524 



NATURE 



{Oct. 29, 1874 



M'Clintock, Kane, Hayes, and Hall, for they have made a 

 breach in a place where no one since Barents, during all 

 the 300 years of arctic discovery, had attempted an attack. 

 The explorations are here shown on a map constructed 

 from the original preliminary sketch by Payer, with the 

 geographical constants drawn by Dr. Petermann. 



The nature of the North Pole is not so fully known but 

 that the learned world is still fighting as to whether it is 

 land or water, or an everlasting ice- cap, stretching like 

 our home glaciers, or obeying other laws, or dissolving 

 and opening under the inJluence of the warm sun, air, or 

 water, like our own seas. And since any expedition can 



only discover a proportionally small part of the great 

 unknown arctic world, there will always be some people 

 ready with ape-like wisdom to pronounce against any 

 endeavour to unfold the laws of nature within the inner 

 polar regions. Dr. Petermann has for ten years urged that 

 Germany should send out a polar expedition far into the 

 great European polar sea, and is particularly anxious to get 

 the whole breadth of the European North Sea explored 

 from East Greenland to Novaya Zemlya, north of Bear 

 Island. 



The results of this expedition have marked an epoch in 

 various wa\s. First by the drift for fourteen months in 



the ice-floe. Such driftings have occurred before on a 

 larger scale, as in the case of De Haven, M'Chntock, 

 the Hansa people, and the Polaris people ; but all these 

 expeditions drifted south- -the Polaris crew from 80'- N. 

 lat. to 53°. But entirely new and full of significance for 

 physical geography, is the circumstance that the path of 

 the Austrian expedition was uninterruptedly towards the 

 north. 



The following instances also show that the icy sea is 

 navigable. Hall's expedition north from Smith's Sound 

 proved that from Tessiusak in 73° 20' N. lat., through the 

 ill-famed Melville Bay, Smith's Sound, Kennedy Channel, 

 Robeson Channel, to 82" 11', was reached with ease in 

 eleven days, the distance being more than 700 miles ; and 

 the best officers of this expedition declare their united 



conviction that they could easily have reached further north. 

 The Karis Sea, formerly called the Ice-cellar of the North 

 Pole, has proved to be completely navigable. Admiral 

 Sir E. Parry, after Sir James Clark Ross perhaps the 

 most experienced of all polar travellers, going north from 

 Spitzbergcn, came to the conclusion that a ship might 

 sail to 82^ N. lat. without encountering a piece of ice. 

 Admiral Beechey, one of the most excellent and perhaps 

 the most scientific sea captain who has ever lived, said in 

 1831 that he considered the navigation of the coast of the 

 arctic region as practicable. 



Dr. Petermann then asks : Is the experience of the 

 Austrian expedition a measure of the resistance offered 

 by the ice in the icy sea just explored.' Are all the 

 results. which are opposed to it, from the former expedi- 



