AUSTRIAN ARCTIC EXPEDITION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4226, 6 October 1874, Page 3

AUSTRIAN ARCTIC EXPEDITION.

It lias been announced by telegraph that the officers of the Austrian Arctic Exploring Ship Tegctthoff have arrived in Norway, over the ice, in sledges, from the Arctic regions. The following information as to the history of LATE GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN ARCTIC EXrXOKATIONS will be read with interest. The writer (in the New York World) says;— The Austrian North Polo Expedition is the child of the German one. Although Germany lias furnished such an unusually strong contingent to the ranks of discoverers, especially in Africa, and on all occasions has shown as lively an interest in all geographical questions as England herself, yet her name had never been associated with the North Pole. Dr. Petermann, of Gotha, for years tried in vain to rouse her ambition to explore the Polar regions, till at length the events of 1860 produced a more lively national feeling, and the first expedition was organised. It consisted of a single ship, the Greenlander, under Captain Boldeway, and left for the Polar Sea in the summer of 1868. It was intended to serve in some sort as a pioneer, and returned in a few months, as originally intended. A greater expedition soon followed, two ships being equipped by the Germans in 1869, to make a voyage of dincovery in the Arctic regions, and, if possible, penetrate to the Pole itself. Their course was to lie along the ice-bound coast of East Greenland, and from there they were to attempt to' reach the North Pole. The Gennania and the Hansa left the Bremen Harbor, June 15, 1869, and nothing was heard of them till in September, 1870, the crew suddenly reappeared. The crew and scientific men of the Hansa returned on board a foreign vessel, in the most miserable plight. They had lost their own ship, suffered a most terrible and disastrous voyage and encountered adventures of all lands. The Germania, however, entered the harbor of Bremen in good condition, richly laden with scientific booty. Two Austrians took part in this expedition— Lieutenant Payer of the Rifles, celebrated for his investigations of glaciers, and Dr. Gustave Laube, Professor at the Prague University—but the credit of the undertaking belonged exclusively to the North Germans. The emulation which the exclusion of Austria from Germany excited between the Germans of both countries made the proposal of Count Wilczek to fit out an Austrian Polar expedition extremely popular, and in a short time the necessary sum for the equipment of the Tegetthoff was raised by private subscriptions. The ship was built on purpose for the voyage, and furnished with every requisite and improvement wliich experience had proved to be of use in fonner expeditions. It went equally well under sail or steam, and the steering apparatus had been most carefully attended to. Three years' provisions were placed on board, and fuel for the same period, which could also be replenished from the floating wood wliich is

