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THE GREAT POLAR CURRENT 
 
 9 
 
THE 
 GREAT POLAR CURRENT 
 
 POLAR PAPERS 
 
 OLD AND NEW 
 BY 
 
 HENRY MELLEN PRENTISS 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 Printed at t&e Ktoerstoe Press 
 
 1897 
 
 <b\A 
 
 V° 
 
 ,1 
 
 + \ 
 
Copyright, 1897, 
 By HENRY MELLEN PRENTISS. 
 
 All rights reserved. f \, ^ h t$&\ 
 
TO JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 WHOSE 
 
 JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 
 
 DEFINED THE FIRST FIVE HUNDRED 
 
 MILES OF THE POLAR CURRENT AND OPENED 
 
 THE WAY FOR THE NANSEN DRIFT AND 
 
 FOR THE FINAL SOLUTION 
 
 OF THE ARCTIC 
 
 QUESTION 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 1 
 
 The Jeannette Search and the Polar Cur- 
 rent. — Letter to Clements Markham 5 
 The Jeannette. — Letter to New York 
 
 Herald 41 
 
 The Results of the Jeannette Expedition 59 
 The North Pole and the South Pole . . 79 
 
 The North Polar Basin 99 
 
 Nansen's "Farthest North" 112 
 
 Peary's New Plan for reaching the Pole 128 
 The Antarctic 139 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Letter from Clements Markham .... 147 
 Letter from New York Herald .... 150 
 The East Greenland Musk-Ox 151 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Beading lately an article on the sci- 
 entific results of Nansen's voyage, in the 
 February number of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury (" Recent Science," III.), by Prince 
 Kropotkin, in which he states that Nan- 
 sen's expedition was suggested largely by 
 the drift of the Jeannette and of the Jean- 
 nette relics, I was reminded of a paper I 
 had sent to the New York Herald in 1883 
 on the scientific results of the Jeannette 
 expedition — which was never published 
 — and of other papers written during the 
 search for the Jeannette in the fall of 
 1881 ; and I was somewhat surprised to 
 find how persistently I had argued for 
 the great polar current, even in my letter 
 to Markham and in that which the Her- 
 
2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 aid published, both of which were written 
 before the Jeannette was heard from ; 
 while in my paper on the " Results " I 
 had proposed this very Arctic voyage on 
 the identical plan that Nansen adopted, 
 and had even given a fair general de- 
 scription of the Fram so many years be- 
 fore she was built. 
 
 At the same time it is interesting to 
 find how nearly Nansen's drift agrees 
 with my forecast, and how completely it 
 has proved my theory of the depth, the 
 currents, and the general hydrography of 
 the polar basin, — a theory about which 
 most of the leading Arctic experts, both 
 of England and America, have been, to 
 say the least, exceedingly skeptical. 
 
 I have never seen, in the whole volumi- 
 nous mass of Jeannette literature, any 
 satisfactory resume of the scientific re- 
 sults of the voyage, — a voyage which was 
 popularly regarded as a failure, because 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 De Long did not reach the Pole, did not 
 even attain a high latitude, and especially 
 on account of its tragic ending. Yet 
 Prince Kropotkin gives the Jeannette 
 voyage its true place in Arctic history 
 when he speaks of Nansen's drift as " em- 
 bodying the drift of the Jeannette and 
 the East Greenland ice-drift in one mighty 
 current." . . . 
 
 "A formidable ice-current, almost as 
 mighty, and of the same length, as the 
 Gulf Stream, ... a current having the 
 same dominating influence in the life of 
 our globe, has thus been proved to exist." 
 
 This great Arctic current, of which the 
 connecting link has been discovered by 
 Nansen, having its inception north of 
 Bering Strait and Wrangell Land, flows 
 northwesterly above the New Siberian Is- 
 lands, and northerly across, around, or 
 very near the Pole, or at least far to the 
 north of Franz Josef Land, and thence 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 southerly by Spitzbergen, by the east 
 coast of Greenland, by Labrador and by 
 Newfoundland, until it meets the Gulf 
 Stream, — its influence being felt even as 
 far as Cape Cod on the coast of New 
 England. Thus it flows across some 
 seventy degrees of latitude, and is about 
 5000 miles long. 
 Bangok, Maine, May 1, 1897. 
 
