have been tabulated by Aksel S. Steen, and printed in the annual report of the Institute for 1876.

In 1877 a Norwegian Arctic Expedition visited Jan Mayen. The chief result of this visit was a new map and description of the island. It appeared that on the earlier. charts, especially Scoresby's, it was placed in the right latitude; but its longitude had to be shifted no less than nine miles to the westward. This correction was at once embodied in the official charts of the different nations. The Austro-Hungarian Polar expedition passed a year upon Jan Mayen (1882-83), and were able to make a very complete map of the island, which confirmed in all essentials the corrections of the coast-line made by the Norwegian expedition.

The year 1878 brings us to an actual new discovery made by a Norwegian-the above-mentioned Captain Edward Johannesen, who sighted a hitherto unknown island between Siberia and Franz-Josef Land. After sailing along the west, north, and east coasts of Nova Zembla, as far as Barents's winter quarters, Johannesen struck eastwards on August 10, 1878, and on the 16th was off the coast of Siberia a little westward of Cape Taimyr. Nordenskiöld had passed this spot in the Vega three days before. Hence Johannesen laid his course to the west, north-west, and north, and on August 28 sighted an island, which he circumnavigated on the following day, before turning eastward again. Johannesen gave his new discovery the name of Ensomhed (Lonely Island). It was about four geographical square miles in extent, and only about a hundred feet above the level of the sea.

In 1878 an Arctic Expedition visited Spitzbergen, and succeeded in making a map of Advent Bay in Ice

Fiord, and correcting the geographical longitude of these regions.

The season of 1881 was remarkably free from ice to the west and north-west of Nova Zembla. The most notable incident of this year was the northward voyage made by the sealer Prove, Captain Isaksen, on board which, as before mentioned, Nordenskiöld had made his first expedition to the Yenisei. On August 19 Isaksen had reached 77° 35′ N. lat., in water entirely free from ice, nor were any signs of ice to be seen to the north or north-west. Isaksen felt convinced that if his vessel had been of more modern build (it was forty years old) he would have had no difficulty in sailing right to Franz-Josef Land, or even to some hitherto undiscovered region nearer the Pole.

In 1889 Captain R. Knudsen made a sealing voyage to East Greenland in the Hecla. On this voyage he was enabled to correct the charts of the Greenland coast between the 73rd and 76th degrees of latitude. Again, in 1893 Captain Knudsen succeeded in making several corrections in the chart of the Blosseville Coast in East Greenland.

In 1894, Martin Ekrol, with his schooner the Willem Barents, wintered at the eastern point of Storfiord in Spitzbergen, and brought back with him several rectifications of the chart. He also kept a meteorological diary which throws a very interesting light upon the climate of south-east Spitzbergen, where no winter observations had previously been made.

Most of these observations made by Norwegian sailors in the Polar Seas have been tabulated by the Meteorological Institute before being published. Notices of all the expeditions and their results will be found in Petermanns Mittheilungen.

In the above short survey of our seal-hunters' contributions to the geography and meteorology of the polar regions, we have spoken only of the absolutely or practically new additions which they have made to our knowledge. It is of course impossible in such a survey to give any adequate account of the dangers and toils and deeds of heroism that underlie these dry data. Let it not be forgotten that this life in the Polar Sea, off the coasts of Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Nova Zembla, fighting drift ice, and fog, and frost, and storm, is the calling by which these men earn their bread. It is in the thick of the struggle for existence that many of them have patiently and unostentatiously carried out important scientific work, all the more admirable in that it was entirely disinterested. It brought them no solid reward, and the honour-well, that was scarcely a realisable asset. Of the thirty or forty ships which year after year have set. forth to hunt the seal and walrus in their fastnesses, how many have never returned! How many Arctic winterings have passed unrecorded, how many fine exploits have been performed that have never come to the ear of the historian! These men, who, in their search for better hunting-grounds, have led the way round the north of Spitzbergen and into the Kara Sea, are pioneers born and bred, and their contributions to polar investigation entitle them to an honourable place in its history.

When they one day find their historian, who shall not only set forth their services to science, but also give a true picture of their characters and their lives, their own countrymen will no longer stand alone in assigning them the place of honour they so well deserve. Many a renowned name might show in truer proportions if the saga of these unknown sailors were to be written.

277

CHAPTER XVI

WITH THE CURRENT

In the beginning of 1890, Nansen delivered a lecture before the Norwegian Geographical Society, and set forth his plan for a new Polar Expedition. I believe,' he said, after giving a short sketch of the history of polar investigation, that if we study the forces of nature itself which are here ready to hand, and try to work with them instead of against them, we shall find the surest and easiest way of reaching the Pole. It is useless to work against the current, as previous expeditions have done; we must see if there is not a current that will work with us. There are strong reasons for supposing that such a current exists.'

Nansen's plan was founded upon the assumption that from Bering Strait and the north coast of Eastern Siberia a constant and comparatively strong sea-current sets in the direction of the North Pole, whence, again, it turns to the south or south-west, between Spitzbergen and Greenland, follows the east coast of Greenland, and then sweeps around Cape Farewell into Davis Strait.

Three years after the sinking of the Jeannette, north of the New Siberia Islands in June 1881, a number of articles were found on the drift ice off the south-west coast of Greenland, which must undoubtedly have belonged to the lost ship -among them, for example, a provision list with the signature of the captain, De Long, a list of the Jeannette's boats,

and a pair of oil-skin trousers marked with the name of one of the sailors who were rescued. The news of this discovery upon the drifting ice floe attracted much attention, and it was conjectured, with a plausibility approaching to certainty, that the floe must have been carried by the abovementioned current from the New Siberia Islands, across or near the Pole, to the place where it was found. It was calculated that the articles must have been conveyed at a speed of about two miles in the twenty-four hours, which corresponded with the rate at which the Jeannette was borne along in the ice during the last four months of her existence.

These relics of the Jeannette are not, however, the only objects which have made the long journey with the current from East Siberia across the Pole, and have been swept southward along the east coast of Greenland. A so-called 'throwing stick,' used by the Eskimos for hurling their birddarts, was found by a Greenlander, and given to Dr. Rink at Godthaab, who afterwards presented it to the Christiania University. It has been shown that this instrument is quite different in form from that used by the Greenlanders, but exactly resembles the throwing-sticks used by the Eskimos of Alaska, the north-western extremity of North America, which borders on Bering Strait; so that it too, in all probability, had traversed the Polar Sea.

The drift wood which is washed ashore in Greenland in such large quantities, and is so indispensable to the Eskimos in the absence of timber trees, has been shown to consist for the most part of timber native to Siberia, so that it too must have been carried by the same current across the very precincts of the Pole.

In the course of his wanderings along the shores of Den