Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/341

Rh and hydrographic nature of the most important northern country were attained. Mr. Koldewey, when he asserts that no continuous channel exists on the east of Greenland, draws perhaps too rigorous a conclusion from a simple experience of two years. But it appears doubtful whether, under any conditions, this coast can offer a favorable base for reaching the central basin of the north-pole, for, on one hand, the state of the channel near the shore is subordinated to all kinds of topical conditions difficult to foresee, and, on the other, the cold current, even at the season of the greatest loosening of the ice, causes immense quantities of huge blocks to drift in that direction. The country itself presents also to the scientist and geographer a very curious field for observation. The officers of the Germania found, from investigations skillfully conducted, that this part of Greenland is actually inhabited, and that it seems also habitable. They discovered the perfectly preserved remains of Esquimaux huts, veritable houses that the history describes very minutely, containing different instruments and utensils, whose primitive fashion recalls the work of the Stone age; but, for some reason, the polar man seems to have deserted, without a desire to return, these quarters, where the conditions of life, during the progress of ages, have been sensibly modified. The polar bear, improperly called the white bear, reigns as master among the glaciers of the coast, as the walrus, no less dreaded, reigns on the icebergs of the sea.

The most intelligent and the most active member of the important mission whose fortune we have followed, was undoubtedly Lieutenant Julius Payer. This officer, devoted heart and soul to the theories of Dr. Petermann, set out the next year (1871) with his countryman, Lieutenant Carl Weyprecht, to search for the land of Gillis. The two explorers did not succeed in finding it; but they penetrated 150 miles farther north than their predecessors had done in this region. Beyond the seventy-eighth degree, between 42° and 60° west longitude, there was still an open sea, and the temperature of the surface of the sea varied between three and four degrees (Centigrade) above zero. The want of provisions obliged the crew to turn back, and this was a great misfortune, for the year seemed exceptionably favorable. The Norwegian captain, Mack, who traversed at this time the eastern part of the same ocean, in search of the place where Barentz had wintered in 1579, met everywhere, at a distance that no one had before attained, navigable water with a strong current. The station of Barentz was, however, found a short time after on the northeast point of Nova Zembla by another Norwegian, Carlsen; it still preserved visible tokens of the abode of the Dutch navigator.

Another expedition, resembling the abortive voyage of the Hansa, in its dramatic catastrophe, if not in its results, was undertaken in this same year (1871) by the American captain, Hall, who adopted the route by Baffin's Bay, instead of the European entrance to the