GEOGRAPHY. 253 



The hopes of those who, like Baron Nordensliiold, looked for success 

 for the trade route from Northern Siberia by way of the Kara Sea to 

 Europe, seem doomed to disappointment. As has been before pointed 

 out in these yearly summaries, no dependence can be placed on the 

 navigability of the Novaya Zemlyau Straits in any year. During the 

 last five or six years the steamer Louise has only twice succeeded in 

 reaching the Yenesei and returning with cargo to Europe, having failed 

 three times in the attempt. At Turukhansk, on the Yenesei, large quan- 

 tities of wheat, rye, and oats have been collected to be transported to 

 Europe, but there seems now but little prospect of these products ever 

 reaching there. The tow-boats and lighters built for transporting freight 

 to the mouth of the Yenesei are all to be sold, the difficulties of navigat- 

 ting the Kara Sea making the success of the scheme hopeless. This 

 conclusion agrees with the experience of M. Eakhmanin (cited by Dr. 

 Schmidt, in a recent lecture on the Vega voyage), who had wintered 

 twice at Spitzbergen and twenty-six times at Novaya Zemlya, and only 

 found the way to the Yenesei open on five occasions. 



In Nature for November 13, 1884, is a communication from Mr. W. 

 G. S. Paterson, Her Britannic Majesty's consul for Iceland, who states 

 that the light-house keeper at Cape Eeykjanes, the southwest point of 

 Iceland, had discovered a new volcanic island a few miles off that cape. 

 This region has long been known as a center of volcanic activity, islands 

 having been thrown up from time to time and afterwards subsiding. 

 The island was sought for without success by the French cruisers Du- 

 pleix and Romanche, and by Captain Nermann, of the Danish gunboat 

 Fylla, on his return from Greenland. Captain Normann, after a careful 

 search and many soundings, became convinced that the new island in 

 question is no other than the outermost of the Fowlskerries, a well- 

 known group of rocky islets. 



An important element toward elucidating the currents of the polar 

 seas has been furnished by the discovery by an Eskimo, on an ice floe 

 in Julianhaab Bay, Greenland, of several relics of the ill-fated Jean- 

 nette expedition. These relics consist of various 2>apers, articles of 

 sailors' apparel, part of a tent, &c., and have been positively identified 

 as belonging to the crew and officers of the Jeannette. Lieutenant 

 Danenhower, U. S. N., one of the survivors of the expedition, states, in 

 in a letter to the writer, that the articles were abandoned at the first 

 camp, near where the Jeannette sank, on June 12, 1881, in latitude 77° 

 15' north, longitude 156° east, and were exhibited on December 1, 1884, 

 at a meeting of the Geographical Society of Copenhagen. These articles 

 probably drifted north of Franz Josef Land and in close proximity to the 

 pole. The direction and rate of the drift can only be approximately reck- 

 oned, but the distance being about 2,500 nautical miles, and the time oc- 

 cupied not far from 1,000 days, makes an average drift of 2J miles a day, 

 without allowing for deviations. 



