GERMAN POLAR EXPEDITION.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1128, 9 March 1872, Page 3

GERMAN POLAR EXPEDITION.

* "The Geographical and Statistical Society of Frankfort/ says the Pall Mall Gazette, "has received an interesting report from Lieutenant Payer, one of the commanders of the German Polar Expedition, dated 'On board the Harold Haarfagr, off the Norwegian coast, 9th October. 1 Lieutenant Payer says that his is a preliminary expedition only, for investigating the sea Wween Spitsbergen >*nd Nova Zembla, and that a larger expedition will follow it next year.. He considers that ' the discovery of an extensive open Polar sea instead of a region supposed to be utterly impracticable for navigation— into which the Russians, Swedes, and the German expedition of 1868 vainly attempted to penetrate— is a result which is calculated to give quite a different aspect to the Polar question, and a new and very promising basis for reaching the Pole. . . . As the Karian Sea has also been found by the Norwegian skippers Simonsen, Mattisen, &c., to be totally free from ice, and Herr Simonsen { has not been able to discover ice even in the vicinity of the White Island, the practicability of passing in autumn from the Nova Zemblan sea to the Polynia in the north of Siberia is as good as proved. An enormous ice region thus disappera from oar maps.' He answers the question how it was that his expedition arrived at such totally different results from all former expeditions as follows:— ' The solution of this • problem lies in the fact that nearly all the other expeditions|arrived in the region too early and left it too late ; for the period of favorable navigation is the autumn. Moreover, all these expeditions went too near the coast of Nova Zembla or Spitsbergen, while the most practicable part of the Nova Zemblan sea for proceeding north seems to be between the 40th and 42nd degrees of longitude. By passing in this direction we easily reached the 79th degree of north latitude, and nothing but the want of provisions prevented us from going even farther to the north. The most probable cause of the extraordinary absence of ice in the Nova Zemblan sea daring the autumn (no such phenomenon is observable pn the coast of Greenland) is the Gulf Stream In September the temperature of the water in that sea is from 3deg. to 6deg. centigrade higher than that of the air ; the stream on the coast has a north-easterly direction, and the sea swarms with animal life, and has the same ultramarine-blue color as has been observed in the Gulf Stream. It would seem that at the beginning of autumn the Gulf Stream leaves the coast ofNova "Zerobla, and either proceeds more to the west, or spreads itself over a larger region. This layer of warm water is of variable depth, and its current loses in force as it proceeds northwards. From an industrial point of view, it is worth remarking that the Nova Zemblan Sea, which has hitherto never been navigated, is enormously rich in whales."