New lands within the Arctic circle / Narrative of the discoveries of the Austrian ship "Tegetthoff" in the years 1872-1874

VOYAGE OF THE "TEGETTHOFF."

JUNE, 1872-SEPTEMBER, 1874.

FROM BREMERHAVEN TO KAISER FRANZ-JOSEF LAND.

CHAPTER I.
FROM BREMERHAVEN TO TROMSOE.

1. He who seeks to penetrate the recesses of the Polar world chooses a path beset with toils and dangers. The explorer of that region has to devote every energy of mind and body to extort a slender fragment of knowledge from the silence and mystery of the realm of ice. He must be prepared to confront disappointments and disasters with inexhaustible patience, and pursue devotedly his object, even when he himself becomes the sport of accident. That object must not be the admiration of men, but the extension of the domain of knowledge. He spends long years in the most dreadful of all banishments, far from his friends, from all the enjoyments of life, surrounded by manifold perils, and bearing the burden of utter loneliness. The grandeur therefore of his object can alone support him,—for otherwise the dreary void of things without can only be an image of the void within. How many are the preconceptions with which the novice begins the voyage to the rugged, inclement north! Books can tell him little of the stern life to which he dooms himself, as soon as he crosses the threshold of the ice, thinking perhaps to measure the evils that await him by the physical miseries of cold instead of by the moral deprivations in store for him.

2. In the year 1868, while employed on the survey of the Orteler Alps, a newspaper with an account of Koldewey’s first expedition one day found its way into my tent on the mountain side. In the evening I held forth on the North Pole to the herdsmen and JÄgers of my party as we sat round the fire, no one more filled with astonishment than myself, that there should be men endued with such capacity to endure cold and darkness. No presentiment had I then that the very next year I should myself have joined an expedition to the North Pole; and as little could Haller, one of my JÄgers at that time, foresee that he would accompany me on my third expedition. And much the same was it with the three-and-twenty men who early in the morning of June 13, 1872, came on board the vessel in Bremerhaven, to cast in their lot with the ship Tegetthoff, whatever that lot might be; for we had all bound ourselves by a formal deed, renouncing every claim to an expedition for our rescue, in case we should be unable to return. Our ideal aim was the north-east passage, our immediate and definite object was the exploration of the seas and lands on the north-east of Novaya Zemlya.

3. A bright day rose with us, and no augur’s voice could have heightened the glad hopes which animated every one of us. Friends from Austria and Germany had come to bid us a last farewell; but, as every venture should be, so our departure that morning was, quiet and without pretension. About six o’clock in the morning the Tegetthoff lifted her anchor and dropped down the Schleusen and the Weser, towed by a steamer. Down the broad stream we calmly glided, full of satisfaction at the fulfilment of long-cherished plans. There lay the same pastures, the same trees and meadows which had so delighted us on our return from Greenland. Yet unmoved we saw all the charms of nature grow young under the morning sun and then fade away in the evening twilight—as the land gradually disappeared behind us, and the coasts of Germany were lost to view. With the feeling that we were leaving them for so long a time, our thoughts turned to our new life in the narrow limits of a ship, and the resolve to live and labour in harmony animated each breast. How often we should be liable to casualties which no eye could foresee, we were soon to find out, when in almost dead calm and without steam we came on the shallow waters of Heligoland. What would have become of the expedition, had we not discovered in time, that we had only a few feet of water under the keel!

4. The vessel, 220 tons burden, was fitted out for two years and a half, but was over-freighted by about thirty tons, so that our available space was much curtailed. Yet the cabin, which Weyprecht, Brosch, Orel, Kepes, Krisch, and I occupied, was far more commodious than the miserable hole in which eight of us had been crowded together on our Greenland expedition. Our supply of coals, 130 tons, was large in proportion to the size of the ship, being calculated not only for our daily wants, but to enable us to keep up steam for about sixty days. But to economise this store we used our sails, as much as possible, even in the ice. Both ship and engine—of 100 horse power—tested in the trial trip of June 8, sustained their character during the expedition, and did great credit to the Tecklenborg firm.

5. The wind being unfavourable, it took us some time to cross the North Sea and reach the coast of Norway. My journal describes this part of our voyage. “Light winds from the south carried the Tegetthoff on her lonely course over the North Sea. In undimmed brightness the blue sky stretched overhead, the air was balmy and mild. In the grey distance frowns the iron rampart of countless cliffs encircling the barren wastes of Norway. Occasionally a sea-gull comes near us, or some bird rests on the mast-head; now and then a sail is seen on the horizon,—but save this, no life—no event. Every one feels, though no one utters it, that a grave future lies before him; each may hope what he wishes, for over the future there is drawn an impenetrable veil. All, however, are animated with the consciousness, that while serving science, we are also serving our Fatherland, and that all our doings will be watched at home with the liveliest sympathy.

6. “On board the Tegetthoff are heard all the languages of our country, German, Italian, Slavonic, and Hungarian; Italian, however, is the language in which all orders are given. The crew is lighthearted and merry: in the evening a gentle breeze carries the lively songs of the Italians over the blue sea, glowing under the midnight sun, or the monotonous cadence of the Ludro of the Dalmatians recalls the sunny home which they are so soon to exchange for its very opposite, which remains a sort of mystery to all their powers of fancy. Thus begins so peacefully our long voyage into the frozen ocean of the north. In a few weeks the ice will grate on the bows of the Tegetthoff, the crystal icebergs will surround her, and with many a strain will the good ship force her way through the icy wastes, sometimes inclosed on every side, sometimes free in coast-water, or threatened by the ‘ice-blink’ foreboding danger.”

7. The officers and crew of the Tegetthoff amounted in all to twenty-four souls.

Lieutenant Carl Weyprecht, }
Lieutenant Julius Payer, } Commanders of the Expedition.
Lieutenant Gustav Brosch,[14] }
Midshipman Edward Orel, } Officers of the Ship.
Dr. Julius Kepes, Physician to the Expedition.
Otto Krisch, Engineer.
Pietro Lusina,[15] Boatswain.
Antonio Vecerina, Carpenter.
Josef Pospischill, Stoker.
Johann Orasch, Cook.
Johann Haller, }
Alexander Klotz, } JÄgers, from Tyrol.
Antonio Zaninovich, Seaman.
Antonio Catarinich, ditto.
Antonio Scarpa, ditto.
Antonio Lukinovich, ditto.
Giuseppe Latkovich, ditto.
Pietro Fallesich, ditto.
George Stiglich, ditto.
Vincenzo Palmich, ditto.
Lorenzo Marola, ditto.
Francesco Lettis, ditto.
Giacomo Sussich, ditto.
Captain Olaf Carlsen, Icemaster and Harpooner.
We had eight dogs on board; two we got in Lapland, the rest were brought from Vienna.

8. Stormy weather detained us for some time among the Loffoden Isles, so that we made Tromsoe only on July 3. Here we were received most courteously by the Austro-Hungarian Consul, Aagaard, who invited us to a banquet. We remained here a week, in order to complete our equipment. The ship, which had leaked considerably ever since we left Bremerhaven, was thoroughly examined by divers, the stores were landed, the ship repaired and reladen. Our supply of coals was replenished, a Norwegian whale-boat added to our equipment, and, lastly, the harpooner, Captain Olaf Carlsen, was taken on board. On July 6 we received our last news from Austria, letters and newspapers. The Ukase granted by the Russian Government also arrived, drawn up both for Weyprecht and myself in case of our being separated, a document of great importance, if the ship should be lost and we had to return through Siberia; an issue only too probable when the vast length and enormous difficulties of the north-east passage were considered. While Lieutenant Weyprecht was engaged in stopping the leak of the ship, some of us ascended—a Lapp of the name of Dilkoa being our guide—a pinnacle of rock, 4,000 feet high, towering over Tromsoe’s labyrinth of fiords, in order to compare our aneroid and mercurial barometers. From the summit we beheld an enormous dark column of smoke rising perpendicularly to the height of about 1,500 feet in the still air—the northern extremity of Tromsoe was in flames. Most gladly would we have learned something of the state of the ice this year; but as yet this was impracticable, for none of the walrus hunters had returned from their grounds in the north.

9. On the morning of Saturday, July 13, officers and crew heard mass from a French priest, and bidding adieu to our Tromsoe friends, we left the quiet little city, the most northerly of Europe, early on Sunday morning. The passengers of the Hamburg mail steamer, entering the harbour as we left it, greeted us with loud and long cheers, and steaming through the narrow GrÖtsound, close under the cliffs of Sandoe and Rysoe we came into the open sea, Captain Carlsen acting as our pilot. As we issued from the Scheeren, a mist arose which covered and obscured the huge rock of Fingloe. Here the engine fires were put out and the sails set, and the first and last voyage, which the Tegetthoff was destined to make, began. On July 15 we steered towards the north, the Norwegian coast with its many glaciers in full view, and on the 16th we sighted the North Cape in the blue distance.

CHAPTER II.
ON THE FROZEN OCEAN.

1. Unfavourable winds had hindered our progress for some days; we now encountered heavy seas. On July 23 a sudden fall of the temperature and dirty rainy weather told us that we were close to the ice, which we expected to find later and much more to the northward, and on the evening of July 25, lat. 74° 0' 15 N., we actually sighted it, the thermometer marking 32·5° F., and 34·5° F. in the sea. The northerly winds, which had prevailed for some time had broken up the ice, and it lay before us in long loose lines. Its outer boundary was consequently the very opposite of those solid walls of ice which we met with in Greenland in 1869, and two years afterwards on the east of Spitzbergen. Though surprised at finding the ice so far to the south, we never imagined that this was anything but a collection of floes, which had drifted out perhaps from the Sea of Kara through the Straits of Matotschkin. But only too soon the conviction was forced upon us that we were already within the Frozen Ocean, and that navigation in the year 1872 was to differ widely from that of the preceding year. Lieutenant Weyprecht had the day before fastened “the crow’s nest” to the mainmast of the Tegetthoff, and henceforth it became the abode of the officer of the watch. On July 26, while steering in a north-easterly direction, the ice became closer, though it was still navigable; but we nowhere saw the heavy fields which had astonished us on the east coast of Greenland, and which LÜtke found to be so dangerous to navigation. The temperature of the air and the sea fell rapidly, and during the two following weeks it remained below the freezing point almost uniformly, and without any essential difference between day and night.

STILL LIFE IN THE FROZEN OCEAN.

2. The frozen sea of Novaya Zemlya is characterized by that inconstancy of weather which in our lower latitudes we attribute to the month of April; the same variability is met with, though in lesser degree, in the Greenland seas during the summer months. Snowstorms now alternated with the most glorious blue skies. The black-bulbed thermometer showed 113° F. in the sun, with 39° F. in the shade. The hunting season began, and the kitchen was well provided with auks and seals. Our Dalmatians soon learnt to like the dark flesh of the latter.

3. The ice gradually became closer; July 29 (74° 44' N. Lat., 52° 8' E. Long.) we were able to continue our course only under steam, and heavy shocks were henceforward inevitable; in many cases the vessel could not force a passage except by charging the ice. In the night a vast, apparently impenetrable barrier stopped our progress; but the tactics of charging under steam again cleared a passage, and we penetrated into a larger “ice-hole.” We now glided along over the shining surface of its waters, as if we were navigating an inland lake, save that no copsewood clothed the shores, but pale blocks of ice, which the mist, that now fell and enveloped us, transformed into the most fantastic shapes, and at last into mere shapelessness itself. In all that surrounded us neither form nor colour was discernible; faint shadows floated within the veil of mist, and our path seemed to lead no whither. A few hours before the glowing fire of the noonday sun had lain on the mountain wastes of Novaya Zemlya, while refraction raised its long coast high above the icy horizon. Nowhere does a sudden change in Nature exercise so immediate an effect on the mind as in the Frozen Ocean, where, too, all that brings delight proceeds from the sun.

4. For some days we had entered into a world utterly strange to most of us on board the Tegetthoff. Dense mists frequently enveloped us, and from out of the mantle of snow of the distant land the rocks, like decayed battlements, frowned on us inhospitably. There is no more melancholy sound than that which accompanies the decay and waste of the ice, as it is constantly acted on by the sea and thaw, and no picture more sad and solemn than the continuous procession of icebergs floating like huge white biers towards the south. Ever and anon there rises the noise of the ocean swell breaking amongst the excavations of the ice-floes, while the water oozing out from their icy walls falls with monotonous sound into the sea; or perhaps a mass of snow, deprived of its support, drops into the waves, to disappear in them with a hissing sound as of a flame. Never for a moment ceases the crackling and snapping sound produced by the bursting of the external portions of the ice. Magnificent cascades of thaw-water precipitate themselves down the sides of the icebergs, which sometimes rend with a noise as of thunder as the beams of the sun play on them. The fall of the titanic mass raises huge volumes of foam, and the sea-birds, which had rested on its summit in peaceful confidence, rise with terrified screams, soon to gather again on another ice-colossus.

5. But what a change, when the sun, surrounded by glowing cirrus clouds, breaks through the mist, and the blue of the heavens gradually widens out! The masses of vapour, as they well up, recede to the horizon, and the cold ice-floes become in the sunlight dark borders to the “leads” which gleam between them, on the trembling surface of which the midnight sun is mirrored. Where the rays of the sun do not directly fall on it, the ice is suffused with a faint rosy haze, which deepens more and more as the source of light nears the horizon. Then the sunbeams fall drowsily and softly, as through a veil of orange gauze, all forms lose at a little distance their definition, the shadows become fainter and fainter, and all nature assumes a dreamy aspect. In calm nights the air is so mild that we forget we are in the home of ice and snow. A deep ultramarine sky stretches over all, and the outlines of the ice and the land tremble on the glassy surface of the water. If we pull in a boat over the unmoved mirror of the “ice-holes,” close beside us a whale may emerge from its depths, like a black shining mountain; if a ship penetrates into the waste, it looks as weird as the “Flying Dutchman,” and the dense columns of smoke, which rise in eddies from her funnel, remain fixed for hours until they gradually melt away. When the sun sinks at midnight to the edge of the horizon, then all life becomes dumb, and the icebergs, the rocks, the glaciers of the land glow in a rosy, effulgence, so that we are hardly conscious of the desolation. The sun has reached its lowest point,—after a pause it begins to rise, and gradually its paler beams are transformed into a dazzling brightness. Its softly warming light dissolves the ban under which congelation has placed nature, the icy streams, which had ceased to run, pour down their crystal walls. The animal creation only still enjoys its rest; the polar-bear continues to repose behind some wall of ice, and flocks of sea-gulls and divers sit round the edge of a floe, calmly sleeping, with their heads under their wings. Not a sound is to be heard, save, perhaps, the measured flapping of the sails of the ship in the dying breeze. At length the head of a seal rises stealthily for some moments from out the smooth waters; lines of auks, with the short quick beat of their wings, whiz over the islands of ice. The mighty whale again emerges from the depths, far and wide is heard his snorting and blowing, which sounds like the murmurs of a waterfall when it is distant, and like a torrent when it is near. Day reigns once more with its brilliant light, and the dreamy character of the spectacle is dissolved.

6. We had sailed over one “ice-hole,” and again a dense barrier of ice frowned on us; as we forced our way into it, the ice closed in all round us—we were “beset.” The ship was made fast to a floe, the steam blown off, its hot breath rushing with a loud noise through the cold mist; every open mesh in the net of water-ways was closed by the ice, which soon lay in such thick masses around us, that any one provided with a plank might have wandered for miles in any direction he liked. July 30, the Tegetthoff remained fast in her prison; no current of water, nor any movement among the floes lying close to us was discernible; a dead calm prevailed, and mist hung on every side. On the following day we made vain efforts to break through a floe which lay on our bows. The calm still prevailed, Aug. 1 (74° 39' N. L. 53° E. L.), and no change was to be seen in the ice. Aug. 2, the crew began with hearty good-will the toilsome work of warping, but with no success, the smallness of the floes hardly admitting of this manoeuvre. In the evening of the same day it seemed as if a fresh breeze would set us free; but after we had gone on for a few cable-lengths, a great floe once more barred the route, while at the same time the wind fell. At length, when the ice became somewhat looser, we got up the engine fires, and in the following night broke through, under steam, a broad barrier of ice, which separated us from the open coast-water of Novaya Zemlya. In the morning of Aug. 3, we forced our way into coast-water, twenty miles broad, to the north of Matotschkin Schar, and steered due north, the mountainous coasts still in sight. A belt of ice 105 miles broad lay behind us. The country greatly resembled Spitzbergen, and we observed with pleasure its picturesque glaciers and mountains rising to the height of nearly 3,000 feet, though inconsiderable compared with the mountains of Greenland. Far and wide not a fragment of ice was to be seen; there was a heavy swell on, the air was unusually warm (41° F.), in the evening rain fell, and on Aug. 4 we had dense mists and driving snow-storms, which forced us to keep to the west of Admiralty Peninsula. During the night of Aug. 6, the snow-storms were heavier than before, and the deck was quite covered. Towards the north and west very close ice was seen, and since the temperature of the air, even with the winds in the south-west, remained constantly below zero, it was evident that the ice must stretch far in that direction also. Aug. 7, we ran on the white barriers to the west of Admiralty Peninsula, and far to the north, beyond a broad field of ice, refraction indicated open water and showed the forms of “Tschorny Nos” floating in the air. In the afternoon of Aug. 8 the ice in 75° 22' N. L. became so thick around us that we were compelled to have recourse to steam-power; but the Tegetthoff, even with this auxiliary was unable against a head-wind to penetrate a broad strip of close ice, and banking up our fires, we determined to wait its breaking up. Close under the coast open water was again observed, and in it—a Schooner! Every one now hastened to write letters to his friends and relations, but the schooner, to which we meant to give our letters and despatches, by running into the heart of Gwosdarew Bay escaped the duty we had in store for it. About half-past ten P.M. the wind had fallen and the ice began to open out, and we were able to continue our voyage under steam in a north-westerly direction. The sun lay before us, the clear mirror of distant “leads” glowed with a glorious carmine, the barriers of ice which lay between these “leads” appeared as stripes of violet, and only our immediate neighbourhood was pale and cold. The Tegetthoff laboured through the dense accumulation of floes and about midnight reached open water, and the steam was again blown off. Aug. 9, we sailed in coast-water perfectly free from ice, excepting the icebergs we encountered, some about forty feet high. These, generally, were so numerous and so small in size, that they were at once seen to be offshoots from the small glaciers of Novaya Zemlya as they plunge into the sea. Their surface was frequently covered with dÉbris. Loose drift-ice showed itself, Aug. 10, but the ship continued to steer between the floes towards the north. In the forenoon of that day we were again nearly “beset,” but happily escaped that fate after four hours’ warping. Aug. 11, our course was continued without impediment in a northerly direction through the loose drift-ice. The land, from which we had hitherto remained distant about eight or twelve nautical miles, now declined in height from three thousand to fifteen hundred or a thousand feet, and quickly lost its picturesque character. On the noon of August 12, on account of a thick mist, we made fast to a great floe, and were able to commence on it the training of the dogs to drag the sledges.

GWOSDAREW INLET.

7. In the neighbourhood of the Pankratjew Islands, a ship suddenly and unexpectedly appeared on the horizon, and endeavoured to gain our attention by discharges from a mortar, and by the hoisting of flags. How great was our astonishment and our joy when we beheld the Austro-Hungarian flag at the peak of the IsbjÖrn, and were able to greet Count Wilczek, Commodore Baron Sterneck, Dr. HÖfer, and Mr. Burger half an hour afterwards on board the Tegetthoff. Coming from Spitzbergen in the IsbjÖrn (the ship of our precursory expedition of 1871) they had sighted us two days before. That in a sailing vessel, and without any sufficient equipment, they had succeeded in following and overtaking the Tegetthoff, which had penetrated so far with difficulty and by the aid of steam was a proof both of skill and resolution. Their object was to establish a depÔt of provisions at Cape Nassau, at whatever personal risk to themselves. About two o’clock in the morning our guests returned to the IsbjÖrn, and both ships now sailed in company, and without meeting any hindrance in the ice-free coast-water, in a northerly direction. In the forenoon of Aug. 13, in 76° 18' N. Lat. and 61° 17' E. Long., we came upon closer ice, amid mist and stormy weather, and the two ships anchored to some firm land-ice two cable-lengths from each other, about a mile from the land. Close to the south of us lay the Barentz Isles with their singularly formed hills, which the walrus-hunters call by the somewhat gloomy name of “The Three Coffins.” On our north an enormous iceberg rose in dazzling whiteness above a faintly glimmering field of ice, a harbinger of new countries—for its size forbade us to think that it owed its origin to the glaciers of Novaya Zemlya. Continuous winds from the W.S.W., close ice, mist, downfalls of snow, the necessity of determining the geographical position of the depÔt of provisions which we had established, compelled us to lie for eight days before the Barentz Islands. The opportunity we thus had of putting our feet once more on the land was exceedingly agreeable. We made repeated visits to the shore with two dog-sledges, in company with Professor HÖfer; and as his observations on the phenomena of the country are those of a distinguished geologist, I here insert those he has kindly placed at my disposal.

8. “The Barentz Isles are flat, girt with cliffs, and separated by narrow straits from the coast, which rises up terrace on terrace. Its rocks consist of a black, very friable slate, frequently alternating with strata of mountain limestone of the carboniferous period, varying in breadth from one to ten metres. These strata are filled with a countless number of fossilized inhabitants of the sea, trilobites, mussels, brachiopodes, crinoides, corals, &c., which are utterly foreign to the Frozen Ocean as it now is, and whose cognates live only in warm seas.

9. “The animal world, therefore, buried in the limestone of these islands, is an indisputable proof that there was once, in these high latitudes, a warm sea, which could not possibly co-exist with such great glaciers as those which now immerse themselves in the seas of Novaya Zemlya. That portion of the earth, now completely dead and buried in ice, once knew a period of luxuriant life. In its sea there revelled a world of life, manifold and beautiful in its forms, while the land, as the discoveries on Bear Island and Spitzbergen prove, was crowded with gigantic palm-like ferns. This age of the earth’s history is called the carboniferous period; it was the rich and fertile youth of the high north, which lived out its time more rapidly than the southern zones, now in all their vigour and variety. If we compare the Fauna buried in the chalk formations of the Barentz Isles, with the contemporaneous Fauna which we know from the carboniferous formation of Russia, specially that of the Ural, we find a very remarkable agreement, not only in their general character, but also in particular organisms. Many of the fossils of the carboniferous limestone of these high degrees of latitude (76°-77°) are found in analogous strata of the Ural, and are proved by the researches of Russian geologists to exist there as far as the fiftieth degree of latitude. Without stopping to insist on the great similarity between the stratification of Novaya Zemlya and the Ural—the former being the real continuation of the latter—we dwell here on the fact that in the carboniferous period there was a sea which stretched from the fiftieth to the seventy-seventh degree of north latitude, i.e. twenty-seven degrees, or 405 geographical miles, which was animated by the same Fauna, and which consequently must have presented the same relations, especially a like warm temperature. From these signs it would appear that the zones of climate now so decisively marked on the surface of the earth did not exist at the carboniferous period. The horizontal surface of the land leads us at the first to infer horizontal stratification; but we find the contrary to be the case; the marine deposits once horizontal, have been so raised at a later period that they are now vertical. Since the friable slate degrades rapidly, and the limestone layers very gradually, it may be assumed that the former wasting away leaves the limestone layers standing like walls between them—a thing which, in a small scale, may often be elsewhere observed. If a glance at these buried fossils awakens in us an image, as in a dream, of a creation rich in organic forms, a glance at the present state of the Barentz Isles impresses us with the gloomiest feelings.

