Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/345

Rh ice of the fiords. A strait, terminated by another land, lay open before the eyes of the travelers, whose prolongation, inflected to the east, could be followed even beyond the latitude of 83°. They named it Petermann's Land. What is, then, this new world that remains provisionally the ultima Thule of navigators? It is not, certainly, according to the report of Mr. Payer, a mass of insignificant islands; it is an entire regional system with a development comparable to the archipelago of Spitzbergen. Could it be the Land of Gillis, so much sought for in these later times?

The explorers, on returning from this long excursion, having had the good fortune to find their ship immovable in the same place, set out very soon for a third tour in a western direction. When fourteen miles from the Tegethoff, they made the ascent of a high mountain, from the top of which they could trace the general configuration of the country; the most elevated summit was 5,000 feet high. Finally, the moment came for thinking of a return home. On the 20th of May, 1874, they put themselves en route, but they were obliged to abandon the ship. All the members of the expedition were safe and sound, the mechanician alone having died. During ninety days, by the aid of sledges and boats, sometimes on the ice, sometimes on the open sea, the glorious Austrian pioneers wandered in these unknown regions, following always the direction of the compass to the south. In the beginning, the winds thwarted their progress to such a degree that after two whole months they were only eight marine miles distant from the ship. Their provisions also were nearly exhausted, when, on the 18th of August, they reached Nova Zembla. Six days after they embarked on the Russian steamer Nicholas, which carried them to Warsoe.

If the vicissitudes endured by this memorable expedition, the official report of which has not yet reached us, give the measure of the difficulties experienced in following in these regions a preconcerted plan, they show also that with coolness and constancy the resistance of polar chaos may be overcome. A day will come, doubtless, when the conditions of arctic life will be in some measure familiar to us, and the navigator will face less timidly its sombre horrors. Already he has succeeded in discovering his way through good and bad fortune into the variable windings of the great labyrinth; he has sounded the depths, studied the currents and counter-currents; he knows at what season such a channel is obstructed or free, and what routes the ice-fields driven to the south follow in their regular migrations. The principal features of this exceptional geography are, then, partially established; the essential point is, that the succession of polar voyages shall be no more interrupted. Too long have arctic explorations been made in a desultory and capricious fashion; audacity and courage have been lavishly used, but consecutive action has been wanting. Experiments, in order to acquire their full scientific value, must be