230 THE VOYAGE OF TPIE VEGA. [ctiAr. 



After Carlsen, Barents' winter haven was visited in the year 

 1875 by the Norwegian wah^us-hunter, M. Gundeesen, who 

 among other things found there a broken chest containing two 

 maps and a Dutch translation of the narrative of Pet's and 

 Jackman's voyages, and in the year 1876 by Mr. Chaeles 

 Gaediner, who through more systematic excavations succeeded 

 in collecting a considerable additional number of remarkable 

 things, among which were the ink-horn and the pens which the 

 Polar travellers had used nearly three centuries ago, and a 

 powder-horn, containing a short account, signed by Heemskerk 

 and Barents, of the most important incidents of the expedition. 

 Gundersen's find is still, as far as I know, at Hammerfest ; 

 Gardiner's has been handed over to the Dutch Government to 

 be preserved along with the other Barents relics at the Hague. 



In 1872 the state of the ice both north of Spitzbergen and 

 round Novaya Zemlya was exceedingly unfavourable,^ and several 

 of the scientific expeditions and hunting vessels, which that 

 year visited the Arctic Ocean, there underw^ent severe calamities 

 and misfortunes. Five of the best hunting vessels from 

 Tromsoe were lost in the ice ; the Swedish expedition, which 

 that year started for the north, could not, as was intended, erect 

 its winter dwelling on the Seven Islands, but was compelled to 

 winter at the more southerly Mussel Bay ; and the Austrian 

 expedition under the leadership of Payer and Weyprecht was 

 beset by ice a few hours after its campaign had commenced in 

 earnest. It is well known how this carefully equipped expedition 

 afterwards for two winters in succession drifted about in the 

 Polar Sea, until it finally came to a standstill at a previously un- 

 known land lying north of Novaya Zemlya, which was named 

 after the Austrian Emperor, Franz Josef These two expeditions, 

 however, did not touch the territory of the Vegas voj'age, on 

 which account I cannot here take any further notice of them.'' 

 But the same year a wintering took place on the west coast of 

 Novaya Zemlya, of which I consider that I ought to give a 

 somewhat more detailed account, both because in the course of 

 it one of the most gallant Polar voyagers of Norway met his 



^ The sea in the neighbourhood of Spitzbergen on the east was on the 

 other hand very open that year, so that it was possible for the same time 

 to reach and circumnavigate the large island situated to the east of Spitz- 

 bergen, which had been seen in 1864 by Uuner and me from the top of 

 "White Mount in the interior of Stor Fjord. 



- Nor does space permit me to give an account of various expeditions, 

 which indeed concerned Novaya Zemlya, but did not penetiate farther 

 eastward than their predecessors; for instance, the fiosentlial expedition of 

 1871, in which the well-known African traveller and Spitzbergen voyager 

 Baron von Heuglin, and the Norwegian botanist Aage Aagaard, took part 

 as naturalists ; Payer and Weyprecht's voyage of reconnaissance in the 

 sea between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya in 1871, &c. 