10. “Before us lies this small greyish brown fragment of the earth. The cold, level ground is covered with sharp-edged pieces of rock, which appear to be as it were macadamised, so closely are they rammed together. Here and there, about a fathom’s length from each other, lie brownish green masses like mole-hills. When we examine them more closely, each mass resolves itself into a vast number of small plants of the same species (Saxifraga oppositifolia), whose little stalks are covered with dark green leaves, which are alive, and also with brown leaves, which have been dead for years and years, but wither in the cold much more gradually than with us. From this small heap, tender rosy blooms raise their little heads, bidding defiance to the bitter snowy weather which sweeps over the miserable plain. Another species of saxifrage (Saxifraga coespitosa), with shorter stalks and yellowish-white flowers, growing in thick clumps, forms, together with the first-named variety and the more rarely appearing Saxifraga rivularis, the hardiest representatives of this family of plants so frequently found in the Polar regions. If to these we add Draba arctica with its little yellow flowers, forming in valleys large patches of sward, the yellow flowering poppy (Papaver nudicaule), and a rare willow (Salix polaris), which with some few leaves peeps forth from the soil, we have described the whole Flora of that desolate waste, in which a mere passing glance would scarce detect the existence of vegetable life among the dÉbris of rocks and the heaps of snow. Mosses are found here and there in the moister fissures of rocks, and especially on the coast, where old drift-wood, or the bones of whales or other animals, afford the nourishment they need, and in some places the mosses spread themselves out into small carpets. Lichens love to shelter under the clusters of the different kinds of saxifrage, though sometimes they are found by themselves. Of this class we will mention merely the so-called Iceland moss (Cetraria islandica), and a reindeer lichen (Cladonia pyxidata); the few other forms are nearly related to those mentioned, and belong to the so-called creeping lichens. One peculiarity of the Flora of the far north, which we have already mentioned, is their growth in clumps. Only thus can these tender organisms maintain their existence against the stern elements; and this indeed is a characteristic of all Arctic creation, which is seen in the animal world also, when its means of nourishment are hard to find. We will point only to the herds of reindeer, of lemmings, of walruses, of seals, &c., lastly to the vast flocks of birds; all of which illustrate the principle: common danger begets common defence.”

11. Our involuntary leisure at the Barentz Isles enabled us to make some precautionary preparations for our future contests with the ice; for a ship may be crushed by the ice and sink in a few minutes, as had happened some days previously, not far from us, to the yachts Valborg and Iceland. Provisions and ammunition for four weeks were got ready, and each man was entrusted with a special service, if it should ever come to this extremity. To guard against the dreaded pressures of the ice, heavy beams were hung round the hull of the vessel, so that the pressure on the ship might be distributed over a larger surface, and the vessel itself be raised instead of crushed. Our space on deck, somewhat limited at first, had been considerably enlarged, although our numerous sledges, our stock of drift-wood, and the rudder which had been unshipped, formed inconvenient obstacles, while the chained-up dogs occasioned some unpleasant surprises to those who had not succeeded in gaining their affections. These poor animals, without protection, suffered much from the cold rough weather which now prevailed, though subsequently some provision was made for their comfort. Sumbu and Pekel, the two Lapland dogs, were the most hardy, and slept without stirring, even when they were completely covered with snow. It was only after a long and stout resistance that the dogs became accustomed to the flesh of seals; at first they growled at every one who offered it to them.

FORMATION OF THE DEPÔT AT “THE THREE COFFINS.”

12. Aug. 14, we were threatened by the advance of an enormous line of pack-ice, which inclosed us in the little “docks” of the land-ice, and caused the IsbjÖrn to heel over. In the evening a bear came near this vessel, which was shot by Professor HÖfer and Captain Kjelsen. On the following day, with the help of the dogs and sledges, we removed over the land-ice to “The Three Coffins” the provisions which were to form the depÔt: 2,000 lbs. of rye-bread in casks, 1,000 lbs. of pease-sausages in tin cases. These were deposited in the crevice of a rock and secured against the depredations of bears. We felt assured of the conscientiousness of Russian or Norwegian fishermen, that they would make use of these provisions only under the pressure of urgent necessity. This depÔt was intended to be the first place of refuge, in the event of the ship being lost.

THE “TEGETTHOFF” AND “ISBJÖRN” SEPARATE.

13. Both ships were dressed with flags, and round one common table we celebrated the birthday, Aug. 18, of the Emperor and King, Francis Joseph I. On Aug. 19 we fetched some drift-wood from the land, and saw from a height an “ice-hole” stretching to the north at no great distance from the coast. As we returned to the ship we came across a bear, which, being assailed by so many hunters at once, took to flight. Aug. 20, some changes in the ice seemed to make navigation possible, and we forthwith went on board the IsbjÖrn to bid adieu to our friends. It was no common farewell. A separation to those who are themselves separated from the world moves the heart to its depths. But besides this, in bidding adieu to Count Wilczek, we felt how much we were indebted to him, as the man who had fostered the work we were about to undertake, who dreaded no danger while providing for our safety in the event of a catastrophe to the expedition. Our high-minded friend was at this moment the embodiment of our country, which, honouring us with its confidence and trust, demanded that we should devote all our energies to the high objects of the expedition. Often afterwards did this adieu return to our memories. With a fresh wind from the north-east we passed the IsbjÖrn as we steamed towards the north, while this vessel, veiled in mist, soon disappeared from our eyes.

THE “TEGETTHOFF” FINALLY BESET.

14. Our prospects, so far as the object of our expedition was concerned, had meantime not improved. To cross the Frozen Sea to Cape Tscheljuskin in the present year was not to be dreamt of, and yet the thought of wintering in the north of Novaya Zemlya was positively intolerable. The navigable water was becoming narrower every day, and the ice seemed to increase in solidity, especially in the neighbourhood of the coast. In the afternoon of this day we ran into an “ice-hole,” but in the night barriers of ice stopped our further progress. As usual, the ship was made fast to a floe, the steam blown off, and we awaited the parting asunder of the ice.[16] Five walruses who had been watching us from a rock as we entered that ill-starred “ice-hole,” sprang into the water and disappeared.

15. Ominous were the events of that day, for immediately after we had made fast the Tegetthoff to that floe, the ice closed in upon us from all sides and we became close prisoners in its grasp. No water was to be seen around us, and never again were we destined to see our vessel in water. Happy is it for men that inextinguishable hope enables them to endure all the vicissitudes of fate, which are to test their powers of endurance, and that they can never see, as at a glance, the long series of disappointments in store for them! We must have been filled with despair, had we known that evening that we were henceforward doomed to obey the caprices of the ice, that the ship would never again float on the waters of the sea, that all the expectations with which our friends, but a few hours before, saw the Tegetthoff steam away to the north, were now crushed; that we were in fact no longer discoverers, but passengers against our will on the ice. From day to day we hoped for the hour of our deliverance! At first we expected it hourly, then daily, then from week to week; then at the seasons of the year and changes of the weather, then in the chances of new years! But that hour never came, yet the light of hope, which supports man in all his sufferings, and raises him above them all, never forsook us, amid all the depressing influence of expectations cherished only to be disappointed.

CHAPTER III.
DRIFTING IN THE NOVAYA ZEMLYA SEAS.

1. At the end of August the temperature in the Frozen Ocean is generally at the freezing point of the Centigrade thermometer, but this year (1872) it was constantly six degrees below it. A cold bleak air enveloped us, there was abundance of snow, the sun showed himself rarely, and for some days he had sunk, at midnight, under the horizon. The ship and her rigging were stiff with ice, and everything indicated that for us winter had begun. As the masses of ice which inclosed us consisted only of small floes, we were led to hope that the strong east winds would soon disperse them. But the very contrary really happened, for the low temperatures, the calms, and falls of snow, bound the floes of ice only the more closely together, and within a few days congealed them into one single field, in the midst of which the ship remained fast and immovable. Our surroundings were monotonous beyond description,—one vast unattractive white surface, and even the high-lands of Novaya Zemlya were covered with freshly fallen snow.

2. To reach the coast of Siberia under these circumstances had become an impossibility, and even in the event of our being liberated, the search for a winter harbour in Novaya Zemlya would be a matter of peril and difficulty. Yet we calculated confidently on this contingency and employed our enforced inactivity in completing our preparations for sledge journeys during the autumn, although we could not but feel, that their importance must be of secondary interest and value in a country so well known as Novaya Zemlya. Meantime we drifted slowly along the coast in a northerly direction and apparently under the influence of a current, which has been often observed on the northern coasts of Novaya Zemlya. But the gloom of our situation, as we became conscious of our captivity, was more distinctly and painfully felt. On the 1st of September the temperature sank nine degrees below zero (12° F.), and the few and limited spaces of open water round our floe disappeared. The sun now remained six hours below the horizon, and the formation of young ice in a single night often reached such a thickness, that we soon perceived that our last hope for this year lay in the setting-in of heavy equinoctial storms to break up the ice-fields.

ATTEMPTS TO GET FREE IN SEPTEMBER.

3. On the 2nd of September a fissure running through our floe reached the after-part of the Tegetthoff and opened into a “lead,” and even our floe partially broke up; but this availed us nothing, for the ship itself remained fast on a huge fragment. During the night of Sept. 3, the after-part of the Tegetthoff was gently raised for the first time by the pressure and driving from beneath of the ice; yet of the formidable nature of such pressure we had as yet no presentiment. Though our situation seemed desperate, it was not attended by immediate danger, and, condemned as we were to inactivity, we found the amusement and occupation we needed in skating on the young ice, which covered many of the newly-formed ice-holes between the ice-floes. Besides the duty of making and recording meteorological observations, the training of the dogs, the bringing ice to the kitchen to be transformed into water, the manufacture of oil, expeditions on foot to explore the country, were the only forms in which our energies could be exerted. Absolute loneliness surrounded us; even the Arctic sea-gull (Larus glaucus) and the grey stormy petrel (Procellaria glacialis, L.) of the polar regions, were but rarely seen, and a bear, which, Sept. 5, came within forty paces of the ship, was driven away by the awkwardness of our hunters. The cold became more and more intense and the weather more gloomy. Sept. 2, the cabin lamp had to be lit for the first time about half-past nine o’clock, and on the 3rd we began to heat the interior parts of the ship, the temperature of which had been for some time at zero; and on the 11th, the first fiery belts of the Aurora flamed in the northern heavens. On the 9th and 10th, there was a very heavy storm from the north-east, which drove us back for a short time towards the west, and partially broke up our floe, but all the efforts of the next week to destroy the connection of what remained by sawing and blasting proved unsuccessful. Blasting with powder, whether above or below the surface-ice, proved ineffectual. Even old fissures in the ice appeared to defy further disruption, segments which had been laboriously made by sawing, froze again almost immediately, and even the application of steam was powerless to set our floe in motion and force the breaking-up of the parts which had been sawn through. It was of no avail that, up to Oct. 7, we kept open a trench round the ship, by destroying in the day the ice which had been formed during the night: the expected disruption of our ice-field never happened. Dark streaks in the heavens still proclaimed that we were in the neighbourhood of open water, and though they seemed only to indicate “leads” of no great breadth or extent, they helped to sustain our hopes. But these were soon doomed to be disappointed, for even these “leads” closed up, and at the same time the temperature fell to an unusually low degree. On the 15th of September we had 15 degrees of cold, and on the 19th the temperature fell 18·6 degrees below zero (C.). To add to this, there were frequent falls of drifting snow. As long as fissures remained we had opportunities of seal-hunting, but by the end of the month the “ice-holes” were overspread with spongy ice, which hindered the movements of our boats within them. The alternate openings and closings of the water-ways around us seemed in our monotonous life a harmless spectacle, for the lofty walls of piled-up ice had not as yet for us the language of imminent and threatening dangers.

SEAL-HUNTING—SEPTEMBER 1872.

4. Sept. 22, there was a fissure in the ice about thirty paces from the ship, and we quickly put on board all the materials which were lying on the floe, believing that the moment of our deliverance had come. But no such moment came, nor did the equinoctial storms which we expected set in; we continued to drift still further to the north; and on Oct. 2, we had passed the seventy-seventh degree of north latitude. In the beginning of this month a storm, which lasted but a short time, opened up a large “ice-hole” near the after-part of the ship, and forthwith we set to work to open a passage through our floe in order to reach it, but two days afterwards this “ice-hole” also closed up. Yet amid all our mishaps we forgot not on October the 4th—the name-day of his Majesty the Emperor Francis Joseph I.—the homage which was due to our noble and gracious Sovereign. The ship was gaily dressed with flags, and a rifle-match, in which watches and pipes were the prizes, scared away for a short afternoon the sad impressions of the moment.

SHOOTING AT A TARGET, OCTOBER 1872.

5. Encounters with polar bears afforded us much excitement. On the 6th of October our first bear was killed and divided among the dogs, for as yet we had not learnt to regard the flesh of these animals as the most precious part of our provisions. A fox also, the first seen during this expedition, showed himself during the previous night. He had evidently come from Novaya Zemlya, and his curiosity had led him close to the ship, from whence he was driven by the dogs. It now became indispensable for everyone who left the immediate neighbourhood of the ship to carry arms with him, and the neglect of this precaution had sometimes rather ludicrous, at other times somewhat serious, consequences. On the 11th of October I left the ship unarmed, and with no other companion than our Lapland dog, Pekel, to employ myself in the harmless occupation of piling up a tower of ice. Working as I was in a stooping position, I was unconscious of what was immediately around me, when on a sudden the loud barking of Pekel caused me to raise myself, and I saw a bear quite close before me. Shaking his head and making a snuffling noise, he came on towards me. In the expectation that some of the people engaged on deck would see my critical position, I contented myself with shaking my fist at him, unwilling to reveal any weakness to my enemy. As this, however, seemed to produce no effect, I cried out repeatedly, “A bear!” At last I saw Klotz, who was on deck, go to the stand of arms, but with such stoical composure, that I ceased to trust to others, and left to the bear, who had now advanced to a distance of about fifteen paces from me, the glory of forcing his enemy to take to flight.

6. In the first days of October the temperature rose considerably, the thermometer standing a little below zero (C.). This was due to south-west winds, and to the temporary extension of the “ice-holes” in our immediate neighbourhood. The days now became shorter, the sun surrounded with red masses of clouds set behind barriers of blackish-blue ice, and an ever-deepening twilight followed his disappearance. Sept. 29, a “snowfinch” flew from the coast of Novaya Zemlya to the ship, hopped about the deck for a little time, and after delighting us all by his little song, again left us. Some few sea-gulls still wended their flight to the spaces of water in our neighbourhood. Skimming over the top of the mast, they seemed to gaze down upon us, and then with a shrill cry darted away like arrows towards the south. There was something melancholy in this departure of the birds; it seemed as if all creatures were retiring from the long reign of night which was before us. In order to divert our attention from the dreadful monotony of our captivity by some occupation in the open air, we fell on the plan of building houses of ice round the ship. The activity of a building-yard reigned on our ice-floe; heavy ice-tables were broken or sawed through, the dogs in the sledges carried the fragments to their appointed places, and with these blocks we raised crystal walls and towers. Snow, mixed with sea-water, furnished an inexhaustible source of the most excellent mortar; and while we worked laboriously at these meaningless erections, we earned at least by our labour the reward of sleep free from care.

PARHELIA ON THE COAST OF NOVAYA ZEMLYA.

7. As we drifted helplessly northward, the coasts of Novaya Zemlya receded gradually from our gaze. Hitherto we had lain close to the land, which with its rounded mountains and valleys filled with glaciers seemed a miniature of Alpine scenery. Daily almost the gigantic luminous arcs of parhelia stood above it, the usual precursors of stormy weather or heavy falls of snow. Towards the north and north-east the country becomes flatter, and runs into glacier-wastes little raised above the level of the sea. The topography of the northern parts of Novaya Zemlya is complete confusion. The only survey which exists—that of LÜtke—extends no further than Cape Nassau. The maps of the Barentz Isles are frequently in contradiction with fact, and their correction is extremely desirable. Though this land was of no value for our object, yet it was still land, and it seemed also to us, drifting as we did, the symbol of the stable and immovable. But now it was gradually disappearing from our eyes. During September we had moved slowly, but with October we drifted at a greater rate, so that by the 12th of this month we saw nothing but a line of heights some thirty miles off, towards the south. At last every trace of land disappeared from our gaze; a hopeless waste received us, in which no man could tell how long we should be, or how far we should penetrate.

CHAPTER IV.
THE “TEGETTHOFF” FAST BESET IN THE ICE.

1. Autumn was passing away, the days were getting shorter, and in our immediate neighbourhood no movement in the ice was perceptible, save that we had drifted continuously towards the north-east; sometimes, though rarely, a fissure in the ice grew to the proportions of an “ice-hole,” only, however, to be quickly frozen over and present a surface for our skates. There lay the frozen sea, the picture of dull, hopeless monotony; shelter there was none. Our floe, though it seemed to combine the conveniences of a winter harbour, could not stand the test of closer observation, the illusion of such a notion must be short-lived. But many signs now indicated the insecurity of our position. Fields of ice in our neighbourhood cracked and split asunder, and piled-up masses floated round us, silent preachers, as it were, of the destruction which ice-pressure could produce.

2. A change, however, was soon to come over the scene. On the evening of October 12 we imagined that the cabin lamp oscillated, and consequently that our floe was in motion. On the same night we were conscious of a violent movement in the ice. A dreadful day was the 13th of October,—a Sunday; it was decisive of the fate of the expedition. To the superstitious amongst us the number 13 was clothed with a profound significance: the committee of the expedition had been constituted on February 13; on the 13th of January the keel of the Tegetthoff had been laid down; on the 13th of April she was launched; on the 13th of June we left Bremerhaven; on the 13th of July, Tromsoe; after a voyage of 13 days we had arrived at the ice, and on the 13th of October the temperature marked 16 degrees below zero (C.). In the morning of that day, as we sat at breakfast, our floe burst across immediately under the ship. Rushing on deck we discovered that we were surrounded and squeezed by the ice; the after-part of the ship was already nipped and pressed, and the rudder, which was the first to encounter its assault, shook and groaned; but as its great weight did not admit of its being shipped, we were content to lash it firmly. We next sprang on the ice, the tossing tremulous motion of which literally filled the air with noises as of shrieks and howls, and we quickly got on board all the materials which were lying on the floe, and bound the fissures of the ice hastily together by ice-anchors and cables, filling them up with snow, in the hope that frost would complete our work, though we felt that a single heave might shatter our labours. But, just as in the risings of a people the wave of revolt spreads on every side, so now the ice uprose against us. Mountains threateningly reared themselves from out the level fields of ice, and the low groan which issued from its depths grew into a deep rumbling sound, and at last rose into a furious howl as of myriads of voices. Noise and confusion reigned supreme, and step by step destruction drew nigh in the crashing together of the fields of ice. Our floe was now crushed, and its blocks, piled up into mountains, drove hither and thither. Here, they towered fathoms high above the ship, and forced the protecting timbers of massive oak, as if in mockery of their purpose, against the hull of the vessel; there, masses of ice fell down as into an abyss under the ship, to be engulfed in the rushing waters, so that the quantity of ice beneath the ship was continually increased, and at last it began to raise her quite above the level of the sea. About 11.30 in the forenoon, according to our usual custom, a portion of the Bible was read on deck, and this day, quite accidentally, the portion read was the history of Joshua: but if in his day the sun stood still, it was more than the ice now showed any inclination to do.

3. The terrible commotion going on around us prevented us from seeing anything distinctly. The sky too was overcast, the sun’s place could only be conjectured. In all haste we began to make ready to abandon the ship, in case it should be crushed, a fate which seemed inevitable, if she were not sufficiently raised through the pressure of the ice. About 12.30 the pressure reached a frightful height, every part of the vessel strained and groaned; the crew, who had been sent down to dine, rushed on deck. The Tegetthoff had heeled over on her side, and huge piles of ice threatened to precipitate themselves upon her. But the pressure abated, and the ship righted herself; and about one o’clock, when the danger was in some degree over, the crew went below to dine. But again a strain was felt through the vessel, everything which hung freely began to oscillate violently, and all hastened on deck, some with the unfinished dinner in their hands, others stuffing it into their pockets. Calmly and silently, amid the loud sounds emitted by the ice in its violent movement, the officers assumed and carried out the special duty which had been assigned to each in the contemplated abandonment of the ship. Lieutenant Weyprecht got ready the boats, Brosch and Orel cleared out the supply of provision to be taken in them; Kepes, our doctor, had an eye to his drugs; the Tyrolese opened the magazine, and got out the rifles and ammunition—I myself attended to the sledges, the tents, and the sacks for sleeping in, and distributed to the crew their fur coats. We now stood ready to start, each with a bundle—whither, no one pretended to know! For not a fragment of the ice around us had remained whole; nowhere could the eye discover a still perfect and uninjured floe to serve as a place of refuge, as a vast floe had before been to the crew of the Hansa. Nay, not a block, not a table of ice was at rest, all shapes and sizes of it were in active motion, some rearing up, some turning and twisting, none on the level. A sledge would at once have been swallowed up, and in this very circumstance lay the horror of our situation. For, if the ship should sink, whither should we go, even with the smallest stock of provisions?—amid this confusion, how reach the land, thirty miles distant, without the most indispensable necessaries?

4. The dogs, too, demanded our attention. They had sprung on chests, and stared on the waves of ice as they rose and roared. Every trace of his fox-nature had disappeared from “Sumbu.” His look, at other times so full of cunning, had assumed an expression of timidity and humility, and, unbidden, he offered his paw to all passers by. The Lapland dog, little Pekel, sprang upon me, licked my hand, and looked out on the ice as if he meant to ask me what all this meant. The large Newfoundlands stood motionless, like scared chamois, on the piles of chests.

5. About 4 P.M. the pressure moderated; an hour afterwards there was a calm, and with more composure we could now survey our position. The carpenter shovelled away the snow from the deck in order to inspect the seams. They were still uninjured. The knees and cross-beams still held, and no very great quantity of water was found in the hold. This result we owed solely to the strength of our ship and to her fine lines, which enabled her to rise when nipped and pressed, while her interior, so well laden as to become a solid body, increased her powers of resistance. Everything was again restored to its place, so that it was possible to go up and down the cabin stairs without great difficulty, and in the evening the water in the hold, which had risen 13 inches, was pumped out to its normal depth of 6 inches. We went down into the cabin to rest, but though thankful and joyful for the issue, our minds were clouded with care and anxiety. Henceforth we regarded every noise with suspicious apprehensions, like a population which lives within an area of earthquakes. The long winter nights and their fearful cold were before us; we were drifting into unknown regions, utterly uncertain of the end. When night came, we fell asleep with our clothes on, though our sleep was disturbed every now and then by onsets of the ice, recurring less frequently and in diminished force; but daily—and for one hundred and thirty days—we went through the same experiences in greater or lesser measure, almost always in sunless darkness. It was, however, a fortunate circumstance for us that we encountered the first assaults of the ice at a time when we were still able to see; for instead of the calm preparations we were able to make, hurry and confusion would have been inevitable had these assaults surprised us amid the Polar darkness.

AN OCTOBER NIGHT IN THE ICE.

6. Early in the morning of Oct. 14 we all met at breakfast, but on every face there lay an expression of grave thoughtfulness, for each of us was contemplating the long perspective of those dreary nights, in which we should drift without a goal in the awful wastes of the Frozen Sea. The speedy restoration of our floe was now our most earnest desire. It was only severe frost and heavy falls of snow—as we vainly imagined—which could cement the chaos of broken fragments around us and form from them a new floe; for as yet we had not learnt by experience, that severe cold in itself, unaccompanied with wind, is sufficient to break up the fields of ice, from the contraction which it causes. We deluded ourselves with another consolation—we imagined that the ice-pressures would cease as soon as we passed the eastern extremity of Novaya Zemlya, and that in the Sea of Kara we should drift without encountering the pressures, due, as we conceived, to our nearness to land. But vain also was this hope, for we were drifting not into the Sea of Kara, but towards the north-east. We should have found, even in that sea, that pressures from the ice may occur within the Frozen Ocean, however, as well as at its coasts. The masses of ice which caused our disasters probably came from that sea.

7. The time subsequent to this crisis was full of painful and anxious moments, but a chronological description of the events of each day, involving a mere repetition of our sad impressions, would be wearisome to the reader. I will, therefore, transfer from my journal such portions of it as most forcibly express the thoughts that passed through the minds of the handful of men on board the Tegetthoff during those terrible days:—

“October 14.—About half-past eight o’clock in the evening a new fissure in the ice appeared astern of the ship; a strain was felt throughout her timbers; in a moment every one in his fur dress and with his bundle in his hand was on deck: so will it be, perhaps, throughout the winter—what a life!

“October 15.—All had slept in their clothes. Fresh pressures from the ice were felt about eight o’clock in the morning, not so powerful as on the 13th, but of such force that all sprang from their berths and within a minute again stood ready on the deck. Much ice had been forced under the after-part of the ship, which was raised up by the pressure. When all was calm every one set to work to make a bag to contain the gear he meant to take if the ship should be crushed. Mine contained the following articles: one pair of fur gloves, one pair of woollen gloves, a pair of snow spectacles, six pencils, a rubber, three note-books, the journal of my Greenland expedition, a book of drawings, ten ball-cartridges, two pairs of stockings, a knife, a case of needles and thread. On the 13th we had neglected to provide ourselves with maps of Novaya Zemlya; two of these I now included among my stock of necessaries. Six Lefaucheux rifles, four Werndl-rifles, two thousand cartridges, two large and two smaller sledges, a tent for ten, one for six men, two great sleeping sacks, each for eight, and a smaller one for six men, were placed in the boats. Although all these preparations would have been quite vain if the ship had sunk with the ice in motion to crush us, we must, for our mutual encouragement, keep up the appearance of believing in them. About six o’clock in the evening the full moon rose, like a copper coin fresh from the mint, above our horizon on the deep blue of the heavens. In the evening the ice was at rest, and for the first time for some days we ventured to undress on going to bed.

