i&4 PLEASANT WA YS IN SCIENCE. 



The next route to be considered in order of time would 

 be the American route; but I prefer to leave this to the 

 last, as the latest results relate to that route. I take next, 

 therefore, a route which some regard as the most promising 

 of all that, namely, which passes between Spitzbergen and 

 the Scandinavian peninsula. 



It will be remembered that Lieutenant Payer, of the 

 Austrian navy, had accompanied Captain Koldewey's first 

 expedition. When driven back from the attempt to advance 

 along the eastern shores of Greenland, that commander 

 crossed over to Spitzbergen, and tried to find the Land of 

 Gilles. He also accompanied Koldewey's later expedition, 

 and shared his belief that there is no continuous channel 

 northwards on the western side of the North Atlantic channel. 

 Believing still, however, with Dr. Petermann, the geographer, 

 that there is an open Polar sea beyond the ice-barrier, Payer 

 set out in 1871, in company with Weyprecht, towards the 

 Land of Gilles. They did not find this mysterious land, but 

 succeeded in passing 150 miles further north, after rounding 

 the south-eastern shores of Spitzbergen, than any Arctic 

 voyagers who had before penetrated into the region lying 

 between Spitzbergen and Novaia Zemlia. Here they found, 

 beyond the 76th parallel, and between 42 and 60 east 

 longitude, an open sea, and a temperature of between 5 

 and 7 above the freezing-point. Unfortunately, they had 

 not enough provisions with them to be able safely to travel 

 further north, and were thus compelled to return. The 

 season seems to have been an unusually open one ; and it 

 is much to be regretted that the expedition was not better 



centuries ago. Indeed, among Captain Koldewey's results is one which 

 seems to indicate the occurrence of such a change. The country he 

 explored was found to have been inhabited. " Numerous huts of 

 Esquimaux were seen, and various instruments and utensils of primitive 

 form ; but for some reason or other the region seems to have been finally 

 deserted. The Polar bear reigns supreme on the glaciers, as the walrus 

 does among the icebergs. " Not improbably the former inhabitants were 

 (breed to leave this region by the gradually increasing cold. 



