Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/340

326 to spring up again in another part of the horizon with the most deceptive effects of refraction. The activity and wakefulness of the nights increased the suffering of these marches where a geographical enigma was mingled, as it were, with every step, and where it was often the work of a whole day to accomplish a simple advance of a quarter of a league; but of what is not the constancy of man capable when science is the object of pursuit! The pioneers of the Germania advanced thus beyond the seventy-seventh degree of latitude by 18° 50' west longitude from Greenwich. This year, at least, there was no trace of an open sea toward the pole, on the Greenland coast. Everywhere, on the north and east, the sea appeared to be solidly bridged by the ice. If provisions had not failed, the traveling colony would have been able to push on the sled indefinitely over these boundless plains. The iceberg, properly so called, without remarkable protuberances, extended for about two leagues from the shore, which, starting from this extreme point, seemed to take a northwest direction, where the perspective was obstructed by high mountains crowned with glaciers.

During the two following months, the voyagers explored, either in sleds or boats, the deep bays and fiords of the estuaries west and south of the Pendulum Islands. In the month of May, even in this high latitude, signs precursory of the fine season were manifest, and the first fruits of the meagre Greenland vegetation were seen in all directions. Under the bridges of snow and the coverings of the glaciers, the murmur of running water was heard; long flights of eider-ducks arrived from the south; the polar ortolan warbled its sweet note; the lemmings, a kind of northern rabbit, were seen among the fragments of the rocks; the white hares enjoyed the young sprouts of moss and saxifrage; while the reindeer, with its slender body, enlivened the depths of the torrents, and, at a distance, the curious head of the seal emerged through the sheets of ice, brightened and mellowed by the sun.

At last, on the 22d of July, 1870, the Germania floated once more in the open sea, and, after having remained 300 days in winter quarters, quitted the little harbor that had hospitably received her, in order to attempt, by the aid of steam, further progress toward the north; but, in latitude 75° 26', a little less than the height she had attained the preceding summer, the channel suddenly failed. The summer influences had not disintegrated the enormous masses bound to the iceberg, and apparently this soldering would yield only to the autumnal tempests. But, these tempests coming at the end of August, the Germania, which, according to the instructions of the committee of Bremen, could make but one winter in these regions, resolved to return to Europe, and she was alongside the wharf in the Weser on the 11th of September.

The scientific results of the exploration were, on the whole, considerable. If the principal problem of polar navigation had not been solved, much more precise and extended notions concerning the