180 THE EUROPEAN ISLANDS OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 



national rivalries, combined with the confused reports of navigators, have rendered 

 the charts very uncertain. The same island was even recently confounded by the 

 Swedes with the Giles or Gillis Land, sighted in 1707 by the Dutch captain, 

 Cornelius Giles. At length the Norwegian Altmann, profiting by the open seas, 

 was able to coast the island, which his fellow-countryman Johnsen ascertained in 

 the same year to be not an archipelago, as Altmann had supposed, but a single 

 mass 70 miles long, and on its south side covered for several hundred yards by a 

 vast quantity of drift-wood. A third Norwegian, Captain ISilsen, also visited it in 

 1872, and all concur in describing it as a low island, above which rise detached 

 mountains and continuous ridges, culminating with Mount Haarfagrehaugen, on the 

 west side. Like Spitzbergen, its inhabitants consist of bears, the arctic fox, and 

 great numbers of reindeer, so that the vegetation, although confined to lichens and 

 small growths, must be comparatively abundant. The land also shares in the 

 general movement of upheaval, as is evident from the quantity of drift-wood 

 observed by Johnsen 20 feet above the present sea-level. 



Giles or Gillis Land has also been recently rediscovered west of North-East Land, 

 precisely where Giles had indicated it, and where it is figured on Van der Keulen's 

 chart, published probably in 1710. In 1864 the Norwegian Tobiesen sighted it 

 without being able to land. But there are other islands in the same waters, for 

 Baffin had seen land to the north-east of Spitzbergen so early as 1614. On Peter- 

 mann's maps Giles Land is represented, apparently by mistake, at some 120 miles 

 to the north-east of the most advanced Spitzbergen foreland, seemingly forming 

 part of the newly discovered Franz- Joseph Land. This region has not yet been 

 visited, and it is uncertain whether it is to be regarded as an island, an archipelago, 

 or a simple headland, though its existence can scarcely be questioned. In spring 

 the fishers who have wintered on the northern shores of Spitzbergen see flocks of 

 migratory birds flying towards the north and north-east, whence they return in 

 September, and this land lies right in their track. According to the walrus 

 hunters frequenting the Seven Islands, north of Spitzbergen, from the same 

 remote region come the walruses and numerous white bears visiting that little 

 group. 



IV.— FRANZ-JOSEPH LAND. 



Since 1874 the arctic waters have been known to encircle with their floating 

 masses another archipelago, even more extensive than Spitzbergen, but of far more 

 difficult access. It lies almost entirely beyond the eightieth parallel, with a mean 

 temperature from 18° to 28° below freezing point. Even on its south side the 

 mean for the year 1873 was found to be 3° Fahr. by the explorers who had to spend 

 some time on its shores. This is the Franz- Joseph Land of the Austro- Hungarian 

 Tegetthofl* expedition, conducted by Payer and Weyprecht, and which has contri- 

 buted so much to promote the scientific exploration of the arctic seas. 



Setting out with the object of making the north-east passage round Siberia to 

 Bering Strait, the daring navigators, after having been ice-bound, contrived to 

 land on a small island, which they named Wilczek, in honour of the promoter of 



