[Illustration:  NORTH POLAR REGION—­EASTERN HALF.]

Simultaneously interest in the northern regions was aroused by the successful exploit of the north-east passage by Professor (afterwards Baron) Nordenskiold, who had made seven or eight voyages in Arctic regions between 1858 and 1870.  He first established the possibility of passing from Norway to the mouth of the Yenesei in the summer, making two journeys in 1875-76.  These have since been followed up for commercial purposes by Captain Wiggins, who has frequently passed from England to the mouth of the Yenesei in a merchant vessel.  As Siberia develops there can be little doubt that this route will become of increasing commercial importance.  Professor Nordenskiold, however, encouraged by his easy passage to the Yenesei, determined to try to get round into Behring Strait from that point, and in 1878 he started in the Vega, accompanied by the Lena, and a collier to supply them with coal.  On the 19th August they passed Cape Chelyuskin, the most northerly point of the Old World.  From here the Lena appropriately turned its course to the mouth of its namesake, while the Vega proceeded on her course, reaching on the 12th September Cape North, within 120 miles of Behring Strait; this cape Cook had reached from the east in 1778.  Unfortunately the ice became packed so closely that they could not proceed farther, and they had to remain in this tantalising condition for no less than ten months.  On the 18th July 1879 the ice broke up, and two days later the Vega rounded East Cape with flying colours, saluting the easternmost coast of Asia in honour of the completion of the north-east passage.  Baron Nordenskiold has since enjoyed a well-earned leisure from his arduous labours in the north by studying and publishing the history of early cartography, on which he has issued two valuable atlases, containing fac-similes of the maps and charts of the Middle Ages.

General interest thus re-aroused in Arctic exploration brought about a united effort of all the civilised nations to investigate the conditions of the Polar regions.  An international Polar Conference was held at Hamburg in 1879, at which it was determined to surround the North Pole for the years 1882-83 by stations of scientific observation, intended to study the conditions of the Polar Ocean.  No less than fifteen expeditions were sent forth; some to the Antarctic regions, but most of them round the North Pole.  Their object was more to subserve the interest of physical geography than to promote the interest of geographical discovery; but one of the expeditions, that of the United States under Lieutenant A. W. Greely, again took up the study of Smith Sound and its outlets, and one of his men, Lieutenant Lockwood, succeeded in reaching 83.24 deg.  N., within 450 miles of the Pole, and up to that time the farthest north reached by any human being.  The Greely expedition also succeeded in showing that Greenland was not so much ice-capped as ice-surrounded.