“October 16.—Slept without care or disturbance till two o’clock in the morning, when pressure from the ice again set in, and all rushed on deck. Some of the crew threw out on the ice the antlers of a reindeer of Novaya Zemlya,—for according to a superstition of the seamen the horns of a reindeer are the generators of mischief! The ice again calm, and I fell asleep from exhaustion; but about half-past five in the morning there was a new pressure of about twenty minutes’ duration, and almost as fearful as on the 13th of the month. The exceeding haste with which every one rushes up from below as soon as the ship begins to strain, shows the effect which the noise makes on us; it is impossible to become accustomed to it; every one runs on deck. Again the ice rests, but about half-past seven in the morning, another pressure, which almost tore away the beams protecting the hull and the davits to which they were fastened. The ship, however, rights herself. To-day the ice which overhung our bulwarks was dug away to prevent masses of it falling on the deck. In the evening, diminished pressure from the ice; at night, glorious moonlight scenery; nothing more peaceful, but nothing more illusive, than such a scene at such an hour.

“October 17.—All quiet during the night till Lusina came to announce, with a voice as from the grave, that the ship was making more water, sixteen inches in the forepart, eleven inches amidships. East wind, with heavy drifting snow-storms—during the day once only a strain of short duration was felt in the ship, as a new fissure opened in the piled-up ice on our starboard quarter.

“October 18.—Our anxieties somewhat abate and our watchful state of preparation to leave the ship relaxes, and most of us determine once more to undress for the night. After several weeks the sun, which had been obscured by the weather, becomes visible, rising 2° 25' above the horizon; the temperature stands at -20° F., and our latitude is 77° 48'.

“October 19.—Straining in the ship; the sun rose about a quarter past eight, but was soon veiled in frosty vapours.

“October 20.—The hull of the ship is still without its necessary protection of ice and snow, while we are wrapt in furs and wear reindeer-shoes and felt-boots. In the evening a faint mock moon was visible.

“October 21.—At night we were alarmed by a loud sound, and in few minutes all were on deck with their fur clothes on—a fissure had opened on the starboard side of the ship, connecting itself with that which had been formed astern of the ship. In an hour this fissure had widened about four feet, and we worked for some hours by the light of lamps to fill it up with snow and pieces of ice. The low temperature (-21° F.) led us to expect that this chasm would be bridged over without further effort on our part. The moon stood surrounded by a vast halo in the heavens and illuminated the awful loneliness of our abode. Once more a calm! When any one comes down from the deck into the cabin, the eyes of all are involuntarily turned upon him to read in the expression of his face what is going on above, and each dreads to hear it said, that the ice is in motion. In the afternoon, when the fissure closed, we heard the old dull sound from the ice, and the ship strained violently, and all were on deck ready to leave. About nine o’clock in the evening the motion of the ice was again felt. Uncertain and full of fears as to what the night might bring forth, we go early to rest; no one knows how short that rest may be. Even Klotz lays aside his stoical calmness, and the philosophical dignity of his remarks departs when his comrades spring from their berths and rush on deck with their bundles. The frozen pumps are daily thawed by boiling water; to-day the shaft of one of them broke, through the excessive strain put upon it.

THE MOON WITH ITS HALO.

“October 22.—During the night, motion in the ice. At 9.30 A.M. the sun rose, and attains its meridian altitude at 1° 41'. In the evening the fissure in the ice again opens. Rents and small ‘ice-holes’ are all round us, and frosty vapour fills the air. To-day the skull of a bear was thrown out on the ice, the crew asserting that mischief comes from the possession of it!

“October 23.—During the night violent movement in the ice; the sound produced resembles the noise of a fleet of paddle-wheel steam-ships, steaming now with full, now with half power. The height of the sun to-day above the horizon was a little above one degree, its form was distorted by refraction into an egg-like shape, and its edges were in constant vibration.

“October 24.—The daylight is now so feeble that the lamps have to be lighted during the day, with the exception of two or three hours in the forenoon. Many of the crew are suffering from frost-bites on their hands, in consequence of their exposure in removing the unnecessary rigging, and in the preparations to facilitate the removal of our stock of provisions in the event of our being forced to abandon the vessel.

“October 25.—In the afternoon we made an attempt to drive the dog sledges, but the snow, in spite of the low temperature, lay in such masses between the small hummocks and on the few level places, that they sank deep into it. It is storms of wind only that harden the snow, and for some time we have had calms or light breezes. In the evening there was a movement in the ice astern of the ship, accompanied with the highest soprano tones. The noise the ice makes in its pressure very much resembles the piping and howling of a storm among rocky cliffs or through the rigging of a ship. About half-past ten at night, the oscillating movements of the ice, occurring at definite intervals, made it appear as if they arose from a swell of the ocean. The ship groans and creaks constantly; indeed, creaking and groaning are weak expressions for such a noise. Once more all are ready. We begin to fear that the ice will never rest.

“October 26.—Pressure throughout the whole night. Armed and provided with lanterns, we used the sledges to remove two boats, 150 logs of wood, fifty planks, and a supply of coals, to the port side of the vessel, and chose a stronger floe, on which to build a house of refuge. Tired and exhausted, we fell asleep, in spite of the straining and creaking of the vessel.

OUR COAL-HOUSE ON THE FLOE.

“October 27.—The sun at noon was scarcely visible above the horizon. At night of the same day a strong wind from the south-east opened a fissure on the starboard side of the vessel and about 150 paces from it, which grew into the dimensions of an ‘ice-hole.’

“October 28.—To-day the sun took leave of us. Only with its upper edge had it appeared above the horizon, and sent towards us its mild beams like the consoling glance of a departing friend. The coal-house is finished. But what reliance can be placed on such an abode in such a position? A storm may carry away the planks which form its roof; sparks from a fire may set fire to its walls and consume it; and at any moment, through a pressure opening up an abyss beneath, it may sink and be engulfed. Two o’clock in the afternoon, the groaning sound comes from the piles of ice around us; our floe appears to twist somewhat, and the pressure of the ice will probably soon begin.

“October 29.—During the night a noise in the ice, which, though it did not further disturb us, was yet witness enough that it is ever ready to disturb us. The sun no longer appears; only a rosy light at noon in the heavens.

“October 30.—At half-past three o’clock in the morning there was a dreadful straining and creaking in the ship: at once we sprang out of our berths, and stood on deck with our fur garments on, and with our bags as before. New fissures had appeared which rapidly enlarge themselves; the two boats and the coal-house are now surrounded by up-forced masses of ice and separated from us. Then a pause! There is however no real repose, and the least sound on deck, the falling of anything heavy—at other times quite unnoticed—alarms us into the expectation of new onsets. At noon, as we sate at dinner, there was renewed and excessive straining in the ship, and even in the cabin we heard such a rushing sound in the ice without, that it seemed as if the whole frozen sea would the next moment boil and rise in vapour. During all the afternoon the noise continues, and all the fissures send forth dense vapours, like hot springs. During the day no quiet for reading or working, and every night almost our sleep is disturbed by a horrible awaking within a great creaking, groaning coffin. Men can accustom themselves to almost anything; but to these daily recurring shocks, and the constantly renewed question as to the end and issue of it all, we cannot grow accustomed.”

8. There is however such an intolerable monotony in my diary, that, to spare my readers, I thus, in a few words, resuming its contents, describe our situation:—“One of us, to-day, remarked very truly, that he saw perfectly well how one might lose his reason with the continuance of these sudden and incessant assaults. It is not dangers that we fear, but worse far; we are kept in a constant state of readiness to meet destruction, and know not whether it will come to-day, or to-morrow, or in a year. Every night we are startled out of sleep, and, like hunted animals, up we spring to await amid an awful darkness the end of an enterprise from which all hope of success has departed. It becomes at last a mere mechanical process to seize our rifles and our bag of necessaries and rush on deck. In the daytime, leaning over the bulwarks of the ship, which trembles, yea, almost quivers the while, we look out on a continual work of destruction going on, and at night, as we listen to the loud and ever-increasing noises of the ice, we gather that the forces of our enemy are increasing.”

CHAPTER V.
OUR FIRST WINTER (1872) IN THE ICE.

1. In the beginning of November we were already environed by a deep twilight; but our dreary waste had become of magical beauty; the rigging, white with frost, stood out, spectre-like, against the grey-blue of the heavens; the ice, broken into a thousand forms and overspread with a covering of snow, had now assumed the cold pure aspect of alabaster shaded with the tender hues of arragonite. Southward at noon we saw veils of frosty vapour rise into the carmine-coloured sky out of the fissures and “ice-holes,” in which the water seemed to boil.

2. All our preparations for wintering had now been completed. Lieutenant Weyprecht struck the top-masts to diminish pressure from the wind; some sails were still kept set, in order that the ship, in the event of her being set free, might at once get under weigh. The fore-part of the ship only could be covered in as a tent, for the preparations to abandon her in case of need compelled us to leave her after-part uncovered. There, in perfect order, lay all the materials we meant to take with us, our provisions, ammunition, tents, sledges, &c. The ship was surrounded with a wall of snow and ice, which we constantly restored, whenever it was injured by pressure from without, and her deck was gradually overspread with a mantle of snow, which contributed, however, to maintain an equable warmth in the ship. Our distance from land rendered it impossible to cover the deck with a layer of sand, which would have prevented the melting of the snow from the warmth of the ship.

THE TWILIGHT IN NOVEMBER, 1872.

3. The temperature of November rose once only—about the middle of the month—considerably; but, except on that occasion, the thermometer stood with tolerable regularity below -13° F., and on the 20th of the month it reached its minimum at -33° F. Winds, from whatever quarter they might blow, constantly raised the temperature, because the colder air was thus modified by the warmer which lay above the open spaces of sea-water; calms were accompanied by a rapid intensification of cold. Wind, increased drifting, pressure, and the formation of fissures—all these are naturally connected. New openings were quickly covered with young ice, which presented a smooth surface when formed by less intense cold, but when the temperature fell lower its saline contents were exuded in a moist, tough layer, which lay on its surface about an inch thick. In this state of the ice, sledge-travelling was rendered more difficult, and even walking was far from easy; for it is only under a temperature ranging from -4° F. to -13° F. that this layer is frozen. The incessant rending of the ice-sheet, by exposing the warmer surface of the sea, tends to mitigate the cold, while, on the other hand, the freezing of these fissures augments the quantity of ice.

SUMBU CHASED FOR A FOX.

4. In the beginning of the month our nights were dark, and it was only occasionally that the light of the aurora and meteors visited us with their fleeting splendours. Although in clear weather day was still distinguishable from night, yet the darkness, even at noon, was so great, that mists could not be seen, but felt only, and it was no longer possible, without the light of a lantern, to make even the slightest sketch, or to take aim with the rifle. Hence, when we met with bears we could not be certain of our aim, if they were at any distance from us, and, on one occasion, Sumbu was mistaken for a fox, chased, and but for my coming up would have been shot.

WANDERINGS ON THE ICE IN OUR FIRST WINTER.

5. The first days of November passed away without any new disturbance from the movement of the masses of ice, and our feeling of security grew apace, and with it our hopes revived, never again to leave us entirely, not even when the pressures returned, as they did too soon. Once more the fields of ice, firmly pressed together, were rent asunder; fissures opened out, and shone in the moonlight like rivers of silver. The night of Nov. 20 was one of extreme anxiety. A mountain formed of piles of broken ice bore down on us amid a fearful din, threatening to bury the ship. Silent, and conscious of our utter helplessness, we watched this gigantic heap of crashing ice-tables drifting nearer and nearer, crushing as it advanced the heaviest pieces of ice with a noise which echoed through our ship. Escape seemed impossible: and Providence alone arrested its career. This night the crew received each an extra glass of grog to obliterate the impression of this terrible crisis.

6. With the exception of books, we had no other amusement than short expeditions, never extending beyond a mile from the ship, in which we were accompanied by all the dogs. We generally set out with two small sledges, and, when the moon was not shining, with our rifles ready to fire, for the darkness and the utter absence of open spaces on the ice imposed the utmost caution against bears. At a very short distance we could see nothing of the ship, and only by our footsteps on the snow could we make out where we were and find the way back. In these expeditions we were exposed to another danger—the risk of being cut off from the ship by the breaking-up of one of the drifting floes. Even the dogs felt the insecurity of recently-formed ice, and put their feet on it with fear and hesitation, and only by compulsion. There seemed to be a cunning agreement among them to shirk the work altogether; for they often rushed away into the coal-house, and threw the harness of the sledges into inextricable confusion.

7. December came, but it brought no change in our situation. Our life became more and more monotonous; one day differed in no respect from another, it was but a mere succession of dates, and time was reckoned merely by the hours for eating and sleeping. The ice, however, did not share in the universal repose. It was never weary of threatening; no day elapsed without movement on its part. My journal records December 1, 8, 9, 19, 20, 21, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, and 31, as days of special disturbance and agitation. On the 20th, as we were talking in the coal-house of the approaching festival of Christmas, a sudden violent movement of the ice surprised us, and rushing out we found that the floe on which the house stood was breaking up. With all haste we endeavoured to save as much as possible of the coal and materials, and moved them close to the ship. The minimum temperature of December was -26° F.; the mean of the whole month amounted to -22° F.; and the extreme of cold, -33° F., was reached on the 26th. A few days before Christmas the temperature rose to a little below -13° F. It may be observed that the lower temperatures were registered during the prevalence of winds from the south-east, and the higher during winds from the north.

8. When the moon returned in the middle of December, our sledge expeditions were extended to a distance of 1½ miles from the ship, over snow and hummocks, to recently frozen ice-holes, the lonely beauty of which, edged with dark masses of ice, in the distance, and lying under the clear silver light of the moon, filled us with feelings of profound melancholy. On returning from one of these expeditions to our vessel, after we had unharnessed the dogs, we heard loud barks from Sumbu, and looking round saw a bear close beside him, which Orel managed to shoot dead when he was not above five paces from the rope-ladder on the port side of the vessel. He was at once cut up, the dogs meanwhile looking on with profound attention; and in reward for his watchfulness, Sumbu was indulged with an extra good feast—the heart and tongue of the bear, which, as yet, we ourselves had not learnt to eat and enjoy. On the 18th, however, he encountered our heavy displeasure for the offence of frightening off a fox, which had ventured to come very near the vessel.

ENCOUNTER WITH A POLAR BEAR.

9. When there was no moon it was perfectly dark, even during the day; but on December 14, in a very clear forenoon, we saw in the south a tender orange segment of light, three or four degrees above the horizon, edged with green, sharply defined against the dark sky, and when the moon, high in the heavens, faced this arch of light, a peculiar faint twilight was observable. But generally there was no difference between the light of midday and the light of midnight. The heavens were usually overcast, and the light of the aurora, during the few minutes of its greatest intensity, seldom exceeded that of the moon in its first quarter. But how deep would be the night of the Polar regions, if the land, instead of being white with snow, were covered with forests! On December 20 we were unable, even at noon, to read anything but the titles of books of the largest type; a man’s eyes were invisible at the distance of a few paces, and at fifty even the stoutest ropes of the ship were scarcely discernible. The effect of the long Polar night—when the range of the light of a lamp is the whole world for man—is most oppressive to the feelings; nor can habit ever reconcile those who have lived under the influences of civilization to its gloom and solitude. It can be a home only to men who spend their existence in eating and drinking and sleeping, without any disturbing recollection of a better existence. The depression was made more intense by the consciousness that we had been driven into an utterly unknown region and with our eyes bound. Work, incessant work, was the only resource in these circumstances.

ICE-HOLE COVERED WITH YOUNG ICE.

10. Again from my journal I reproduce some passages which express the feelings which passed through our minds—through mine at least—during this season of the Tegetthoff’s first winter in the ice:—“December 21—The middle of the long night. It is noon, and, though nothing can be lighter than the colour of all that surrounds us—of the snow—yet it is as dark as midnight. Nothing but a pale yellow sheen hovers over the south. The sun has sunk below the horizon 11° 40', and we should have to ascend a mountain eighteen and a half (German) miles high in order to behold it. Nothing is to be seen, neither bears nor men, and we only hear the steps of those who are near us. We see but the confused outline even of the ship, as she drifts hither and thither with the floe, a prisoner in the fetters of the ice, the sport of winds and currents, carrying her further and further into the still and silent realm of death. A definite object, with hope to inspire them, raises men above toils and troubles of every kind; but exile like ours, when the sacrifice seems useless, is hard to be borne. An inexorable ‘No’ lays its ban on every hope, and daily struggle for self-preservation is our lot. If we attempt to fathom destiny, our utmost hopes are liberation from our icy captivity some time next summer, and the reaching the coast of Siberia. Siberia a hope! And yet how changeable are the feelings when the reign of monotony is interrupted! The moon is up—darkness exists no more. In the North the moon is an event—it is life, everything almost; it is the only link which connects us with the far-distant home. As its beams fall on the meanest forms, diamonds blaze forth in its light from the snow and the frost, and the soul feels the beauty of the transformation. She looks down on us like a returning friend that watches over us, and unfolds bewitching forms and magic images to cheer us. Two weeks ago she rose above the horizon, first as a blood-red disk, then paled as she climbed higher and higher, till she stands out the clear, silver-bright, full moon.”

11. Christmas had come; the season when in the forests of our far-distant home the branches of the pine-trees are heavy laden with snow, and which ever comes back with the memories of the days of our youth, and with the remembrances of our families and absent friends. Only for a short time, about noon, we were made uneasy by a movement and pressure of the ice. But the alarm passed away, and we gathered together for a choice and gorgeous feast, both on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and each of the cabin-mess had a bottle of good wine to himself. Carlsen and Lusina were our guests. Each of the crew received half a bottle of wine, together with a quarter of a bottle of “artificial wine,”[17] and in addition an allowance of grog, so weak, however, that even a baby might have drunk it without harm. Dried fish, roast bear well kept and seasoned, nuts and the like, contributed in their way to heighten the joyous feelings which, this day at least, animate even the most miserable of men. The dogs, at other times so insatiable, had for once enough and to spare, and carried off the fragments to bury them in the snow. The contents of a chest full of presents, which we had brought with us, were distributed by lot, and great was the delight of those who won a bottle of rum or a few cigars.

12. The last day of the year 1872 afforded us no very happy thoughts as we looked back on its events; it had been to us a year of disappointments. The comparison drawn between our actual condition and the expectations we had so ardently cherished seemed full of the bitterest irony. This day also, about noon, a pressure from the ice, which lasted but a short time, alarmed us all, and we rushed on deck to make our usual preparations. The enemy, however, passed away without further disturbance, and cheerfully and socially we awaited the first hour of the new year. With a bottle of champagne, one of the two still left, we meant to greet its coming in with that hopefulness of mind which seems inextinguishable in all the changes and chances of life. But the champagne, alas! proved a delusion. Klotz, the Tyrolese, in one of his brown studies exposed this precious bottle for four hours to a temperature of -19° F., and when he produced it the bottle had burst and the wine was thoroughly frozen. At midnight the crew serenaded us, and we afterwards marched forth in a body with torches, and walked round the ship, whose rigging glowed in the light of the tarred torches. The frosted fur garments of the men seemed edged with shining light, and a red glare fell on the masses of ice.

CARLSEN MAKES THE ENTRY IN THE LOG.

13. To-day, too, we allowed the dogs to descend into our cabin,—the constant object of their longings. The poor animals were so dazzled by looking at our lamp, that they almost took it for the sun itself; but by and by their attention was directed exclusively to the rich remains of our dinner, the sight of which appeared completely to satisfy their notions of the wonders of the cabin. After behaving themselves with great propriety, they again quietly withdrew, all except Jubinal, who appeared to be indignant at the deceitfulness of our conduct, inasmuch as we had allowed him to starve so long on dried horse-flesh and on crushed bear’s head, while we revelled in luxury. He accordingly made his way into Lieutenant Brosch’s cabin, where, discovering a mountain of macaroni, he immediately attacked it, and warned us off from every attempt to rescue it, by growling fiercely till he had finished it all. Sumbu, however, with much levity, suffered himself to be made drunk by the sailors with rum, and everything which he had scraped together for weeks and buried in the snow and so carefully watched, was stolen from him by the other dogs in one night.

14. Another year had now glided away. Looking anxiously into the future, we shortsighted mortals saw the fulfilment of our highest wishes in being liberated from the floe. In the pious manner of the whalers of the Arctic Ocean, Carlsen wrote this day in the log: “Önsker at Gud maa vere med os i det nye aar, da kan intet vare imod os—May God be with us in the new year and nothing can be against us.” In this new year, with its happier issues, was verified again the eternal truth, that Providence acts in ways not to be fathomed, and that it is folly in man to mark out his own path beforehand according to his own mind. The sun of this new year, whose beams were to light us to new lands and discoveries, was still low beneath the horizon.

CHAPTER VI.
LIFE ON BOARD THE “TEGETTHOFF.”

1. Like a spectre in white, the ship stretches out her arms, as if in silent complaint, towards the heaven, and rests, in cruel mockery of her destiny, on a mountain, not of water, but of ice, and seems like a building ready to fall in. A wall of snow and ice surrounds her hull, snow lies thick on her deck, and her rigging is stiffened in icy lines. Could we see through her sides, we should then behold four-and-twenty men parted off in two spaces under the suns of two lamps. Let us inspect them, and first the cabin of the officers in the after-part of the ship.

2. Neither few nor slight were our struggles to remedy the various inconveniences which we encountered; their enumeration here is meant to aid the experience of future adventurers. Though our arrangements were far from complete or perfect, we had never to complain of the discomforts which previous expeditions, even the second German expedition to Greenland, had to endure from the excessive condensation of moisture. Against this enemy we protected ourselves by the snow wall which we raised round the ship, by covering in the deck windows of the cabin, by lining our quarters with vulcanized india-rubber, by sheds built over the cabin stairs, all acting as condensers. Before, however, I enter on the unavoidable inconveniences to which we were exposed by the formation of ice, or by damp and the sudden change of temperature, I would preface my remarks by observing, that all these discomforts and inconveniences are to be endured far more easily than would seem possible to the reader, and that life on board a ship of a North Pole expedition, under normal circumstances, is free from annoyances worthy of mention.

THE “TEGETTHOFF” IN THE FULL MOON.

3. It is a matter of the last importance to keep the air pure and wholesome, and to maintain an equable warmth in the quarters of the officers and crew. The accumulation of moisture and consequent congelation in them is an inconvenience which requires incessant watchfulness to avert.[18] The destruction of the snow wall which surrounded the ship increased the condensation; for that snow covering was nothing but a greatcoat for the ship and those on board. In the beginning of November 1872 the frost on the bulk-heads of the berths, and on those parts of the cabins which were impervious to warmer air, was very perceptible. The bed-clothes were frozen at night to the sides of the ship, the iron knees of the beams—not, alas! covered with felt—gleamed like stalactites, small glaciers were formed under the berths, and even in October the skylight was frozen, inches thick. Every rise in the temperature caused this formation of ice to fall down like a “douche,” and with the opening of a door a white vapour, even in October, streamed along the deck. We prevented the increase of moisture by cutting the openings in the deck, over which we placed two chimneys, each a foot high and covered with a thin metal cap. We boarded up the skylight, leaving a lid by which to air the cabin. But in spite of all this the variations of temperature within our quarters were extraordinary. If the heat of the air in the middle of the cabin and on a level with our heads rose from -2° F. to 76° F.—our usual mean temperature—it amounted on the floor to a little above 34° F., and fell during the night not unfrequently below freezing-point.

4. But the greatest inconvenience perhaps with which we had to contend, arose from the removal of the protection of the tent roof, which was stretched over the after-part of the ship. The want of this prevented our walking on the deck in bad weather, and it also hindered perfect ventilation, which could only be secured, with the constant heat which was maintained below, by keeping the deck windows open. Warming the air from underneath the floor of the cabin would possibly be preferable to the best stove. We had the stove of Meidingen of Carlsruhe, the excellence of which had been tested on the Germania. This stove consumed only 20 lbs. of coals daily, with a thermometer at -13° F., and after the adoption of certain arrangements to save the fuel, its consumption amounted to only 12 lbs. Even in the coldest period of the winter we never consumed more than 4½ cwt. in a month. The lighting of the messroom and quarters of the men was effected by petroleum, the daily consumption of which amounted to about 2? lbs. Altogether there were in the ship two large and two small lamps, besides the deck-lantern, which were burning day and night. The berths were lighted with train-oil; for special purposes, such as drawing, candles were used.

