1 66 General Notes. [February, 



August 25th. The next day a good harbor was found and ex- 

 ploring parties were sent out to examine the interior and the 

 coast line. A mountain about 2500 feet high was ascended. 

 Open water was seen in all directions except between the west 

 and south-south-west, in which quarter a high range of mountains 

 seemed to terminate the land. Two parties were sent out in boats, 

 of which one followed the eastern and the northern shores until 

 stopped by ice when the boat had to be abandoned and a return 

 made on the land, while the other boat took the western shore 

 along which it passed until stopped by the same ice, after passing 

 the most northern point of Wrangell Land, where the position of 

 the other party could be seen. Wrangell Land is thus shown to 

 be an island about sixty miles in length. At the northern end 

 there is a current running to the north-west at about six knots an 

 hour. The Rodgers anchorage was in N. lat. 70 57' W. long. 

 1/8° io'. It is situated to the south and west of Capt. Hooper's 

 landing place at the mouth of Clark River. The Rodgers afterwards 

 reached N. lat. 73 44' W. long. 17 1° 48' on September 19th. 

 She expected to winter in St. Lawrence Bay. 



The U. S. steamer Alliance reached lat. 79 36', in the neigh- 

 borhood of Spitzbergen, in September last. Captain VVadleigh 

 found the ice extending far to the eastward and southward of the 

 ordinary limit, and it was also much heavier. The Norwegian 

 walrus hunters, who ordinarily go to Hinlopen Straits and even 

 further on the north coast of Spitzbergen, did not this season get 

 as far to the north and east as the Alliance. Wyde Jan's Water 

 on the south-east was full of ice, which extended from Hope 

 Island nearly to Cape Petermann, Novaya Zemlya. Captain 

 Wadleigh says that the southerly position of the ice is accounted 

 for by the last very severe winter, and the fact that during July 

 and August the usual southerly winds did not prevail and force 

 the ice northwards. Captain David Gray confirms this report in 

 a letter given in the Royal Geographical Society's Proceedings, in 

 which he states that the ice for the past two years has been 

 almost stationary, notwithstanding that strong northerly winds 

 prevailed. " The absence," he writes, " of southerly drift can only 

 be accounted for by the lanes of water making amongst the floes 

 being immediately frozen up again with the severe frosts, keeping 

 the ice fixed together, and preventing any large waters being 

 made to force the ice south. The ice has not diminished during 

 the last two summers so fist as usual owing to the frosts covering 

 the lanes and pools of water with bay ice, preventing the wash 

 of the water from cutting into it and washing it away. Close ice 

 melts very slowly; open ice soon disappears." 



The Lady Franklin Bay Expedition made the most rapid pas- 

 sage through Melville Bay ever recorded and reached their des- 

 tination one month after leaving St. John's, N. F. They stopped 

 to take aboard natives, furs and dogs at Godhaven, Rittenbank, 



