NORDENSKJOLD’S LABORS. 395 
1850, and by Collinson in 1851, but its northern entrance was completely sealed 
up by the ice floes. 
Finally, Banks Strait was a fatal obstruction—fatal I mean as regards the 
making of the northwest passage—to Parry sailing westward in 1819, and 
equally so to McClure in 1851, ’52, and ’53, going eastward from Behring Strait, 
when he had to abandon his ship in Mercy Bay, and with his crew take refuge 
on board Kellett’s vessels, which were also abandoned. ‘They then took pass- 
age in an auxiliary steamer to England wa. Lancaster Sound and Davis Straits, 
thus making or finding a northwest passage by walking one or two hundred miles 
over the ice-covered sea. 
Sea channels having an east and west direction, when of considerable length, 
are usually pretty free from obstruction, as the land to the north in a great meas- 
ure prevents ice pressure from that direction. 
An idea has recently been started, and papers have been read on the sub- 
ject, advocating an advance Pole-ward between the meridians of 50° and 60° 
east longitude to Franz Joseph Land, which is acknowledged to be fosséble of ap- 
proach about once in every five or six years. If this assumption is correct, as I 
presume it may be, because mentioned by the advocates of this route, it must be 
most dangerous, for, supposing a ship to reach the south portion of Franz Joseph 
Land in ¢he favorable year, she would in all probability be shut up and prevented 
from getting back for five or six years—a much longer detention than is either 
safe or desirable. 
I have already quoted Nordenskjéld’s favorable opinion of the northward 
route za the west shore of Spitzbergen, where we know there is a wide channel 
of sea as far as 83° north latitude, seen by Parry in 1827. That greatest of 
Arctic navigators, when in latitude 82° 45’ N., could not find an ice-floe suffi- 
ciently large and strong to haul his boats upon, so as to protect them from be- 
ing nipped, and remarks in his journal, ‘‘such was the state of the ice at this 
my extreme north point”’—the fact being that, the farther north he went the 
smaller and weaker the floes became. ‘This Spitzbergen route has never been 
attempted by large, well equipped, and powerful screw steamers such as those of 
Nares in 1875, or like the fine ships now almost universally used by the seal 
hunters from Dundee and Peterhead. 
Previous to his great undertaking which ended so gloriously, Nordenskjéld 
undertook two preliminary shorter voyages, as it were to feel the way. For this 
purpose he made a voyage eastward in 1875, with a small sailing sloop of 70 
tons burden, crossed the Kara Sea, and reached the Yeniessei River without dif- 
ficulty, the vessel returning the same season by the same route. Almost every- 
thing intended by this expedition was effected—something unusual in Arctic dis- 
covery. It beimg supposed that the cause of success in 1875 was an unusually 
favorable state of the ice, Nordenskjéld went the following year by nearly the 
same course in a steamer of 400 tons, and made the voyage with equal success— 
thus proving, as far as possible where such an uncertain element of obstruction 
as ice movement is concerned, the practicability of navigating these seas. 
