590 



NATURE 



{Oct. 3, 1878 



journals is to be continued. We trust its comprehensive- 

 ness, thoroug^hly scientific character, and general high 

 standing will be maintained, and that it will continue a 

 permanent monument to the genius, knowledge, and zeal 

 of its founder. 



THE NOR WEGIAN NOR TH A TL ANTIC 

 EXPEDITION 



'T^HE Voringen left Hammerfest on July 29 on its last 

 -*■ cruise. On the 31st, at noon, Bear Island was 

 reached. Here the expedition was kept till August 3, 

 the weather- being too stormy to allow sea work to be 

 done. In the night of August 1-2 a party landed on the 

 east side of the island, where the sea was sufficiently 

 smooth to allow a boat to land : but foggy weather inter- 

 fered with any observations of importance being made. 

 Some birds were shot and some fossils collected. In the 

 morning hours extensive fishing operations were carried on 

 from the deck of the ship, now anchored in some 12 fathoms. 

 From 4 to 7 a.m. 200 large cods were hauled. From a point 

 about midway between Bear Island and Spitzbergen we 

 worked first up a cross section towards west-north-west, 

 till we found 1,149 fathoms' depth on the afternoon of 

 the 4th. From this point the course was shaped for 

 South Cape, Spitzbergen. At noon on the Sth we made 

 the cape, sailed round the island lying off the cape, and 

 entered the Stor-Fjord. Here the sun was shining and 

 the water smooth, so Capt. Wille swung the ship for 

 deviation. The next morning we dredged on the bank 

 lying south-east of South Cape; here ths temperature 

 Avas - i""2 C. at the bottom, in 140 fathoms, and zero in 

 120 fathoms. In the upper layers the temperature was 

 very irregularly distributed, both increasing and decreas- 

 ing with depth. We went again round the islands and 

 to the west side of South Cape, taking here a departure 

 for a larger cross section along the parallel of the cape 

 towards Greenland. Having crossed the Spitzbergen 

 bank, we sounded 523, 743, 1,017, 1,429, 1,487, and 

 1,686 fathoms, when we at last, on August 8, were 

 stopped by the ice in 76° 26' N. lat. and o 29' W. long. 

 Off the Spitzbergen bank we found 0° C. in a depth of 

 470 fathoms. The polar current was reached in long. 

 5* E. Station No. 360, where we met the ice, gave the 

 following serial temperatures characteristic of the polar 

 current: — Surface, 3°'2 C, 40 fathoms, - \°'i\ 70 fathoms, 

 -o°-3; 200 fathoms, -o°7,' 300 fathoms, -i°-o; 1,686 

 fathoms at bottom, -i°'3. On this station we lost a 

 trawl and 2,163 fathoms of dredge rope. The sea-bottom 

 between Spitzbergen and Greenland was very rough ; the 

 trawl or dredge seldom came up without damage or having 

 stones inclosed, some of which were rather heavy. We 

 sailed, on August 9, northwards along the ice, and 

 reached our next cross section on the loth, lat. ']'j'^ 50', 

 long, o'' 9' W. The soundings were, from west to east, 

 1,640, 1,686, 1,333, 1,343, 948, no fathoms. The polar 

 current closed in about 4° E. long. Farther east, 0° C. 

 was found in 300 to almost 500 fathoms. On Station No, 

 354, lat. 78-' i', long. 6^" 54' E., we had the great satisfac- 

 tion of verifying the Swedish sounding made in 1868 at 

 the same place by von Otter in the Sofia. The Swedes 

 found 1,350 fathoms, we found 1,343. This agreement 

 gives me great confidence in von Otter's soundings, 

 which were made with less perfect means than ours. 

 The Swedish deep-sea soundings in the Sofia extend 

 far westwards and northwards from Spitzbergen, and are 

 therefore of the greatest importance. From our last 

 cross-section we took a longitudinal section parallel to 

 the coast of Spitzbergen. The depths reached were 421 

 fathoms (temperature o''-o), 905 fathoms, and 459 fathoms 

 in lat. 79° 59; long. 5° 40' E. There was 0° in 390 fathoms 

 depth. There was ice floating in the surface temperature 

 at 5°-2. This brought our section to a close. 

