12 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
What this was may he seen from the following 
PLAN OF THE EXPEDITION, 
PRESENTED TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF SWEDEN AND 
NORWAY, July 1877. 
The exploring expeditions, which, during the recent decades, 
have gone out from Sweden towards the north, have long ago 
acquired a truly national importance, through the lively interest 
that has been taken in them everywhere, beyond, as well as 
within, the fatherland; through the considerable sums of money 
that have been spent on them by the State, and above all by 
private persons ; through the . practical school they have formed 
for more than thirty Swedish naturalists ; through the important 
scientific and geographical results they have yielded; and through 
the material for scientific research, which by them has been 
collected for the Swedish Riks-Museum, and which has made it, 
in respect of Arctic natural objects, the richest in the world. 
To this there come to be added discoveries and investigations 
which already are, or promise in the future to become, of 
practical importance; for example, the meteorological and hydro- 
graphical work of the expeditions ; their comprehensive inquiries 
regarding the Seal and Whale Fisheries in the Polar Seas; the 
pointing out of the previously unsuspected richness in fish, of 
the coasts of Spitzbergen; the discoveries, on Bear Island and 
Spitsbergen, of considerable strata of coal and phosphatic 
minerals which are likely to be of great economic importance 
to neighbouring countries ; and, above all, the success of the two 
last expeditions in reaching the mouths of the large Siberian 
rivers, navigable to the confines of China—the Obi and Yenisej 
—whereby a problem in navigation, many centuries old, has at 
last been solved. 
But the very results that have been obtained incite to a 
continuation, especially as the two last expeditions have opened 
a new field of inquiry, exceedingly promising in a scientific, and 
I venture also to say in a practical, point of view, namely, the 
part of the Polar Sea lying east of the mouth of the Yenisej. 
Still, even in our days, in the era of steam and the telegraph, there 
meets us here a territory to be explored, which is new to science, 
and hitherto untouched. Indeed, the whole of the immense 
expanse of ocean which stretches over 90 degrees of longitude 
