New lands within the Arctic circle: Narrative of the discoveries of the Austrian ship "Tegetthoff" in the years 1872-1874Payer, Julius
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New lands within the Arctic circle: Narrative of the discoveries of the Austrian ship "Tegetthoff" in the years 1872-1874
Payer, Julius
Admiral Tegetthoff (Ship); Arctic regions; Franz Josef Land (Russia) -- Discovery and exploration
north-east wind.
11. The day after, when the heavy storm-clouds lifted from the table-land
of Cape Look-out, we made the unpleasant discovery, that we were to the
south-west of it. Hitherto we had been sailing in dense fog, but after
passing this Cape we had almost unbroken sunshine, which illuminated
the whole western side of Spitzbergen up to Prince Charles’s foreland.
A current one or two miles wide, which flows southward, turns at Cape
Look-out and flows in a northerly direction. At this Cape, which is the
apex of the current, besides many rocks on which the waves break, there
are twenty islands, some of them of considerable size. This promontory,
which has been of great importance to navigators for more than 200
years, is erroneously represented in the charts I have seen. Many
ships, therefore, have been wrecked at this place, chiefly those of the
Spitzbergen whalers and sealers, who base their sailing on making this
headland, though they are ignorant of its exact geographical position.
Thrice we tried at the beginning of August to reach the Stor-Fiord from
the western side of Cape Look-out, and thrice we were driven back by this
current, though the wind was in our favour. This, however, gave us an
opportunity we had not expected, of seeing something of the west coast
of Spitzbergen with its fiords and glaciers as far as Horn Sound. A fog,
as dense as coal smoke, floats almost always over “Hornsundstind” (4,500
ft. high) and the pyramid of Haytand. The slopes, clothed in dull green,
running down to the coast, make Spitzbergen seem scarcely an Arctic land
when compared with the cold grandeur of Greenland. The rocky shores of
the northern parts of Norway are more dreary, and wear more the aspect
of Arctic regions than Spitzbergen. Hence General Sabine, comparing
Spitzbergen with Greenland, called it “a true paradise.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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