Or still more dread is thy sound—Oh say- Unknown and unguess'd may thy secrets be!' We consider this as much a psychological curiosity as an elder poet's well-known dream of Kubla Khan. ART. IV.-Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea, in the Years 1820-21-22-23. Commanded by Lieutenant, now Admiral, Ferdinand von Wrangell, of the Russian Imperial Navy. Edited by Major Edward Sabine, R. A., F.R.S. London. 8vo. 1840. IN N our review of Sir E. Parry's narrative of an attempt to reach the North Pole, in 1827 (No. LXXIV.), we observed,— "The "attempt" which is here described, though unsuccessful, is of so bold and daring a character, that it will stand as a record, to the latest posterity, of the patient, persevering, energetic, and undaunted conduct which British seamen are capable of displaying, in the most difficult, discouraging, and dangerous circumstances, when under the command of prudent and intelligent officers in whom they have entire confidence.' Substituting the word Russian' for British,' the whole of this sentence may justly be applied to Baron von Wrangell and his small party of seamen. We are no strangers to the enterprising character, or to the spirited exertions, of Von Wrangell; they have been occasionally glanced at by us long before the appearance of the present volume, which, late as it comes forth, at least in its present shape, we hail with peculiar pleasure for many reasons, but chiefly on account of the strong resemblance between the baron's labours along the Siberian coast of the Polar Sea, and those of Franklin, Richardson, Back, Dease and Simpson, on the American coast of the same sea; we may also add, of the striking similarity between Parry's attempt to reach the north pole, and the three or four attempts of the baron on the ice of the same sea, though with different objects; that of the latter being to ascertain the existence, or otherwise, of a supposed continent or large island far to the north. Lastly, we are pleased to find that our sentiments accord with those opinions so well expressed by Major Sabine, in his preface to the work: 'Whether we view M. von Wrangell's narrative as an authentic account account of a portion of the globe and of its inhabitants, hitherto but very imperfectly known;-or as a personal relation of difficulties encountered and privations borne in a spirit which England cherishes in its own officers, and is not slow to value in others;-or finally, as an essential portion of the history of ARCTIC DISCOVERY, in which our own country has taken so prominent a part;-in each, and in all of these respects, it has a claim on the attention and interest of British readers. 'The facts and circumstances made known by an expedition which was engaged during three years in geographical researches, extending over fifty degrees of longitude of the coasts of the Polar Sea, must in many instances bear, by a close analogy, on reasonings connected with the yet unexplored portion of the arctic circle: and they do so particularly in respect to that part, which has been, and still continues to be, the theatre of British enterprise.'-Pref. pp. iv. v. We may premise that the account was drawn up in the German language by M. Engelhardt, from the journals and papers of M. von Wrangell and the other officers of the expedition, and published last year in Berlin. The present translation is highly creditable to a fair lady, the wife of Major Sabine; and she has judiciously curtailed it by the omission of meteorological tables, and details of astronomical and magnetical observations, the results of which appear in the narrative, and are all that the general reader requires. In an introduction of 137 pages, Von Wrangell has given a concise history of the various efforts made by Russia to explore the coast of the Polar Ocean, from the middle of the sixteenth century downwards, some under the sanction of government, and others by private individual adventurers, attracted mostly by the hope of large profits to be derived from a trade in the costly furs of the animals with which those regions abound, and which are found along the whole extent of sea coast, from the White Sea to Behring's Straits. This extent of coast embraces about 145 degrees of longitude, and, as the baron says, 'has been discovered, surveyed, and described by Russians,' or, we may add, by others under the auspices of the Russian government. These surveys were made very much in the manner pursued by our own explorers on the polar shores of America. One great object of the baron's four years' employment on the Siberian coast was to rectify the errors of the coast-line, much of which, he says, remained in complete obscurity-the whole coast from Cape Schelagskoi to Cape North being nearly, if not entirely, unknown; whilst, on the other hand, the memorable researches of Parry and Franklin had led to the most exact examination and description of the northern coast of America.' The second and more important object was to remove the doubts respecting respecting a large country supposed to be situated to the northward of Kotelnoi and New Siberia. To fill up these blanks, and remove these doubts in the geography of his country, the Emperor Alexander ordered two expeditions to be fitted out by the naval department, which were accordingly equipped and ready in 1820. 'A licutenant of the navy was placed at the head of each, who was to be accompanied by two junior officers, a medical officer, who was likewise to be a naturalist, and two sailors. One of these expeditions, under Lieutenant Anjou, was to commence its operations from the mouth of the Jana; the other, under my command, from the mouth of the Kolyma. My companions were, Midshipman (now Captain-Lieutenant) Matiuschkin, the Mate Kosmin, Dr. Kyber, and two seamen, one of whom was a smith, the other a carpenter.'