found on the coast of Nova Zembla and Siberia. Captain Weyprecht, one of the best officers in the Austrian fleet, and Lieutenant Payer, for the land journeys, were the two commanders. Under them were five other officers and the Norwegian Carlsen, the old experienced steersman among ice-flows, who has been forty times among the Polar ice. The sailors, all Dalmatians from the Austrian fleet, were as good as any in the world. Tall, strong men, exposed in their native wastes of stone to a tropical treat and the terrible icy storms of the Bora, the most violent in the world, and thus inured to all weathers. Wild by nature, they are usually held in discipline by the iron rule of the German officers, but sometimes —as at Lissa, when the grappling irons were used—they exhibit the fury of the tiger, and nothing can resist them then. When at the end of August, 1872, the Norwegian sailors had already put on their muter clothes, the Dalmationa, in the lightest summer dress, amused themselves on the ice, and executed the orders of their captain with the same unconcern as if they had been in the harbor of Pola. The Tegetthoff was to have sailed round Nova Zeinbla, to the east of which a bay free from ice and with warmer water was supposed to lie. Dr. Petermann had advanced, the hypothesis that the Gulf Stream fell into a sea round the North Pole, the water of which was warmed by it, and in no less than thirteen voyages undertaken from 1869 to 1871 facts were observed which seemed to confirm this supposition. From the Carey Sea the Austrians were to sail direct east, and endeavor to reach Cape Chelyuskin, from whence it was thought possible that, by means of the nomadic tribes, they could send letters to Europe through Siberia. There they were to winter, and the following summer were to penetrate as far as possible to the North Pole and return by the Pacific Ocean. During the time that the ship was wintering in Pesimaland or Teimyr, Lieutenant Payer intended to travel north and east in sledges. While the Tegetthoff was being built, Captain Weyprecht and Lietenant Payer undertook a voyage to the Arctic Sea in the little Norwegian vessel the Ibsjoeru, and in the summer of 1871, in the latitude of 78deg. they found open water. The following summer the Tegetthoff put to sea, and somewhat later Captain Wilczek, the father of the expedition, accompanied by Admiral Baron Doublebsky von Sterneck, the geologist Hoefer, Paierl, the well-known guide to the great Glockner, a photographer, and a huntsman, undertook a voyage in the above-named Ibsjoeru, from Tromsoe north, to establish a depot of provisions and coals at so;ne point, if possible eastward, from which the Tegetthoff could draw supplies. PARTING COMPANT —A LAST SIGHT Op""tHB SHIP. On the 20th of June the Ibsjoern left the harbor of Tromsoe and steered for Iceland, the south cape of which came in sight on the 25th. Unfavorable and stormy winds, however, prevented their landing till the 30th, when the Ibsjoeru anchored in Horn Sound. On July 5 the ship left Horn Sound to search for the edge of the ice and so sail through the Arctic Sea east. But all attempts to penetrate north of Hope Island failed on account of the heavy ice masses which blocked up the passage. After going north to a little over 77 deg. they were obliged to return and sail round Hope Island to the western side of it. Petermann's suppositions, founded on former experience, and especially the favorable reports made by Weyprecht in the former year, proved incorrect this season. After struggling with the ice incessantly for fourteen days the coast of Nova Zembla, near Cape Britwin, came in sight. On the following morning the ice had entirely disappeared; the sea, as far as the eye could reach, was free from ice and smooth as glass ; even the ice-blink which had accompanied the expedition during the whole voyage suddenly disappeared. The wind was favorable, and so the mouth of the Matochkin Shar was reached without difficulty on the 29th of July. Here two Norwegian vessels and two Russian schooners were lying at anchor. On the sth of August the Ibsjoern weighed anchor and steered north. Little hope was entertained of falling in with the Tegetthoff, and it was looked upon as a fata morgana when, on the 10th, the man on the look-out announced the undefined and distorted form of a three-masted ship. However, on the following day the Tegetthoff was really to be seen lying fast bound in the ice. The little Ibsjoern succeeded in working its way to her, and on the 12th at noon a joyous meeting took place on board the Tegetthoff. Both ships now steered northwards till the following day, when by the Barent Islands the ice effectually prevented all further advance. Cape Nassau, where the depot was originally to have been placed, was only about 100 miles distant, but, all circumstancees considered, it was resolved to form the depot on one of the Barent Islands. A cleft between two rocky walls discovered on the northernmost island offered an excellent hiding place, and here by the united efforts of both ships, the provisions were safely stowed away. One of the motives which decided Count Wilczek to give up any further advance was the ilness of Paierl, a man, one would have thought, inured to dangers and privations of all sorts ; but the sea-sickness, the strange and powerful impx-essions made upon him by all he saw, the struggles with the ice and the creaking and groaning of the ship produced such an effect upon him that he first became dejected and at last showed symptoms of insanity. It was only when he had crossed the Semmering and once more seen the green mountains of Styria that he was cured of his melancholy. On the 21st of August the low state of the barometer and a tei-rible northwest wind gave the signal for a breakup. After a hearty leave-taking both ships started at noon. The Tegetthoff, under steam, went north-east to round Cape Nassau, if possible, and seek her winter quarters on the east coast of Nova Zembla, the Ibsjoern southwest, along the coast. Shortly after the ships parted a heavy snowstorm came on, in which the Tegetthoff disappeared, and when, later, the weather cleared she was no longer in sight. Thereturnof the Ibsjoern along the west coast of Nova Zembla was accomplished without accident. On the Ist September the Warandoi Islands, at the mouth of the Petchora, were reached, and two Russian pilots came on board, and, in the midst of a violent north-east wind and heavy snow-fall, steered her safely into the river and anchored her off Bolwanskbay. There Count Wilczek, Admiral Sterneck, Professor Hoeler, with the now insane Paierl, left the Ibsjoern, and procuring some little boats through the help of the Russian wood merchant Sidoroff, the Rothschild of North-west Siberia, they continued their journey in them up to the Petchora River and the Tchma, across the watershed between Petchora and the Dwina, through the Kettma, Rama, St. Catherine's Canal and the Wylehegda to Bandjuk, from whence the journey was made by land. From the 21st of August, 1872, no news of the Tegetthof reached Europe until now ; yet, during last summer, several ships were able to sail round the north coast of Nova Zembla and into the Carey Sea.