5. The stove had one troublesome enemy in the shape of a hole, as big as a man’s head, in the door of the mess-room, through which a cold stream of air poured itself; and as the ship dipped forward considerably, and the hearth was only about a foot above the floor of the mess-room, this stream filled the whole space with a lake of cold air from three to four feet deep. Hence, while in the berth close by the stove there was a temperature ranging between 100° F. and 131° F., in the other, there was one which would have sufficed for the North Pole itself. In the former a hippopotamus would have felt himself quite comfortable, and Orel, the unhappy occupant of it, was often compelled to rush on deck, when the ice-pressures alarmed us, experiencing in passing from his berth to the deck a difference of temperature amounting to 189° F. In the other berth of the mess-room, water, lemon-juice, and vinegar froze on the floor. Those who occupied it, as they lay in beds, or those who sat at the table to read, were in a cold bath reaching up to their neck. But the hole was an indispensable necessity, for it was better to endure the discomfort even of such a draught than to impede ventilation. Other causes, too, disturbed the equilibrium of temperature. At night the stove was sometimes, from sanitary considerations, not lighted, and then all had to sleep in that cold bath. With the increase of cold and wind, our inconveniences often assumed somewhat ludicrous forms. Some passages from my journal will make this clear:—“When any come below the temperature falls. If the door be opened there rolls in a mass of white vapour; if any one opens a book which he has brought with him, it smokes as if it were on fire. A cloud surrounds those that enter, and if a drop of water falls on their clothes, it is at once converted into ice, even at the stove. Frequently the upper stratum of air in the mess-room becomes so heated, that the deck light has to be opened, and then it rises up, like smoke out of a chimney, to blend itself with the cold air without.”

6. The arrangements of the officers’ mess-room are simple and in harmony with its purpose. Here stands a large table, used for study and for meals; the smaller berths, where the officers sleep, are round the sides of the mess-room—just large enough to enable a man to breathe in. There, in a recess between two pillars, an untold resource, the library (of about 400 volumes, chiefly scientific); close beside it the chronometers; and lastly, the inevitable evils, the medical stores, ranged round the mast. By the side of scientific works stand Petermann’s Mittheilungen; and between Milton’s Paradise Lost and Shakespeare’s immortal works, a whole tribe of romances, which were read with never-tiring delight. Our instruments, too, frosted with ice, are here, and a chest containing our journals. Once a month a cask, filled with wine—the chemical wine—concocted of snow, alcohol, tannin, sugar, and glycerine, was placed there. Dr. Kepes was not only our physician, but our wine brewer. One thing more we have to mention, which, alas! incommoded us much too little—wine; that is, wine made in Austria, from grapes. As we have already mentioned, the want of room in the cabin prevented our laying in a large stock, and the supplies we had were frozen in a cellar below the mess-room, about the middle of December, for the temperature of even this place was about 16° F. or 14° F. Each, however, had a bottle of rum as an allowance for eighteen days. But quite inexhaustible was the supply of our common drink—melted snow—a great jar of which, filled to the brim, stood always on the table. Under the cabin were our supplies of alcohol and petroleum, accessible only by well-fitting pipes, but possible volcanoes as far as our safety was concerned. From the accumulation of so many combustible materials, together with 20,000 cartridges, and with several lamps constantly burning, it is clear that the danger of fire was great. But once only had we an alarm from this source—when Carlsen caused us much trepidation by accidentally discharging a rifle in the cartridge magazine.

7. Let us now turn to the persons who occupied this mess-room. Marola, the steward, lights the lamp, and kindles the fire, and awakens those who were not already awoke by the smoke from the stove, with the cry, “Signori, le sette e tre quarti, prego d’alzarsi;” and after a pause of a quarter of an hour, during which the sleepers seem carefully to deny their existence, he startles this silence of indifference by the second call: “Colazion’ in tavola.” Out of every berth now comes forth its occupant, each in picturesque costume; costumes teach us how superficial after all is civilization in man!

8. The day’s work begins. The watch, as ever, walks the deck, lest the ice should slip away from the world unobserved; in the mess-room meanwhile calculations or drawing or writing are in full operation. Our daily meals consist of a breakfast of cocoa, biscuit, and butter; of a dinner of soup, boiled beef, preserved vegetables, and cafÉ noir, and of tea in the evening, with hard biscuit, butter, cheese, and ham. I would recommend potage instead of tea for the evening meal to all future expeditions. Many of the articles of food must be thawed before the process of cooking begins, the greater part of the provisions being frozen as hard as iron. The tins with preserved meat stand for hours in boiling water, and the things for supper on the cabin stove, in order to be thawed. A plate of cheese that steams, butter as hard as a stone, which has thrown off the salt it contained in great lumps from the action of frost, a ham as hard as the never-thawed ground of the Tundra of Siberia, form an icy repast, specially if we use knives, which are so cold that they often break with the least exertion of force. I will here notice the sanitary importance—insisted on by Parry and Ross—of fresh bread, which the cook in an Arctic ship should be able to bake about twice a week. On board the Tegetthoff we used at first Liebig’s “baking-powder,” but this from being kept too long gave such a disagreeable taste to the bread, that we gave it up and contented ourselves with a defective leaven.

DIVINE SERVICE ON DECK.

9. Every Sunday at noon we celebrated Divine Service. Under the shelter of the deck-tent, the Gospel was read to the little band of Christians gathered together by the sound of the ship’s bell, in all that grave simplicity which marked the worship of the early Christian Church. The Service over, we then sat down to the Sunday dinner, which was graced by a glass of wine and cake. Carlsen and Lusina were our guests by turns. Carlsen always appeared in his wig, trimmed with extra care, and on the high festivals of the Church decorated also with the cross of the order of St. Olaf. Lusina, our excellent-boatswain, was ready to talk with enthusiasm on any subject whatever, prefacing his stream of words with some sententious remark or with some far-fetched introduction. During our meals the conversation turned on our plans for the future; we talked of Polar bears; we discussed the question of the existence of Gillis’ Land and the possibility of our reaching Siberia; but very seldom did we venture to speak of what filled the minds of all—our captivity in the ice. Political combinations formed a favourite theme; and as we had some old numbers of the Neue Frei Presse on board, they furnished an inexhaustible source of topics for conversation. The events of the year 1870 were related as the latest news, and we thought anxiously of the issue of the war between Germany and France, and feared lest Austria should be compelled to take part in it.

10. After dinner came the hour for contemplation; in our lonely berths and by the side of our beds we sat down to brood—to listen to our watches beating seconds. The English Arctic expeditions, during the long period of their enforced leisure, found a great source of amusement and distraction in theatricals. But the ships of these expeditions had far larger crews than the Tegetthoff, and the men could be more easily spared for these recreations. But there were other reasons why we could not think of following the example of the English. Our situation during the first winter was far too serious for such things, and no other place for the theatre was at our disposal except the barricaded deck; and we should have had to sit there with a thermometer marking from 25° to 37° of cold, on the centigrade scale, and see how the actors and the audience suddenly rubbed their frost-bitten feet with snow! There was one other potent reason for this renunciation—our performances must have been in four different languages.

11. Monotonous beyond all monotony is life in the long night of a Polar winter, and exile can never on earth be so entire as here under the dreadful triumvirate—darkness, cold, and solitude. In such a life, the man who surrenders himself to idleness, or even to sleeping during the day, must necessarily be utterly demoralized. In fact, nothing can be more destructive to an expedition wintering in the Arctic regions than the indulgence of mental or bodily lassitude. The real ground of the failure of the attempts made in earlier times to winter in Jan Mayen and other places in the far North was probably the utter want of discipline. There is, however, a widely spread, though mistaken view, that the long day of Polar lands is oppressive to man. Nothing is more untrue; for not continual light, but constant darkness, is distressing. Continual daylight heightens the energies and vital powers; and yet, in our own first winter, it was less the darkness which wore us than the perpetual anxiety; when our greatest consolation was found in the Arabic proverb, “In niz beguzared” (This too will pass away), inscribed on our cabin wall.

12. After supper, before going to bed, we smoked our cigars in the shed over the cabin steps, with a thermometer from 25° to 37° below zero C., and talked pleasantly over bygone days, though our thoughts were not unmixed with gloomy forebodings, as we heard ever and anon the ominous sounds that issued from the moving ice. Existence on board a straining and groaning ship resembles life over a volcano. It was only after we had been some time in this ice-covered wooden grotto that the temperature rose, through our own heat, a few degrees, and it was certainly some testimony to the excellence of my down-quilted clothes that I could wear them in the cabin without being distressed by the heat, and yet I was able to sit the whole evening in this freezing hole without suffering from cold. A train-oil lamp sends out almost more smoke than light, and when the snow drifted, we had to contend with the importunities of the dogs, who seemed to regard the deck shed as a great dog-kennel. With a sudden rise of the outer temperature this shed became utterly uninhabitable, for its coating of ice then melted and fell down like rain.

13. The effect of the long winter night is even greater on the body than on the mind, because of the insufficient opportunities for exercise. Middendorf contrasting the influence of climate on men remarks:—“I consider travels in cold regions, even in the most unfavourable conditions of climate, to be far less dangerous to life than travels under the tropics. The former certainly are unutterably more miserable, but as certainly less deadly. I say this notwithstanding the danger which threatens ships when they penetrate far within the realms of ice. We are never secure from sudden and deadly attacks of illness in tropical countries, but the longer we remain in them the less is the danger; whereas the high North deteriorates the constitution of the blood, and after three winters, very few can stand a fourth.” To the influences of Polar life detrimental to health must be added the constant hindrance to perspiration from wearing an extra quantity of woollen clothing—more or less hurtful as it is more or less waterproof—the want of fresh animal and vegetable food, and last, but not least, the periodic departure of light and warmth.

14. Our sanitary condition during the two winters we spent on board the Tegetthoff was not altogether satisfactory. Scorbutic affections of the mouth and diseases of the lungs appeared sometimes in distressing shapes, and scarcely a day passed in which we had not one or two on the sick-list. I believe, however, that our trying situation had far more to do with these evils than the southern blood and breeding of our people. The incessant watchfulness and care of Dr. Kepes left nothing undone which would counteract the evil influences to which we were exposed. The berths of the crew were changed in rotation, and those which were exposed to the greatest accumulation of ice were dried by warm air conveyed through movable pipes. Want of exercise, constant change of temperature, depression of mind, the periodic scarcity of fresh meat, were the causes of the scurvy. In our first winter it appeared only in the more crowded quarters of the crew. It was then also that the first symptoms of lung-disease appeared in Krisch, the engineer, which he probably contracted from “catching cold.” From that time he liked to sit by the stove and always complained of cold. Our supplies of preservatives against, and remedies for scurvy were rather limited, although we had at our disposal several hundred tins of preserved vegetables, a cask of cloud-berries (Rubus chamÆmorus), which we had brought from Tromsoe, and above a hundred bottles of lime-juice. Wine also is an important preservative; we therefore served out to the crew, notwithstanding our small supply, twice a week, not Kepes’ artificial, but real wine—at the rate of two bottles for eighteen men. No doubt scorbutic symptoms would have been far more general and severe, had we not been fortunate enough to shoot no less than sixty-seven Polar bears, a larger number than had fallen to any previous expedition. It was more a sign of our good intentions to leave nothing undone or untried in our efforts against this malady, than any actual service it was to us, that we sowed cress and cabbage—radishes did not succeed—in a bed which we suspended over the stove. It was interesting, however, to observe how the little plants of cress, with every change of position, always turned to the light of the lamp, growing to the height of three inches, and in spite of their brimstone colour retaining the true cress flavour.

15. The use of the bath tends greatly to promote health, for without it the skin of the body has no other stimulant; but the insecurity of our position rendered bathing sometimes a somewhat doubtful enjoyment. I remember many cases, when some of us, while bathing in the cold dark washing place in lukewarm water an inch deep, were alarmed by a sudden pressure of ice. Ultimately we gave up this practice, finding that it produced a troublesome amount of damp.

16. To a stranger, who should have visited us during this winter, nothing in the ship would have been so surprising and interesting as a visit to the quarters of the crew. Except for an hour, from five to six o’clock in the evening, when they were encouraged to take exercise in the open air, the rest of their time was spent in school, or in the duties of the watch, or in the work of the ship. Our supply of Slavonic books was unfortunately not very ample, and besides, not all the crew were able to read; the greater therefore was their tendency, like men of southern climes, to harmless noise, and I believe that some of our people, during the whole expedition, never ceased to speak. Here I beg to insert some passages from my journal:—“Passing by the steaming kitchen, we enter their messroom. Here in a narrow space we find the toilers of the sea and the mountains—eighteen in number. A little band of Dalmatians who for the first time encounter darkness and cold, the horrors of which are increased tenfold to men born and bred in the sunny South. Truly it could be no little thing to such men to be torn from sleep almost every night by the movement of the ice, to sit day after day in the long night of winter without any real intellectual occupation, and yet not to become demoralized, but remain calm and composed, and ever ready to obey and oblige. Can anything higher be said in their praise? Those men slept, each by himself, in a double row of berths; only Lusina the boatswain, and Carlsen the harpooner, who had circumnavigated Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, occupied a separate partition. The clatter of the tongues of so many vehement Southerners was like the sound made by the smaller wheels of a machine, while the naive simplicity of the grave Tyrolese came in between times, like the steady beat of a great cog-wheel. It was a miniature reproduction of the confusion of tongues of Babel. Lusina speaks Italian to the occupants of the officers’ cabin, English with Carlsen, French with Dr. Kepes, and Slavonic with the crew. Carlsen had adopted for the ‘Slavonians,’ as he called our people, a kind of speech compounded of Norwegian, English, German, Italian, and Slavonic. The crew, with the exception of the two Italians, speak Slavonic among themselves. The head of the little German colony is the cook, a Styrian; his heart is better than his culinary skill, for only too readily he leaves his work to be done by the stove. There is also among them a Moravian, Pospischill, the Vulcan of the ship; but we must return to the predominant race—the Slavonic. There is Lukinovich, a very Harpagon, always collecting, finding treasures in nails, empty bottles, lamp wicks, and searching even under the snow for articles wherewith to fill his sack—the sack which he was one day to leave behind him, much against the grain, when we abandoned the ship. There is Marola, the steward, and Fallesich, who had worked at the Suez Canal; these are our great singers. Then Palmich with his lance, the man whose zeal never bated, and whose very glance transfixed everything; Vecerina, the Job of the party, and the merry Titans, Sussich and Catarinich; Latkovich and Lettis, ‘the philosophers;’ Stiglich, the immovable confessor of passive obedience and the unlawfulness of resistance; Zaninovich, the ‘pearl;’ Haller the herdsman and Klotz the prophet. Five of these men had run away from their wives. Klotz the prophet was under all circumstances, not indeed the most useful, but the most interesting person of this little community. A lofty calm worthy of an Evangelist graced his outer man; of still greater stature than Andreas HÖfer, he wore, like him, a large black beard. As a hunter, a guide, a collector of stones, and a lonely enthusiast, he had moved about the mountains of his home, leading a life of visions. At home he was regarded as an incomparably bold mountaineer, and the ropes of the ship were to him so many convenient foot-paths. His reputation as a physician in his native land was great, and on board ship he failed not with his good offices. Haller, his fellow-countryman, shared with Klotz the office of armourer, and the duties of hunter and driver of the sledge-dogs; and when we began our sledge journeys, both of them were ready to relieve others in dragging. Both had served in the army, Klotz on the Tonale, Haller on the Stelvio, and in 1868 the latter had been my useful companion when I was engaged in the survey of the Ortler and Adamello Alps. ‘The philosophers’ of our party, Latkovich and Lettis, had drawn a fine distinction between the different layers of ice, according as they contained a greater or less amount of saline matter: Ghiaccio della prima and Ghiaccio della seconda qualitÀ.”

17. To obviate as far as possible the evils of too much leisure among the men, a school was instituted at the beginning of the January of the second year; Lieutenant Weyprecht, Brosch, and Orel undertook the Italians and Slavonians, and I the Tyrolese. To avoid all confusion I retired with my smaller body of pupils to the shed on deck. Here, with the thermometer at 25° to 37° below zero C., the seed of wisdom was sown in the hearts of these sons of nature; but alas! the climate was not favourable to its growth. After many painful disillusions, the Pole was ascertained to be the intersection of lines in a point, of which nothing was to be seen in reality. If in this little lecture-room an exercise had to be examined, and the scholars were obliged to hold in their breath, in order that the teacher, who spoke out of a cloud, might be able to see the slate; or when the pupils engaged in a division sum had suddenly to stop to rub their hands with snow, was it a matter of wonder if the school did not flourish exceedingly?

18. The food of the crew consisted principally of preserved meats, different kinds of pulse, and the products of the chase, amounting on an average to two bears a week. Bear-flesh, roasted, was liked by all; the seal was at first despised, till necessity corrected taste. Besides artificial wine, water was their strongest drink.

CHAPTER VII.
ICE-PRESSURES.

1. When compared with the tortures we endured from the thought that we were captives in the ice, little to us seemed the dangers which threatened our existence, though these assumed the appalling form of ice-pressures. Daily almost the ship had to sustain the attacks of our old enemy, and when the ice seemed to repose, threatening indications were not wanting to warn us how short that repose might be. My journal records a long series of commotions in the ice on almost every day of January 1873, and even during the pauses the timbers of the ship continually shook and trembled and creaked. The pressures accompanied by a low grumbling noise were very great on the 3rd, and lasted till the oldest ice was shattered, during which our hatchways were displaced. On the 4th the pressures continued without intermission during the whole day. But on the 22nd they exceeded all we had hitherto experienced. When we awoke in the morning, the crashing of the masses of ice was dreadful. In the messroom we heard a deep, grumbling, rumbling noise—the ship trembled like a steam-vessel under very high pressure. When we hastened on deck we were greeted by the long howls which issued from the ice, and we were soon convinced of the exceedingly formidable character of this special onset! Ten paces astern of the ship, the ice had been heaved up in a moment into mountains. With the greatest difficulty, amid the profound darkness that prevailed, the boats were got on board, and many stores re-shipped, though some of our coals had to be sacrificed. A tent formed of sails was engulfed, and our water-hole utterly displaced by the pressures; it was only after many attempts that we succeeded in finding a thinner ice-table, which we pierced till we found water. January 26, again tremendous pressures roused us from sleep. In half an hour every preparation was made to leave the ship, and I believe that many of us, while waiting the issue amid the fearful din heard from the deck, longed that the ship might be crushed, in order to escape from the torture of continually preparing to depart.

ICE-PRESSURE IN THE POLAR NIGHT.

2. I will not, however, fatigue the reader with the monotonous rehearsal of our ever-recurring daily dangers, but will here insert a few passages from my journal of that date, which will suffice to explain our position:—

“Scarcely asleep after the exhaustion and cares of the day, the timbers of the ship begin to moan and groan close by our ear, and we awake and lie listening to the onset of the ice. We hear the step of the watch on deck crackling on the ice as he paces to and fro; as long as it is measured and steady we know there is nothing to be feared. Again that uncanny creaking in the timbers, and the watch comes to announce to those below that the terrible movement in the ice has begun, and once more we all spring from our beds, put on our fur clothes, seize our ready-filled bags, and amid the darkness stand ready on deck, and listen to the war between the ice and the elements. In autumn, when the ice-fields were not nearly so large as in the winter, their collision was accompanied by a deep dull sound; but now, rendered hard and brittle by the extreme cold, a sound as of a howl of rage[19] was emitted as they crashed together. Ever nearer come the rushing, rattling sounds, as if a thousand heavy waggons were driving over a plain. Close under us the ice begins to tremble, to moan and wail in every key;—as the fury of the conflict increases, the grumbling becomes deeper and deeper, concentric fissures open themselves round the ship, and the shattered portions of the floes are rolled up into heaps. The intermitting howls become fearfully rapid, announcing the acme of the conflict, and anxiously we listen to the sound which we know too well. Then follows a crash and crack, and many dark lines wander over the ice: these are for a moment narrow fissures, the next moment they yawn asunder like abysses. Often with such a crash the force of the pressure seems broken; the piles of ice collapse, like the undermined walls of a fortress, and calm is again restored. But to-day this was but the commencement, and with renewed violence a second assault of the ice begins,—then a third, yea a fourth. Tables of ice broken off from the floes around us rise perpendicularly from the sea; some are bent under the enormous pressure, and their curved shapes attest the elasticity of ice. Like a giant in the conflict, a veteran floe, many winters old, crushes in its rotations its feeble neighbours, and in turn succumbs to the mighty iceberg—the leviathan of all ice-forms, which forces its way through a phalanx of opposing masses, crushing them to pieces as it advances. And in this wild and fearful tumult a ship—squeezed, pressed, all but crushed, by the ice; her crew on deck, ready to leave her at a moment’s notice. Boats and sledges, tents, provisions, arms and ammunition, everything prepared, if the ship should at last be destroyed—but for what?—for an escape? No one really thought this possible, though all were ready for the attempt. But again the conflict ceases, and once more we breathe freely, and can contemplate the wonderful change that has come on everything round us. A few minutes have sufficed to create a maze of mountain chains from a plain of ice. The flat surfaces covered with snow, which we saw yesterday, are gone. Ice ruins are visible on every side. Abysses gape between the shattered masses, and show the dark sea beneath. Gradually a calm has crept over all; equilibrium is reinstated in the desolate realm of ice; new ‘leads’ and ‘ice-holes’ have been opened up, but for the Tegetthoff no liberation.”

CHAPTER VIII.
THE WANE OF THE LONG POLAR NIGHT.

1. Although the sun was mounting higher, there was no essential change in the gloom and darkness which surrounded us. In fact we were drifting during the whole of January towards the north, and were wintering nearer the Pole than any who had ever preceded us.[20] On gloomy days, noon was not distinguishable. We were now four hundred miles within the Frozen Ocean, and had been for five months the sport and play of winds and currents, and nothing indicated any change in our situation. Yet, in spite of our desperate position, the first, ever so faint, indications of the return of light filled us with joy. With a clear atmosphere, January 10, we observed for the first time at noon a decided brightness, and on the 19th a brilliant carmine was seen in the sky, an hour before noon on the southern horizon. After a long obscuration from cloudy weather, the morning twilight increased gradually, and by the end of the month it was discernible in the forenoon. As the light increased, the signs of the convulsions were more distinctly seen. Round us there rose piles of craggy ice, which, hurled up, as from a crater, by the ice-pressure of the 22nd, kept us in a state of constant fear, lest the ice-walls would break up and fall in upon us. At a little distance off, nothing was to be seen of the ship but the tops of its masts: the rest of it was hidden behind a lofty wall of ice. The ship itself, raised seven feet above the level of the sea, rested on a protuberance of ice, and, removed from its natural element, looked a truly miserable object. This ice protuberance had been formed from a floe which had been often rent asunder and frozen again, and had been rounded in a singular manner from the under-driving of the ice and the lateral pressure in its recent movements. In other respects, also, our environment had been completely changed. Before the movement in the ice on the 22nd, a narrow strip of level ice wound like a river through a maze of hummocks, and throughout the winter this had been diligently used for exercising the dogs. Of this nothing was now to be seen: walls of ice rose, where a fortnight before our coal-house had stood: fissures gaped on every side. In every respect the weather during this month was capricious and unaccountable. In the first two weeks, the temperature fell several times below -35° F., and on January 8, 13 and 14, quicksilver, exposed to the cold, froze to a solid mass; gin also froze, and alcohol only maintained its fluid state. Yet, notwithstanding this low temperature, the snow was always soft; and it continued to be so, amid all the variations of temperature and the high winds of this month. January 22 and 23, the temperature rose for a short time to 26° F.; everything in the ship then began to thaw, and a disagreeable moisture penetrated both our clothes and our quarters. The mean temperature of this month, in consequence of these abnormal variations, did not exceed -8° F., and was therefore about ten degrees higher than might have been expected.

