Austro-Hungarian expedition of 1872—The voyage as planned—The drift of the Tegetthoff—The polyglot crew—Discovery of Franz Josef Land—Payer's description of an aurora—The sledge journeys—Crown Prince Rudolf Land—Cape Fligely reached—Abandonment of the Tegetthoff—The boat voyage to Cape Britwin—Leigh Smith's expeditions—Loss of the Eira—The retreat in the boats—Jackson in Franz Josef Land—His excellent survey work—The Italian expedition under the Duke of the Abruzzi—Cagni attempts to reach the Pole and is stopped at 86° 34´—The return journey.

In 1871 Weyprecht and Payer were out in the cutter IsbjÖrn, pioneering for their intended voyage to the eastward, which started next year in the Tegetthoff, the famous Austro-Hungarian attempt of 1872 which may be described as an unintentional voyage of unexpected discovery. The amount of credit due to a man who starts to find one thing and lights upon another has always been a contentious matter, and this expedition afforded an extreme case for such speculations. The plan was to go east-north-east, the wintering places being undetermined, though they might be Cape Chelyuskin, the New Siberian Islands, or any land that might be discovered; and a return to Europe through Bering Strait lay among the possibilities of the venture, as an endeavour was to be made to reach the coast of Siberia in boats and penetrate south down one of the large rivers of Northern Asia. What happened was that during the afternoon of the 20th of August, when off the north-west coast of Novaya Zemlya in 76° 22´ north, 63° 3´ east, the ship was run into an ice-hole and made fast to a floe, and during the night the ice, instead of parting asunder, closed in and imprisoned her, so that she never steamed or sailed again. In the ice and on the ice she lay perfectly helpless, drifting with the floe, and still in its grip when she was abandoned by her crew on the 20th of May, two years afterwards.

It was a wonderful drift. North-easterly in the main to begin with, then north-westerly, then easterly to about 73°, then north, then west, in and out and roundabout, till they reached much the same longitude as they started from and then with a general tendency to the northward. Autumn passed away; the Polar night set in; and still they drifted ice-bound—a miscellaneous company representative of the polyglot empire; "on board the Tegetthoff," says Payer, "are heard all the languages of our country, German, Italian, Slavonic, and Hungarian; Italian is, however, the language in which all orders are given," to which we should add the Norwegian of Olaf Carlsen, the ice-master. During the winter there was enough of occupation and amusement, though private theatricals were impossible, as they would have had to be given in four languages to be intelligible to the audience.

The short summer came and went, and August had almost gone when—it was on the 30th, in 79° 43´—there came a surprise. The rays of the sun were fitfully breaking through the gloom when suddenly the gliding mists rolled up like a curtain, revealing in the north-west the outlines of a rocky coast, which in a few minutes grew into a radiant Alpine land. The shore, however, was unattainable, as a rush over the icefield soon showed, but from the edge of the fissure that barred any further progress they could make out its hills and glaciers and imagine the green pastures of its valleys. They called it Kaiser Franz Josef's Land, and along it they drifted during September till its outlines faded as the wind began to drive the floe to the south. But at the end of the month the direction of the floe changed to the north-west, taking the Tegetthoff up to 79° 58´, her highest north, near enough to one of the islands for an effort to be made to land. Six started from the ship over the grinding, groaning, broken walls of ice, and when they were out of sight of the ship a mist settled down which cut them off from the sight of land and then so closely enwrapped them that they could see nothing. Advance they found hopeless, and as they returned they lost their way and were saved by the sagacity of a dog they had with them. All through October the drift continued, and it was not until forenoon of the 1st of November, two months after sighting the country, that they managed to get ashore. This was on Wilczek Island in the same longitude as Admiralty Peninsula in Novaya Zemlya, and in the same latitude as Mossel Bay in Spitsbergen.