THE JEANNETTE SEARCH AND THE 
 POLAR CURRENT 
 
 Bangor, Maine, November 27, 1881. 
 
 Clements R. Maekham, 1 Esq., C. B., 
 Sec'y Royal Geographical Society* 
 Dear Sir, — I am unknown and with- 
 out experience in Arctic matters, and 
 therefore feel that I am taking a liberty 
 when I address you on the subject. My 
 only excuse is that, having of late 
 thoroughly read up on the Arctic, I have 
 come to a conclusion as to the probable 
 course and present position of the Jean- 
 nette, differing considerably from any I 
 have yet seen. I also wish to urge an 
 
 1 Now Sir Clements Markham, K. C. B M F. R. S., 
 F. S. A., President of the Royal Geographical So- 
 ciety. This letter was never published. See Appen- 
 dix, Markham's letter. 
 
6 THE JEANNETTE SEAKCH 
 
 English naval search expedition to Franz 
 Josef Land, and to consider the situation 
 from an American point of view. The 
 Jeannette Expedition is lost in " the 
 unknown region." For the second time 
 there is to be a great " Franklin search," 
 but with this difference. Franklin sailed 
 under Admiralty instructions on a special 
 line of exploration, and consequently the 
 search was confined to a comparatively 
 small portion of the Arctic area. Cap- 
 tain De Long, however, was at liberty 
 to go where he pleased. The Jeannette 
 was not a government vessel, although 
 officered and manned from our navy, and 
 De Long was, therefore, free to incur 
 extra hazardous risks of losing her ; and 
 from his known views and plans, often 
 expressed, we are quite sure that he was 
 determined to go to the Pole in any way 
 he could get there, and if the coast of 
 Wrangell Land did not continue far to 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 7 
 
 the north, to take to the pack, to pene- 
 trate the ice-field as far as possible, and 
 then alternately to steam and to drift, or 
 if necessary to drift with wind and cur- 
 rent, hoping to be carried across the Pole 
 and out between Spitzbergen and Green- 
 land, with or without his ship. He is one 
 of the most venturesome men that ever 
 went into the Arctic ; especially when we 
 consider the present state of our know- 
 ledge of the formidable character of the 
 polar ice. Even in view of the daring at- 
 tempts of English explorers, we can only 
 say that he is the least hampered man or 
 the most reckless. This attempt to float 
 across the Pole may well be compared 
 with Stanley's rash attempt to float down 
 the Congo, except that Stanley knew that 
 the river must bring him to the ocean, 
 while unfortunately De Long may come 
 out, if at all, on any one meridian of the 
 360. 
 
8 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 Consequently, there are 360 possible 
 theories as to the course of the Jeannette, 
 of which, since the last reports of the 
 Kodgers, I would suggest the following as 
 the most plausible. The Jeannette was 
 last seen by a whaler, September 2, 1879, 
 about fifty miles south of Herald Island, 
 steering north for that island. Probably 
 the sea was too rough there for De Long 
 to land, as Captain Berry of the Rodgers 
 found it, at times, this summer ; and as 
 Captain Berry has landed there twice, 
 and Captain Hooper of the Corwin once, 
 this year, and as the island has been 
 thoroughly searched and no cairn found 
 there, it is quite certain that De Long 
 was not able to land. Then he may have 
 gone on to the north and west and found 
 Wrangell Land to be an island; proba- 
 bly there was such an ice pack along 
 its shores, possibly also stormy weather, 
 that he did not find it practicable to land 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 9 
 
 there. He would not be turned away 
 from his main object for the sake of ex- 
 ploring an island no larger than one of 
 the New Siberian Islands, especially so 
 late in the season, with plenty of open 
 water as far as he could see to the north 
 and west. Proceeding north, he would 
 come to the pack, very likely about where 
 the Kodgers did this year, and would ex- 
 plore its edge, and make efforts to pene- 
 trate it in various places at points one 
 hundred and fifty to two hundred miles 
 north and northwest of Wrangell Land, 
 and find it practically impenetrable — 
 the sea growing deeper as he went north, 
 no prospect of any land very near toward 
 the north, and no current moving north- 
 ward or otherwise. The season of 1879 
 was probably an open season in those 
 waters, about the same as this year, and 
 his experience, and his track to the north 
 of Wrangell Land, about the same as that 
 
