lat., and in the eastern half of it no ice most coast of America, though exposed whatever was met with. The experience to the pressure of the immense pack ice of their last expedition, in 1872, certainly masses from the north impinging upon has been the reverse, as they encoun- these coasts. Captain Kellett with the tered much and dense ice, at least in the Herald, a vessel not intended for icedirection of Cape Nassau, but it would navigation, penetrated in 1849 with ease lead to erroneous conclusions, if it was to 72° 51m. N. lat. into the Polar Sea so not taken into account that the Norwe- much dreaded by Cook and Clerke, disgians at the same time found the west-covered Herald Island, and what is now ern half of that sea quite free from ice.

I am not going to make any remark upon the late Austrian expedition, as its results and observations are not yet sufficiently before us; but I am authorized by a letter of Lieutenant Weyprecht, the nautical commander, dated November 1, to state that, before he has published his extensive observations, he warns against all premature conclusions, and concludes the letter, which I shall publish in the next part of the Mittheilungen, and in which he expresses his own views on the Arctic question for the first time, with the sentence, "that he considers the route through the Siberian Sea as far as Bering Strait as practicable as before, and would readily take the command of another expedition in the same direction."

I believe myself that the navigability of the seas to the north of Nowaya Zemlya can as little be called in question by this one drift of the Austrian expedition, as the navigability of Baffin's Bay by the drifts of De Haven, McClintock, and the crew of the Polaris. These drifts by no means prevent others from penetrating the same seas.

called by some Wrangel Land, and found the ice not at all so formidable as supposed previously.* Passing over the similar experience of Collinson, McClure, Rodgers and others, we come to the time when the Americans established a highly profitable whale-fishery in seas considered entirely useless by Cook and Clerke, gaining as much as eight millions of dollars in two years. It was in one of these years that a shipmaster went as far as 74° N. lat. nearly due north of Herald Island, and saw peaks and mountain ranges far to the northward of his position. Another, Captain Long, went a considerable distance along the Siberian coast to the west, and did more in a few days with a sailing-vessel than Admiral Wrangel had been able to accomplish with sledges in winter, in the course of four years, in the same region. In a letter dated Honolulu, January 15, 1868, he says: "That the passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean will be accomplished by one of the routes I have indicated, I have as much faith in as I have in any uncertain event of the future, and much more than I had fifteen years ago in the success of the Atlantic telegraph. And here I may be allowed to refer in Although this route will be of no great a few words to the other end of this route, importance to commerce as a transit from the seas north of Bering Strait. Captain one ocean to the other, yet could the pasCook, in 1778, and his second in com-sage along the coast as far as the mouth of mand, Captain Clerke in 1779, thought they had reached the extreme limit of navigation by attaining Icy Cape (in 70 1-20 N. lat.) on the American, and North Cape (in 69° N. lat.) on the Asiatic side, and they considered further attempts there as madness as well as to any practical purpose useless. Captain Beechey, however, with his lieutenant, the present Admiral Sir Edward Belcher, penetrated already in 1826 as far as Point Barrow, and expressed the result of his experience in the weighty sentence: "I have always been of opinion that a navigation may be performed along any coast of the Polar Sea that is continuous.” * And true enough, many a follower has sailed along the whole of the northern

Beechey, Voyage, vol. ii. p. 297.

the Lena be successfully made every year (which I think probable), it would be of great benefit in developing the resources of Northern Siberia." †

To the north-east of Spitzbergen also an interesting cruise was recently made by Mr. Leigh Smith, who in 1871, with only a sailing-schooner of 85 tons, reached as far as 27° 25m. E. of Gr. in 80° 27m. N. lat., four degrees of longitude farther than any authenticated and observing navigator before him. At this point he had before him to the east, consequently in the direction of the newly-discovered Franz Joseph Land, nothing but open water on September 6, 1871, as far as the eye could reach.

Proceedings R. G. S., xii. p. 99. † Nautical Magazine, 1868, p. 242.