2. The bears had in these last weeks kept at a regrettable distance from us. On the 12th, however, a very large fellow ventured to come within ten paces of the rope-ladder on the starboard side. We fired at him with explosive balls and he fell; but his strength was so great, that even after these terrible wounds he was able to get up and run. Explosive bullets, however, are to be recommended for encounters with bears, though their flight is rather uncertain. A bear-hunt, on the 29th and 30th, had a somewhat tragical result. About ten o’clock at night, when it was quite dark, a bear approached the ship, and with the agility of a tiger fell on Sumbu, who got away very cleverly, and by his loud barking summoned Krisch, who was then on watch, to his aid. When he was not more than ten feet from the deck Krisch fired at him and wounded him. The noise brought some of us at once, and though it was exceedingly dark and the snow very deep, a useless chase, in which I joined, forthwith began. The pursuit through the midst of driving snow became weaker; until at last I found myself alone with Palmich. We could see nothing; and heard only an occasional howl of pain. We hastened our steps through the whirling snow, till we saw, by the dim light of our lantern, Matoschkin lying howling on the ground, and the bear a few steps from him, vigorously assailed by Sumbu, who seized him by the foot whenever he began to retreat. As Matoschkin incautiously approached too near, the bear turned, seized him, and carried him off. To fire with effect was impossible; we were too far off to take aim with our rifles. The bear continued to drag the dog along, and at last a puff of wind put out our lantern, and we soon discovered our inability to keep up with our enemy. Bitterly as we lamented the fate of the poor dog, whose howls were brought to our ears by the wind, we had nothing for it but to return to the ship. About noon next day when it was sufficiently clear, Brosch, the two Tyrolese, and I set out to ascertain the fate of the dog. The snow was drifting heavily, and we constantly sank into it as we advanced. After a toilsome walk we came on traces of blood, which Sumbu followed up, while Gillis timidly stuck to us. At last, after we had gone on for the third of a mile, Sumbu came back in a great state of excitement, and then ran on before us till he stopped at an ice-hummock, where he renewed his angry barks. We advanced with quickened steps and with our rifles cocked, and when we were about twenty paces from it the bear came out from behind, apparently in great astonishment. After several shots the bear fell, but again gathering himself up he dragged himself along like a walrus, in spite of his broken spine, with extraordinary activity towards an “ice-hole” covered with young ice. Two other shots with explosive bullets terminated his career, and Matoschkin, whose body we afterwards found behind the ice-hillock, was avenged.

FRUITLESS ATTEMPT TO RESCUE MATOSCHKIN.

3. The cold set in with great intensity with the month of February and maintained itself throughout it: the mean monthly temperature being -31° F. Repeatedly the quicksilver froze, and in the last eight days it remained solid. Even the petroleum was frozen on the 17th at -49° F. in the globe of the lamp, though it was throwing out a considerable heat. The lowest temperature we experienced was on the last day of the month, -51° F. Notwithstanding the extreme cold, the light had increased so much that a thermometer, in which the degrees were strongly marked, could be read off, even on the 3rd of the month, at ten o’clock in the forenoon without the aid of lamplight; and on the 20th we were able to carry on our meteorological observations, without any artificial light at six o’clock in the evening. The ruddiness we observed at noon in the south grew more and more decided. On clear days we could discern, about seven o’clock in the morning, a faint twilight, and at noon of February 14 the near approach of the sun was distinctly to be traced by a bright cloud that was resting over it, though it was still below the horizon. About the middle of the month there was light enough to cause the different forms and groups of ice to cast shadows. In spite of the low temperature, we remained for hours in the open air, though previously to this period we had ventured on deck for a few minutes only at a time—the watch of course excepted. But as the daylight increased, we saw also what a dark, gloomy grave had been our abode for so long a period. All our thoughts and conversations were concentrated on the returning light of the sun. The movements of the ice ceased to be a source of dread, though for several days during the month they had been exceedingly formidable. In the course of our drifting we had penetrated into a region where never ship had been before. The following table exhibits the course of the Tegetthoff, as she drifted from August 21, 1872, to February 27, 1873:—

Time.			N. Lat. °'	E. Lon. °'
Aug.	21	1872,	76·22	62·3
day when the ship was beset
Sept.	1	1872	76·25	62·50
”	4	”	76·23	62·49
”	11	”	76·35	60·18
”	14	”	76·37	60·50
”	21	”	76·28	63·9
”	26	”	76·36	64·8
”	27	”	76·38	64·4
”	28	”	76·37	64·10
Oct.	1	”	76·50	65·22
”	2	”	76·59	65·48
”	3	”	77·4	66·1
”	17	”	77·50	69·22
”	18	”	77·48	69·8
”	22	”	77·46	69·26
”	31	”	77·53	69·12
Nov.	5	”	77·53	69·30
”	9	”	78·15	69·42
”	14	”	78·8	71·16
”	18	”	78·10	70·31
”	28	”	78·13	69·48
Dec.	4	”	78·19	69·1
”	8	”	78·21	69·2
”	12	”	78·25	68·57
”	16	”	78·22	67·42
”	19	”	78·13	67·11
”	26	”	78·10	68·19
Jan.	2	1873	78·37	66·56
”	19	”	78·43	69·32
”	26	”	78·50	71·47
Feb.	2	”	78·45	73·7
”	14	”	78·12	72·20
”	19	”	78·15	71·38
”	23	”	79·11
”	27	”	79·12

4. The inspection of this table shows that the movement of the ship was retarded as the increasing cold closed the open places of the sea, and when we fell under the influence of the Siberian ice-drift from east to west. It may be remarked, too, that we drifted generally straight before the wind, and that we and our floe during the first four months turned only one degree in azimuth. By the end of January all the open places of the sea were closed; and the masses of ice were thus driven one over the other from their mutual pressure, and pile thus rose upon pile. It seems probable, also, that wind was the main cause of our drifting, while sea currents were only of secondary moment. From the beginning of the month of February we drifted constantly toward the north-west, and from this deviation in our course we indulged in the hope that we were approaching the mysterious Gillis’ Land. But at this time the liberation of the ship in the summer was the sum of our expectations and desires. In fact, there was not one of us who doubted this eventuality. Fully convinced, as we were, that our floes, firmly attached to each other, would ultimately break up and drift southwards, we determined to make them the bearers of the record of what had befallen us. Hence we threw out, February 14th, round the ship a number of bottles, inclosing a narrative of the main events of the expedition from the departure of Count Wilczek up to that date.

CHAPTER IX.
THE RETURN OF LIGHT.—THE SPRING OF 1873.

1. Though the sun did not return to our latitude (78° 15', 71° 38' E. long.) till the 19th of February, we were able to greet his beams three days previous to that date, owing to the strong refraction of 1° 40', which accompanied a temperature of -35 (F.). To the Polar navigator the return of the sun is an event of indescribable joy and magnificence. In those dreadful wastes he feels the force of the superstitions of past ages, and becomes almost a worshipper of the eternal luminary. As of old the worshippers of Belus watched its approach on the luxuriant shores of the Euphrates, we, too, standing on mountains of ice or perched on the masts of the ship, waited to hail the advent of the source of light. At last it came! A wave of light rolled through the vast expanse of heaven, and then—up rose the sun-god, surrounded with purple clouds, and poured his beams over the world of ice. No one spoke for a time. Who indeed could have found words to embody the feelings of relief which beamed on the faces of all, and which found a kind of expression in the scarcely audible exclamation of one of the simplest and least cultured of the crew, “Benedetto giorno!” The sun had risen with but half his disk, as if reluctant to shine on a world unworthy of his beams. A rosy hue suffused the whole scene, and the cold Memnon pillars of ice gave forth mysterious whispers in the flood of heat and light. Now indeed with the sun had a new year begun—what was it to bring forth for us and our prospects? But alas, his stay was short—he remained above the horizon for a few minutes only; again his light was quenched, and a hazy violet colour lay over distant objects, and the twinkling stars shone in the heavens.

SUN-RISE (1873).

2. While we watched the sun’s return, we had also an opportunity of looking on each other. How shocked and surprised were we with the change which had been wrought on us in the long Polar night! Our sunken cheeks were overspread with pallor; we had all the signs of convalescence after a long illness—the sharp-pointed nose, the sunken eye. The eyes of all had suffered from the light of lamps which had burnt for months; those especially who had used them for hard work. But all these consequences were of short duration under the beneficent influence of the daylight and the spring sun, which soon brought colour into our faces. Cheerfulness gradually returned to all on board the Tegetthoff, as we revelled in the warm beams of the sun. We built a house without a roof, and open to the south, and thither the healthy and the sick on calm fine days used to repair from the dreary ship, and sun themselves like lizards. But within the ship it was still night.

3. The visits of bears again became numerous. February 17th one of about five feet long was shot very close to the ship, and two days afterwards a second came near us, but was scared away by the awkwardness of the hunters. The dogs however pursued him, and we were compelled from fears for their safety to follow up the chase. The temperature of -33° F., and a pretty strong wind against which we had to run in the pursuit, brought on in some of our party palpitation of the heart and spitting of blood, and our return to the ship was a matter of some difficulty. On the morning of the 20th another bear came close to the ship, was fired at, but missed, and got away. Palmich, Haller, and Klotz immediately gave chase, though the temperature was -40° F., and the wind high. After a short time Palmich returned with his face frost-bitten, and the Tyrolese after several hours, without any success, but with their feet so frost-bitten that they had lost all feeling in them. The second stage of the malady had begun, which renders amputation almost a necessity. For several hours their feet had to be rubbed with snow till sensation returned, and with returning sensation much suffering; large swellings as big as a man’s fist rose on their feet, which were reduced only after the application of ice for several days. Again, in the grey of the morning of February 22nd a bear came within eighty paces of the ship, which Sussich, the watch on deck, after several shots, which the animal seemed not in the least to regard, at last hit and killed. By a wound on his right forepaw we recognised our friend whom we had hotly chased a few days before. He was six feet in length, and in his stomach there was nothing but a small piece of the skin of a seal. Sussich was overjoyed with his success, and for the whole day tried to drag everyone outside the ship to show the result of his prowess, “Se mi non era, il copava tutti,” he added, with a look of contempt on those who had not been so successful as himself.

THE CARNIVAL ON THE ICE.

4. Although at the end of February the sun rose with a carmine light which imparted an indescribable charm to the fields of snow and ice, we were doomed to disappointment in our expectation of bright and clear weather in the after-part of the day. Soon after sun-rise, white frosty mists gathered over the ice-fields, making the sun as he shone through them a mere ball of light, or completely concealing him. On February 24th we enjoyed the peculiar spectacle of seeing the sun appear, the temperature being -44° F., distorted by refraction, through the thick mists on the horizon, as if he were quite flat, beamless, and of a coppery red. The end of February reminded us of the carnival time of the land of the South, and the crew appeared in such masques as they could command; but their masquerading formed a sad and mocking contrast with the gravity of our position. The men bestowed all their art on “Sumbu,” who was dressed up as the demon “Lindwurm,” and deported himself in a manner highly becoming his costume.

5. With the month of March the spring had, in name at least, begun; but in our sense of the word no spring as yet appeared. Instead of the joyous gleams of early vegetation, a blinding white waste environed us; instead of the perfumed breath of flowers and the soft air of spring, there rose driving clouds of ice-needles; and parhelia of almost daily occurrence shone in a heavy sleepy fashion through white frosty mists. The atmosphere was filled with snow; to be convinced of this we had only to look at the sun when the weather seemed clear and bright. This continual fall of snow as fine as dust was the cause of the retardation of the evaporation of the ice. The influence of the sun was so great, that on March 3 the black-bulb thermometer indicated the unusual temperature of 45° F., and a layer of snow on the bows of the vessel showed evident signs of diminution. The thermometer, in the sun, rose eight degrees March 6, and nine degrees two days after. The weather was calm and clear, and the increasing influence of the sun was a most joyful sensation. A cube of ice freely suspended showed during the second half of March a daily diminution of 1/100 of its weight from evaporation; while in the sea itself its behaviour was the very opposite; the cube of ice, which was submerged to a depth of ten feet from February 19th to March 5th, showed at the latter date an increase of its mass, amounting to ¾ of an inch round its surface. In the beginning and end of March the cold was so severe, that the thermometer every day for three weeks marked -35° F. Calms and clear weather, however, characterized this period of the spring, and snow-drifting and a clouded sky were rare. On the 13th of March the full moon again appeared in the azure twilight of the western heavens, and its soft light fringed with silver the dark ranges of ice. The days became longer, and the shadows cast by the masses of ice were shorter and more marked, and every one who remained long in the open air was forced to use snow-spectacles. Small avalanches began to fall from the rigging, and the masts, spars, and ropes lost their white frosted aspect. On the 22nd the fore-part of the ship’s hull facing the south was completely free from snow and its dark colour was visible. On the 29th the temperature in the sun exceeded the temperature at 9.30 A.M. by 34° F.; and on the 30th we could for the first time observe the melting of the snow on the seams of the timber of the ship’s hull. The enumeration of these events, insignificant as they may appear, will serve to show with what attention the Polar navigator notes the minutest occurrence due to the influence of the sun.

6. Welcome, though illusive, harbingers of the returning summer were the first birds, whose arrival we greeted on the 19th. These were little divers, which flew over the ship to the open spaces of water amid the ice, there to seek their food in the countless crustaceÆ which abound in them. Magnificent auroras continued to illuminate our nights; and although the duration of their intensity was much too brief to serve as a source of light, there was a charm in these phenomena which their daily recurrence could not weaken.

7. While under these various influences the health of all on board the Tegetthoff greatly improved, we were threatened with the serious calamity of losing our excellent physician, Dr. Kepes, who fell ill on the 13th of the month. For two weeks we were kept in a state of anxious fear for him; and our anxieties were increased as we had to treat his malady without the necessary knowledge and experience. To our great joy, however, he was spared to us; and our supply of fresh bear’s-flesh was henceforth reserved for him.

8. For some time the bears had observed a very distressing reserve and shyness in their visits, On the 15th one came near us, and as Pekel had for some time announced his approach, he found a long front of rifles drawn up behind some masses of ice to give him a warm reception. He, as usual, came on under the wind, showing considerable interest in our edifices. He then ascended a small ice-crag, and, after balancing himself carefully, sat down on the top of it, with his snout uplifted, snuffing all round. This seemed so ludicrous to some of our party that they burst out into a laugh so loud, that the bear came down from his pinnacle in evident astonishment, and with much circumspection drew nearer and nearer till at a short distance from us he fell mortally wounded. He was, alas! a very small animal, about 5½ feet long, and his stomach was absolutely empty. On the 30th of March another came close to the ship; the watch on shore fired at, but missed him, whereupon both the watch and the bear took to flight.

THE “TEGETTHOFF” DRIFTING IN PACK-ICE.—MARCH 1873.

9. April at last arrived, and with it the time of icicles, which hung down from every yard of the ship, and from every rope of the rigging, from every icy ridge and crag. The melting and decaying of the ice, though always a source of satisfaction when the question of its breaking up is discussed, went on, to our impatient desires, with intolerable slowness. What was it to us that we were able to read even at midnight on the 2nd of April; that the number of divers and sea-gulls constantly increased; that on the 6th the difference of temperature between sun and shade was 18°; that the black-bulb thermometer on the 20th showed 43° F.; that the sun on the 11th rose about two o’clock in the morning, and from the 16th remained constantly in the heavens? What did all this matter? The constant light notwithstanding, we were still environed with the signs of deepest winter, and the forms and masses of ice collapsed with a slow deliberation that tortured us. We were no longer to be satisfied and amused with the spectacle of parhelia, even though the phenomenon should appear, as it did on the 1st of April, with eight suns. Months of weary waiting still lay before us; daily we had to arm ourselves with patience, as, when we came on deck, we discovered the apparently unchangeable character of our environment, with all its forms, which had become familiar to us down to the smallest details. Reluctantly condemned to almost total idleness, we filled up our time with such occupations as fancy suggested. Some of our people built a tower of ice on a level part of our floe; others tried their rifles—tried often enough before—at empty bottles as targets. Along with the Tyrolese I constructed a road through hills of ice, over passes and ridges, going up and down in serpentine paths, making a circuit of about three miles round the ship. The labour of weeks with picks and shovels was expended in making and preserving it; after each downfall of snow this road had to be dug out afresh. Our passing and repassing along it through a maze of ice not only beneficially exercised our bodies, but furnished opportunities for training our dogs to drag heavy-laden sledges. I continued also to fill my portfolio with studies of scenery in the ice, and I accustomed myself, whenever there was no wind, whatever might be the temperature, to draw for hours together with no other protection to my hands than light gloves.

10. April had begun with a temperature of -38° F.; as the month advanced it steadily increased. At the end of the month the extreme of cold was but -20° F. But the weather had now lost the clearness of the early spring; and constant calms, together with the frequent falls of snow, undid the work of the few hours of the day on which the sun shone. The ice was covered with deep snow; on the level we sank ankle deep, while among the hummocks it was up to our knees. Sledging would have been impracticable. Among the changes produced by the softening of the weather, none was greater or more agreeable than the return of daylight to the cabin, when we took off the covering of the skylight and removed the tent-roof from the fore-part of the ship. Once more to be able to read without the dull glimmer of artificial light was an extraordinary event in our monotonous life. For five months our lamps had been burning in our mess-room, so that the walls were black with smoke, and it was a work of no small labour to make them clean and pleasant. The unloading of the ship’s hold was, however, a far heavier, though necessary task; the thick crusts of ice which had accumulated on its sides must be removed, lest the provisions should be damaged by their thawing; and there was no time to lose, for the temperature in the hold was only 1° below zero. The provisions, which had been left out on the ice, were again stowed in the ship, the cessation of the ice-pressures rendering this precautionary measure useless.

11. Round a ship which has wintered in the ice there is gradually accumulated a mass of rubbish of all kinds, of which cinders form a considerable constituent. These, when thrown out in small quantities, sink at once into the snow, while larger quantities act as a non-conducting layer. Hence we were surrounded by a maze of holes, big and little, alternating with plateaus, under which winter still continued to linger. When thaw-water made its appearance, all this was transformed into a succession of lakes and islands, which we bridged over by planks.

12. Meantime we began our labours of digging out the ship. We removed the wall of snow, which had served as an outer garment and protection during the winter, and the hard-trodden layer which covered the deck a foot thick. In clearing away from the after-part of the ship, we discovered that the machinery protecting the screw had been torn away by the ice-pressures. The mischief done, however, was not considerable; and as the ship made no water, we consoled ourselves with the thought, that she had sustained no material injury, though she had lain so long out of water perched on the floe.

13. The continued cessation of movements in the ice induced Weyprecht to erect a tent at no great distance from the ship, to carry on in it observations of the magnetic constants, which were taken on certain appointed days. On the night of one of such days, Orel, who conducted these observations, was surprised by the visit of a bear. His shouts for help brought us on deck, but before we could actually reach him, the seaman on the watch had killed the bear with an explosive bullet. Hitherto these animals had shown little courage in the neighbourhood of the ship, and to shoot them from the deck exposed no one to any danger; but this incident showed us that we could not count securely on their actions. Soon after this we had another surprise. Stiglich, the seaman on watch on shore, suddenly found himself confronted with a bear about eight paces off. Throwing his cap to the bear, he made a rush for the rope-ladders of the ship, but fell in his hurry and confusion. Carlsen, hearing his cries for help, hastened to the rescue, and dexterously shot the pursuer. A glorious event for Carlsen! who used to tell us strange stories of his encounters with bears: how he had scared them away with the glance of his eye; and how once in Novaya Zemlya he had frightened away a whole pack of them by the magic of his glance. All doubts in the prowess of his eye were silenced to-day by the more unquestionable prowess of his rifle. On the 28th of May a bear clambering over the wall of ice close astern of the ship was shot dead with an explosive bullet. His stomach was empty, but notwithstanding his leanness, he furnished more meat than many others, for he was fully seven feet long.

14. At the end of April the force of the winds so loosened the compactness of the ice, that dark strips hanging above the horizon in all directions announced the existence of numerous fissures, although they were invisible even from the masts of the ship. We counted on these signs with such unshaken confidence, that when on the 2nd of May we heard in the distance the now familiar sound of the ice-pressures, we heard them not only without dismay, but as the voice of a joyous message. Three-quarters of a year had passed away since we were first caught in the ice—a time laden to us with bitter disappointments to our hopes, and great dangers to our lives. The hour of our long and ardently desired liberation seemed at hand. If once we got free, it lay within the bounds of possibility that we might reach, if not the somewhat mythical Gillis’ Land, then at least the uninhabited Arctic coasts of Siberia. Siberia had, in fact, become the rosiest of our hopes. Some, indeed, still indulged in extravagant expectations and counted on the discovery of new lands, even while they drifted with the ice. But our wishes for the most part had become so subdued, that the discovery of the smallest cliff would have satisfied our ambition as discoverers.

15. But Nature’s laws held their own course, undisturbed by our desires. Snow continued to fall in abundance, and spread its mantle over the ice. The constant round of downfalls and evaporation was a sad bar to our hopes. In the beginning of May the snow began to thaw on the surface, and became soft and sticky. Even in the depth of winter it was never hard, but like the fine dry grains of driving sand. This change in the snow, which occurs a fortnight earlier than in Greenland, compelled us to substitute our black leather boots for those of sailcloth, which we had hitherto worn. On the 2nd of May the temperature fell to -8° F., but it now began to rise gradually, so that it sometimes reached the freezing point about the end of the month, and on the 29th rose five degrees above it. The mean temperature of the month, however, was not above 16° F. But the difference of temperature in the sun and the shade became greater and greater. The thermometer marked -18° F. at 6 P.M. of the 1st of May, and on the 11th the black-bulb thermometer showed 90° F. at 3 P.M., while the common instrument gave only 14° F. In the middle of the month, after the heavy winds fell, we were enveloped with dark fog banks; stray beams of the sun broke through the warm misty atmosphere, and dark skies were succeeded by masses of white vapour illuminated by the sun. Just as in our happier clime, the Arctic April has her alternations of cloud and sunshine.

16. Hitherto the only birds which had visited us were divers and gulls. Once only a snow-bunting flew among us, and fearlessly settled on the ship. On the 24th of May the auks made their appearance, and from that date we were constantly entertained by the whirring sounds of their flight. As they keep one direction in their flight, we could shoot those only which passed over the ship; they were a useful addition to our table, though they had to be steeped in vinegar to make them palatable. The majestic Burgomaster Gull appeared somewhat later, and later still the “Ice-birds” frequented the shores of the lakes around us, and hovered round the remains of the bears we had shot. These birds settled with the greatest boldness in the immediate neighbourhood of the ship, and day and night filled the air with their wild shrill cries.

17. By the middle of March, Krisch, the engineer, had put the steam machinery in working order, but another month elapsed before the screw-propeller, which had been frozen fast, was set free; our fears lest it should refuse to act proved to be groundless. As, however, there was no prospect of our being able to use steam for some time, it was thought advisable to dig out and raise the rudder in order to secure it.

18. On the 26th of May a partial eclipse of the sun was visible in our latitude; but from an error in our calculations we had ante-dated the commencement of the observation by about two hours and a half. Everyone on board who had an instrument at his command stood ready to observe the passage of the moon over the sun’s disk. After waiting for some time in vain, we discovered the error we had committed as to the time of the beginning of the eclipse, but in order that the dignity of astronomical observation might not be degraded in the eye of the crew, we still held our ground with the telescopes in our hands. Two hours of such suspense enabled us to feel that there could be no more perfect fulfilment of the punishment of Sisyphus than being condemned to wait for an eclipse of the sun which would not come off! At last the eclipse took place, but not until great disgust had been excited in the minds of men who were too much inclined to regard the whole thing as a piece of humbug. At the height of the eclipse about one-third only of the sun’s disk was obscured, and the sun was so covered with mist that we could look at it without the use of coloured glasses. The whole duration of the eclipse was one hour and fifty-six minutes.

19. From the 1st of the month the number of living creatures belonging to the expedition had been increased by the birth of four Newfoundland puppies, who passed the earliest days of their youth in a tent erected on the ice, and artificially heated to the temperature of a European May. But all our care in rearing this litter was frustrated by one of these little Polar wretches, who, after sucking his mother till he was as round as a drum, lay on his brothers as they slept, and stifled them. This little criminal received the name of Torossy, and soon became the pet of the crew, and a favourite with all the other dogs. The fame which he afterwards gained made him an important member of the expedition. All the dogs had become so hardy during the past winter, that they now slept outside their kennels, finding the inside too warm for them.

CHAPTER X.
THE SUMMER OF 1873.