 It appears that here on theSoth parallel, the warm Atlantic 



current is still running northwards, backed up on the west 

 coast of Spitzbergen. The polar ice, driven by northerly 

 winds, is swimming on its back, and melted gradually off 

 just like the end of the glaciers in the summer heat of the 

 valleys. It was apparent that the current was rather strong 

 towards the north, the ship's place being always, by obser- 

 vations and bearings, found more northerly than by dead 

 reckoning. On the open sea it Avas found very difficult, 

 not to say impossible, to determine the ship's place with 

 the ordinary accuracy. The horizon was generally — as 

 we observed, when off the shore— lifted by a sort of 

 mirage. 



On August 15 we dropped our anchor at the Norway 

 Islands, North Spitzbergen, where we took in some 

 ballast. In the sound, where we were lying, the beach 

 was formed of mere loose stones, granite, apparently 

 burst asunder by frost. Flakes and small bergs of ice 

 sailed through the sound with the tide and were often 

 touching the shore, but I could not observe there 

 any sign of the ice cutting any line or mark along the 

 beach. From the Norway Islands we went out off 

 Hackluyt Head, where we took a sounding, passed the 

 Smeerenberg and the South Gat, and anchored in Mag- 

 dalena Bay. The Admiralty chart of the last-named 

 places, surveyed in 181 8 by Franklin and Beechy, 

 proved very accurate. In Magdalena Bay we found a 

 bottom temperature of — i°7 to — 2°'o, in exact agree- 

 ment with the results formed by M. Charles Martins in 

 1839 iri the La Recherche expedition. Our last visit was 

 in the Advent Bay ice-fjord, where Capt. Wille con- 

 structed a chart of the bay, assisted by Capt. Grieg and 

 myself, who measured the base line, some trigonometrical 

 angles, and took altitudes for latitude and longitude. 

 Foggy weather prevented our visit to Bell Sound. On 

 August 23 we left Spitzbergen, and on the 26th we 

 anchored at Tromso. On September 4 the Vdringen 

 returned to Bergen and the expedition was closed. The 

 three summers have yielded in all 375 sounding-stations, 

 113 temperature series, 44 dredgings, and 42 trawlings. 



H, MOHN 



THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF ITHACA 



T N a recent letter to the Times Dr. Schliemann de- 

 ■^ scribes his search for the ancient capital of the island 

 of Ithaca. He began his researches in the valley called 

 Polis, which is in the northern part of the island, and has 

 generally been considered as the site of the Homeric 

 capital of Ithaca — first, on account of its name, which is 

 the Greek word for city ; second, on account of its 

 splendid harbour, at a distance of only two miles from a 

 small island now called Mathitarid, which, being the only 

 one in the strait between Ithaca and Cephalonia, has 

 naturally always been identified with the Homeric island 

 of Asteris, behind which the suitors of Penelope were in 

 wait for Telemachus on his return from Pylos and Sparta 

 ("Odyssey," iv., 844-847). As a fourth reason for the 

 identity of Polis with the site of Ithaca's capital, he men- 

 tions an acropolis which one thinks to perceive on the 

 very steep rock, at a height of about 400 feet, on the 

 north side of the port. Dr. Schliemann found it to con- 

 sist of a very irregular calcareous rock, which had evi- 

 dently never been touched by the hands of man, arid can 

 most certainly never have served as a work of defence. 

 There can be no doubt that the name of this valley is 

 derived not, as has been hitherto thought, from a real 

 city, but merely from an imaginary fortress. 



Besides, this valley is the most fertile spot in Ithaca, 

 and it can therefore never have been used for the site of 

 a city ; in fact, it never yet occurred in Greece that a 

 city should have been built on fertile land, and least of 

 all can such have been the case on the rocky island of 

 Ithaca, where arable land is so exceedingly rare and 

 precious. 



