"south-ice year," as that of 1900 has been for the absence in the Greenland Seas of this indispensable shelter both for the Right Whale and for the breeding Seals. The year first named seems to have been the culminating point of a series of south and east ice years; there had been very little southerly drift, and one vast ice-field extended in the months of April and May from the east point of Iceland in a north-easterly direction to Bear Island, where it made a sharp bend to the E.S.E., extending to within 2½° of the North Cape. When Capt. David Gray in the 'Eclipse' entered the ice, on May 23rd, he had to bore his way through three hundred miles of that obstruction before he reached the "land-water" of Spitzbergen, where the Whales are first looked for. Of course, under these conditions, the east coast of Greenland was utterly unapproachable, and it was equally useless to attempt to penetrate to the then all but unknown Franz Josef Land. Of late years both these regions have been accessible every year, and the latter mysterious archipelago has been repeatedly visited, wintered in, and to a large extent mapped; but in the year 1886 the ice was so heavy in the usual summer fishing-ground off the Greenland coast, that Capt. David Gray, as an alternative, made an attempt to reach the Franz Josef Land waters, hoping to explore that region in search of Right Whales (which subsequent experience has proved do not extend their wanderings so far to the eastward), but was stopped by the impassable ice in 75° N. lat., 36° 44' east longitude. In 1898, so changed was the condition of the ice, that Dr. Nathrost was able to reach White Island, as well as the mysterious Wyche's Island, and performed the feat of circumnavigating the whole of Spitzbergen in a single season; whilst to the westward the east coast of Greenland has been approachable for the last few years. In the past season Prof. Kolthoff was enabled to follow the coast from Cape Broer Ruys to Pendulum Island; and the captain of the Norwegian whaler 'Cecilie Malene' took his vessel as high as 75° 30' N. latitude, a point further north than is positively known to have been previously reached by a ship.[1] Lieut. Amdrup's expedition to the same coast passed through the ice barrier on July 6th, 1900, in lat. 74° 30' N., 30° 58' W. longitude, and from the vessel or by boat
- ↑ Geogr. Journ. Nov, 1900, p. 567.