The sun had retired for the winter nine days before, and it was by the light of the moon that they first explored the unknown country. Little could be done, and, as it was much too late for attempting to shift from the ship to the shore, the winter had to be spent on board as the other had been. Through this winter, as before, the auroral displays were remarkable, and they are excellently described by Payer. Of one of them, he says: "It is now eight o'clock at night, the hour of the greatest intensity of the northern lights. For a moment some bundles of rays only are to be seen in the sky. In the south a faint, scarcely observable, band lies close to the horizon. All at once it rises rapidly and spreads east and west. The waves of light begin to dart and shoot; some rays mount towards the zenith. For a short time it remains stationary, then suddenly springs to life. The waves of light drive violently from east to west; the edges assume a deep red and green colour and dance up and down. The rays shoot up more rapidly; they become shorter; all rise together and approach nearer and nearer to the magnetic Pole. It looks as if there were a race among the rays, and that each aspired to reach the Pole first. And now the point is reached, and they shoot out on every side, to the north and the south, to the east and the west. Do the rays shoot from above downwards, or from below upwards? Who can distinguish? From the centre issues a sea of flames. Is that sea red, white, or green? Who can say?—it is all three colours at the same moment. The rays reach almost to the horizon; the whole sky is in flames. Nature displays before us such an exhibition of fireworks as transcends the powers of imagination to conceive. Involuntarily we listen; such a spectacle must, we think, be accompanied with sound. But unbroken stillness prevails, not the least sound strikes on the ear. Once more it becomes clear over the ice, and the whole phenomenon has disappeared with the same inconceivable rapidity with which it came, and gloomy night has again stretched her dark veil over everything. This was the aurora of the coming storm—the aurora in its fullest splendour."

Sledging was begun in March, Hall Island being first visited, and, on the 26th, Payer, with six men, started on his main journey up Austria Sound, reaching Hohenlohe Island, where three men were left, and then proceeding further north to Crown Prince Rudolf Land. Off the southern promontory of this were innumerable icebergs, up to two hundred feet in height, cracking and snapping in the sunshine. The Middendorf Glacier, with an enormous sea-wall, ran towards the north-west; layers of snow and rents in the sea-ice, caused by icebergs falling in, filled the intervening space. Into these fissures Payer and his men were continually falling, drenching their canvas boots and clothes with sea-water. One of the men was sent on ahead to find a path by which the glacier might be climbed, and discovering a fairly open road the summit was gained across many crevasses bridged with snow, three of those at the lower part needing but a slight movement to detach the severed portions and form them into bergs.

While resting on the glacier looking down on the semicircular terminal precipice and the gleaming host of bergs which filled the indentations of the coast, one of the men reported that his foot was swollen and ulcerated, and he had to be sent back to Hohenlohe Island. Just as the others were setting off, the snow gave way beneath the sledge, and down fell Zaninovich, the dogs and the sledge, while Payer was dragged backwards by the rope. The fall was arrested at a depth of thirty feet by the sledge sticking fast between the sides of the crevasse. Payer, on his face, the rope attaching him to the sledge tightly strained and cutting into the snow, shouted that he would sever the rope, but Zaninovich implored him not to do so as the sledge would then turn over and he would be killed; hearing, however, from Orel, that the man was lying on a ledge of snow with precipices all around him and that the dogs were still fast to the traces, Payer cut the rope, and the sledge made a short turn and stuck fast again. Then, telling Zaninovich that he must contrive to keep himself from freezing for four hours, Payer and Orel set off to run the six miles back to Hohenlohe Island. Payer, as he went on ahead, threw off his bird-skin clothes, his boots and his gloves, and ran in his stockings through the snow. In an hour he reached the camp, and leaving it unattended they all set off to the rescue with a rope and a pole. Picking up his clothes on the way, Payer and his men reached the crevasse; one of the party was let down by the rope, and finally Zaninovich and the sledge and dogs were brought from their dangerous position four hours and a half after their fall.

The advance was then resumed along the west coast of Crown Prince Rudolf Land round the imposing headland they named Cape Auk—the rocky cliffs being covered with little auks and other seabirds, enormous flocks flying up and filling the air, the whole region seeming to be alive with their incessant whirring—and following the line of Teplitz Bay, Payer mounted one of the bergs detached from a glacier and saw open water with ice bounding it on the horizon. As the sheet over which their course lay became thinner, and threatened to give way beneath them, they had to open up a track among the hummocks by pick and shovel; and when this failed they had to unload the sledge and carry the things separately. At Cape Saulen they camped for the night in the fissure of a glacier into which they had to drag their baggage by a long rope; and next day—the 12th of April, 1874—they went on again and reached Cape Fligely, in 81° 50´ 43?, their farthest north.

