r sea, yet that the ocean is not always covered with ice. There is
a medium which a favourable year would improve, and render navigation,
near the shore, possible. Having deposited a record of the visit, the
party returned over the hundred and sixty miles they had come.

One more little journey was made, and then the thoughts of the officers
and men turned to home. On the 20th of May the ship's colours were
nailed to the mast, and the retreat was commenced. Provisions were
packed in boats, the boats placed on sleighs, but little progress was
made at first as all hands were required for each sleigh in turn. _Two
months_ were occupied in making a distance of _eight miles_--and a third
winter in the ice seemed probable.

At last, in July, they made a mile a day. In August they reached the
edge of the pack, when the sleighs were abandoned, and the dogs killed,
as no room could be spared. The boats then crossed open water to Novaya
Zemlya, and at the end of three months from leaving the ship sighted a
Russian vessel. The _Nickolai_ brought them to Vardoe in Norway, where
the voyagers landed in September, 1874.

The success of the expedition was unquestionable, for land was
discovered two hundred miles north of Nova Zemlya. The success of the
sleighing is due to Sir L. McClintock's advice.

[The _Tegethoff_ we see drifted _north_--other vessels we have read of
drifted _south_. Does not that indicate a simultaneous movement of ice
around the Pole on both sides? The American side going south as the
ice-floe on the Asiatic side ascends--as glaciers in Switzerland which
are connected, advance and recede in turn. This idea would go to prove
that no open sea exists there; the ice covers the whole of the Polar
Ocean, and moves north and south correspondingly. This is, however,
only speculation, but as the _Tegethoff_ is said to have been drifted by
the wind, which must have been southerly, and therefore northerly on the
other side, the fact will not militate against the idea above
suggested.]

The Austro-Hungarian Expedition did not succeed in discovering the
North-East Passage. We will now turn to the great Nordenskiold, who did
succeed.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

THE VOYAGES OF ERIK NORDENSKIOLD--1870-1878.

Expeditions to the North--To Spitzbergen and the Yenissei--The Discovery
of the North-East Passage.

Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiold was born at Helsingfors, Finland, in
November, 1832. His father was a