GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS AND DISCOVERY. 



355 



and sail for Behring Strait in the alternative of 

 the latter's being disabled in the voyage. Two 

 other vessels, the steamer Fraser with the 

 Express in tow, freighted by the owner of the 

 Lena, sailed in company as far as the Yenisei. 

 The officers and scientific staff of the Vega 

 were: Professor Nordenskjold, the leader ot 

 the expedition; Captain Palander, the com- 

 mander of the Vega; Dr. F. Kjelhnan, of Up- 

 sal, botanist ; Dr. A. Stuxberg, zoologist ; and 

 Dr. E. Almquist, physician; Lieutenant An- 

 dreus Hovgaard, of the Danish navy ; Lieuten- 

 ant E. Brusewitz, of the Swedish navy ; Lieu- 

 tenant Giacomo Bove, of the Italian navy ; and 

 Lieutenant Nordquist, a Finnish officer and a 

 geologist. The crew were chosen out of a large 

 number of volunteers, and consisted of 18 sea- 

 men and three hunters. Professor Nordenskjold 

 has not his equal in the knowledge, ability, and 

 experience requisite for the direction of the 

 scientific exploration of these dangerous re- 

 gions. He is a veteran explorer, who has 

 served in six arctic expeditions, has sustained 

 the rigor of a winter beyond the 80th parallel, 

 and has made long spring sledging tours. His 

 famous expedition to the north coast of Sibe- 

 ria in the year 1875 has been noticed in the 

 " Annual Cyclopaedia." The expedition of 1875, 

 made in the Proven, with 12 Norwegian fisher- 

 men, on which he was accompanied by his 

 present associates Drs. Kjellman and Stuxberg, 

 with Drs. Theel and Lundstrom, throwing a 

 new continent rich in grain and many other 

 useful products open to the world, and offering 

 it in return the benefits of civilization, was a 

 deed of such high commercial importance that 

 it will probably be remembered as an event 

 and a landmark in history. He entered the 

 Sea of Kara, before supposed to be covered 

 with perpetual ice, through Jugar Strait, aftar 

 coasting along Nova Zembla from the Matoch- 

 kin Shar, and crossing it, encountering ice in 

 lat. 75 45' N., steered southward and made 

 into the harbor to which he gave the name of 

 Port Dickson. The course of the return voy- 

 age was northwest, across the Kara Sea, and 

 through the narrows of Matochkin Shar. The 

 second voyage, made in the steamer Ymer, 

 was undertaken to prove that the passage of 

 the Kara Sea was practicable every year at the 

 same season, as well as for scientific purposes. 

 He passed through the Matochkin Shar on the 

 31st of July, but found the Sea of Kara full of 

 ice-floes, which obstructed his course until the 

 12th, and then rapidly melted away. He as- 

 cended the Yenisei in the steamer, and, failing 

 to meet the land party of scientists who had 

 appointed to join him but were retarded, re- 

 turned across the Sea of Kara without seeing 

 ice, and was back in Tromso by the 22d of 

 September. His scientific acumen enabled him 

 to predict, after gathering and comparing all 

 the scattered records and data relating to the 

 Sea of Knra, in opposition to the opinion of all 

 men of science and all practical navigators, 

 that this supposed ice-locked gulf is free from 



ice in the months of August and September. 

 It seemed then a hardier and more hopeless 

 undertaking to navigate the Kara Sea than 

 does now his present endeavor to extend the 

 voyage to Behring Strait and solve the prob- 

 lem of ages, the northwest passage, which in 

 past centuries stirred the ambition and be- 

 guiled the hopes of the world's most famous 

 navigators, and led them to the sacrifice of 

 their fortunes and their lives, their efforts 

 yielding as their only fruit the early knowledge 

 of the arctic regions. 



Nordenskjold entered upon this new enter- 

 prise after a like exhaustive research into all 

 the records of voyages and sledging explora- 

 tions along the coast of Siberia and in the seas 

 to the north, and the log-books of many a 

 whaler and seal-hunter. Although scarcely 

 anything is known of the seas from Port Dick- 

 son to the Lena and beyond for a good part of 

 the way to Behring Strait, the accounts which 

 he found confirmed his conviction that the in- 

 fluence which dissolves the ice in the Kara 

 Sea at the end of summer and in the early 

 autumn acts along the whole coast of Siberia 

 at this season, and that that is the action of 

 the waters of the Yenisei, Ob, Lena, and other 

 rivers of Siberia, which, after their discharge 

 in the Arctic Ocean, form surface currents, 

 which bend and flow to the eastward along the 

 coast, and which, at the period when they are 

 heated by the summer sun in the upper courses 

 of the rivers, have a sufficiently high tempera- 

 ture to clear an open passage through the ice 

 near the coast, where these currents take their 

 way. The temperature of the Ob and Yenisei 

 he had tested in the month of August, and 

 found that of the current of the former 8 C., 

 and of that of the latter 9-4 0. Several of the 

 explorers who have sailed in these latitudes 

 have returned, on account of the supposed 

 lateness of the season, at the time when the 

 ice in the seas was first clearing away. Minim 

 sailed up to lat. 7515' N. in 1740, but returned 

 on the 2d of September. The Yakoot Fornin 

 informed Middendorf in 1 843 that in Taimyr 

 Bay the ice was driven away out of sight from 

 land in the latter half of August. Cheliuskin's 

 survey of the coast line of the Taimyr Penin- 

 sula up to Cape Cheliuskin, in 1742, was made 

 in sledges in the spring. Pronchichef sailed in 

 the open sea nearly as far as Cape Cheliuskin 

 in August, 1736 ; and Norwegian whalers have 

 reached Ion. 68 E. without seeing ice. Laptet" 

 sailed almost as far as Cape Cheliuskin. East 

 of the North Cape there were several short 

 coasting voyages made by Russian explorers in 

 the last century; but the vessels were too 

 small and the sailors too inexperienced to 

 achieve any valuable results, although their 

 records tend to prove the navigability of the 

 sea during autumn. More is known of the 

 coast east of the mouth of the Lena. Russian 

 whalers are said to have frequently coasted the 

 shore in search of trade informer times. From 

 the Lena Lassinius and Lapter made unsuccess- 



