Abstract
SOME anxiety may have been caused amongst Dr. Nansen's friends by reports published in an evening paper from the slender testimony of some Samoyedes, that the Kara Sea was unusually hampered by ice this season. The Nouvelles Geographiques, it is satisfactory to see, reports on the authority of the captains of the Russian vessels carrying railway material to the Yenesei, and of Captain Wiggins, that the navigation of the Kara Sea was particularly easy this summer, the ice being thin and not compact. The Hammerfest whalers also reported that never within human memory has the sea been so free from ice. At the end of December one vessel saw not a single ice-berg between Nova Zemlya and Franz Josef Land. In the Kara Sea the current, which is usually westerly at that season, was this year running north-north-west, at the rate of a mile an hour. The note indicates that Captain Wiggins entertained no doubt of Dr. Nansen having easily reached the New Siberian Islands, which were to be his real starting-point.
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Geographical Notes. Nature 49, 39 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/049039a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/049039a0