With great difficulty they made their way back to the ship, a long, toilsome journey through snow and sludge, with open water in places where there had been ice, which made them fear the Tegetthoff might have drifted away again. The imminent danger of starvation was ended by their reaching their depot on Schonau Island, whence Payer went on for the remaining twenty-five miles alone with the dog-sledge, the two dogs giving much trouble until they struck the old sledge track almost obliterated by snow, when they raised their heads, stuck their tails in the air, and broke into a run. Halting on an iceberg for a meal, the berg capsized, and in a moment Payer was begirt by fissures, water-pools, and rolling blocks of ice, from which he managed to escape. When he turned into the narrow passage between Salm and Wilczek Islands, Orgel Cape, visible at a great distance, was the only dark spot on the scene. At once the dogs made for it, and about midnight he arrived there. With an anxious heart he began the ascent; a barren stony plateau confronted him; with every advancing step, made with increasing difficulty, the land gradually disappeared and the horizon of the frozen sea expanded before him; no ship was to be seen, no trace of man for thousands of miles except a cairn with the fragments of a flag fluttering in the wind, and a grave half covered with snow. Still he climbed, and suddenly three masts emerged. He had found the ship; there she lay about three miles off, appearing on the frozen ocean no bigger than a fly, the icebergs and drifts around her having hidden her amongst them. He held the heads of the dogs towards her and pointed with his arm to where she lay; and they saw her, and away they went, to find all but the watch asleep.

After another sledge journey north-westwards to Mount Brunn, from which Richthofen Peak was sighted, preparations were made for abandoning the ship and returning home. The three boats left the Tegetthoff on the 20th of May, but so slow was the progress over the difficult route that at the end of every day in the first week it was possible for Payer to go back to her on the dog-sledge to replenish the stores which had been consumed; and at the end of two months of indescribable effort the distance between the boats and the ship was not more than eight statute miles. The heights of Wilczek Land were still distinctly visible and its lines of rocks shone with mocking brilliance in the ever-growing daylight. All things appeared to promise that after a long struggle with the ice there remained for the expedition but a despairing return to the ship and a third winter there with the frozen ocean for their grave.

In the middle of July the fissures which had been opening out around them became wider and longer, progress reaching some four miles a day; then the north wind blew and the icefield commenced to drift to the south, to drift again north-east when the wind changed. Backwards and forwards, amid every variety of weather, including heavy rain, the pack ice moved until it changed to drift ice, and, on the 15th of August, the much-tried company got afloat at last in open water and laid their course for Novaya Zemlya, where they fell in with two Russian schooners off Cape Britwin.

The next to visit Franz Josef Land was Leigh Smith, whom we met with in the Spitsbergen seas. Building the Eira especially for Arctic service, he started in 1880, the year she was launched, on a cruise to Greenland and thence eastwards, which took him to the west and north-west of the ground gone over by the Austrians. He surveyed the whole coast from 42° east to the most westerly point seen by Payer, and sorted it out into several islands, but found no trace of the Tegetthoff, for where she had been left was open water. Encouraged by the success of his visit, in which the observations and collections were unusually good, he returned in the Eira the following year to meet with much more unfavourable ice conditions. Finding it impossible to get westward of Barents Hook the Eira was, on the 15th of August, made fast to the land floe off Cape Flora, and six days afterwards she was nipped and stove by the ice and slowly sank in eleven fathoms of water. As she settled down the steam winch was set to work, and by its means half a dozen casks of flour and about three hundredweight of bread were saved from the main hold; and when nothing more could be got from the lower deck the stores in the after cabin were attacked, and within the two hours from the discovery of the leak to the disappearance of the ship, all these provisions and the boats and clothes were safe on the ice; and the sails were cut away, and with them and some oars a tent was erected in which all the company, twenty-five in number, took shelter.