1. The time crept away with indescribable monotony. The crew performed their heavy labours, but of events there were none. The only change in our position was the constant decay of the buttresses and walls of ice, until the frozen sea lay like a snowy chaos before us. Pure sharp-edged ice was nowhere to be seen; the edges were no longer transparent; evaporation had transformed the surface into a kind of glacier-snow. June 1, we had the greatest degree of cold of the month, the thermometer marking 13° F.; but on the last day it rose to 32·2° F.; the mean temperature being 31·1° F. Every week brought us promises of summer. On the 1st the black-bulb thermometer reached 98° F.; on the 14th rain fell for the first time; on the 16th the temperature at 9 o’clock A.M., was 41·5° F., on the 26th 46·4° F., and on the 29th even 50·2° F. On these days the air seemed to have the pleasant mildness of southern climes, and when there was no wind we felt an oppressive sultriness. Wreaths of mist moved along the icy wastes which glowed with sunlight, while the long dark lines of ice-wall lay in deep shadow. The air was filled with flocks of birds; day and night we heard the shrill cries of the Robber-gulls, ever and anon mingled with the barking of the dogs in full pursuit of them. Flocks of rotges congregated without fear in the narrow basins of distant “leads;” and the “great gulls,” shunning companionship, sat for hours on the top of an ice-cliff, or in the middle of a floe.

2. No one who has not actually seen it, can imagine the blaze of light in the Arctic regions on clear days, or the glow which floats sometimes over the cold white ice-floes, with their outlines in constant vibration, while refraction transforms the icebergs into a variety of shapes. The sun’s power is sometimes so great as to blister the skin in a few hours, and the glare from snow and ice produces snow-blindness, if the eyes be not carefully protected. At a little distance the sea appears to be of a deep black colour, though it still preserves its ultramarine hues in the narrow “leads;” even the pure blue of the heavens may be called almost black when compared with the dazzling sheen of the ice. In the middle of June there was an incessant dripping and oozing in the ice-world, and streams of thaw-water flowed into the open fissures. By the end of the month the surface of the ice resembled snow; and even at some depth it was viscous, instead of brittle and hard as glass, as it is during the colder season. Streams of thaw-water ran through the softened and saturated snow. Small lakes were formed on the levels, and swamps of snow, wearing a traitorous exterior, surrounded their borders. In the summer of 1873 we observed a vertical decrease of five or six feet in the thickness of the ice; but this diminution in thickness was from the surface downwards, while in the sea itself there was little or no thawing, because the temperature of its surface was still below zero. The moisture, from which there was no escape, became exceedingly troublesome. In spite of our stout leather boots we had never the comfort of dry feet during the whole of the summer, and this we felt the more, as our labours to free the ship, which we had commenced at the beginning of May, necessitated our being constantly amid the snow and ice.

3. At the end of May the ship began slowly to settle, and the water rose between the ice and the hull on the fore-part of the ship. But we soon discovered that these small changes would not suffice to free us from our prison-house, but that we must ourselves endeavour to loosen the fetters which held us fast, if it were only to banish gloomy thoughts of the future by action of some kind or other. Hence constant digging, sawing, and blasting on our floe, through May, June, July, and August—labours in which the whole crew of the ship, with the exception of the sick and of the cook, took part; labours, alas! which admonished us of the impotence of man when he contends against the power of Nature. Only on the port side of the ship were our efforts to dig through the floe at all successful; on the starboard side the floe had been so enormously increased by the tables of ice forced upon one another, that we had not pierced through the ice after sinking a shaft eighteen feet deep; and at last the water, forcing itself through the pores of the ice, compelled us to desist from the labour of sinking deeper. The process of sawing was possible only where we had broken through the ice—that is, on the port side; yet even there the great thickness of the floe necessitated the construction of longer instruments, for which the iron casing of the engine-room had to furnish the material. The difficulty of sawing increases with the thickness of the ice in an almost incredible manner. It is easy enough to cut through a floe, four or five feet thick, but to break up one, eight or ten feet thick, is a matter of great difficulty. Our saws too, even when they were lengthened, permitted a play of only a foot; and their twisting, as they cut deep, proved a great hindrance. Besides, when we had cut to the depth of a fathom, the saws were always frozen fast, and when we attempted to free them by blasting they were very often broken in pieces. But even the sections, made with so much difficulty, often proved to be quite useless, as they were frozen together again by broken ice left in the cut. Blasting with gunpowder proved as ineffectual as in the previous year; in fact, the process was only applicable to ice-blocks which had been loosened by sawing, and which could not be broken up by the crow-bar alone.

4. By the middle of June we were at last convinced that the thickness of the ice rendered it impossible to join together, by sawing, the two-and-twenty holes which we had dug out round the ship. Henceforward our labours were confined to the formation of a basin at the fore-part of the ship. Although we saw the impossibility of liberating the vessel, as long as she rested on a mountain of ice, we hoped that the basin would help to break up the floe, and that the Tegetthoff would of itself return to its normal position. The gliding down of the ship, raised as it was, to its natural water-line might indeed easily end in a catastrophe, but we braved this peril when we thought of the vain attempts we had made to free her. Though the ship sunk so much in the course of the summer, that its height above the water-line was a little more than two feet in the fore-part of the ship, and three feet in the after-part, this circumstance in our favour was outweighed by the disadvantage of the rapid melting away of the ice at its sides. The ship, freed from its covering of ice, stood so high above it, that in order to guard against the danger of its overturning we were obliged, in the second half of the summer, to shore it up by strong timbers fastened to its masts. It looked no longer like a ship, but like a building ready to fall in! In the middle of July Lieutenant Weyprecht ordered Krisch, the engineer, to construct heavy chisels and borers to ascertain the thickness of the ice. After long and hard labour, we found that after boring through several ice-tables, to a depth of twenty-seven feet, we still struck on ice! Every attempt, therefore, to break through this accumulation had to be given up, and we contented ourselves with leading the basin we had formed on the fore-part round the larboard side of the ship. On the 27th of the month, twenty tons of coal were removed to the ice, in order to lighten the ship as much as possible, and every day we had to look to the props which steadied the ship, as the melting of the ice rendered them unsafe. In the following weeks, the bows continued to sink into the water, while the after-part as a natural consequence was raised up.

5. Even in the month of July, the weather was generally gloomy and unsettled. We had several times two or three inches of snow, and the showers were mingled with mist, rain, and snow, as had been the case in June. The winds were generally from the west; the mean temperature of the month was 34·7° F.; on the 8th of July, the black-bulb thermometer marked 108° F., and the temperature in the shade at the same date amounted to 34° F. But neither wind nor temperature made any change in our position. The sun on which our liberation depended was seldom visible; and the winds on which we had counted failed to blow. For weeks we watched for the formation of fissures round the ship. Fissures indeed were formed, but at such a distance that they were utterly useless to us. On the 16th of June, one opened towards the south-east; but it was at least two miles distant, and in the middle of July it was only half a mile nearer to us. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was to be seen from the deck but ice, and Klotz, coming down one day from the top-sail yard, described our position with a melancholy laconic brevity: “Nix als Eisch, und nix als Eisch, und nit a bisserl a Wosser. (Nothing but ice, ice everywhere, and not a patch of water.)” Amid such impressions all hope gradually left us. The drifting of the ice ceased to animate our hopes. Even the approach of a fissure on the 29th of July to the distance of three-quarters of a mile, in consequence of heavy gales from the south and west, ended in miserable disappointment. A movement in the ice which began a little way off on the 6th of August resulted only in the diminishing of our floe. There was no essential change in the remainder of this month, except that the monthly mean temperature fell to 32·7° F. We had the greatest extreme of heat on the 4th of August, 41·9° F.; but on the last day of the month we had 5·7 degrees of cold.

6. For some time we had been surprised by the appearance of a dark mass of ice, the distance of which prevented us from making a closer acquaintance with it. Our life on the narrow space of our floe had quite assumed the character of that of mere insects, who dwell on the leaf of a tree and care not to know its edges. Excursions of one or two miles were regarded as displaying an extraordinary amount of the spirit of enterprise and discovery. On the 14th some of us pushed on for about four miles to the group of ice just mentioned, and discovered it to be a very large iceberg. Two moraines lay on its broad back. These were the first stones and pieces of rock we had seen for a long time, and so great was our joy at these messengers of land, that we rummaged about among the heaps of rubbish, with as much zeal as if we had found ourselves among the treasures of India. Some of the party found what they fancied to be gold (pyrites), and gravely considered whether they would be able to take a quantity of it back to Dalmatia. Although the glaciers of Novaya Zemlya could not shed icebergs of such magnitude as that on which we now stood, we all held it for certain that it had come from thence. Not one of us had the least presentiment that it could belong to new lands, to which at that time we were near. Even the other icebergs which we discovered in increasing numbers on the following days, did not as yet speak to us the language of a message to fill us with hope and ardour. Our walk to the “dirt iceberg” was an event in our monotonous life, and was often repeated. These expeditions enabled us also to form some conception of the size of our floe, the diameter of which could not be less than six or seven miles.

7. August 18—the birthday of his Majesty our Emperor,—the ship was dressed with flags, the only form left to us of expressing our loyalty. Our dinner was as sumptuous as the circumstances permitted, though fasting would have been more appropriate, as the third day after this was the anniversary of that sad and gloomy day on which we were inclosed in the ice. In order to visit an iceberg which lay to the north-west of us, we ventured beyond our floe for the first time, and passed over a fissure to some drifting ice-floes which lay in the way. A seal lying on the ice was immediately attacked by our dogs, but succeeded after many efforts in reaching its hole. From the top of the iceberg, which was about sixty feet high, we discovered that the few openings in the ice were not navigable “leads,” but isolated holes utterly unconnected, and therefore useless for navigation.

8. We had continually drifted, since the beginning of February, first to the north-west and then to the north, with few modifications; at that date, we had reached our greatest East Longitude, and winds appeared as before to be the main cause of this drifting. At the end of that month there was a succession of calms, and we lay almost motionless in latitude 79°, and longitude 71°. The subjoined table shows our change of place in the following months.

Time.			Latitude. °'		Longitude. °'
March	3	1873	79	13	69	32
”	9	”	79	19	68	28
”	14	”	79	20	68	28
”	20	”	79	33	68	52
”	25	”	79	23	67	17
”	27	”	79	15	67	29
”	29	”	79	14	67	35
April	2	”	79	5	66	49
”	3	”	79	5	66	42
”	7	”	79	4	—
”	10	”	79	12	68	1
”	12	”	79	19	67	43
”	13	”	79	20	67	40
”	15	”	79	14	67	0
”	19	”	79	18	65	51
”	20	”	79	19	65	37
”	27	”	79	13·5	64	37·0
”	28	”	79	12·2	64	41·8
May	1	”	79	15·8	64	58·8
”	2	”	79	17·1	65	3·9
”	6	”	79	16·0	65	0·5
”	10	”	79	20·4	65	41·9
”	11	”	79	20·2	65	32·4
”	13	”	79	19·7	65	15·8
”	14	”	79	19·8	64	45·6
”	16	”	79	15·5	63	39·0
”	17	”	79	13·1	63	21·7
”	22	”	79	9·2	62	3·5
”	29	”	79	2·4	62	55·5
”	30	”	79	2·5	62	54·2
”	31	”	79	2·5	62	53·9
June	1	”	79	2·4	62	43·2
”	3	”	79	0·4	62	29·7
”	5	”	79	1·3	62	24·8
”	6	”	79	1·1	62	20·2
”	9	”	79	5·4	61	31·4
”	10	”	79	5·3	61	23·6
”	11	”	79	4·3	61	21·3
”	18	”	79	6·6	61	5·2
”	20	”	79	8·6	61	2·8
”	22	”	79	9·2	60	54·9
”	24	”	79	8·4	60	31·8
”	25	”	79	11·2	60	14·6
”	26	”	79	13·3	59	55·3
”	27	”	79	13·7	59	46·0
”	28	”	79	15·5	59	35·4
July	3	”	79	15·2	59	14·8
”	4	”	79	14·8	59	13·3
”	8	”	79	15·2	59	5·8
”	10	”	79	13·2	59	9·0
”	15	”	79	9·8	59	52·6
”	18	”	79	7·3	59	50·4
”	19	”	79	7·6	59	35·1
”	20	”	79	8·7	59	33·6
”	21	”	79	9·2	59	33·1
”	22	”	79	9·0	59	34·1
”	23	”	79	6·6	59	34·2
”	24	”	79	7·1	59	29·5
”	25	”	79	6·6	59	27·3
”	31	”	78	58·5	60	25·5
August	1	”	78	56·9	60	40·6
”	4	”	79	0·4	61	6·2
”	13	”	79	25·4	61	6·6
”	14	”	79	24·5	61	16·3
”	16	”	79	27·8	61	7·6
”	19	”	79	29·1	61	31·0
”	21	”	79	31·3	61	44·8
”	30	”	79	43·0	60	23·7
”	31	”	79	42·5	60	5·6
Sept.	2	”	79	40·2	60	32·9
”	5	”	79	41·3	60	12·5
”	8	”	79	34·2	59	47·3
”	9	”	79	33·6	59	45·9
”	10	”	79	32·2	59	53·1
”	16	”	79	45·6	61	30·5
”	23	”	79	49·6	61	58·1
”	30	”	79	58·3	60	41·1
Oct.	16	”	79	54·6	60	34·7
”	19	”	79	53·9	60	40·6
”	23	”	79	44·5	60	7·9
”	26	”	79	44·3	59	17·1
”	27	”	79	44·0	59	14·1
”	28	”	79	43·8	59	6·6
”	29	”	79	44·8	59	9·8
”	30	”	79	49·0	58	59·9
”	31	”	79	50·6	58	53·7
Ship in Land ice			79	51·1	58	56·0

9. The meteorological observations of the expedition, and the course of the Tegetthoff have been ably analysed by Vice-Admiral Baron von WÜllersdorf-Urbair in the Mittheilungen of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Vienna, and while I refer the curious reader to these reports for a fuller discussion of these questions, I subjoin the most important paragraphs of the Admiral’s report which concern the course of the Tegetthoff:—

“Under ordinary circumstances a ship drifts on with the floe; is imprisoned, and necessarily obeys the force of the wind and the sea-currents. Its course, consequently, corresponds to the combined effect of these forces. But, inasmuch as the Tegetthoff was not in the free sea, but was driven along for the greater part of the time in close pack-ice, the ship not only obeyed the general movement of the ice, which was dependent on the direction of the winds and currents of the sea, but was also influenced by its vicinity to coasts and by the greater or lesser accumulation of ice.

“In so far as the Tegetthoff with her hull and masts presented a greater surface to the wind, the floe, on which it was imprisoned, would necessarily receive an excess of movement in the direction of the wind. If this excess formed an angle with the direction of the movement of the ice, the ship’s floe would deviate to the side of the least resistance, and drift according to the resultant between wind and resistance. Thus it might be that the ship’s course deviated from the wind, even in a direction opposed to it. But these anomalies certainly were not great, and could not well be estimated, because the deviations which thus arose depended on the direction of the wind, on the density and mass of the ice, on causes, in fact, which could not be exhibited under numerical relations.

“If we compare the statements, as given in the Meteorological Journal,[21] concerning the ice-drift and ice-pressures, it is seen that the maximum of both occurred in those parts of the sea in which the ship was within the action of the ice coming from the Sea of Kara, and that the greatest deviations in the ship’s course necessarily happened there.

“With respect to another abnormal deviation in the ship’s course, it cannot be doubted that this depended on the vicinity of Franz-Josef Land, towards which the masses of ice drifted under the action of continuous south-west winds; and were again driven back, thus forming a circle in their movement. It would seem natural to assume the existence of a sea-current in order to explain this peculiarity; but the configuration of that land and its coasts, or the greater or lesser amount of immovable ice, or, lastly, the prevailing winds in those regions, may have influenced the direction of the movement of the ice, and consequently of the ship’s course.

“If we consider the prevalence of winds, as furnished by Weyprecht’s observations for more than two years, we find south-west winds prevailing in the southern part of the seas that were navigated, and north-east winds in the northern part of those seas.

“If the sea to the east of Franz-Josef Land should not be broken by larger groups of islands, or by masses of land, but be a vast range of ocean, the winds would be free from the influence of land, and blow in a north-easterly direction, and exhibit, so to speak, the phenomenon of a Polar north-east trade wind. If it should be the case that north-east winds prevail to the north of the 78th or 79th degree of north latitude, and, at the same time, south-west winds to the south of that same degree, the notion of a sea-current must be dismissed, and a revolving movement in the ice assumed, in the opposite direction to the hands of a clock. The observations of Weyprecht on these winds establish their circulatory character. The curve of deviation in the course of the Tegetthoff seems to be in harmony with this assumption. But these suppositions cannot be accepted, until observations be made on the winds to the south of 79° N. L. at the same season of the year with those which were so successfully made by Weyprecht to the north of this degree.

“The following arguments, however, would seem to favour the supposition of the existence of a sea-current. The curve at the commencement of its deviation corresponds pretty nearly with the direction which the Gulf Stream would take after passing round Norway, and in its further course with that current, which comes out of the Sea of Kara between Novaya Zemlya and Cape Taimyr, and which undoubtedly exists, though its course has to be more accurately determined.

“However small may be the value we assign to the winds in explanation of the deviation in the Tegetthoff’s course, it is at any rate impossible to ascribe those phenomena to the influence of the coast formation. We must, therefore, assume either, that the different directions of the wind produce a constant circulation of the ice in the sea to the north of 79°; or that currents known to exist in this and contiguous seas cannot be excluded from the small part of the ocean lying between Novaya Zemlya and Franz-Josef Land.”

From these and other grounds the Vice-Admiral Baron von WÜllersdorf draws the following conclusions:—

“It is probable that there exists a sea-current in the seas between Novaya Zemlya and Franz-Josef Land; that at any rate, its existence cannot positively be denied, although the prevailing winds may produce similar phenomena.

“That there is a great probability that the Ocean stretches far to the north and east beyond the eastern end of Novaya Zemlya.”

SOUNDING IN THE FROZEN OCEAN.

10. During the summer Orel took soundings of the depth of the sea, which he was prevented from continuing in the winter by the frost. These show its shallowness on the north of Novaya Zemlya, especially towards Franz-Josef Land. A bank, over which we drifted in the summer of 1873, and which we explored with a drag-net, was the principal source of the collection of marine fauna, which we shall speak of in a later chapter. These soundings also enabled Orel to prove the small increase of the temperature of the sea at any considerable depth. He used in his experiments the maximum and minimum thermometer of Casella. The specimens we collected showed, that the bottom of the sea consists of layers of mud and shells. The soundings are exhibited in the following table:—

Time.			Metres.
July	20	1872	400
”	28	”	115
”	31	”	250
Aug.	3	”	130
”	4	”	80
”	22	”	36
”	30	”	170
Sept.	16	”	100
”	25	”	90
”	29	”	85
”	30	”	190
Oct.	2	”	170
”	9	”	450
Nov.	14	”	345
Jan.	28	1873	510
Mar.	27	”	450
April	28	”	350
May	17	”	230
”	18	”	187
”	19	”	172
”	20	”	163
”	21	”	138
”	22	”	186
”	23	”	162
”	25	”	177
”	25	”	182
”	26	”	186
”	27	”	249
”	28	”	251
”	29	”	254
”	30	”	253
”	31	”	256
June	1	”	238
”	2	”	210
”	3	”	183
”	4	”	207
”	5	”	200
”	6	”	198
”	7	”	190
”	8	”	215
”	9	”	231
”	10	”	203
”	11	”	240
”	12	”	218
”	13	”	211
”	14	”	235
”	15	”	161
”	16	”	184
”	17	”	222
”	18	”	200
”	19	”	186
”	20	”	220
”	21	”	195
”	22	”	200
”	23	”	169
”	24	”	178
”	25	”	195
”	26	”	220
”	27	”	227
”	28	”	233
”	29	”	240
”	30	”	240
July	1	”	240
”	3	”	245
”	4	”	250
”	5	”	235
”	6	”	235
”	7	”	274
”	8	”	266
”	9	”	250
”	10	”	250
”	11	”	236
”	12	”	265
”	13	”	247
”	14	”	215
”	15	”	195
”	16	”	184
”	17	”	200
”	18	”	240
”	19	”	232
”	20	”	231
”	21	”	231
”	22	”	226
”	23	”	198
”	24	”	205
”	25	”	216
”	26	”	218
”	27	”	218
”	28	”	236
”	29	”	260
”	30	”	236
”	31	”	234
Aug.	1	”	225
”	2	”	219
”	3	”	173
”	4	”	188
”	5	”	210
”	6	”	107
”	7	”	216
”	8	”	184
”	9	”	244
”	10	”	225
”	11	”	209
”	12	”	214
”	13	”	189
”	14	”	177
”	15	”	170
”	16	”	170
”	17	”	174
”	18	”	148
”	19	”	152
”	20	”	138
”	21	”	130
”	22	”	131
”	23	”	128
”	24	”	145
”	25	”	140
”	26	”	185
”	27	”	219
”	28	”	180
”	29	”	132
”	30	”	211
”	31	”	197
Sept.	1	”	260
”	2	”	142
”	3	”	212
”	4	”	215
”	5	”	178
”	6	”	188
”	7	”	204
”	8	”	250
”	9	”	240
”	10	”	218
”	11	”	168
”	12	”	127
”	13	”	132
”	14	”	137
”	15	”	111
”	16	”	134
”	17	”	178
”	18	”	175
”	19	”	275
”	20	”	300
”	21	”	220
”	22	”	188
”	24	”	237
”	25	”	325
Oct.	28	”	165
”	31	”	210

CHAPTER XI.
NEW LANDS.

1. We Spent the latter half of August in seal-hunting, for it was only by the use of fresh meat that we were able to contend with, if not prevent, cases of scurvy. Day after day lines of hunters lay in wait before the fissures at the edge of our floe, and in the evening our dogs generally had to drag in the sledges several seals to the ship. Many of these creatures which we wounded sank and disappeared. All these seals belonged to the class Phoca Groenlandica. Walruses were never to be seen, and once only in an “ice-hole” we came across a shoal of white whales, which however seemed to be moving on. In the capture of seals we sometimes used a light boat, made of water-proof sailcloth, which two men could easily drag out of the water. Some of our people too had learnt the use of the harpoon. By the end of September we had killed in one way or another some forty seals, and as we shot many of the birds which flew round us, and on an average one bear a week, we were seldom without fresh meat. With the exception of Krisch, the engineer, who suffered from lung disease, and of the carpenter, who had become lame from a scorbutic contraction of the joints, all on the sick list recovered under the influence of work in the open air and of the improved diet.

2. The covering of deep soft snow, which had been so troublesome, almost disappeared at the beginning of autumn, and the surface of the ice had been transformed by evaporation into a firm mass like the congealed snow of a glacier, so that we were able to walk on its hard surface without sinking; only the numerous small ice-lakes, on the floes, impeded our excursions. In all these signs, we were reminded of the near approach of winter, and it seemed that, drifting as we were constantly towards the north, we should spend it nearer to the Pole than any other expedition had ever done. On the 25th the sun set at midnight. The period intervening between this and the time when the sun ceases to reappear may be regarded as the autumn of the Arctic region. For some time the light had so diminished, that our quarters again became dark at night, and from the 19th of July we were obliged to use a light in order to read at midnight. On the 29th of August, after falls of rain and snow succeeded by north winds, the ship was stiffened in a coating of ice. The rigging was covered with an incrustation of ice of an inch thick, and pieces of ice of a pound weight sometimes fell on the deck, rendering walking on it neither comfortable nor safe. After a succession of frosts and thaws, complete congelation at last set in, and when the moon was up, the masts and rigging shone like burnished silver.

3. The second summer was gone. It had come in with the hope and promise of liberation, and patiently had we awaited this result. With sad resignation we now looked forward to another winter. But once more it was to be seen, in our case, how great is the power of men to endure dangers and hardships, when these come upon them not suddenly but gradually. A few months ago, the thought that we should be prisoners on the ice, bound to our floe, for a second winter, would have been unendurable. But now that the intolerable thought had become a stern fact, we accepted and endured it. But often as we went on deck and cast our eyes over the wastes, from which there was no escape, the despairing thought recurred, that next year we should have to return home—without having achieved anything, or at most with a narrative of a long drift on the ice. Not a man among us believed in the possibility of discoveries, though discoveries beyond our utmost hopes lay immediately before us.

