VOL. XVII. (3) THE ISLAND OF JAN MAYEN 335 



timed too late, and some weeks before their arrival the last 

 of the seven men had succumbed to scurvy. 



Jan Mayen must often have been visited by passing 

 whalers in the succeeding years, but I must skip a couple of 

 centuries and come down to 1856, when Lord Dufferin in his 

 little sailing-yacht " The Foam," landed on the island for 

 two brief hours,' and was almost kept a prisoner there by 

 the drifting ice. For ice and fog are the twin arch-enemies 

 of the would-be visitor to these waters, and fortunate is the 

 navigator who sees nothing of either of these evils. The south- 

 ward-drifting floes hug Jan Mayen in their cold embrace for 

 a large portion of the year, and often quite block up the 250 

 miles of sea between it and the coast of Greenland. 



In 1882 the Austrian Government (as a participator in 

 the International Circumpolar Conference of 1879) sent an ex- 

 pedition to the island, which set up its head-quarters at Mary 

 Muss Bay on the 71st parallel, and remained there for twelve 

 months, making meteorological and other observations. The 

 wooden erection which served as the home of this expedition 

 may still be seen there, and contains (for the benefit of ship- 

 wrecked sailors) a store of tinned provisions ; whilst close at 

 hand is a stack of twenty tons of patent fuel to be used by 

 those who may come to need it. The average temperature 

 throughout the year was ascertained to be 278° Fahrenheit. 

 To this visit of the Wohlegemuth expedition it may be due 

 that Jan Mayen is shown on certain maps as Austrian terri- 

 tory ; in actual fact, however, the island is the property of 

 no one. 



An interesting report on Jan Mayen was made by the 

 French " La Munche " expedition in 1892, and a visit was 

 paid to the island by Professor Nathorst of Stockholm in 

 1899, in 1900 by the Swedish Kolthoff expedition, and 

 again in 1902 by Dr. Jean Charcot. The latter was nearly 

 caught in the quick-sands at the end of Driftwood Bay, 

 but he succeeded in landing and he visited the Austrian head- 

 quarters in Mary Muss Bay. The tinned provisions deposited 

 there twenty years earlier, were still remarkably well preserved : 



I See the brilliant account of this exploit in his " Letters from High Latitudes." 