That land would be found in the locality where the Austrian expedition actually found it, I have long predicted. Gillis Land, after Keulen's map generally considered to be situated in 80° N. lat., 30° E. long., by the Swedish explorers erroneously put down in 79° N. lat., I have from the original text concluded to be in 81 1-2o N. lat. and 37° E. long. Gr. This approaches to within eighty nautical miles of Franz Joseph Land, which was sighted westward as far as 46° E. long., but in this longitude there was not as yet any limit of the land. The flight of immense numbers of brent geese and other birds in the same direction has long been observed by various voyagers, and it has also been noticed that not only migrations of birds, but also of mammals, take the same direction; the Norwegian fishermen on the north of Spitzbergen have repeatedly caught immense numbers of walrus and ice-bears at the Seven Islands, and especially on their north-eastern side, whereas at Spitzbergen the walrus is now very scarce, and the ice-bear almost extinct.

has been found more trustworthy and correct than all the Russian maps and pilots put together. Even the identical winter hut of that great Dutch navigator, nearly 300 years old, was found by the Norwegian Captain Carlsen on September 9, 1871, and many interesting relics brought home by him, so that the truth and correctness of those famous old Dutch voyages has been proved beyond all doubt. In like manner, Baffin's voyage to within sight of the western shores of Franz Joseph Land may be considered trustworthy until some substantial proof of the contrary is brought forward. Nay, it even appears to me that the report given of another remarkable voyage of a Dutch navigator, Cornelis Roule, merits attention, and is to be considered in the same way as Baffin's and Barents', so that if it be as true as the voyages of these navigators, it may yet be found that Franz Joseph Land was already discovered, and sailed through up to 74 1-2° or 75° N. lat. nearly 300 years ago. This report runs thus: "I am informed with certainty that Captain Cornelis Roule has been in 84 1-2° or 85° N. lat. in the longitude of Nowaya Zemlya, and has sailed about 40 miles between broken land, seeing large open water behind it. He went on shore with his boat, and, from a hill, it appeared to him that he could go three days more to the north. He found lots of birds there, and very tame." * Now the mean longitude of Nowaya Zemlya is 60° E. Gr., and passes right through Austria Sound and Franz Joseph Land; the latter is a "broken land" also, behind which Lieutenant Payer saw "large open water" and found "lots of birds"!

I consider it also highly probable that that great Arctic pioneer and navigator, William Baffin, may have seen the western shores of Franz Joseph Land as long ago as 1614, for in that year he proceeded to 81° N. lat., and thought he saw land as far as 82° to the north-east of Spitzbergen, which is accordingly marked in one of Purchas' maps.* It is true the account of this voyage is very meagre, and so is the account of his voyage and still greater discovery of Baffin's Bay, two years after, which Sir John Barrow calls "the most vague, indefinite, and unsatisfactory," and in his map leaves out Baffin's Bay altogether, and this, be it observed, in the year 1818. Barrington and Beaufoy, though inserting Baffin's discoveries in their map dated March 1, 1818, describe them in the following words: "Baffin's Bay, according to the relation of W. Baffin in 1616, but not now be- There is, however, no doubt that the lieved!" With Barents' important voy-northern coast of Spitzbergen lies just in ages and discoveries it is exactly the the teeth of one of the most formidable ice-currents, and one that, summer and winter, is sweeping its ice-masses directly towards these coasts. If, therefore, an English expedition should take

same.

The Russians, who only navigated as far as Cape Nassau, also tried to erase Barents' discoveries from the map, and cut off the north-eastern part of Nowaya Zemlya altogether. But old Barents

Barrington and Beaufoy, pp. 40, 41.

↑ Barrow, Chronological History, p. 216 and map. This was actually attempted by a pilot of the "Russian Imperial Marine," and found its way also into vol. viii. of the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, p. 411, where the map is spoken of as "showing the actual outline of its coasts, as traced by

Be this as it may, we now come to Sir Edward Parry's voyage north of Spitzbergen, regarding which it is an undoubted fact that he reached 82° 45m. N. lat., the furthest well-authenticated point yet reached by any navigator, and a feat unsurpassed to this day.

the pilot Ziwolka, from the latest examinations, by which it will be seen that more than the eastern half represented on our maps has no existence in reality"!

