266 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
neighbourliood of land. From this I draw the conclusion that 
the sea scarcely anywhere permanently ^ freezes over where it is 
of any considerable depth, and far from land. If this be the 
case, there is nothing unreasonable in the old accounts, and 
what has happened once we may expect to happen another time. 
However this may he, it is certain that the ignominious 
result of Wood’s voyage exerted so great a deterring influence 
from all new undertakings in the same direction, that nearly 
two hundred years elapsed before an expedition was again sent 
out with the distinctly declared intention, which was afterwards 
disavowed, of achieving a north-east passage. This was the 
famous Austrian expedition of Payer and Weyprecht in 
1872-74, which failed indeed in penetrating far to the east¬ 
ward, but which in any case formed an epoch in the history of 
Arctic exploration by the discovery of Franz-Josef’s Land 
and by many valuable researches on the natural conditions 
of the Polar lands. Considered as a North-east voyage, this 
expedition was the immediate predecessor of that of the Vega. 
^ That thin sheets of ice are formed in clear and calm weather, even in 
the open sea and over great depths, was observed several times during the 
expedition of 1868. But when we consider that salt water has no 
maximum of density situated above the freezing-point, that ice is a bad 
conductor of heat, and that the clear, newly-formed ice is soon covered by 
a layer of snow which hinders radiation, it appears to me to be improbable 
that the ice-covering at deep, open places can become so thick that it is 
not broken up even by a moderate storm. Even the shallow harbour at 
Mussel Bay first froze permanently in the beginning of February, and in 
the end of January the swell in tlje harbour was so heavy, that all the 
three vessels of the Swedish Expedition were in danger of being wrecked 
—ill consequence of the tremendous sea in 80^ N.L.in the end of January ! 
The sea must then have been open very far to the north-west. On the 
west coast of Spitzbergen the sea in winter is seldom completely frozen 
within sight of land. Even at Barents’ winter haven on the north-cast 
coast of Novaya Zemlya, the sea during the coldest season of the year was 
often free of ice, and Hudson’s statement, that it is not surprising that 
the navigator falls in with so much ice in the North Atlantic, when there 
are so many sounds and bays on Spitzbergen,” shows that even he did not 
believe in any ice being formed in the open sea. 