4. A memorable day was the 30th August 1873, in 79° 43' Lat. and 59° 33' E. Long. That day brought a surprise, such as only the awakening to a new life can produce. About midday, as we were leaning on the bulwarks of the ship and scanning the gliding mists, through which the rays of the sun broke ever and anon, a wall of mist, lifting itself up suddenly, revealed to us, afar off in the north-west, the outlines of bold rocks, which in a few minutes seemed to grow into a radiant Alpine land! At first we all stood transfixed and hardly believing what we saw. Then, carried away by the reality of our good fortune, we burst forth into shouts of joy—“Land, Land, Land at last!” There was now not a sick man on board the Tegetthoff. The news of the discovery spread in an instant. Every one rushed on deck, to convince himself with his own eyes, that the expedition was not after all a failure—there before us lay the prize that could not be snatched from us. Yet not by our own action, but through the happy caprice of our floe and as in a dream had we won it, but when we thought of the floe, drifting without intermission, we felt with redoubled pain, that we were at the mercy of its movements. As yet we had secured no winter harbour, from which the exploration of the strange land could be successfully undertaken. For the present, too, it was not within the verge of possibility to reach and visit it. If we had left our floe, we should have been cut off and lost. It was only under the influence of the first excitement that we made a rush over our ice-field, although we knew that numberless fissures made it impossible to reach the land. But, difficulties notwithstanding, when we ran to the edge of our floe, we beheld from a ridge of ice the mountains and glaciers of the mysterious land. Its valleys seemed to our fond imagination clothed with green pastures, over which herds of reindeer roamed in undisturbed enjoyment of their liberty, and far from all foes.

5. For thousands of years this land had lain buried from the knowledge of men, and now its discovery had fallen into the lap of a small band, themselves almost lost to the world, who far from their home remembered the homage due to their sovereign, and gave to the newly-discovered territory the name

KAISER FRANZ-JOSEF’S LAND.

With loud hurrahs we drank to the health of our Emperor in grog hastily made on deck in an iron coffee-pot, and then dressed the Tegetthoff with flags. All cares, for the present at least, disappeared, and with them the passive monotony of our lives. There was not a day, there was hardly an hour, in which this mysterious land did not henceforth occupy our thoughts and attention. We discussed whether this or that elevation in the grey and misty distance were a mountain, or an island, or a glacier. All our attempts to solve the question of the extent of the land lying before us were of course still more fruitless. From the headland which we had first seen (Cape Tegetthoff), to its hazy outline, in the north-east, it seemed to extend nearly a degree; but as even its southernmost parts were at a great distance from us, it was impossible to arrive at anything more definite than a mere approximation to its configuration. The size and number of the icebergs which we had recently fallen in with were now amply explained,—they were indisputable witnesses of its great extent and its vast glaciation.

6. At the end of August and the beginning of September north winds drove us somewhat towards the south, so that the outlines of the land were still more faintly defined. But at the end of September we were again driven towards the north-west and reached 79° 58', the highest degree of latitude to which the Tegetthoff and its floe drifted. We now saw an island at some distance off—afterwards called Hochstetter island—lying before us. Its rocky outlines were distinctly visible, and the opportunity of reaching the land by a forced march seemed more favourable than any which had been presented. It might also be the last chance offered to us, for our fears lest we might drift out of sight of this land were well founded. Six of her crew now left the Tegetthoff and committed themselves to the destiny which the movement of the ice had in store for them. The east winds, which had prevailed during the last days, had forced the ice landward, and the pressures had crushed in the edges of our floe, and greatly diminished its size. We rushed over the grinding, groaning, broken walls of drifting ice, and so great was our ardour, that we took no notice when some one or other of the party tripped and fell. Each panted to reach the land. We had already gone half way, the ship having long disappeared from our eyes, when there arose a mist which enveloped everything, so that the masses of ice looked like high mountains through the hazy atmosphere. Of the land itself we could see nothing, and no choice was left to us but to return to the ship through the mist. The compass was little help, and within the barriers of recently broken ice the traces of our steps were lost. We took at last a wrong direction and were following it up, in spite of Jubinal’s loud barks to divert us. As he ran backwards and forwards, magnified in the mist he ran many risks of being mistaken for a bear. What the sagacity of six men could not do, this the instinct of the animal effected. Exhausted by our own exertions, we yielded ourselves to his guidance, and he actually brought us into the right track—and back to the ship.

CHAPTER XII.
THE AUTUMN OF 1873.—THE STRANGE LAND VISITED.

1. The autumn was unusually mild, though stormy and gloomy. The thermometer up to the 20th of September fell daily some degrees below zero (C.), and occasionally we had rain. At the end of the month the minimum temperature ranged from 14° to 5° F., and the mean temperature of the month was as low as 24·5° F. The mildness of the season was, perhaps, connected with the unusual recession of the ice-barrier in the south; though it might have been a consequence of the open water which had been formed under the land during the drifting of the floes. The land itself was but seldom visible, and heavy masses of dark-blue clouds, which are peculiar to southern latitudes, generally hung over it. Frequent falls of snow again covered everything around us. Parhelia were sometimes visible, and these were generally the precursors of driving snow, which reared deep drifts round the ship. The numerous little lakes on the ice-floes were frozen over in the night even in the earlier part of August, and at the end of the month these bore us during the day. The clear mirror of their surface cracked whenever the temperature fell suddenly some degrees, while the effect of contraction in the ship was followed by the noises which we called “SchÜsse.” The “ice-holes” were overspread with a viscous ropy ice, which was strong enough to bear us at their edges. The ship now stood out from the ice; her hull was about fourteen feet above the surrounding surface of snow. To facilitate egress and ingress, we constructed steps of ice on each side of the vessel. After the 7th of September our efforts to free the ship were given up. The little basin at the fore-part of the ship—the result of the toil of many months—was completely frozen over, and afforded us the recreation of skating as a reward for our labours.

2. The experience of the past greatly strengthened all the grounds and motives which so readily presented themselves to abandon our helpless vessel in the following summer and attempt the return to Europe by means of sledges and boats. If there had been no other reason for this resolution, regard for our health would have dictated the step. Our supply of lemon-juice was so reduced, as to leave scarcely a doubt as to the necessity of attempting to return. But amid these prudential considerations, we were filled with fear lest we should be unable to explore the mysterious land we had discovered.

3. The daylight now began to fail. On the 9th of September the sun set at 8.30 and the stars were visible at night. About the middle of the month lamps were kept burning all the night through in our quarters below, and our environment, never very animated, again wore the aspect of the dark realm of ice. The visits of birds became rarer, although they did not quite leave us as long as there was any open water near. The divers and auks had already disappeared. They flew in long lines southward, and as they whizzed past us through the rigging of the ship, we acknowledged the superiority of these little creatures to us and to our ship, which was never to hoist its sails again. The ice-birds, and the robber-gulls still remained with us. We once shot a rose-coloured gull (Ross’s gull), said to belong only to North America and Iceland. On the 28th we saw the last snow-bunting. The first aurora was seen on the 22nd, and during the winter its light fell not merely on the Frozen Ocean but on the distant Franz-Josef’s Land, showing us that we were not drifting away from it. By the end of the month we had drifted to the eightieth degree of latitude, nearly; and every cliff of the land, even the most insignificant, emerging at a distance from the ice, had charms enough to call us all on deck.

4. In the second half of October, winds from the north and north-east had driven us towards the south and south-west, and as we neared the land we saw that the ice-fields were broken up by their contact with its immovable barrier. Our own floe had been greatly diminished from the general pressure of the ice. On the 1st of October we were driven so near the land that we found ourselves in the midst of the destruction going on in the ice. Our ice-floe was shattered and broken, and so rapidly had it diminished in size, that the distance of the ship from the edge of the floe, which was 1,300 paces on the 1st, amounted to only 875 two days afterwards. On the 6th it had diminished to 200 paces, so that it was reduced to a mere fragment of its former size. The shocks it now received caused the ship to quiver and shake, and we heard the cracking and straining in its timbers, which kept us on the tenter-hook of expectation lest the ice should suddenly break up. It seemed as if we were doomed to a repetition of the trials and dangers of the preceding winter. The bags of necessaries to be taken with us if we should be forced to leave the ship, were kept in readiness for immediate use. As we watched the advancing wall of ice, and heard the too well known howl it sent forth, and saw how fissures were formed at the edge of the floe, the days of the ice-pressures were painfully recalled, and the thought constantly returned—what will be the end of all this? The Land we had so longed to visit lay indeed before us, but the very sight of it had become a torment; it seemed to be as unattainable as before; and, if our ship should reach it, it appeared too likely that it would be as a wreck on its inhospitable shore. Many were the plans we formed and debated, but all were alike impracticable, and all owed their existence to the wish to escape from the destruction that stared us in the face. Such were our out-looks when on the 31st of October we were driven close to a headland of no great height, about three miles distant from the ship, and found ourselves in the midst of icebergs, several of which were of considerable magnitude. Towards this, the bergs, or we ourselves, or both, were rapidly drifting, as the soundings showed. If the icebergs drifted they would of course crush all the ice-fields which stood in their way. We were now in 79° 51' N. Lat. and 58° 56'E. Long. Here exactly in the longitude of Admiralty peninsula of Novaya Zemlya, and with the ship lying north and south, we were to pass the winter—but harbourless.

5. On the forenoon of the 1st of November, the land lay to the north-west of us in the twilight. The lines of rocks were so clearly and distinctly seen, that we were convinced that it could be reached without endangering our return to the ship. There was no room for hesitation; full of energy and wild excitement, we clambered over the ice-walls lying to the northward, which consisted of barriers, fifty feet high, of huge pieces of ice recently forced up amid the pressure. These passed, we came on a broad surface of young ice, which showed that there had been open water there a short time before. Over the surface of this young ice we now ran towards the land. We crossed the ice-foot and actually stepped on it. Snow and rocks and broken ice surrounded us on every side; a land more desolate could not be found on earth than the island we walked on; all this we saw not. To us it was a paradise; and this paradise we called Wilczek Island.

6. So great was our joy at having reached the Land at last, that we bestowed on all we saw an attention which, in itself it in no way merited. We looked into every rent in the rocks, we touched every block, we were ravished with the varied forms and outlines which each crevice presented. We talked in grand style of the frozen slopes of its hollows as glaciers! Nothing was of greater moment in these first hours than the question of its geological character, and great was our surprise to find here the same rocks, with which we had become acquainted at the Pendulum Islands during the second German North Polar Expedition. The columnar conformation of these Dolerite rocks singularly resembled those of Griper Roads and Shannon Island. The vegetation was indescribably meagre and miserable, consisting merely of a few lichens. The drift-wood we expected to find was no where to be seen. We looked for traces of the reindeer and the fox, but our search was utterly fruitless. The land appeared to be without a single living creature. We then ascended a rocky height on the southern margin of the island, whence we had a view of the frozen ocean extending some miles beyond the ship. There was something sublime to the imagination in the utter loneliness of a land never before visited; felt all the more from the extraordinary character of our position. We had become exceedingly sensitive to new impressions, and a golden mist which rose on the southern horizon of an invisible ice-hole, and which spread itself, like an undulating curtain, before the glow of the noontide heavens, had to us the charm of a landscape in Ceylon.

7. How vexatious was it to feel, that if we had reached this Land some weeks earlier, we might have explored it without the risk of being cut off from the ship. For some days the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the twilight of noon admitted of only a few short excursions from the ship, quite insufficient to satisfy our earnest desire to learn more of its structure and configuration; and we much feared lest the constant north winds should cause us to drift out of sight of it. Southwards stretched a flat surface of bluish-grey ice, and beyond the distant ship, a large “ice-hole” from whose yellow mirror there arose undulating mists. Beyond this again stretched dark lines of floes running parallel to the horizon, over which, in the south, hung the sky in deep carmine. We scrambled over a rugged slope covered with ice as smooth as glass, which ran into the interior of the little island, in order to get a clear view northward; but we were compelled to return without achieving our purpose, for we feared to absent ourselves longer from the ship. We accordingly went back, but returned next day to explore. But these barren days and small events made a profound impression on our minds, and even Carlsen, the old and tried navigator of the frozen deep, wore on his breast, beneath his fur coat, the star of the order of St. Olaf, to do due honour to the dignity of discovery. We built a pyramid of stones six feet high on the island, and fixed in it one of our flags attached to a pole.

8. On the 3rd of November a party of us started about eight o’clock in the morning, when it was quite dark, to attempt to reach a glacier which we had seen, on the north of the island and on the other side of a frozen inlet of the sea. We took with us a small sledge drawn by three dogs, and, in constant fear of being cut off from the ship, we pressed on over a level surface of snow towards some objects suffused with a dim rosy light, which seemed to float over them. As we neared them we found them to be icebergs, which sparkled like jewels, and which we took to be the terminal precipice of the glacier we were in search of. It was only, however, after some hours that we came actually in sight of it; the ship having meanwhile disappeared from our view. Suddenly there emerged before us, in the east, a white band, which proved to be the terminal front of the glacier, which, as we approached it, we were surprised to find had an inclination of only two or three degrees. Its highest point, therefore, must have been at a very great distance. On its left side there was a moraine of great depth. When we began our return to the ship, the rosy evening light had disappeared from the higher clouds, while it became clearer behind the gigantic mass of the glacier, so that its dark outline stood out strongly marked on the heavens. It was quite dark when we again drew near the ship, but the brave Carlsen, armed with rifle and walrus-lance for any emergency, came out to meet us.

APPROACHING THE LAND BY MOONLIGHT.

9. In an excursion on the 6th of November we reached a point on the north-west of Wilczek Island—passing for the first time during this expedition beyond the eightieth degree of north latitude—whence we could see the mainland of the new country stretching before us under the silver light of the moon. An indescribable loneliness lay on its snowy mountains, faintly illuminated by the span of twilight in the south and by the light of the moon. If the ice on the shore, as it was moved by the ebb and flow of the tide, had not sent forth shrill notes, and had not the wind sighed as it passed over the edges of the rocks, the stillness of death would have lain on the pale and spectral landscape. We hear of the solemn silence of the forest or of the desert, or of a city buried in sleep during the night; but what is this silence to the silence of a land with its cold glacier mountains losing themselves in snows and mists which can never be explored, and the very existence of which had remained unknown from creation till this moment?

10. On the 7th another short expedition towards the south-west of Wilczek Island was carried out; but notwithstanding all our exertions we were unable to determine its configuration, even of the parts immediately contiguous to us. Until the spring of the following year, the whole island, except perhaps a portion of its southern side, remained a mystery to us.

CHAPTER XIII.
OUR SECOND WINTER IN THE ICE.

1. The Land had meantime been thickly enveloped in its pure white mantle, and wreaths of snow-drifts lay over the rocks scattered over its surface. The light became fainter. Sometimes the precipitous faces of the glaciers seemed to glow in subdued rose-colour through the leaden grey of the atmosphere. When new “ice-holes” appeared, a frosty vapour rose and spread over the surface of the ice; the ship and surrounding objects were covered as if with down; even the dogs were frosted white. We used to stand on deck and gaze on the sun as it sank, surrounded by the evening clouds, behind the jagged edges of the hummocks. Raised by refraction, he appeared for the last time on the 22nd of October with half his disc above the horizon, and the whole southern sky was for a time like a sea of fire over the cold, stiff forms and lines of ice. At length the disc disappeared, and masses of dark clouds moved up and obscured the light still lingering in the sky. The long reign of night began, and the wastes around us relapsed into the stern sway of winter. A pale twilight still lingered for some time, but its faint arc became smaller and feebler. No shadows accompanied the forms of those who strayed over the ice. The wind moaned in the frozen desert. The darkness and the cold continually increased, till the dome of night vaulted the lonely spot which had become our home.

2. But the hope and expectation of successes to be achieved, and the feeling that our safety was not immediately threatened, rendered this second winter a happy contrast to the preceding one. We had now leisure and calmness for intellectual occupations, which were, indeed, the only means of relieving the monotony of the long period of darkness. We lived like hermits in our little cabins in the after-part of the ship, and learned that mental activity without any other joy suffices to make men happy and contented. The oppressive feeling of having to return ingloriously home, which had always been disagreeably present to our minds during the first winter, was no longer felt. We had now a hope, the charms of which grew day by day, that in the spring we should be able to leave the ship and start on expeditions to explore the land we had discovered. Happy in this expectation, we could enjoy the indescribable pleasures of good books, all the more that we were far from the busy haunts of men, and that the presence of danger clears and sharpens the understanding. Nowhere can a book be so valued as in such an isolated position as ours was. Great, therefore, was the advantage we possessed in a good library, consisting of books of science, and of the classics of literature. In fact, freed from the constantly recurring perils, which had been our portion in the first long Arctic night, this second winter was, to all who actively employed their minds, comparatively a state of happiness, undisturbed by cares. With regard to the crew, they were kept in good humour by the increase of their comforts. As we had not the prospect of a third winter in the ice—which would have rendered a greater economy of our provisions imperative—we were enabled to provide them with a more generous diet.

3. In the last three weeks of November we had complete darkness, the sky clouded over and the weather bad. So dark was it, that our environment, though it was overspread with countless hummocks and ice-cliffs, looked like one black unbroken level. On the 31st of October most of the stars were visible about 3 o’clock in the afternoon; by 4 o’clock actual night prevailed. On the 16th of November large print was barely legible even at noon. On the 18th of the month we were able to read the larger letters on the title-page of Vogt’s Geology at the distance of a foot. At noon, on the 13th of December, not a letter of this same title-page was legible, even in clear weather. On the 5th of November there was a total eclipse of the moon, which then sank below the horizon and did not return till the 29th of that month. Its beams then fell on a large ice-hole, which had formed itself twenty miles to the south of the ship, which made us apprehensive lest our floe should be driven by the north winds in a southerly direction. On the 4th of December the moon reached its highest declination, but, as it waned, it was constantly obscured by bad weather. I had reckoned on the return of moonlight to make an excursion of some days to the mainland. But the fickleness of the weather at the beginning of December compelled me to confine my wanderings to Wilczek Island, which I frequently visited, although with a thermometer at -35° F. I was exposed to frost-bites in the face and hands, whenever I attempted to draw by the light of a lamp, and with only the protection of light woollen gloves.[22]

DEPARTURE OF THE SUN IN THE SECOND WINTER.

4. We observed during this winter, that, on the clearest nights, snow of the finest texture continued to fall, so that we saw the heavenly bodies, as it were, through a veil of fine gauze. In the moonlight this fine snow sparkled faintly, and its presence could only be discovered by a prickling on the skin. The constancy of these downfalls added of course to the depth of the snow under which the Tegetthoff was almost buried; indeed at the beginning of the spring she no longer stood out from the covering of snow, although her fore-part was eleven-and-three-quarter feet, and her after-part four-and-a-half feet, above the ice on which she rested. The air was also often filled with an indescribable quantity of driving snow; and when the wind dropped and permitted it to fall, we were struck with the profound stillness of our environment. The cold constantly increased and penetrated all the parts of the interior of the ship which were not artificially heated,[23] and almost all the fluids, which were not specially protected, were frozen. The various kinds of spirits on board were exposed on the 23rd of November to the cold at -26° F.; at the end of an hour-and-a-half they still remained fluid. When the temperature fell to -31° F., hollands, common gin and maraschino were congealed in two-hours-and-a-half, but rum and brandy remained unchanged. On another occasion a mixture of two parts of pure alcohol to one part of water froze at -47° F., cognac at -53° F. This low temperature had so increased the thickness of the ice, that the basin of open water, which had been sawed through in the previous summer, was covered on the 3rd of January with ice three-and-a-half, and on the 20th with ice six-and-a-half feet thick.

NOON ON DECEMBER 21, 1873.

5. On the 21st of December, the middle of the second long Polar night—which lasted in all 125 days—was reached; and although we knew where the south lay, every trace of twilight had disappeared, and for six weeks we were enveloped in unbroken darkness. The figure of a man could not be discerned at a very short distance. In order to be able to sketch the ship, I had to illuminate it by torches. Those who made expeditions afoot were struck, as it were, with blindness. If they approached what seemed to be a lofty chain of mountains, over the ridge of which the planet Jupiter hung like a glowing point, they came at once on a dark wall of ice; and when they ascended the apparently far distant ridge, the planet stood almost in the zenith. There was something approaching to twilight only when the crescent moon shone in her first quarter. On the 7th of December the sun was 12°, and on the 21st 14½°, below the horizon. We should not have seen the sun, could we have ascended the pinnacle of the Alps, which Pliny imagined to be 120,000 feet high, or even from that summit of the Caucasus which Aristotle reckoned at 230,000 feet.

6. Distrusting the quiescent state of the ice, we had again stretched a tent over one-half of the ship’s deck, while the other portion was covered with snow trodden down as hard as a skating-rink. The space for free movement was narrowed still further by the long-boat placed between the two masts, by the stores of provisions kept in readiness for the possible disaster which might compel us to leave the ship, by the stand of rifles, by dog-kennels, and other inevitable impediments. In bad weather the dogs sheltered themselves under the tent, and sometimes showed ill-temper if their feet were trod on. There were places on deck where only their particular friends were safe from being bitten; Sumbu especially had a bad habit of lying behind a cask and springing out on every one that passed by. Here under its friendly shelter the men waited the summons to their meals. Hither came Carlsen to enjoy the opportunity of talking Norwegian with some one or other. The deck light shone feebly on all this, shedding its rays on the fine snow which fell through the tent-roof. In the second half of the winter, when the deck was less frequented, the lantern became, like the crew—more sleepy; and its dull light fell on hard-frozen sailcloth, boards covered with snow, and on empty tin cases. Here, too, walked, of course, the deck-watch, enveloped in clothes from head to foot, with only their eyes uncovered, looking more like moving figures than men. The deck-watch had also to keep open the water-hole in the ice, to look out for bears, and to assist in reading off the thermometers exposed on the ice. They were on duty for two hours, and the moment they were relieved, they shot down into their quarters, as quickly as a harpooned whale dives under the waves. He, too, whose duty it was to fetch the snow to be converted into water was often to be seen on deck. Although the store of snow in which we lived was inexhaustible, yet, in order to be exempt from this duty in bad weather, it was the practice of those who were told off for this service to lay up a supply of blocks of frozen snow under the tent. Some of the crew showed the scrupulosity of chemists in their work. Before they proceeded to build up their pile, they brought specimens to the cook, in order to learn his opinion as to the residuum of salt in the ice.

7. With December a new era began for the dogs. A large snow house was built for them outside the ship, in which were placed their kennels, well filled with straw. The name of each dog was written on his house. And here let me remark, that the winter quarters of the dogs should always be on the ice. To keep them under the deck-tent is unhealthy and inconvenient, and would be an impossibility if their numbers were great. Every morning Haller opened the door of the snow house, and out rushed the dogs, with their tails in the air, to begin forthwith a general fight. No shouts, no blows, not even the discharge of a rifle could separate the combatants. Pouring water over them at a temperature of -35° F., though a somewhat barbarous way of producing peace, was successful only with the younger dogs. When the fight was over, the next object was to find out their special patron, and the instant they recognised him they rushed upon him, tugged at his clothes, and thrust their noses inquiringly into his pockets. Each then made his morning round, visiting the places where he had hid in the snow a piece of bread or covered up a bit of seal. When they had satisfied their appetite, it was curious to observe how they would make it smooth over the hole in which they deposited their treasure, all the time cunningly turning their eyes right and left to see whether they were observed.

PEKEL, SUMBU, AND JUBINAL.

