38 



NATURE 



[Nov. 12, 1874 



the same time found the western half of that sea quite free of 

 ice. 



I am not going to make any remark upon the late Austrian 

 expedition, a£ its results and observations are not sufficiently 

 before us, but I am authorised by a letter of Lieut. Weyjirecht, 

 the nautical commander, dated the I st November, to state that, 

 before he has i)ublished his extensive observations, he warns 

 against all premature conclusions, and concludes the letter vifhich 

 I shall publish in the next part of the l\/itlheiluiigei!, and in 

 which he expresses his own views on the arctic question for the 

 first time, with the sentence "that he considers the route 

 tlirougli the Siberian Sea as far as Behring Strait as practicable 

 as before, and would readily take the command of another expe- 

 dition in tlie same direction." 



I believe myself that the navigability of the seas to the north 

 of Novaya Zemlya can as little be called in question by this one 

 drift of the Austnan expedition, as the navigability of Baffin's Bay 

 by the drifts of De Haven, M'Clintock, and the crew of the 

 Polaris. These drifts by no means prevent others from pene- 

 trating the same seas. 



And here I may be allowed to refer in a few words to the 

 other end of this route, the seas north of Behring Strait. Capt. 

 Cook in 177S, and his second in command, Capt. Gierke, in 

 I779> believed to have reached the extreme limit of navigation 

 by attaining Icy Cape (in 7oi° N. lat. ) on the American, and 

 North Cape (in 69° N. lat ) on the Asiatic side, and they con- 

 sidered further attempts there as madness as well as to any 

 practical purpose useless. Capt. Beechey, however, with his 

 lieutenant, the present Admiral Sir Edward Belcher, penetrated 

 already in 1S26 as far as Point Barrow, and expressed the result 

 of his experience in the weighty sentence : "I have always been 

 of opinion that a navigation may be performed along any coast 

 of the Polar Sea that is continuous." * And, true enough, many 

 a follower has sailed along the whole of the northernmost coast of 

 America, though exposed to the pressure of the immense pack- 

 ice masses from the north impinging upon these coasts. Capt. 

 Kellett, with the Herald, a vessel not intended for ice navigation, 

 penetr.ated in 1S49 with ease to 72° 51' N. lat. into the Polar Sea 

 so much dreaded by Cook and Clerke, discovered Herald Island, 

 and what is now called by some Wrangel Land, and found the ice 

 not at all so formidable as supposed previously. Going over the 

 similar experience of CoUinson, Maclure, Rodgers, and others, 

 we come to the time when the Americans established a highly 

 ]:)rofitable whale fishery in seas considered entirely useless by 

 Cook and Clerke, gaining as much as .iSS, 000,000 in two years. 

 It was in one of these years that a shipmaster went as far as 

 74° N. lat., nearly due north of Herald Island, and saw peaks 

 and mountain ranges fpr to the northward of his position. Another, 

 Capt. Long, went a considerable distance along the Siberian 

 const to the west, and did more in a few days with a sailing 

 vessel than Admiral Wrangel had been able to accomplish with 

 sledges in winter in the course of four years, in the same region. 

 In a letter dated Honolulu, 15th January, 186S, he says: — 

 " That the passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean «ill 

 be accomplished by one of the routes I have indicated I have 

 as much faith in as I have in any uncertain event of the future, 

 and much more than I had fifteen years ago in the success of the 

 Atlantic Telegraph. Although this route will be of no great 

 importance to commerce as a transit from one ocean to the other, 

 yet could the passage along the coast as far as the mouth of the 

 Lena be successfully made every year (which I think probable) it 

 would be of great benefit in developing the resources of Northern 

 Siberia." + 



To the north-east of Spitzbergen, also, an interesting cruise 

 was recently made by Mr. Leigh Smith, who in 1871, with only 

 a sailing schooner of S5 tons, reached as far as 27° 25' E. of 

 Greenwich in 80° 27' N. lat., 4° of longitude further than any 

 authenticated and observing navigator before him. At this point 

 he had before him to the east — consequently in the direction of 

 the newly-discovered Franz-Joseph Land — nothing but open 

 water on the bth of September, 1871, as far as the eye could 

 reach. 



That hnd would be found in the locality where the Austrian 

 Expedition actually found it, I have long predicted. Gillis Land, 

 after Keulen's map generally considered to be situated in So" N. 

 lat., 30° E. long., by the Swedish explorers erroneously put 

 down in 79° N. lat., I have from the original text concluded to 

 be in 8i4° N. lat. and 37" E. long. Greenwich. This approaches 



'* Beechey : Voyage, vol. ii. p. 297. 

 t Naiitical Magazine, 1868, p. 242. 



to within eighty nautical miles of Franz-Joseph Land, which was 

 sighted westward as far as 46° E. long. ; but in this longitude 

 there was not as yet any hmit of the land. The flight of im- 

 mense numbers of brent-geese and other birds in the same direc- 

 tion has long been observed by various voyagers, and it has also 

 been noticed that not only migrations of birds but also of 

 mammals take the same direction ; the Norwegian fishermen on 

 the north of Spitzbergen have repeatedly caught immense 

 numbers of walrus and ice-bears at the Seven Islands, and espe- 

 cially on their north-eastern side, whereas at Spitzbergen the 

 walrus is now very scarce and the ice-bear almost extinct. 



