528 General Notes. [ May, | 
‘assistance of the Zowise, then beset by the sea. She was caught 
in the pack and frozen in on Sept. 17. The wreck reported by 
the Samoieds proved to be that of an old Russian whaler. It has 
been decided by the Danish government to send outa search 
expedition. 
The ice in the Spitzbergen and Barents seas has this year been 
so unfavorable for exploration that the geographical results have 
been almost x7/, In 1881 the ice was exceptionally low down to- 
wards the coast of Norway, while there was open water north of 
Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. In that year the ice disap- 
peared with extraordinary rapidity when it once began to melt, 
while in 1882 it seems hardly to have given way at all. The 
north side of Spitzbergen has been almost inaccessible, which 
has not been the case for many years. Not improbably this was 
due to the northerly winds, which brought fresh ice as fast as the 
pack melted at its southern edge, so that possibly open water was 
present in the region around Bering strait. It is the opinion ot 
Baron Nordenskiold and other authorities upon Arctic matters, 
that the Siberian seas can be navigated every summer from one 
end or the other, and that the past year was favorable to pent 
tration by way of Bering strait. a: 
Fresh attempts to open up a trade route between Siberia and 
Europe will this year be made by Mr. Sibiriakoff, Dr. Oscar 
Dickson and Baron Knop. 
The members of the Lena Expedition are reported by Lieut 
Harder to have been in excellent health and comfortably settled 
in winter quarters on Oct. 3. fs ri 
=- An expedition, with Baron Nordenskiold at its head, will 
sent out by Dr. Oscar Dickson, to explore the interior of ca 
land. Baron Nordenskjold is confident that in the interior * 
this ice-covered land an oasis exists, and believes t 
reach it. It is hoped, also, to obtain some traces of th 
Norse colonies, last heard from at the end of the fourteenth cen- 
Their very location is matter of dispute. 
Care Horn Expepition—The members of the French re 
netic and Meteorological Expedition to Cape Horn = as a 
commenced observations on the 26th. The air was Maire 
AsiA.—Lieut.-Col. Beresford Lovett has published a — , 
the route from Teheran to Astrabad, and thence to Shahru roe 
general aspect of Western Mazanderan is bare an ag yilla 
relieved by fertile spots, and Col. Elliott remarks that tne ag 
gers seem prosperous, wear good clothes, are fat a a 
looking, and probably have a better lot than that of ane ia 
German or Russian peasants. An opening of twenty for" i 
a dyke of basalt, which rises up eighty or ninety feet ° 
’: 
