22G THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ciiAr. 



of booty ^ from the hunting-grounds where formerly the 

 walruses tumbled undisturbed among the drift-ice, and where 

 the white bear has not yet met his superior.^ 



These voyages are amongst the most remarkable that the 

 history of Arctic navigation can show. They at once overturned 

 all the theories which, on the ground of an often superficial 

 study of preceding unsuccessful voyages, had been set up 

 regarding the state of the ice east of Novaya Zemlya, and they 



EDWARD HOLM JOHANNESEN. 



Born in 1844, at Balsfjord Parsona^'e. 



thus form the starting-point of a new era in the history of the 

 North-east Passage. 



After his return to Norway Johannesen sent to the Academy 

 of Sciences in Stockholm a paper on his voyage in 1869, and on 

 his hydrographical observations in the Kara Sea, for which he 

 received a silver medal. This I was commissioned to send him, 

 and in the correspondence which took place regarding it I on 

 one occasion said in jest that a circumnavigation of Novaya 



1 Palliser's game consisted of 49 walruses, 14 Polar bears and 2.5 

 seals ; that of the working hunters was many times greater. All the 

 vessels which went from Tromsoe that year captured 805 walruses, 2,302 

 seals, 53 bears, &c. 



2 Sidoroff too started in 1869 on a north-east voyage in a steamer of his 

 own, the George. However, he only reached the Petchora, and the statement 

 that went the round of the press, that the George actually reached the Ob, 

 is thus one of the many mistakes which so readily find their way into the 

 news of the day. 