Wilsen N. & O. Tartarye, folio 1707, 2 edit. p. 920. See also Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, ix. p. 178.

Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xii. p. 197.

Spitzbergen as a base to start from, it Thus there is always the means of pushwould require two vessels, one of which ing to the northward, by keeping to the ought to go up the west coast, the other land-ice and watching favourable openup the east coast; for when northerlyings." and westerly winds prevail, the first ves- And quite recently, in communicating sel would probably be hampered by ice, the result of his experience in the presand the second vessel find it navigible up ent year, he writes: "During the past the east coast, and if easterly and south-season I had too many opportunities of erly winds prevail, the reverse would be observing the drift of the ice. In May, the case. June, July and August its average drift was fully fourteen miles a day, in March and April it must have been driving double that rate. I calculate that nearly the whole of the ice was driven out of the Arctic Basin last summer. I went north to 79° 45m. in August and found the ice

floes were lying whole in the sea, clearly showing that the ice in 80° must have been broken up by a swell from the north; beyond the pack to the north, which I could see over, there was a dark water-sky reaching north until lost in the distance without a particle of ice to be seen in it. I was convinced at the time, and so was my brother, that we could have gone up to the Pole, or at any rate far beyond where any one had ever been before. I bitterly repent that I did not sacrifice my chance of finding whale, and make the attempt, although my coals and provisions were wearing down. Although I have never advocated an attempt being made to reach the Pole by Spitzbergen,

It is by way of Smith Sound, however, that navigation has hitherto been pushed furthest, and here an English expedition, so long projected, may well operate. At the same time the east coast of Greenland seems still worthy of attention. The second German expedition did not pro-all broken up, whereas down in 77° the ceed far to the north, it is true, but it was easy enough to reach the coast, and Lieutenant Payer told me, this was merely something like a "cab's drive." Captain Gray, of Peterhead, a most experienced Arctic navigator, wrote already in 1868, thus: "Having for many years pursued the whale-fishery on the east coast of Greenland, and observed the tides, the set of currents, and the state of the ice in that locality at various seasons of the year, I think that little, if any, difficulty would be experienced in carrying a vessel in a single season to a very high latitude, if not to the Pole itself, by taking the ice at about the latitude of 75°, where generally exists a deep bight, sometimes running in a north-west direc-knowing well the difficulties that would tion upwards of 100 miles towards Shannon Island, from thence following the continent of Greenland as long as it was found to tend in the desired direction, and afterwards pushing northwards through the loose fields of ice, which I shall show may be expected to be found in that locality. The following are the reasons on which that opinion is founded: In prosecuting the whale-fishery in the vicinity of Shannon Island, there are generally found loose fields of ice, with a considerable amount of open water, and a dark water-sky along the land to the northward; the land-water sometimes extending for at least fifty miles to the If this important information should be eastward; and, in seasons when south-considered worthy the attention of the west winds prevail, the ice opens up very British geographers and the Admiralty, fast from the land in that latitude. The there would, perhaps, be two steamers ice on the east coast of Greenland is sent out to make success doubly certain, what is termed field or floe ice, the exone to proceed up the west coast of tent of which varies with the nature of Greenland by way of Smith Sound, the the season, but it is always in motion, other up the east coast of Greenland. even in winter, as is proved by the fact that ships beset as far north as 78° have driven down during the autumn and winter as far south as Cape Farewell.

have to be encountered, my ideas are now changed from what I saw last voyage. I am now convinced that a great advance towards the Pole could occasionally be made without much trouble or risk by Spitzbergen, and some of our amateur navigators will be sure to do it and pluck the honour from the Royal Navy. I do not know if the Eclipse will be sent to the Greenland whale-fishery next year; if I go I shall be able to satisfy myself more thoroughly as to the clearing out of the ice this year, because it will necessarily be of a much lighter character than usual." *

But whatever may be decided on, I

*Letter of Capt. David Gray to Mr. Leigh Smith dated Peterhead, September 21, 1874.

