44 SPITSBERGEN 



char was picked up ; and, at Shoal Point, Torell dis- 

 covered in a mass of driftwood a specimen of the un- 

 mistakable Entada bean, two and a quarter inches 

 across, brought there from the West Indies by the 

 Gulf Stream, as other specimens have been drifted to 

 European shores. 



In 1864, the year that Elling Carlsen found the 

 navigation so open that he passed the Northern Gate 

 and sailed round Spitsbergen, Nordenskiold, at the 

 head of a small expedition, was at work in Ice Fjord, 

 and, unable to go north on account of the ice, rounded 

 South Cape, entered Stor Fjord, visited Edge's Land 

 and Barents Land, and from the summit of White 

 Mountain, near Unicorn Bay, rediscovered the west 

 coast of the island reported by Edge two hundred and 

 fifty years before. In 1868, as leader of the Swedish 

 North Polar Expedition in the Sofia, he reached 

 81 42', in 17 30' east, the highest latitude then 

 reached by a steam vessel, and his farthest north ; his 

 next Polar venture, four years afterwards, in the 

 Polhcm, ending in his having to winter in Mossel Bay, 

 where his generous endeavour to feed one hundred and 

 one extra men, who were ice-bound, on provisions 

 intended for his own twenty-four, would have ended in 

 disaster had he not been relieved by Leigh Smith in the 

 Diana. 



The Diana was the steam yacht built for James 

 Lamont, in which, like Leigh Smith, he cruised for 

 several seasons in the Arctic seas, combining sport with 

 exploration in a truly admirable way. To these two 

 yachtsmen we owe much of our knowledge of Spits- 

 bergen, Novaya Zemlya, and Franz Josef Land, but we 