A move was made next day to the land. On Cape Flora a house was built mainly of earth and stones, covered with sails, in which the winter was passed. Fortunately the district abounds with bears and walruses, and the meat from these, boiled with vegetables, and served out three times a day into twenty-five plates made out of old provision tins, proved the right sort of fare to keep every one in excellent health. Thanks in a great measure to Bob, the retriever, the larder was kept full; but there being a shortness of coal, recourse for fuel had to be made to rope and blubber, so that no one could mistake the time when the cooking was on. In fact, the odour and the smoke were of great interest to the bears, who lingered about intending to pay surprise visits, and the dog had always to be sent in front of those leaving the house. One day when out on his own account, Bob discovered a school of walruses on the ice and reported the matter in his own fashion, whereupon several of these were shot, and after an exciting chase five were secured. In January he found another school, of which three were bagged and stowed alongside the house, although the thermometer stood at forty below zero. On another occasion he managed to tempt a bear up to the front door, where it was promptly tumbled over, to his evident satisfaction.

During the winter the party killed twenty-nine walruses and three dozen bears. Once, when only a fortnight's meat was left, and things began to look serious, no less than eight bears were killed in two weeks. At the end of April the birds returned, and in June the ice was cleared away by a gale and walruses were seen swimming on the water in hundreds. Never did a wintering party meet with better fortune, and never was one better managed.

On the 21st of June they started from Cape Flora in four boats, six men each in three of them, seven in the other, to reach the open sea, leaving in the house six bottles of champagne in case any person might look in, besides a few other things, and blocking up the door to keep out the bears. Before the boats reached the ice they crossed eighty miles of water, and then six weeks' hard labour began, zigzagging through channels, hauling over hummocky floes, sailing through pools, halting for days on a floe with no water in sight, but never doubting that a clearance would come. On leaving the ice they steered for Novaya Zemlya, at first in a gentle breeze, which rapidly increased to a gale in a heavy thunderstorm, so that the boats, with their sails of tablecloth and shirt-tail, had to be carefully handled as they scudded before it at such a pace that within twenty-four hours of leaving the ice they were drawn up all safe on the beach at the entrance of Matyushin Shar. Next morning the Dutch exploring schooner, Willem Barents, was descried coming out of the strait, and before the schooner was reached by the boats there came round the point the Hope, which Sir Allen Young, of the Pandora, had brought out as a rescue ship for them. They had been driven by the gale to the very spot on the very day they could be best relieved.

From the reports of Weyprecht and Payer it appeared that the north-east of Franz Josef Land would make an excellent base for a start for the North Pole, and Leigh Smith was led to the same view by his visit to Alexandra Land, but along the south he had made so many changes in Payer's map that a further examination of the region was evidently desirable. To effect this by a careful survey of the coasts, Frederick G. Jackson landed near Cape Flora on the 7th of September, 1894, and began his residence of a thousand days. Setting to work in a businesslike way, and recording his progress in similar style, he disintegrated the land masses into a group of some fifty size-able islands, through which run two main waterways, his British Channel and Payer's Austria Sound, both opening out northwards into Queen Victoria Sea; Crown Prince Rudolf Land being a large island at the northern entrance of Austria Sound, Wilczek Land at its southern entrance being about twice its size. He defined the coast-lines for over eighty miles of latitude, extending to fifteen degrees of longitude as far west as the most westerly headland, Cape Mary Harmsworth, and so cutting up Franz Josef Land that not even an island now bears the name, which is used only as that of the archipelago. Never in Arctic exploration was work rendered more evident than in the difference between the map as Jackson found it and as he left it.

The Windward, with the expedition on board, sighted the land on the 25th of August, but, stopped by intervening ice, could not reach the coast until a fortnight afterwards, the landing taking place at Cape Flora, close to Leigh Smith's house, which was found with the roof off. Not far away Jackson established his headquarters, quite a little settlement, though the expedition consisted of only eight men. Just as Leigh Smith found no remains of the Tegetthoff, so Jackson found no trace of the Eira. It had been intended that the Windward should return after putting the party ashore, but, shut in by the ice, she had to remain during the first winter, getting away safely next year, to return in 1896 and take away Nansen, who, as we shall see further on, ended his long land journey here. On her 1897 trip she departed with the members of the expedition all well, so that neither ship nor man was lost, the only serious casualties being among the dogs and the Russian ponies which did such excellent service.

Two years afterwards, in July, 1899, the deserted settlement was visited by the Duke of the Abruzzi, in his expedition in the Stella Polare, on his way to the north, a few days before he met with his short imprisonment in the ice in British Channel. His was a successful run all the same, for he was in 82° 4´, to the northward of Crown Prince Rudolf Land, or, as it is now called, Prince Rudolf Island, twenty-seven days out from Archangel. Passing Cape Fligely—the latitude of which was afterwards found to be sixteen miles south of the 82° 5´ Payer had made it—and rounding Cape Auk, the Stella Polare went into winter quarters in Teplitz Bay, whence Captain Umberto Cagni started, on the 11th of March, 1900, for his forty-five days' march towards the North Pole.

