22. Storms compelled us to keep to sea. As a current constantly set us to the north-east, we found it not possible to land on Novaya Zemlya, scarcely even to see it. On the night of September 12th we came into the region where the equatorial and Polar air-currents meet, and had an opportunity of observing the hurricane-like effects of their conjunction. The barometer fell about two inches, and the sea was so broken that the ship could hardly be steered, even with a fresh wind. On September 14th we were off Matoschkin Schar, and could not anchor, a snow-storm from the north-east completely hiding the coast. The change, which meantime had taken place in the sky, was strange and remarkable. Heavy thunder-clouds lay over our heads, just as they do in the region of the trade-winds, and every moment threatened to discharge themselves. On the 13th of September we saw the first Aurora, in the shape of an arch, passing through, our zenith. The want of fuel and water, from which we began to suffer, and the end of the season for navigation, compelled us to avail ourselves of the favourable wind which had set in, and begin our voyage home, without landing on Novaya Zemlya. On this same day three of our crew of seven men fell ill, one of them with scurvy. A heavy storm from the north-east compelling us to heave to, we lay close under the coast of Lapland for a whole day. On the 20th of September we ran into Tana Fiord on the east of North Cape, the most northerly point of Europe, and took in water. The gloomy cliffs of Tanahorn and the rocky iron-bound coasts were not at all behind the lands we had left in their terrible desolation. On the 24th of August the _Isbjörn_ passed North Cape; on the 4th of October she anchored in Tromsoe. Weyprecht had remained on board while, with a Lapland sailor who could speak Norwegian, I left the ship in Tana Fiord and went on to Tromsoe through Lapland, sometimes by means of a small boat on the shallow rivers and sometimes by means of reindeer sledges. 23. It had formed no part of our plan, either to make discoveries, or to reach high latitudes. Our object was to investigate whether the Novaya Zemlya seas offered greater facilities, either from the influence of the Gulf Stream, or from any other causes, for penetrating the unexplored Polar regions. Many arguments, derived from the scientific results of our voyage, would seem to favour this idea, and in contradiction to the discouraging views of our predecessors, whose failures are explained by their defective equipment and the choice of the most unfavourable season for navigation, we ventured to draw the following inferences: