There were now no fewer than thirty-six cases of scurvy on the _Alert_ alone, and Nares decided to return as soon as he could break out of winter quarters. He was released at the end of July, and in October both ships reached England in safety, after a remarkably successful voyage, in which great tracts of entirely new country had been opened up. CHAPTER XXIV THE GREELY TRAGEDY Valuable as were the immediate results of Lieutenant Charles Weyprecht’s voyage in the _Tegetthoff_, its indirect results were greater still, for he came back from his adventurous journey full of plans for revolutionising the manner in which Arctic exploration had been conducted. Up to that time each nation or each group of individuals had gone on its own way, practically regardless of the scientific or geographic work of the others, and there had been no attempt to solve the mysteries of the Arctic regions by concerted action. In an address delivered before the German Scientific and Medical Association of Gratz in 1875, however, Weyprecht suggested that the chief of the nations engaged in Arctic research should establish a number of stations round the Pole, whereat a series of simultaneous observations should be made. As a result of this address, Bismarck appointed a commission of leading men of science to consider Weyprecht’s proposal, and this commission came to the conclusion that the work would be of the greatest value, and that the united action of several nations was essential to its success. Out of these beginnings gradually grew the International Circumpolar Conference of 1879. Its first meeting, which was held at Hamburg, was principally devoted to the discussion of business, and eleven nations promised their support. The second conference, which met at Berne in August 1880, decided definitely on the plan of action to be employed, and adopted a scheme of observations, obligatory and optional, for use at the fifteen stations which it was proposed to establish. Of the fifteen stations ultimately established, Denmark, Germany, Russia and the United States occupied two each, while Austria-Hungary, Finland, France, Great Britain, Holland, Norway and Sweden established one each. In addition, thirty-four permanent observatories promised their co-operation, with the result that during several succeeding years important observations were being simultaneously conducted by competent men of science at forty-nine different stations, all of them either actually in or in the immediate neighbourhood of the Polar regions.