It was a great disappointment to the Duke to have to stay with the ship instead of leading this well-equipped and thoroughly organised sledge attempt, but owing to an accident two of his fingers had been so severely frost-bitten that they had to be amputated, and, unless a second winter was to be spent in the ice, a start was imperative before he could recover from the operation. Thus all he could do was to assist at the first encounter of the sledges with the pressure ridges and wish Cagni the longest possible journey and a safe return. There was every appearance of the journey being a difficult one, for on the first day a stoppage had to be made every quarter of a mile or thereabouts for a road to be cut through the ridges with ice-axes, while next day a new hindrance was experienced in the young ice in the channels being too thin at times to support the sledges, one of which began to sink and was only extricated with difficulty, so that only one sledge could be allowed on such ice at a time.

On the 13th of March the auxiliary sledge was sent back, thus reducing the caravan to a dozen sledges and ninety-eight dogs, which in a long line passed over a vast plain covered with great rugged blocks of ice, as though they had been thrown down confusedly by a giant's hand to bar the way. The wind was north-east, the cold intense, fifty below zero, not to be particular to a degree or so, for, as Cagni says, when the temperature is below twenty-two, and it is impossible to use a screen or a magnifying glass, the mere fact of approaching to read the scale on an unmounted thermometer sends it up a couple of degrees, and when the temperature is below fifty-eight an approach makes a difference of three or four degrees. So cold was it that the sleeping bags were as hard as wood, and the men got into them after much effort, not to sleep but to feel their teeth chattering for hours, the only warm parts of the body being the feet clad in long woollen stockings. "There are patches of ice on our knees," says Cagni, "like horses' knee-caps, and we have others, both large and small, sometimes thick enough to be scraped off with a knife, everywhere, but especially on our cheeks and backs and in all places where the perspiration has oozed through."

Amid such surroundings the camp must have seemed somewhat out of place. When a suitable site was chosen the first sledge was stopped, and near it the three other sledges of the third detachment were drawn up at a distance of about ten feet from each other. The sledges of the second detachment as they came up formed a second line, those of the third forming another. The tents were pitched between two sledges, generally those in the centre, the guy ropes being fastened to the sledge runners, those at the ends to an ice-axe stuck in the ice. The sleeping bags were then unpacked, the cooking stoves taken out of the boats, and everything arranged under the tent. The thin steel wire ropes to which the dogs were tethered, when unharnessed, were stretched between the sledges away from the tents. While the men were taking the dogs out of the harness, which always remained attached to the traces on the sledges, and tethering them to the steel ropes, one of the guides took a chosen victim to some distance from the camp, and felled it with a blow from an ice-axe, then opened it, skinned it quickly, divided it up into ten shares and distributed these to the dogs, already destined to undergo the same fate, these being the weakest and most ailing—in short, this was the elimination of the unfit.

On the 22nd of March the first detachment began its return journey; it consisted of Lieutenant Querini and two men, and it was never heard of again. The way northwards continued extremely difficult, with channels and ridges plentiful and the road so rough that the sledges began to break up in the bows and runners, some at last so badly that their fragments had to be used to repair the others with. On the 31st the second detachment was sent back, consisting of the doctor and two men, and it got safely to the ship. The third detachment, consisting of Cagni with two Courmayeur guides—Petigax and Fenoillet—and a sailor, Canepa, all four Italians, made the final effort. That day they were on level ice and covered seventeen miles, but at night a snowstorm came on and there was trouble. After a rest they pressed forward in rapid marches amid bad weather over the drifting fields. On the 12th of April while raising camp a strong pressure piled up within a hundred yards of them a wall from thirty-six to forty-five feet high, the highest ridge they had seen. Enormous blocks rolled down towards them with loud crashes after being thrown up by other blocks, lifted to the brow of the ridge and rolled over in their turn, raising a cloud of ice-dust in their fall, the loud continual creaking of the pressure drowned by the booming of the cascade which shook the ice for yards around. These ridges were constantly forming, most of them remaining, some of them subsiding as the edges drifted apart, and the channels thus caused were even more difficult to deal with, some having to be passed over thin ice, some ferried over on small floes. But they did not cross the track all along, and during the last few days the travelling was easy.

