Captain Koldewey was convinced, by the results of his exploration, that there is no continuous channel northwards along the eastern coast of Greenland. It does not seem to me that his expedition proved this beyond all possibility of question. Still, it seems clear that the eastern side of the North Atlantic is less suited than the western for the attempt to reach the North Pole. The prevailing ocean-currents are southerly on that side, just as they are northerly on the western side. The cold also is greater, the lines of equal temperature lying almost exactly in the direction of the channel itself—that is, nearly north and south—and the cold increasing athwart that direction, towards the west. The nearer to Greenland the greater is the cold.[22]
The next route to be considered in order of time would be the American route; but I prefer to leave this to the last, as the latest results relate to that route. I take next, therefore, a route which some regard as the most promising of all—that, namely, which passes between Spitzbergen and the Scandinavian peninsula.
It will be remembered that Lieutenant Payer, of the Austrian navy, had accompanied Captain Koldewey’s first expedition. When driven back from the attempt to advance along the eastern shores of Greenland, that commander crossed over to Spitzbergen, and tried to find the Land of Gilles. He also accompanied Koldewey’s later expedition, and shared his belief that there is no continuous channel northwards on the western side of the North Atlantic channel. Believing still, however, with Dr. Petermann, the geographer, that there is an open Polar sea beyond the ice-barrier, Payer set out in 1871, in company with Weyprecht, towards the Land of Gilles. They did not find this mysterious land, but succeeded in passing 150 miles further north, after rounding the south-eastern shores of Spitzbergen, than any Arctic voyagers who had before penetrated into the region lying between Spitzbergen and Novaia Zemlia. Here they found, beyond the 76th parallel, and between 42° and 60° east longitude, an open sea, and a temperature of between 5° and 7° above the freezing-point. Unfortunately, they had not enough provisions with them to be able safely to travel further north, and were thus compelled to return. The season seems to have been an unusually open one; and it is much to be regretted that the expedition was not better supplied with provisions—a defect which appears to be not uncommon with German expeditions.