ARCTIC EXPLORATION. 143 
ARCTIC EXPLORATION. 
At the regular meeting of the Geographical Society of Berlin, April roth, 
1880, the President, Dr. Nachtigal, read a letter received from St. Petersbrug 
giving an account of the various attempts made in the course of the year 1879 
to establish regular intercourse by sea between the ports of Europe and the estu- 
aries of the great rivers of Siberia. In 1879 seven ships attempted to reach 
Siberia from Europe by the North Cape, but of these only one, the steamer 
Luise, was successful. With two barges in tow, this vessel left Bremen on the 
8th July, arrived in the Yenissei on the 15th September, and returned in good 
condition to Bremerhaven on the 30th October. The cargo consisted of petro- 
leum, sugar, butter and tobacco, and the return freight of about 20,000 pounds 
.of wheat which had been brought from the interior of Siberia to the mouth of the 
Yenisei in boats specially built for this purpose. All the other ventures were 
complete failures. The two Swedish vessels, the Samuel Owen and the Express, 
freighted by the well-known Moscow merchant, Sibiriakoff, endeavored in vain 
to force a passage through the masses of ice accumulated at the entrance of the 
Kara Sea, and were compelled to return. Still more unfortunate were the two 
steamers, Amy and Mizpah, bound for the Obi and chartered by the merchant 
Fund, as also ihe Danish steamer Neptun, dispatched on account of the same 
firm, and which, as well as Mr. Ketley’s English steamer Brighton, came to 
grief in Baidarak Bay. A similar fate was in store for three sailing vessels which 
after having been built in the dockyard of Trapesinkow at Tjumen (Government 
of Tobolsk), were laden with grain, tallow and spirits, and sailed for Europe. 
The Nadeshda and the Ok were shut in by the ice in Baidarak Bay, near 
the Tambata Rives, and lost their tackle as well as part of the cargo; the Tjumen 
and the steamer Luise (the latter had wintered in the Obi) ran on sand banks in 
the Gulf of Obi and were thus prevented from continuing their voyage. These 
shipping disasters have caused great surprise at St. Petersburg, where Professor 
Nordenskiold’s voyage had been hailed as the commencement of a new epoch in © 
the Siberian trade. The advocates of communication by sea with Siberia point 
out that 1879 has been an exceptionally unfavorable year, and that most of the 
accidents were due not so much to the state of the ice in the Kara Sea, as to the 
want of charts, buoys, beacons, etc. It is also suggested that while there must 
have been in that year a great accumulation of ice in the Kara Sea, the sea 
round Novaya Zemlya just about the same time was free from ice, and we may 
conclude that in each year, according to the direction of the prevailing wind, 
one of these two routes will be open to navigation; an opinion to some extent — 
confirmed by the voyage of the English Captain Markham, who at the end of 
September, having found the Kara Sea encumbered with ice, sailed without 
obstacle round the northern extremity of Novaya Zemlya. Unfortunately our 
experience does not date further back than the year 1875. It is possible that the 
year 1879 may have been exceptionally unfavorable, and its immediate prede- 
cessors exceptionally favorable to Arctic exploration, and as observation alone, 