On the 24th of April the long journey reached its end. "At ten minutes past twelve," says Cagni, "we are on our way to the north. The ice is like that of yesterday, level and smooth, and, later on, undulating. At first the dogs are not very willing to pull, but encouraged by our shouts and a few strokes, they advance at a rapid pace, which they keep up during the whole march. At five we meet with a large pressure ridge, which almost surprises us, as it seems to us a century since we have seen any; we lost a quarter of an hour in preparing a passage through and crossing it. Beyond it the aspect of the ice changes; the undulations are more strongly marked, and large blocks and small ridges indicate recent pressure, but luckily they do not stop us or obstruct our way. Soon after six we come upon a large channel running from east to west; we must stop. Beyond the channel is a vast expanse of new ice, much broken up and traversed by many other channels. Even if I were not prevented from doing so, I would now think twice before risking myself in the midst of them. If we did push forward on that ice, even for half a day, we would gain very few miles and besides run the risk of losing a sledge. The dogs are very tired, and we too feel the effects of yesterday's strain. I therefore consider that it is more prudent to stop here, and both the guides are of the same opinion. The sun is unclouded. I bring out the sextant and take altitudes of the sun to calculate the longitude (65° 19´ 45? E.) while Fenoillet and Canepa put the sledges in order and pitch the tent in a sort of small amphitheatre of hillocks which shelter us from the north wind. On that farthest to the north, which is almost touched by the water of the channel, we plant the staff from which our flag waves. The air is very clear; between the north-east and the north-west there stand out distinctly, some sharply pointed, others rounded, dark or blue and white, often with strange shapes, the innumerable pinnacles of the great blocks of ice raised up by the pressure. Farther away again on the bright horizon in a chain from east to west is a great azure wall which from afar seems insurmountable." The latitude was 86° 34´.

The outward journey took forty-five days; the homeward took sixty, and proved a perilous adventure owing to the drift of the pack to the westward and its breaking up as the weather became warmer and the southern boundary was approached. At first there was good promise. The dogs knew they were going back, and followed the outward track so fast that the men, failing to keep up with them, for the first time took a seat on the sledges and were drawn along at four miles an hour. Progress was rapid for a few days owing to there being now only four sledges and, in a considerable degree, to the intelligence of the leading dog, Messicano. Ever since leaving Teplitz Bay this small white dog, with the intelligent eyes and bushy legs, had held the first place in the leading sledge because he followed the man at the head of the convoy better than the others, and now when the guide was behind or on the sledge, Messicano took the track at a gallop with his nose on the snow, losing the way now and then, but finding it again, though to the men it was often invisible. The time came, however, when the old track had to be left for a better course to the ship, and then difficulties of every sort had to be overcome, the delays being such that dog after dog had to be killed to keep away starvation, and it was only with seven of them and two sledges that Prince Rudolf Island was reached from the westward on the 23rd of June. "The snow is wet, which is very bad for dragging the sledges, as it sticks to the runners and tires our dogs exceedingly; we have still seven, but only three that really pull (three to each sledge), for Messicano is at the last extremity and can hardly hold up the trace." Toiling on thus through the fog to Cape Brorok a noise was heard in the distance like the creaking caused by pressure among ice floes, and when the fog lifted it was found that the sound was that of the seabirds on the cliffs. Out on the icefield no signs of life had been met with beyond the traces of a bear, a seal that vanished, and a walrus that popped up through thin ice to send Fenoillet scuttling off on his hands and knees.

Meanwhile the ship, which had been seriously damaged, had been made seaworthy. Liberated from her berth by mines of gunpowder and guncotton, she sailed from Teplitz Bay on the 16th of August, and, after further unpleasant experiences in the ice, reached Cape Flora, where a call was made at Jackson's house in the vain hope of news of Querini; and thence, after more ice complications, Captain Evensen took her to Hammerfest. Though, as in all Arctic endeavour, conditions were against them, the employment of a Norwegian crew for the ship and an Italian crew for the sledges had, under excellent management, worked thoroughly well.