298 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
to Norway, after having completed a voyage which some years 
before all geographical authorities would have considered an 
impossibility. I need scarcely mention that the Academy in 
Stockholm redeemed the promise which one of its members had 
given without the necessary authority. Johannesen was then 
twenty-six years old. Son of a skilful hunter, he had from his 
childhood taken part in Arctic voyages, and thus grown up in 
the employment to which he had devoted himself. 
The same year several other walrus-hunters also made remark¬ 
able voyages in the Kara Sea. Captain E. A. Ulve first sailed 
along the west coast of Novaya Zemlya to 76° 47' N.L., then 
back to Alatotschkin Schar, through which he passed on the 
7th and 8th August into the Kara Sea, which was completely 
free of ice, with the exception of some few very scattered pieces. 
After sailing backwards and forwards in different directions in 
the Kara Sea, he returned through the Kara Port on the 24th 
August. Captain F. E. Mack made a similar voyage. He 
sailed from the 28th June to the 8th July northwards along the 
west coast of Novaya Zemlya, which was free of ice between the 
Tetchora and the Admiralty peninsula, where fast ice was 
found, and fourteen sailing vessels and two steamers were now 
assembled. On the 8th and 9th June thunder was heard here. 
From the Admiralty peninsula Mack sailed again, first to the 
south, and then, on the 18th July, through Matotschkin Sound 
into the Kara Sea, which was nearly free of ice. Captain- P. 
Quale, again, and A. 0. Nedrevaag, sailing master, penetrated 
through Yugor Sound into the Kara Sea, and sailed there to 
75° 22' N.L., and 74° 35' E.L. (Greenwich).^ 
^ Petermann’s Mittheilungen, 1871, p. 97. Along with Ulve’s, Mack’s, 
and Qaale’s voyages, Petermann refers to a voyage round Novaya Zemlya 
by T. Torkildsen. In this case, however, Petermann was exposed to a 
possibly unintended deception. Torkildsen, who visited the Polar Sea for 
the first time in 1870, indeed made the voyage round Novaya Zemlya, but 
only as a rescued man on Johannesen’s vessel. Torkildsen’s own vessel, the 
Alfa^ had been wrecked on the 13th July at the bottom of Kara Bay, after 
