SUMMARY OF ARCTIC EXPLORING EXPEDITIONS. 



753 



limits. He returned to New York, after three years' sojourn, having in the meanwhile 

 done much for future service. In a previous chapter ^ full details of the expedition 

 have been given. In 1864 he again set out, returning in 1869. In the following chap- 

 ter will be told all that is known of this expedition, of which no full record has appeared. 

 In 1871 he once more started upon what was to be his last expedition. Of this and 

 of the marvelous escape of a portion of his men after his death, the next chapter will 

 contain an account. 



Of late years the opinion has become prevalent that the most feasible way of 

 reaching the open Polar Sea is by way of Spitzbergen or Nova Zembla ; that is, to 

 the eastward of Greenland, and several European expeditions have gone in that direc- 

 tion. It is argued that the warmer waters of the great oceanic current of the Gulf 

 Stream, flowing as a surface current in this direction, keep the channels comparatively 

 free of ice. Some indeed go further, and ascribe the existence of this assumed open 

 sea to be owing to these currents. In 1868 a German expedition was organized by 

 Dr. August Petermann of Gotha, the foremost geographer of the day. It consisted 

 of a vessel of 80 tons, under command of Captain Koldeway, and left Bergen, in 

 Norway, early in May. Koldeway went up between Greenland and Spitzbergen, 

 reaching a point as high as 81° b' North, and returned in October. In 1868 the 

 Swedish government also sent an expedition which sailed to the north of Spitzbergen, 

 but accomplished little or nothing. In June, 1869, another German expedition of 

 two vessels left Bremen. One of these, the Hansa, was in October wrecked in the 

 ice near the eastern shore of Greenland. The crew escaped to an ice-field which 

 was slowly drifting southward, and constantly diminishing in size as it came into 

 warmer waters, until at last it was hardly larger than a raft. The men then took to 

 their boats, and succeeded in reaching Fredericksthal, near Cape Farewell, the south- 

 ern point of Greenland, and reached home in the summer of 1870. Their adven- 

 tures while on this ice-field read strangely like those of the persons saved from Hall's 

 last expedition, to be narrated in the next chapter. Meanwhile the other vessel, the 

 Germania, which had become separated from her consort, endeavored to reach high 

 latitudes by keeping close along the eastern shore of Greenland. She turned back 

 as winter set in, having apparently accomplished nothing toward solving the problem. 

 But she discovered what was supposed to be a deep indentation in the shore, running 

 north-westward, to which was given the name of Francis Joseph Bay. Hall's last 

 expedition discovered, on the opposite side of the Greenland coast, an apparent bay 

 running north-eastward. Many circumstances combine to render it probable that 

 these two supposed bays are a connected channel, forming the northern boundary of 

 the island of Greenland. During 1869, 1870 and 1871, several other expeditions, 

 tmong which was one conducted by James Lament, an English gentleman of fortune, 

 tried the way between Greenland and Spitzbergen, but none of them reached very 

 high latitudes, or made any important discoveries. In June, 1871, Payer and Wey- 

 precht, lieutenants in the Austrian navy, embarked at Tronso, in Norway, on board 

 a little trading vessel, and sailed between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. They 

 reached only as high as latitude 78° 41', but entered an almost open sea, in which 

 navigation was impeded only by very light and scattered ice. Had they been fitted 

 out for an extended cruise there seems good reason to suppose that they would have 



1 p. 433, et seq. 