-pp. cxxxv. cxxxvi. We rejoice to find that the Lieutenant von Wrangell, of 1820, has now attained the rank of Admiral, and Matiuschkin, the Midshipman, that of Captain-lieutenant. Such promotion had been well deserved by both. Of Lieutenant Anjou's expedition no account would seem to have yet been published; but it appears from the chart, that the course of his expeditions in 1822 and 1823, one from the Lena, and the other from the Jana, much exceeded in extent any of Von Wrangell's, the former having reached the latitude of 761°, and passed round the whole of the New Siberian islands. Von Wrangell left St. Petersburgh on the 23rd of May, 1820, and proceeded, according to his orders, to the mouth of the river Kolyma, of which district and its inhabitants he gives an interesting description. It is not easy to understand how any human beings can contrive to exist in this region, where, from the beginning of October till the end of April, the temperature rarely, if ever, rises even to the freezing point, and in January falls to 65° below zero; frequently stands at -50° to -57°;—where, in the early part of September even the temperature has been as low as -47°. In such a climate vegetation is necessarily so languid and scanty that it can hardly be said to exist at all. This poverty, however, of the vegetable world, is strongly contrasted with the profusion and variety of animal life over these inhospitable shores, and on the ice of the Polar Sea. Countless herds of reindeer, elks, black bears, foxes, sables, and grey squirrels, fill the upland forests; stone foxes and wolves roam over the low grounds. Enormous flights of swans, geese, and ducks arrive in spring, and seek deserts where they may moult and build their nests in safety. Eagles, owls, and gulls pursue their prey along the sea-coast; ptarmigan run in troops among the bushes; little snipes are busy along the brooks, and in the morasses; the social crows seek the neighbourhood of men's habitations; and, when the sun shines in spring, spring, one may even sometimes hear the cheerful note of the finch, and in autumn, that of the thrush.'—p. 52. These animals, the baron observes, either visit or inhabit the icy deserts in obedience to the unerring laws of instinct; they have no choice to exercise. 'But,' he asks, what induced man to fix himself in this dreary region? Nomade races under milder skies wander from one fruitful region to another,-gradually forget the land of their birth, and prefer a new home; but here there is nothing to invite: endless snows and ice-covered rocks bound the horizon; nature lies shrouded in almost perpetual winter; and life is a continual conflict with privation, and with the terrors of cold and hunger.' What, indeed, could induce human beings to take up their abode in such a region? The answer is, necessity in most cases-avarice in others. For the former class there is no want of food or clothing. The summer, as it is called, affords them an ample supply of fish and fowl, of rein-deer and other esculent animals. In the commencement of autumn, shoals of herrings enter the rivers in such quantities, that 3000 or more, it is said, may be taken at a draught, and in three or four days, 40,000 head, by a single good net; and when, to the resources already enumerated, we add the numerous fur-bearing animals, we see sufficient inducement for avarice, as well as poverty, to seek for an abode in these regions of frost and snow. The natives are permanently settled, but the few Russian traders in the valuable furs come only occasionally at the proper seasons. I have lived here,' says the baron, through three such dreadful springs, I cannot now look back without shuddering to the scenes of misery which I have witnessed, but which I may not venture to describe.' He does, however, describe some of them, and very well too; but for the details we must refer our readers to the volume. There is another article of commerce of too interesting and curious a nature to be passed over, we allude to the enormous quantity of animal remains, and especially those of the mammoth, a species of elephant differing from those now existing on our globe; the ivory of which, buried, as it must have been for thousands of years, is as sound and perfect as that supplied by the tusks of the living animal. The multitude of these huge remains, together with the bones of a great variety of other animals that are found along the whole northern shore of Siberia, and on the numerous islands of the polar ocean, buried in masses of ice, and in the frozen mud-banks of the rivers, near their mouths, is almost beyond belief. The traveller here may indeed say, in the words of our new Poetess 'V-,' I saw the old world's white and wave-swept bones, Lay strewn beyond mine eye's remotest ken.' Hederström, who was ordered to visit the islands, of which New Siberia is one, situated between 74° and 76° of latitude, and opposite to the Cape Swatainos (or the Sacred Cape), paid great attention to these remains. According to his account,' says Von Wrangell, these bones or tusks are less large and heavy the further we advance towards the north, so that it is, a rare occurrence on the islands to meet with a tusk of more than three pood in weight, whereas on the continent, they are said often to weigh as much as twelve pood. In quantity, however, these bones increase wonderfully to the northward, and, as Sannikow expresses himself, the whole soil of the first of the Lachor Islands appears to consist of them. For about eighty years the furhunters have every year brought large cargoes from this island, but as yet there is no sensible diminution of the stock. The tusks on the islands are also much more fresh and white than those of the continent. A sand-bank on the western side was most productive of all, and the fur-hunters maintain, that when the sea recedes after a long continuance of easterly winds, a fresh supply of mammoth-bones is always found to have been washed upon this bank, proceeding apparently from some vast store at the bottom of the sea.'-Intro., pp. cxxxii. cxxxiii. In addition to the mammoth and those of common occurrence, we are told the remains of two other unknown animals are occasionally found along the shore of the Polar Ocean: one supposed, by Dr. Kyber, the naturalist, to be a species of rhinoceros, the other a reindeer. In the northern islands above mentioned, Sannikow, another Russian explorer, 'found the skulls and bones of horses, buffaloes, oxen, and sheep, in such abundance, that these animals must formerly have lived there in large herds. At present, however, the icy wilderness produces nothing that could afford them nourishment, nor would they be able to endure the climate. Sannikow concludes that a milder climate must formerly have prevailed here, and that these animals may therefore have been contemporary with the mammoth, whose remains are found in every part of the island. Another circumstance, whence he infers a change in the climate, is the frequent occurrence, here, as well as in the island of New Siberia, of large trees partially fossilised.'-p. cxxix. That these animals may have been contemporary with the mammoth is exceedingly probable, but the large' fossilised trees' must have been, we presume, the production of a more remote But if those, here mentioned, required a milder climate, how must it have fared with the elephant? This change of era. *That is from 108 lbs. to 432 lbs. climate |