8. Their violence and eagerness having somewhat abated, we may observe the members of our pack one by one. The red giant there, who offers his paw as huge as a bear’s, is named after a god of the heathen days of Lapland, “Jubinal;” and not a few legends surrounded the accounts of his early life. A Siberian Israelite, so it was said, brought him from the north of Asia over the Ural. He was the victor in all fights, the leader of the sledge team, and could drag four men on a hard level path without any effort. The day before we sailed from Bremerhaven he tore a sheep to pieces. Every summer when he changed his coat, the sailors clad him in a canvas dress. Bop was his inferior in strength, but his superior in wisdom; Matoschkin surpassed him in gravity. The latter used to sit for hours in a moody manner on a pile of chests looking at the ice world. Bop and Matoschkin were Newfoundlands; the first died of cold in our first winter, the latter, as our readers may remember, was carried off by a bear and torn to pieces. We had also two Newfoundland bitches, who were called respectively “Novaya” and “Zemlya;” the former died in the first year, the latter, though she was of little use in sledging from her laziness, may claim indisputably the merit of being the mother of her hopeful son, “Torossy,” who grew to a considerable size, and was the pride of the whole crew. He knew no other world than the frozen ocean, and no other destiny than to draw a sledge; and to this work he had devoted himself zealously since the commencement of winter. In the happy courage of ignorance he wagged his tail all day on deck; wagged his tail as he followed us on the ice; wagged it, even when Sumbu stole his dinner; wagged it, even before the jaws of a bear. Gillis, the fifth Newfoundland, was incessantly quarrelling, and was the irreconcilable enemy of Jubinal; he was a favourite with no one, chiefly because he had killed the two cats which we brought from Tromsoe as pets for the dogs. His body was covered with scars, and half his time was spent under the medical treatment of the Tyrolese. He was not wanting in docility, but he was essentially an eye-pleaser; all his efforts in the sledge were mere sham. Pekel, the Lapp, was the smallest of all the dogs. In his early days he had tended the reindeer at the North Cape and on the plains of Tana Elf, and his ways did not fit him for life amid the ice, but for the brown herd which roamed at the foot of Kilpis. Hence he was quarrelsome, and showed special enmity to Sumbu, the mere sight of whom was enough to stir up the most hostile feelings. He was therefore banished with his house to a high ice-cliff, but the thaw destroying its supports, house and dog fell plump into an ice-lake. Among all the dogs there was no such desperate hypocrite as Sumbu, the most demonstrative in his friendship, but withal the most greedy and dissatisfied. He was the first to slink away with tail between his legs and find out the most secluded nook, when he saw the other dogs being harnessed in the sledges; and, when pulled out and put in a team, at once laid himself down on the sledge, not to draw, but to be drawn. When at last he was set in motion, he was no longer the same dog. He was then full of action, unsurpassed in speed and agility, and his sportiveness was as great as his cunning. From the carpenter he would carry off a hoop, or a bag of nails from the stoker, or he lay flat on his belly and thrust out his long nose in the snow. His agility stood him in good stead, for it enabled him to catch all the mice that ventured on deck. Neither the stores of provisions for the dogs nor the depÔt of food for the crew were safe from his depredations. He hated bears so fiercely, that he began to howl like a wolf when we turned out to hunt them. Boldly he followed up their trail, even when at a distance from the hunters and close to the heels of the bear. The dogs were fed once a day with bear’s flesh or blubber, or dried horse-flesh, as long as it lasted.[24] They well knew the hour of feeding, and gathered together before it arrived. At night they were shut up in their house, and when the snow drifted they all lay huddled in a heap before the door. The dog-house was about eight feet high, but after a few weeks we could scarcely discern it from the accumulation of snow-drifts. For some time we kept up communication with it by means of a shaft dug in the snow; but one day in February a fissure in the ice was formed right across where the house stood, which compelled us to remove it.

9. The end of December came, and with it the season of those festivals which animate the Christian world—Christmas-tide and the New Year. In order to celebrate them in common, we built a snow house, decorated its interior with flags, and placed in it a Christmas tree, which, however, more resembled a wooden hedgehog or a cheval de frise. About six o’clock in the evening all our preparations were made, and the ship’s bell, sounding mournfully in the dark and misty atmosphere, summoned us to our snow house on the ice. Here lots were drawn, and cigars, watches, knives, pipes or rum fell to the fortunate drawers. For all these presents we had to thank friends in Vienna, or Pola, or Hamburg. Then came the Christmas dinner, but no one’s heart was in the matter. Our bodies, indeed, were present, but our thoughts were far away with those we loved at home. New Year’s Eve passed off somewhat more cheerfully. Better grounded seemed our expectations that 1874 would at last bring us our long-desired activity and a not inglorious return to Europe. Scarcely had the new year begun than the crew knocked at our cabin doors with their congratulations, and such salutations continued to be the order of the day. On the whole this second winter both before and after the new year (1874), passed away without the fearful events of the preceding. Although floes lay close to us on every side, and we had no harbour in which to pass the winter with comfort—like a bear in its winter sleep—the quiescent state of the ice allowed us to hope that our floe would remain in the position it had hitherto maintained. This hope, indeed, lay at the mercy of the winds; for if north winds should set in, it was extremely probable that the ice would break up and drift asunder.

10. The life we now led below in the ship had ceased to be in any way disagreeable, and cheerful and entertaining reading seemed to be healthier than bodily exercise. We did not suffer from any want of the necessaries of life; the temperature of our living-rooms generally admitted of our sitting for hours even without our overcoats. The long night of this Polar winter was gloomy and oppressive only to those who had time and leisure to weigh the burden of the hours. There were, of course, even in this second winter, some of those discomforts and dangers of which the reader has heard enough, and which lead him when he reads of life in the frozen regions to think of ice-floes rather than of a room in which comfort is quite possible. We had, indeed, the usual inconveniences. As early as the middle of October the skylight was so covered with frost that we could scarcely read even at noon. On the 20th of that month we were obliged to keep the lamps constantly burning, and to close in the skylight, which brought night into the mess-room before the night of Nature had arrived. By the middle of November the condensation of moisture was perceptible, and our bed-clothes were frequently frozen to the wall, and had to be torn from it before we could go to rest. Yet what signified all this? We all slept soundly notwithstanding, and during the day had to complain rather of warmth than of cold. The condition of the crew, however, was not so happy. We could not follow the example set by Hayes and others of removing the contents of the hold to the land, and so transforming it into quarters for the men. On board the Tegetthoff we suffered some of the evils of over-population, and the moisture was so much increased from it, that some of the berths were completely saturated. The employment of hammocks would perhaps avert this evil.

IN THE MESS-ROOM.

11. The number of those afflicted with scurvy decreased with the approach of spring. Their gums recovered their fresh and natural appearance, and the general weakness, the pains in the joints, the leaden weight of the feet, the depression of spirits—symptoms of this terrible malady—abated, and the scorbutic marks disappeared from their bodies. Pachtusow, when he wintered in Novaya Zemlya, so abundant in supplies of drift-wood, caused his people to use the bath once a week in a log house constructed on the land, as a preservative against scurvy, and had their inner clothing washed twice a week, but even these steps were insufficient to avert the malady. In our case baths so added to the moisture that we were obliged to put a stop to them, and our under-garments could be changed only as our stock of them permitted. Hence we could hope to prevent the spread of scurvy only by the improvement of our diet. Several hundred-weight of potatoes and a large supply of preserved meat had been kept in store for the second winter. These now came into use, and were the more welcome as our supply of lemon-juice—the most important preservative against scurvy—was diminishing. By the advice of our physician, Dr. Kepes, we departed from the maxim, so generally adhered to in Arctic expeditions, of avoiding spirituous liquors. From the beginning of October our men daily received rations of brandy. When I compare the sanitary condition of the crew of the Tegetthoff with the better state of that of the Germania, I attribute this to the lesser power of resistance to disease in some of our people on board the Tegetthoff and to the moral depression so easily explained by our disasters in this ship.

12. The Arctic voyager is exposed to no disease so much as to scurvy. Its appearance among a crew exercises a most untoward influence. Its causes are still but little known; the means, however, of combating it are numerous. It is no longer the scourge it was in the days of Barentz, when he and all his men were attacked with it on the short summer excursion of 1595, or when in Munk’s expedition of 1619 all died but two. In Behring’s expedition of 1741, out of seventy-six men, forty-two were attacked and thirty died. In Tschirikoff’s summer expedition during that same year (1741), out of seventy men, twenty died. Rossmyslow, who passed the winter of 1768-69 in “Matoschkin-Schar,” lost seven out of thirteen men. When the disease gains the mastery, the utter incapacity of the expedition for further exploration follows as a necessary consequence. Lassinius, who was sent out to explore Novaya Zemlya in 1819, had to return in the height of summer, all his men having fallen down with the scurvy. This disease has been a frightful enemy to expeditions which have wintered in that region, and carried off numerous victims. All these, it is true, were miserably equipped, and depended on the medicinal virtues of the “LÖffel-kraut” of that country for remedies against the disease. In 1832-33 Pachtusow, wintering in the south of the island, out of ten men lost three; in 1834-35, two more died of the same disease. In the expedition of Ziwolka and Mojsejew, 1838-39, the scurvy gained such mastery that at the end of February half of the crew were attacked, and Ziwolka himself with eight men died. Parry regarded damp, especially damp bedding, as the principal cause of the malady. During his wintering at Melville Island he found sorrel an effective remedy or palliative. He attributed the greatest anti-scorbutic effect to beer; and according to him and to most of the English expeditions, beer and wine take the place of brandy. The disease generally has a fatal issue when there has been excessive loss of blood, or when dropsy supervenes. Most of Ross’s second expedition suffered more or less from it, and the experience of that expedition showed that vegetable nourishment alone was not competent to make head against it. Ross regarded the addition of fish or seals to the ordinary diet as an effective preservative, and did not disdain the use of blubber for the same purpose. Lemon-juice, uncooked potatoes, fruit with much acidity, fresh vegetables and fresh meat, wine and yeast, exercise in the open air, and cheerfulness, have always proved sufficient to prevent its appearance, or at any rate to render it improbable. But however valuable these may be as preventives, they almost cease to have any effect when the disease has once broken out. The lime-juice must be fresh, and, like vinegar, be taken in as concentrated a form as possible. It is decomposed and useless by being kept too long, and also by the action of frost. This was the case with the lemon-juice which Sir John Ross found among the stores of the Fury. An anti-scorbutic effect has been attributed also—and with justice—to the chewing of tobacco. It appears that liability to scurvy is very different among different races, and that neither vegetable nor animal food is an absolute preservative. The Eskimos, and even the Lapps, who seldom or never use vegetables, are almost exempt from it, and McClure’s men fell down with it in their second winter, although they had fresh meat three times a week. Steller relates that in Kamschatka scurvy attacks strangers only, but not the natives, who live largely on vegetables; he states also, that the scurvy when it does appear among strangers and visitors there, is cured by a diet of the fresh fish of spring.

CHAPTER XIV.
SUNRISE OF 1874.

1. An unbroken sleep for the whole winter would, undoubtedly, be a blessing to the Arctic navigator, and the most energetic among us resigned himself to slumber for a few hours in the afternoon—the profane time of the day for all zones of the earth—especially after the coming in of the New Year, when the long unbroken night is intensely felt. The darkness diminished very gradually, and as the weather was frequently cloudy and dull, it was little lessened by the full moon, which we had at the beginning of January and February. December 26, we were able to read only the title of New Free Press, at the distance of a few inches, but not a word of Vogt’s Geology. January 11, the word Geology on the title of that book was discernible in clear weather, but only when the book was held up to the light of the midday twilight. On the following day it was as dark at nine o’clock in the morning as at noon on December 1st. The moon returned again on the 24th of January, and after it was four days old we could distinguish the common print of the “Press” by its light, and for the first time read off the degrees of the thermometer without artificial means. During the whole of the month we had alternations of high temperatures and snow-drifting, and at the end of it the wind dropped and the cold became exceedingly great, causing the ice to break up to the south of our position. It would be difficult to give in an illustration any notion of the wonderful forms produced by the twilight, and its glowing colour-effects, and quite impossible to describe the blaze of the meridian heavens, while deep shadows still lay over the ice-plains and a dark ridge fringed and closed the horizon.

2. At noon on the 23rd of February the rolling mists glowed with a red light, announcing the reappearance of the sun. The next day the sun himself, raised and distorted into an oval shape, appeared above the horizon about 10 A.M. Again there was spread over the snow that magical rosy hue, those bright azure shadows, which impart a poetical character even to the landscape of the frozen north. The return of the sun was this year the deliverance from our long night of 125 days.[25] Anxiously had we waited his return, and joyously we greeted it, but not with the frenzied feelings of the previous year. Then the reappearance of the sun was tantamount almost to a deliverance from hell itself; but now the sun was nothing to us but as a means to an end: would it enable us to begin our sledge-journeys to explore the Kaiser Franz-Josef Land? The mere thought of the possibility of making new discoveries threw us into a feverish impatience, and our fears became intense lest the ship with its floe should drift away and frustrate the execution of our plans just as they seemed feasible.

3. On that same day Lieutenant Weyprecht and I resolved to abandon the ship after the termination of our projected sledge-journeys of discovery, and to attempt to return to Europe by means of the boats and sledges. No arguments were needed to convince every one of the ship’s company of the absolute necessity of this resolution. Our ship lay on its icy elevation, beyond the power of man to liberate her, and the provisions would not be sufficient to sustain us for another year. But fear lest the state of our health should greatly deteriorate in a third winter spoke more forcibly than anything else in favour of our decision. When we looked at our medical stores, once so ample, now so reduced, at the few bottles of lemon-juice we could count on, all saw the impossibility of our remaining longer in these latitudes. The melancholy issue of Franklin’s expedition forced itself on our mind as an instructive example and warning. In all likelihood that ill-fated expedition had delayed its return a year longer than it should have done, and began it in so weakened a condition, that it was next to an impossibility that they should have succeeded in their purpose. We began to be pinched also in many of our stores, in spite of the greatest economy in their use. To add to our perils, the doctor drew a sad picture of the sanitary condition of our crew. Of nineteen men, several had fallen sick: Krisch still suffered from scurvy and consumption; Marola from the first scorbutic symptoms; Fallesich from its consequences; Vecerina from the utter inability to move his lower extremities produced by the same malady; Palmich from a constant tendency to it and the contraction of his lower extremities; Pospischill from lung disease; and Haller from a rheumatic affection of his extremities which almost incapacitated him for any exertion.

CHAPTER XV.
THE AURORA.

1. The Northern lights had shone for these two winters with incomparable splendour, not, indeed, with the quiet diverging beams, sometimes observed in our northern latitudes, and different also from the phenomena which have been seen and noted in recent years, even in Central Europe; they resembled rather those we saw in East Greenland, save that the brilliancy and intensity of their colours were far greater.

2. It is very difficult to characterize the forms of this phenomenon, not only because they are manifold, but because they are constantly changing. Sometimes the Aurora appears like flaming arches with glowing balls of light; sometimes in irregular meridians painted on the heavens, sometimes in brilliant bands and patches of light on the sky. Each of these forms was frequently developed from a different one, but towards morning the last-named appearance was the most general.

3. The movement of the waves of light gave the impression that they were the sport of winds, and their sudden and rapid rise resembled the uprising of whirling vapours, such as the Geysers might send forth, which generally assumed the form of enormous flames, except that they were transparent and mist-like. In many cases the Aurora much resembled a flash of summer lightning conceived as permanent. It appeared almost always in the south, and was visible from September till March, during which period it was to us the only external excitement which we had. The illuminating power of the Aurora, when its colours were most brilliant and intense, was inferior to the illuminating power of the full moon. Some rare cases excepted, this was either so small or so transitory, that it had no influence on the darkness of our long winter nights. Like a stream, or in brilliant convolutions, the light rushed over the firmament, as well from east to west as from west to east. The formation of the corona (or the convergence of the streamers in the direction of the inclination needle) was sudden, and short in its duration, and frequently happened more than once in the course of a night. Its greatest intensity was from eight till ten o’clock at night. It was never accompanied with sound.[26] The sketch we have given represents one of its most characteristic forms. The inner parts of the flames are usually whitish green, and their edge on the upper side red, on the lower green.

4. Brilliant auroras were generally succeeded by bad weather. Those on the other hand which did not rise to any great height in the sky, or which did not show any special mobility, were regarded as the precursors of calms. None of the theories which have been ventilated are in exact accordance with all the manifestations of these northern lights. The undulating motion of their waves of light, their rolling forth like pillars of smoke driven by winds, has hitherto remained unexplained. Although electrical processes, still unknown, seem to be the main causes of the Aurora, atmospheric vapours may, however, have a considerable part in producing the phenomenon; and nothing so much favours this supposition as the indefinite form in which it often appears. Its occurrence during the day, i.e. light clouds with its characteristic movement, has been rather imagined than actually observed. The transition of white clouds into auroral forms at night has never at least been satisfactorily proved. Falling stars pass through the northern lights without producing any perceptible effect, or undergoing any change. A dirty sulphur yellow was characteristic of all auroras when the sky was overcast with mists or when they were seen by moonlight. In clear weather they were colourless.

THE AURORA DURING THE ICE PRESSURE.

5. Their influence on the magnetic needle was very variable. While the quiescent and regular arches had little or no effect, the quicker and more fitful streamers, especially when accompanied with prismatic colours, produced great disturbance in it. Sir John Ross remarked, that the aurora when tinged with deep red colour had a great effect on it, although he completely stultifies his observation by his supposition, that the phenomenon was produced by rays of the sun reflected on the vast fields of snow and ice surrounding the Pole. Parry in 1820 could discover no effect from it either on the magnetic needle or on the electrometer. During the winter of 1872-3, the character of the northern lights was much altered, though their colour remained constant. At first they consisted chiefly of bands of light, running from the south-northwards. At a later period of that winter they assumed for the most part the appearance of coronÆ, and then their direction was from the north southwards. During the voyage of the Tegetthoff the observations of the behaviour of these lights and of the magnetic constants were taken by Weyprecht, Brosch, and Orel by means of a magnetic theodolite, a dipping needle, and three variation instruments. The extraordinary disturbances of the needle rendered the determination of exact mean values for the magnetic constants impossible. The diminution of their intensity was considerable during the continuance of auroras. In 79° 51' N. Lat. and 58° 56' E. Long. the declination amounted to 19½° E. and the inclination to 82° 22'. The ice-pressures which occurred in December, 1873 together with the tedious preliminaries in fixing the magnetic instruments, prevented these officers from carrying out their labours regularly till the next month. The following are the principal results of these observations: (1) The magnetic disturbances were of extraordinary magnitude and frequency. (2) They were closely connected with the aurora; and they were greater as the motion of the rays was more rapid and fitful, and the prismatic colours more intense. Quiescent and regular arches, without changing rays or streamers, exercise almost no influence on the needle. (3) In all the disturbances the declination needle moved towards the east, and the horizontal intensity decreased while the inclination increased.

6. In spite of the extreme difficulty of describing the appearances of those fitful and changing lights, I believe that the following description of Lieutenant Weyprecht will be found equally faithful and effective:—

“There in the south, low on the horizon, stands a faint arch of light. It looks as it were the upper limit of a dark segment of a circle; but the stars which shine through it in undiminished brilliancy convince us that the darkness of the segment is a delusion produced by contrast. Gradually the arch of light grows in intensity and rises to the zenith. It is perfectly regular; its two ends almost touch the horizon and advance to the east and west in proportion as the arch rises. No beams are to be discovered in it, but the whole consists of an almost uniform light of a delicious tender colour. It is transparent white with a shade of light green, not unlike the pale green of a young plant which germinates in the dark. The light of the moon appears yellow, contrasted with this tender colour so pleasing to the eye, and so indescribable in words, a colour which nature appears to have given only to the Polar regions by way of compensation. The arch is broad, thrice the breadth, perhaps, of the rainbow, and its distinctly marked edges are strongly defined on the profound darkness of the Arctic heavens. The stars shine through it with undiminished brilliancy. The arch mounts higher and higher. An air of repose seems spread over the whole phenomenon; here and there only a wave of light rolls slowly from one side to the other. It begins to grow clear over the ice; some of its groups are discernible. The arch is still distant from the zenith; a second detaches itself from the dark segment, and this is gradually succeeded by others. All now rise towards the zenith; the first passes beyond it, then sinks slowly towards the northern horizon and as it sinks loses its intensity. Arches of light are now stretched over the whole heavens; seven are apparent at the same time on the sky, though of inferior intensity. The lower they sink towards the north, the paler they grow, till at last they utterly fade away. Often they all return over the zenith, and become extinct, just as they came.

“It is seldom, however, that an aurora runs a course so calm and so regular. The typical dark segment which we see in treatises on the subject, in most cases does not exist. A thin bank of clouds lies on the horizon. The upper edge is illuminated; out of it is developed a band of light, which expands, increases in intensity of colour, and rises to the zenith. The colour is the same as in the arch, but the intensity of the colour is stronger. The colours of the band change in a never-ceasing play, but place and form remain unaltered. The band is broad and its intense pale green stands out with wonderful beauty on the dark background. Now the band is twisted into many convolutions, but the innermost folds are still to be seen distinctly through the others. Waves of light continually undulate rapidly through its whole extent, sometimes from right to left, sometimes from left to right. Then again it rolls itself up in graceful folds. It seems almost as if breezes high in the air played and sported with the broad flaming streamers, the ends of which are lost far off on the horizon. The light grows in intensity, the waves of light follow each other more rapidly, prismatic colours appear on the upper and lower edge of the band, the brilliant white of the centre is inclosed between narrow stripes of red and green. Out of one band have now grown two. The upper continually approaches the zenith, rays begin to shoot forth from it towards a point near the zenith, to which the south pole of the magnetic needle, freely suspended, points. The band has nearly reached it, and now begins a brilliant play of rays lasting for a short time, the central point of which is the magnetic pole—a sign of the intimate connection of the whole phenomenon with the magnetic forces of the earth. Round the magnetic pole short rays flash and flare on all sides; prismatic colours are discernible on all their edges; longer and shorter rays alternate with each other; waves of light roll round it as a centre. What we see is the auroral corona; and it is almost always seen when a band passes over the magnetic pole. This peculiar phenomenon lasts but a short time—the band now lies on the northern side of the firmament; gradually it sinks, and pales as it sinks; it returns again to the south to change and play as before. So it goes on for hours; the aurora incessantly changes place, form, and intensity. It often entirely disappears for a short time only to appear again suddenly, without the observers clearly perceiving how it came and where it went: simply—it is there.

“But the band is often seen in a perfectly different form. Frequently it consists of single rays, which, standing close together, point in an almost parallel direction towards the magnetic pole. These become more intensely bright with each successive wave of light; hence each ray appears to flash and dart continually, and their green and red edges dance up and down as the waves of light run through them. Often again the rays extend through the whole length of the band and reach almost up to the magnetic pole. These are sharply marked but lighter in colour than the band itself, and in this particular form they are at some distance from each other. Their colour is yellow, and it seems as if thousands of slender threads of gold were stretched across the firmament. A glorious veil of transparent light is spread over the starry heavens; the threads of light with which this veil is woven are distinctly marked on the dark background; its lower border is a broad, intensely white band, edged with green and red, which twists and turns in constant motion. A violet-coloured auroral vapour is often seen simultaneously on different parts of the sky.

“Or again, there has been tempestuous weather, and it is now—let us suppose—passing away. Below on the ice the wind has fallen, but the clouds are still driving rapidly across the sky, so that in the upper regions its force is not yet laid. Over the ice it becomes somewhat clear; behind the clouds appears an aurora amid the darkness of the night. Stars twinkle here and there; through the openings of the clouds we see the dark firmament and the rays of the aurora chasing one another towards the zenith. The heavy clouds disperse; mist-like masses drive on before the wind. Fragments of the northern lights are strewn on every side; it seems, as if the storm had torn the aurora bands to tatters and was driving them hither and thither across the sky. These threads change form and place with incredible rapidity. Here is one! lo, it is gone! scarcely has it vanished before it appears again in another place. Through these fragments drive the waves of light; one moment they are scarcely visible, in the next they shine with intense brilliancy. But their light is no longer that glorious pale green, it is a dull yellow. It is often difficult to distinguish what is aurora and what is vapour—the illuminated mists as they fly past are scarcely distinguishable from the auroral vapour which comes and goes on every side.

“But, again another form. Bands of every possible form and intensity have been driving over the heavens. 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. No pencil can draw it, no colours can paint it, and no words can describe it in all its magnificence. And here below stand we poor men, and speak of knowledge and progress, and pride ourselves on the understanding with which we extort from Nature her mysteries. We stand and gaze on the mystery which Nature has written for us in flaming letters on the dark vault of night, and ultimately we can only wonder and confess that, in truth, we know nothing of it.”

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CHAPTER I. FROM BREMERHAVEN TO TROMSOE.

CHAPTER II. ON THE FROZEN OCEAN.

CHAPTER III. DRIFTING IN THE NOVAYA ZEMLYA SEAS.

CHAPTER IV. THE “TEGETTHOFF” FAST BESET IN THE ICE.

CHAPTER V. OUR FIRST WINTER (1872) IN THE ICE.

CHAPTER VI. LIFE ON BOARD THE “TEGETTHOFF.”

CHAPTER VII. ICE-PRESSURES.

CHAPTER VIII. THE WANE OF THE LONG POLAR NIGHT.

CHAPTER IX. THE RETURN OF LIGHT.—THE SPRING OF 1873.

CHAPTER X. THE SUMMER OF 1873.

CHAPTER XI. NEW LANDS.

CHAPTER XII. THE AUTUMN OF 1873.—THE STRANGE LAND VISITED.

CHAPTER XIII. OUR SECOND WINTER IN THE ICE.

CHAPTER XIV. SUNRISE OF 1874.

CHAPTER XV. THE AURORA.