Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/337

Rh means the commonly-received belief was corrected, which represented as narrow and of little depth this basin, into which, by two neighboring estuaries, are poured the congealed masses of the Obi and Yenisei, as if it were the great ice-house of the north-pole.

The most important event of the year 1869, in the order of facts, was the second German expedition, which departed in June from Bremerhaven. This expedition, fitted out at great expense through the zeal of numerous committees, was composed of two ships, the screw-steamer Germania, seasoned already by a preceding exploration, and the sailing escort Hansa. Captain Koldewey, the commander-in-chief, was assisted by the Austrian Lieutenant Julius Payer, and several scientists. The instruction given to the voyagers, by the Central Committee of Bremen, marked out for them the eastern coast of Greenland as the principal base of operations, and the object to be accomplished was to study it scientifically, and to examine it in all its details. These labors completed, Mr. Koldewey and his companions would, if circumstances were favorable, direct their course as far as possible toward the pole; but, in any event, the extreme date of return was fixed upon the first of November of the following year. The two ships kept company, through good and evil fortune, as far as the seventy-fourth degree of latitude; there, a fatal error, a signal of the Germania incorrectly interpreted on board the sailing-vessel, separated the two ships forever. The Hansa, not having at command the resources of steam, was soon invested by the ice, about forty miles from the coast, and, after having, in this position, drifted considerably to the south, broke to pieces under the pressure of the ice-blocks that surrounded her. The crew sought safety upon an immense piece of floating ice, where they built of coal a winter hut that was destroyed in its turn. This new species of raft, which was at first seven miles in circumference, broke up or gradually melted during a perilous and capricious drift of six months, a part of the time in the darkness of a polar night, until at last the hour came when the unfortunate sailors measured only with anxiety the surface of their fragile domain. Happily, the current had carried them insensibly to more hospitable latitudes, and, as they had saved their boats, they seized the first occasion to set them afloat. Finally, by force of sail, towing, and transshipment, they reached Friedrichsthal, a missionary station situated at the southern point of Greenland, then Lichtenau, and Julianshaab, where they found a steamer that landed them at Copenhagen on the first of September.

The Germania, more favored, had meantime the glory of accomplishing to the letter the very precise instructions of the committee of Bremen. The history of the voyage, filling four large volumes, deserves the closest attention, and will remain, until new discoveries are made, the indispensable manual of the navigator in the eastern part of Greenland. The difficulty of gaining access to these coasts,