“A memorable day,” writes Payer, “was the 31st of August, 1873, in 79° 43´ Lat., and 59° 33´ E. Long. That day brought a surprise, such as only the awakening to a new life can produce. About midday, as we were leaning on the bulwarks of the ship and scanning the gliding mists, through which the rays of the sun broke ever and anon, a wall of mist, lifting itself up suddenly, revealed to us, afar off in the northwest, the outlines of bold rocks, which in a few minutes seemed to grow into a radiant Alpine land! At first we all stood transfixed and hardly believing what we saw. Then, carried away by the reality of our good fortune, we burst forth into shouts of joy—‘Land, land, land at last!’ There was now not a sick man on board the _Tegetthoff_. The news of the discovery spread in an instant. Every one rushed on deck, to convince himself with his own eyes, that the expedition was not after all a failure,—there before us lay the prize that could not be snatched from us. Yet not by our own action, but through the happy caprice of our floe and as in a dream had we won it, but when we thought of the floe, drifting without intermission, we felt with redoubled pain, that we were at the mercy of its movements. As yet we had secured no winter harbour, from which the exploration of the strange land could be successfully undertaken. For the present, too, it was not within the verge of possibility to reach and visit it. If we had left our floe, we should have been cut off and lost. It was only under the influence of the first excitement that we made a rush over our ice-field, although we knew that numberless fissures made it impossible to reach the land. But, difficulties notwithstanding, when we ran to the edge of our floe, we beheld from a ridge of ice the mountains and glaciers of the mysterious land. Its valleys seemed to our fond imagination clothed with green pastures, over which herds of reindeer roamed in undisturbed enjoyment of their liberty, and far from all floes. “For thousands of years this land had lain buried from the knowledge of men, and now its discovery had fallen into the lap of a small band, themselves almost lost to the world, who far from their home remembered the homage due their sovereign, and gave to the newly discovered territory the name Kaiser Franz Josef Land. With loud hurrahs we drank to the health of our Emperor in grog hastily made on deck in an iron coffee-pot, and then dressed the _Tegetthoff_ with flags. All cares, for the present, at least, disappeared, and with them the passive monotony of our lives. There was not a day, there was hardly an hour, in which this mysterious land did not henceforth occupy our thoughts and attention.” In October the vessel drifted within three miles of an island lying off the main mass of land. Lieutenant Payer landed on it, and found it to be in latitude 79° 54´ N. It was named after Count Wilczek, whose deep interest in the expedition had won for him the affection of all.