GUIZOT.

From Temple Bar.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "MIRABEAU," ETC.

In

trust that the British government will no longer hold back from granting what all geographers and all the scientific corporations of England have been begging for these ten long years, and afford the ANOTHER, and one of the last links means for a new effective expedition to which bind the modern world of France crown these our modest endeavours, of to the ancien régime has snapped; a little which I have given an outline. We in while and all will be broken, and a bridgeGermany and Austria have done our less gulf will divide that past from this duty, and I am happy to have lived to see present. Born when Louis the Sixthat our humble endeavours, the work of teenth was king, Guizot had sad cause to our Arctic explorers, have gained your remember the horrors of the Reign of approbation, that of the Royal Geograph- Terror; when the Empire was declared ical Society of Great Britain. We have he was on the verge of manhood, when done all we could in the private manner Waterloo was fought he was twenty-eight we had to do it, for as a nation we Ger- years of age; under the Restoration he mans are only now beginning to turn our mingled with the intimates of Rousseau attention to nautical matters. We have and Voltaire and some of the beaux esprits had no vessels, no means, and our govof the Court of Louis the Fifteenth. ernment has had to fight three great 1830 he again saw the Bourbon crown wars in the last ten years. But, never- cast into the mire seemingly to lie theless, we have had in this interval Ger- there; in 1848 he beheld the fall of the man, Austrian, American, Swedish, Nor-short-lived Orléans dynasty; at sixtywegian, and Russian Polar expeditions, three he was watching the rise of the in which even an Italian officer took part at the instance of the Italian government. And England, formerly always taking the lead in these matters, is almost the only maritime power that has kept aloof. When nearly thirty years ago one man of science proposed that magnetical observations should be extended, it was at once answered by the government then by sending out to the Antarctic regions an expedition of two vessels, the Erebus and Terror, under that great navigator Sir James Clarke Ross, which has never yet been eclipsed as to the importance of its results and the lustre it shed on the British navy. I do not know the views held in England now, but I know that to us outsiders the achievements and work of a man like Sir James Clarke Ross or Livingstone have done more for the prestige of Great Britain thad a march to Cumassi, that cost nine millions of pounds sterling. That great explorer, Livingstone, is no more, his work is going to be continued and finished by German and American explorers; we shall also certainly not let the Arctic work rest till it is fully accomplished, but it surely behooves Great Britain now to step in and once

to take the lead.

more

I have the honour to be, Sir, your very obedient humble servant,

AUGUSTUS PETERMANN.

Honorary Corresponding Member and Gold-Medallist
of the Royal Geographical Society.
Gotha, November 7, 1874.

of years passed away and he was still Second Empire; more than another score watching; but during that time the Empire had disappeared, its founder's bones were mouldering in a foreign land, and France, the all-mighty, all-conquering power of his youth, lay crushed and mangled beneath the feet of the once half-despised Prussians.

Thus he witnessed

four revolutions, lived under three republics, four monarchs, and two emperors. The social and scientific revolutions contained within the span of his life were yet more marvellous; he was a man of mature years before a bar of iron had been laid for a railroad, and now the whole civilized world is overlaid with them; before a wire of the electric telegraph had been stretched, and now the earth is encircled, the depths of the ocean traversed, by them. The whole art of war, on sea and land, has been the great armies of his youth have berevolutionized, and the lethal weapons of come as puny and inefficient as the rude arms of a tribe of savages. The contemplation of an experience so vast, concentrated within one memory, is awe-inspiring

scended from an ancient and aristocratic François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, deat Nimes on the 4th of October, 1787. family of the south of France, was born His parents were Protestants; his father was an advocate, his mother the daughter of a Huguenot pastor. To be a Protestant in those days was to be a being without the pale of the law; marriages

turn to journalism. So he became a contributor to the Publiciste, the Archives Littéraires, the Gazette de France, Le Mercure; and he wrote a tragedy, which he was too sensible to publish. Fancy

celebrated by a Protestant minister were illegal, to worship God according to the rites of that faith was a crime, and had to be done in secret, in woods and desert places, and those detected in the act were hunted and shot down like vermin. Two a tragedy by Guizot! He did write months after Francois' birth Louis the Six- something in the shape of a sentimental teenth annulled those cruel edicts. All story, "L'Amour en Mariage," in which Protestants very naturally threw them- love becomes a philosophical theory. selves heart and soul into the first movement of the Revolution, père Guizot with the rest; but all good men of every faith drew back from its excesses, he again among the rest; and so the Terror guillotined him at twenty-seven years of age, on the very day that Danton was arrested. The boy was only seven years old at the time, but a grave, thoughtful child, impressionable as wax to outward influences, and the horror of that time sank deep into his memory.

It was not until 1808 that he applied himself exclusively to historical studies. Of a devout turn of mind, he took an eager interest in minutely tracing the rise of Christianity; this it was which first turned his attention to the exhaustive study of history and to the pages of the great German writers, in which that period is so profoundly treated. Yet, notwithstanding the high value in which he held their erudition, he never failed, proof of his patient and laborious intelMadame Guizot was a noble and de- lect, to test the accuracy of their facts voted woman. Henceforth her life was and deductions by the consultation of the consecrated to her son and to the mem-original authorities. About the same ory of her dead husband. On the night time he undertook and accomplished the before his execution he wrote her a fare-gigantic task of translating Gibbon's well letter; the next day she enclosed it" Decline and Fall" into French. He was in a little case and placed it over her already regarded as a rising genius, and heart; it never left that resting-place, was, even at this early period of his and there never came a time that the career, received in the most exclusive fountain of her tears was dried up. salons. France, delivered up to madness, murder and atheism, was no place for this pious mother to rear her child in, and so she took him to Geneva.

After a long life of fierce contention, I recall with pleasure the remembrance of that enchanting society," he writes in his memoirs. Talleyrand said that those And there the grave, thoughtful child, who had not mingled in society previous whose recreation was sought in the pages to 1789 knew not what it was to live; of Tacitus and Homer instead of in the and, regarded from his point of view of — games of his age, developed into a grave, what it was to live, the saying was scarcely sedate youth, intensely studious, very an exaggeration. The world will never unlike a Frenchman and very like a Gen-again know any approximation to the evese. His aptitude in acquiring lan-pre-revolutionary society of France; and guages was particularly remarkable, and most people will add that the world has at the age of fifteen he had mastered much to be thankful for. Brilliance and German, Italian, and English, besides the wit were the least remarkable features of classic tongues. In 1805 he returned to the salons of the eighteenth century, Paris for the purpose of studying juris-repose and refinement were their unique prudence, a ripe scholar, poor, proud, characteristics. I do not use the latter and ambitious. His necessities com- word in its ordinary acceptation, but as pelled him to accept the post of tutor to the children of M. Stapfer, the minister of the Helvetic Confederation. It was for the use of these pupils he composed his "Dictionary of Synonyms," a valuable and erudite work.

At the end of a twelvemonth he threw up this appointment in disgust; he felt that François Guizot was born to be something better than a bear leader to cubs, and in the meantime he had been introduced to M. Suard, the secretary of the Institute, who counselled him to

descriptive of a condition of unruffled smoothness, devoid of all rude and jarring elements. There never will be again such elegant, such polished, such heartless ladies and gentlemen as those of the ancien régime; bore was a genus unknown amongst them, the race of monomaniacal reformers and of people of strong convictions was unborn. Every subject from the atomic theory to the fashion of a shoe-buckle was discussed with equal serenity; authors, politicians, churchmen, philosophers, beaux, belles,