I consider it also highly probable that that great arctic pioneer 

 and navigator William Baffin may have seen the western shores 

 of Franz-Joseph Land as long ago as 1614, for in that year he 

 proceeded to Si° N. lat, and thought he saw land as far as 82° 

 to the north-east of Spitzbergen (which is accordingly marked 

 in one of Purchas's maps. * It is true the account of this voyage 

 is very meagre, but so is the account of liis voyage and still 

 greater discovery of Baffin's Bay two years after, which Sir John 

 Barrow calls ,"the most vague, indefinite, and unsatisfactory," 

 and on his map leaves out Baffin's Bay altogether, and this, be 

 it observed, in the year i8iS!+ Barrington and Beaufoy, 

 though inserting Baffin's discoveries in their map dated March I, 

 i8l8, describe them in the following words : — "Baffin's Bay, 

 according to the relation of Mr. Baffin in 1616, but not nolo be- 

 liez'cd!" With Barents's important voyages and discoveries it 

 is exactly the same. The Russians, who only navigated as far 

 as Cape Nassau, also tried to erase Barents's discoveries from 

 the map and c it off the north-eastern part of Novaya Zemlya 

 altogether. J But old Bai-ents has been found more trustworthy 

 and coirecl lUan all the Russian maps and pilots put together. 

 Even the identical winter hut of that great Dutch navigator, 

 nearly 300 years old, has been found by the Norwegian Capt. 

 Carlsen on Sept. 9, 1871, and many interesting relics brought 

 home by him ; so that the truth and correctness of those famous 

 old Dutch voyages has been proved beyond all doubt. In like 

 manner, Baffin's voyage to within sight of the western shores of 

 Franz-Joseph Land may be considered trustworthy until some 

 substantial proof of the contrary is brought forward. Nay, it 

 even appears to me that the report given of another remarkable 

 voyage of a Dutcli navigator, Cornells Roule, merits attention 

 and is to be considered in the same way as Baffin and Barents ; 

 so that it it be as true as the voyages of these navigators, it may 

 yet be found that Franz-Joseph Land was already discovered 

 and sailed through up to 74I0 or 75° N. lat. nearly 300 years 

 ago. This report runs thus ; — " I am informed with certainty 

 that Capt. Cornells Roule has been in 84!° or 85° N. lat. in the 

 longitude of Novaya Zemlya, and has sailed about forty miles 

 between broken land, seeing large open water behind it. He 

 went on shore with his boat, and from a hill it appeared to him 

 that he could go three r'ays more to the north. He found lots 

 of birds there and very tame." g Now, the m . m longitude of 

 Novaya Zemlya is 60° E. Greenwich, and passes : ight through 

 Austria Sound and Franz-Joseph Land ; the latter is a " broken 

 land" also, behind which Lieut. Payer saw " large open water," 

 and found " lots of birds ! " 



Be this as it may, we now come to Sir Edward Parry's voyage 

 north of Spitzbergen, regarding which it is an undoubted fact 

 that he reached 82° 45' N. lat., the furthest well authenticated 

 point yet reached by any navigator, and a feat unsurpassed to 

 this day. 



There is, however, no doubt that the northern coast of Spitz- 

 bergen lies just in the teeth of one of the most formidable ice- 

 currents, and one that summer and winter is sweeping its ice 

 masses just towards these coasts. If, therefore, an English 

 expedition should take Spitzbergen as a basis to start from, it 

 would require two vessels, one of which ought to go up the west 

 coast, the other up the east coast ; for when northerly and 

 westerly winds prevail, the first vessel would probably be ham- 

 pered by ice, and the second vessel find it navigable up the east 

 coast, and if easterly and southerly winds prevailed, the reverse 

 would be the case. 



'^ Barrington and Beaufoy. pp. 40 and 41. 



t Barrow, "Chronological History," p. 216 and map. 



J This was actually attempted by a pilot of the " Russian Imperial 

 Marine," and found its wayalso into vol. viii. of the Journal of the R. G. S., 

 p. 411, where the map is spoken of as "showing the actual outline of its 

 works, as traced by the pilot Ziwolka, from the latest examinations, by which 

 it will be seen that more than the eastern half represented on our maps has 

 no existence in reality ! " 



§ Wilsen, N. and O. Tartarye, folio 1707, 2 decl., p. 920. See also Proc. 

 R. G. S. ix. p. J78. 



