safely multiply the road by 2j ; 

 so that our whole distance, on a very moderate cal- 

 culation, amounted to five hundred and eighty geo- 

 graphical miles, or six hundred and sixty-eight statute 

 miles ; being nearly sufficient to have reached the Pole 

 in a direct line." 



In 1858 a Swedish expedition under Otto Torell 

 started from Hammerfest for Spitsbergen. He was 

 accompanied by A. Quennerstedt and Adolf Erik 

 Nordenskiold. They explored Horn Sound, Bell 

 Sound, and Green Harbour. In Bell Sound they 

 dredged with great success for mollusca ; they made a 

 botanical collection, chiefly of mosses and lichens, 

 found tertiary plant fossils, and, in the North Harbour, 

 carboniferous limestone beds with the tertiary plant- 

 bearing strata above them in short, Nordenskiold 

 entered upon his long and fruitful study of Spits- 

 bergen geology. Three years afterwards Torell took 

 out another expedition, Nordenskiold going with him, 

 which was to explore the northern coast and then 

 make for the far north ; but the ice conditions kept 

 them in Treurenberg Bay, where they visited Hecla 

 Cove and found Parry's flagstaff. In the course of 

 their journeys they noticed in Cross Bay the first 

 known Spitsbergen fern, Cystopteris fragilis ; by the 

 side of a freshwater lake in Wijde Bay an Alpine 



