PREFAC E.

THE work, of which the present is a translation, was drawn up in the German language by M. Engelhardt, from the journals and papers of M. Wrangell, and of the other officers of the expedition, placed in his hands for that purpose, and was pub. lished at Berlin in July, 1839, under the editorial care of Professor Ritter, with the sanction of M. Wrangell, who himself communicated the map which accompanied the publication. Notices had been previously given by Professor Parrot in regard to some of the physical observations which were made in the course of the expedition, but no general account of its proceedings appeared until this of 1839, either in the Russian or any other language.

The German orthography of the proper names has been generally retained. Great part of the names being new, and their pronunciation only known approximately through the medium of a representation by German letters, it did not appear that any adequate advantage would have been gained by an attempt to substitute letters with English values, involving, as it must necessarily have done, an additional degree of uncertainty. The temperatures have been changed from Réaumur to Fahrenheit's scale. Distances, weights, and prices have been preserved in the original expressions, in wersts, poods, and roubles. The

dates are in the "old style," which is still in use in Russia, and twelve days are to be added, to give the corresponding dates in the style adopted by other European nations; thus Newyear's day in this volume is our 13th of January, and so forth.

The facts and circumstances made known by an expedition which was engaged during three years in geographical researches, extending over fifty degrees of longitude of the coasts of the Polar Sea, must in many instances bear, by a close analo. gy, on reasonings connected with the yet unexplored portion of the Artic Circle; and they do so particularly in respect to that part which has been, and still continues to be, the theatre of Brit. ish enterprise.

There is a striking resemblance in the configu ration of the northern coasts of the continents of Asia and America for several hundred miles on either side of Behring's Straits: the general direction of the coast is the same on both continents, the latitude is nearly the same, and each has its attendant group of islands to the north; the Asiatic continent, those usually known as the New-Siberi. an Islands, and the American, those called by Sir Edward Parry the North Georgian Group, and since fitly named, from their discoverer, the Parry Islands. The resemblance includes the islands also, both in general character and in latitude.

With so decided a similarity in the configuration and position of the land and sea, it is reasonable to expect that there should be a corresponding resemblance in the state and circumstances of the ice by which the navigation of the ocean may be affected.

PREFACE.

In perusing M. Wrangell's description of that portion of the sea which is comprised between the Asiatic Continent and the New-Siberian Islands, those who have had personal experience of the corresponding portion of the sea on the American side, namely, of the portion included between the continent and the Parry Islands, must at once recognise the close resemblance which the ice described by M. Wrangell bears to that which fell under their own observation. In both cases, in summer, a narrow strip of open water exists between the shore and the ice, admitting of the occasional passage of a vessel from point to point, subject to frequent interruptions from the closing of the ice on the land by certain winds, and from difculties at projecting capes and headlands. The main body of the ice by which the sea is covered is at that season broken into fields and floes of various extent and size, with lanes of open water between them; and in this state they remain till the first frost of autumn, when the whole is cemented into a firm and connected mass, and remains so during the winter.

The thickness of ice formed in a single season M. Wrangell states to be about nine and a half feet; that, if prevented from drifting away during the summer, a second season will add about five feet; and a third season, doubtless, somewhat more. The fields of ice which have been met with by the British expeditions in parts of the sea which are known to be cleared every year (in Baffin's Bay and Hudson's Straits, for example, and to the north and west of Spitzbergen), have usually been from nine to ten feet thick; but I well remember

the surprise excited in the expedition which penetrated to Melville Island, at the extraordinary and unprecedented thickness of the field-ice which they encountered after passing Barrow Strait, and entering, for the first time, the portion of the sea comprised between the continent and the islands north of it; evidencing that on that portion of the sea the icy covering remains for successive years. The general thickness was more than double that of the formation of a single year.

All the attempts to effect a northwest passage since Barrow Strait was first passed in 1819, have consisted in endeavouring to force a vessel, by one route or another, through this land-locked and iceencumbered portion of the Polar Ocean. No examination has made known what may be the state of the sea to the north of the Parry Islands; whether similar impediments there present themselves to navigation, or whether a sea may not there exist, offering no difficulties whatsoever of the kind, as M. Wrangell has shown to be the case to the north of the Siberian Islands, and as by strict nalogy we should be justified in expecting, unless, indeed, there should be other land to the north of the Parry group, making that portion of the ocean also a land-locked sea.

The expeditions of MM. Wrangell and Anjou were undertaken on the presumption of the continuance to the north (in the winter and spring at least) of the natural bridge of ice by which the islands are accessible from the continent; but every attempt which they made to proceed to the north, repeated as these were during three years, and from many different points of a line extending for

several hundred miles in an east and west direction, terminated alike in conducting them to an open and navigable sea.

Setting aside, then, the possibility of the existence of an unknown land, the probability of an open sea existing to the north of the Parry Islands, and communicating with Behring's Straits, appears to rest on strict analogical reasoning. The distance of either group to Behring's Straits is nearly the same.

It can scarcely be doubted, therefore, that by calling again into action the energy and the other admirable qualities which have been fostered and displayed in the Arctic voyages, and by persevering through a succession of seasons, a vessel might be forced from the Atlantic to the Pacific through that confined and encumbered portion of the sea in which all the recent attempts have been made.