GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1871. 



335 



notice of previous explorers. Far up this 

 fiord (to which they gave the name of Franz 

 Josef, in honor of the Austrian Emperor), at 

 the farthest limit to which their steamer could 

 penetrate, they discovered an elevated moun- 

 tain-summit, fourteen thousand feet high, to 

 which they gave the name of Payer's Peak. 

 Much of the interior of Greenland seems to be 

 covered with ice of great thickness, which no 

 summer's heat can wholly thaw, a vast sea of 

 ice sloping down to either shore, of which the 

 glaciers of both coasts and the icebergs which 

 break off from them, huge as some of them 

 are, are but the small and inconsiderable frag- 

 ments. Yet there are valleys and slopes even 

 on this forbidding coast, where, during the 

 brief summer, vegetation springs up, and the 

 musk-ox, the ermine, and the lemming, as well 

 as some of the smaller rodents, all now for the 

 first time, and in very considerable numbers, 

 from the 76th to the 77th parallel, discovered 

 in Eastern Greenland, find shelter and food. 



Soon after his return from this second expe- 

 dition, Captain Koldeway quarrelled with Dr. 

 Petermann, the eminent geographer and pro- 

 moter of both expeditions, on the question of 

 routes to the open Polar Sea, in the existence 

 of which they both professed full faith. It 

 will be recollected that Dr. Petermann had 

 been a strenuous advocate for the route by 

 way of Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla as the 

 only practicable way of approaching the open 

 Polar Sea, and before the Royal Geographical 

 Society he had defended this route with so 

 much vigor and ability as to defeat Captain 

 Sherrard Osborne's proposed expedition by 

 way of Smith's Sound and Baffin's Bay. It 

 was, of course, very annoying to him to find 

 that Captain Koldeway was denouncing the 

 Spitzbergen route, declaring it impracticable, 

 and saying that he would not take part in an 

 expedition in that direction again, unless Dr. 

 Petermann would accompany it in person. 

 He was still more annoyed to find that Kolde- 

 way was attempting to get up another expedi- 

 tion without reference to him, although it was 

 wholly o'wing to his efforts that the money 

 was raised for the previous expeditions, and 

 that the captain openly avowed his intention 

 of going by way of Smith's Sound. 



It was, therefore, with great satisfaction that 

 he was able to announce on the 9th of Octo- 

 ber, 1871, that Lieutenant Julius Payer, of the 

 Austrian Army, and Lieutenant Weyprecht, 

 of the Austrian Navy, both of them com- 

 panions of Koldeway in the second expedi- 

 tion, had, at their own expense mainly, hired 

 a small Norwegian sailing-vessel, and sailed 

 for the Spitzbergen coast in June, 1871 ; and 

 that he had received from them the intelli- 

 gence that, in September, they had found an 

 open sea in north latitude 78 and above, and 

 had followed it in their little vessel through 

 eighteen degrees of longitude (42 to 60 east 

 from Greenwich), reaching, on the meridian 

 of 43 east, the latitude of 79, and that 



there seemed to be a probable connection with 

 the Polynia, or Open Polar Sea, toward the east. 

 At the time of writing, it was doubtful if they 

 had reached their destination, King Carl's 

 Land, discovered in 1870, though believed to 

 be the GillisLand of the old maps, their course 

 being southeast of it. Mr. Smith, an English 

 yachtman, also reported having reached, in 

 the same neighborhood, 81 13' north latitude, 

 during the summer of 1851. Mr. Lament, an 

 English gentleman, in 1870, had penetrated to 

 the parallel of 80 north and longitude 11 east 

 from Greenwich, and in 1871 reached a latitude 

 5' or 6' higher in the same neighborhood, but 

 was unable to force his way farther east, so as 

 to pass the northern coast of the islands of the 

 Spitzbergen group ; he subsequently followed 

 the western, southern, and southwestern shores 

 of these islands, in the hope of being able to 

 pass up their eastern and northeastern coast, 

 so as to attain a higher latitude, but could not 

 reach a point beyond 78 20', the ice being 

 too dense to be penetrated. The efforts of 

 Count Zeil and Von Heuglin, as well as those 

 of Payer and Weyprecht, to pass this point in 

 longitude 20 to 25* east from Greenwich, 

 proved abortive. Mr. Lamont, who had made 

 three voyages (in 1869, 1870, and 1871) to this 

 region, thinks that there has been during that 

 time a gradual settling down of the northern 

 ice against the back (the northern and eastern 

 shores) of Spitzbergen, and that it will prob- 

 ably be many years before it will be removed 

 sufficiently to permit the passage of vessels 

 to circumnavigate the islands. The Swedish 

 Government, in 1871, fitted out an expedition 

 under the general direction of Prof. Norden- 

 skiold, who had charge of the expedition of 1868 

 (which penetrated to 81 42' north latitude, 

 and 17 30' east longitude from Greenwich, the 

 highest point yet reached in the Eastern Hemi- 

 sphere). It consists of three vessels, two of 

 them gunboats from the Swedish Navy. A 

 colony is to be temporarily placed on Spitz- 

 bergen, with ample provisions and facilities 

 for a sledge-journey northward, should oppor- 

 tunity offer. Whether the north-pole, or the 

 open Polar Sea, shall be reached by this ex- 

 pedition or not, we may rely on its accomplish- 

 ing much for science by means of its large and 

 well-trained corps of scientific men. A Nor- 

 wegian expedition has also undertaken the ex- 

 ploration of the region north of Nova Zembla, 

 primarily in the interests of the whale and 

 seal fisheries, but with a scientific purpose also, 

 and carries out a number of well-trained phys- 

 icists. The Russian Grand-duke Alexis and 

 his suite explored, in the Russian corvette 

 Warjag, the open sea between Iceland and 

 Nova Zembla, and made many interesting ob- 

 servations ; but, though their voyage was of no 

 great geographical importance in itself, it was 

 the means of arousing an interest in arctic 

 exploration among the Russian scientists, and 

 a well-appointed expedition left St. Petersburg 

 in the summer of 1871, to endeavor to pene- 



