398 GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS AND DISCOVERY. (ARCTIC REGIONS.) 



on the ground that the island is unable to sup- 

 port a penal colony like that proposed. In a 

 report made in 1882 it was said that 1,030 

 desjatin were under cultivation in northern 

 Saghalien, and several thousand more were to 

 be taken up the next year; but the official re- 

 port of Surveyor Karaulowskij reports only 

 510 desjatin in the beginning of 1884. There 

 are 700 families of former convicts already 

 there, who can scarcely live upon the poverty- 

 stricken soil ; and 560 men were to be settled 

 there during the year as colonists. The con- 

 dition of the criminals in the prisons is made 

 especially miserable by want of discipline, by 

 violence, and deficient support. 



The presence of the Russians is said by the 

 author of a book of sketches of travel, " Ko- 

 lyinsk to Yakutsk,' 1 to have made a remarka- 

 ble change in the population on the Indigirka. 

 Tribes once numerous there have retreated to 

 the mountains, and epidemic diseases which 

 have broken out among them have extended 

 to the Russians. The city of Saschiwersk is 

 completely deserted. At the end of the seven- 

 ties it was an inhabited place. The greater 

 abundance of fish in the lower courses of the 

 Kolyma, Indigirka, and Yana, has also had a 

 tendency to draw the population northward. 

 Some of the tribes have been impoverished by 

 diseases among their cattle, and have been 

 driven from their homes by the necessity of 

 seeking a living in some other way as fishers, 

 hunters, or ivory-seekers, in a half-nomadic 

 existence. The region of Kolymsk was lately 

 for six years without a single physician. The 

 post-routes are so infested by lawless Cossacks 

 that the finest meadows and fishing-places near 

 the roads are left unused. 



Arctic Regions. Very little has been done in 

 1885 in the way of Arctic exploration, though 

 some books and articles of interest on recent 

 expeditions have been published. The schoon- 

 er " William Barent," which has made an Arc- 

 tic voyage every summer since 1878, made none 

 this year, it having been decided to collect 

 funds for a steamship instead. 



But an expedition was sent out in 1884 

 from Denmark to examine the coast of East 

 Greenland, consisting of Capt. G. Holm, Lieut. 

 Garde, the Norwegian geologist Knutsen, and 

 the botanist Eberlin. The work began in 

 the spring of 1884, and the explorers reached 

 Copenhagen in October, 1885. Notwithstand- 

 ing the unfavorable condition of the ice in the 

 early summer of 1884, the travelers reached 

 a point much higher than that touched by 

 Capt. Graah, in 1829. This stretch of coast 

 was taken possession of as Christian IX. Land. 

 The explorers built a cabin for winter quarters 

 not far from Cape Dan, in the midst of a na- 

 tive population of about 400, whom they found 

 in a more primitive condition than the west 

 Greenlanders at the arrival of Egedes in 1721. 

 They found no ruins of the old Icelandic colony 

 " Osterbygd," although they examined all the 

 fiords throughout the region. The reports of 



the expedition will fill a gap in the knowledge 

 of the geography of Greenland, and furnish in- 

 teresting scientific facts, especially in the de- 

 partment of ethnography, since the ten months' 

 sojourn among remote tribes of heathen Green- 

 landers gave opportunity for close observation 

 of their mode of life. 



Much doubt has been expressed as to the 

 new islands discovered in the Spitzbergen Sea 

 in 1884, by Johannesen and Andreassen. It 

 was thought that, if they were there, they 

 could not have been overlooked by other sea- 

 men ; and that as King Karl Land was de- 

 scribed in 1872 as rising in three hills, which 

 looked like separate islands at a distance, the 

 supposed islands might be only the two east- 

 erly hills. But the positive assurances of the 

 two navigators and their crews that no such 

 mistake could have been made, as well as their 

 descriptions, which do not apply to King Karl 

 Land, leave little doubt of the reality of the 

 discovery. 



According to the report of Dr. F. Boas, on 

 his researches in Baffin Land, some changes 

 will be necessitated in the maps of that region. 

 Home Bay, particularly, which has been sup- 

 posed to extend far inland, disappears almost 

 entirely. This is not strange, however, since 

 the maps are based on observations made from 

 ships some 37 kilometres from shore, nearer 

 approach being barred by the masses of ice 

 that pass along this coast on their way to 

 Davis Strait. 



During the year an important supplementary 

 volume to the work on the Vega Expedition 

 has been published by Von Nordenskiold, 

 through Brockhaus in Leipsic, " Studies and 

 Researches occasioned by my Travels in the 

 Extreme North." It is made up of chapters 

 by Nordenskiold and his co-workers, giving 

 the scientific results of their observations bo- 

 tanic, geologic, zoologic, and sociologic. The 

 third section is devoted to Nordenskiold's fa- 

 vorite theme the geologic significance of the 

 fall of cosmic matter on the earth. His theory, 

 if accepted, would cause a complete revolution 

 in the science of geology as it is now under- 

 stood. It is that the earth has been formed in 

 the course of ages by the aggregation of cold 

 and mostly solid cosmic particles. 



Other books that have appeared during the 

 year on Arctic discoveries are G. W. Melville's 

 "In the Lena Delta," and "The Rescue of 

 Greely," by W. S. Schley, commander of the 

 Relief expedition, and Prof. J. R. Soley, of the 

 United States Navy. 



Lieut. Greely believes that the route by 

 Franz-Josef Land is the one that offers the 

 greatest number of favorable conditions for 

 the prosecution of Arctic research a safe har- 

 bor, ice smooth and sound for sledges, game ii 

 tolerable abundance, and a chance for escape in 

 case the ship has to be abandoned. 



Central America. In the spring of 1885 a party 

 of American travelers made the ascent of the 

 volcano Irazu, in Costa Rica, 11,500 feet high. 