10 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 of Captain Berry last summer. Very- 
 likely De Long would not run the risk of 
 getting beset in that position, because, 
 finding no current to the north, and know- 
 ing from Baron Nordenskjbld's experi- 
 ence at his winter quarters at Serdze the 
 preceding winter, and from many other 
 sources, that the prevailing fall and 
 winter winds in that whole region were 
 from the north and northwest, 1 he would 
 naturally fear being drifted to the south- 
 east and east into a region where he could 
 not expect to make new discoveries or 
 
 1 De Long did not meet Nordenskjold, and the pre- 
 vailing winds on the Siberian coast several hundred 
 miles to the southward were mostly of continental ori- 
 gin, and so were no criterion, as it proved, for the 
 winds north of Wrangell Land. From all the data 
 then possessed — from what was known, supposed, or 
 reported — as to the force and direction of the winds 
 on the north and west sides of Bering Sea, and also of 
 the winds at the New Siberian Islands and at Franz 
 Josef Land, I theorized that the region of equal winds 
 should be placed farther west towards the New Sibe- 
 rian Islands ; later I learned that De Long found the 
 "doldrums" nearer to Wrangell Land. See page 65. 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 11 
 
 any brilliant progress. Consequently, I 
 believe he abandoned that meridian and 
 went westerly, probably north of Wran- 
 gell Land, as, if he had gone south of it, 
 he could probably have landed and built 
 cairns, while the ice or a gale may have 
 prevented his landing on the northern 
 side. Captain Berry carefully examined 
 the coast of Wrangell Land all the way 
 around, and found no cairns, or traces of 
 the Jeannette; and yet De Long would 
 undoubtedly have landed, for various 
 strong reasons, if it had not been very in- 
 convenient to do so, or if it would not 
 have involved too great a loss of time, 
 when he had not a day to lose. As to 
 cairns, however, he never intended that 
 search should be made for him where he 
 went in to the Arctic, if he did not find 
 Wrangell Land to extend far to the 
 north. Captain Berry did not find the 
 ice-conditions favorable for crossing to 
 
12 THE JE ANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 the west on the north side of the island, 
 and had no great object to gain by trying 
 to push through the ice in that direction. 
 Yet, the ice may have been more open 
 when De Long was there. 
 
 After passing Wrangell Land, I think 
 that De Long may have steered for the 
 New Siberian Islands, in the hope of get- 
 ting into a region where the prevailing 
 winds would be more favorable to his pro- 
 ject, or at least where they would not be 
 against him ; also to explore the Russian 
 polynias, with the expectation of find- 
 ing a current running to the north or 
 northwest, around to the northward of 
 Franz Josef Land and out by Spitzbergen. 
 Perhaps he did not find the polynias so 
 extensive as he hoped, and, trying the ice 
 everywhere, may have had to follow the 
 shore by Cape Chelagskoi, and so on to 
 near the mouth of the Lena, where a Ya- 
 kut reported that he saw a three-masted 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 13 
 
 steamer, or the smoke of a steamer, Sep- 
 tember 13, 1879. The New York Herald 
 was not inclined to credit this report, 
 on account of the short time between the 
 2d and the 13th of September. Yet De 
 Long may have made rapid progress ; the 
 winds may have favored him. He evi- 
 dently did not waste much time at Her- 
 ald and Wrangell islands. Nordenskjold 
 and Palander often covered greater dis- 
 tances in shorter periods in their north- 
 east passage. The Yakut may have been 
 incorrect about the date, and probably 
 could not fix it exactly ; but such a report 
 was not likely to arrive without some 
 foundation, and the Jeannette was the 
 only possible foundation for it. Finally, 
 Nordenskjold and Lieutenant Hovgaard 
 believe the report, and certainly no one is 
 more competent to judge of its credibility. 1 
 
 1 There was a similar unfounded report from the 
 same region about Nansen last winter. 
 
14 THE JE ANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 Thence from off the mouth of the Lena 
 De Long may have steered north late in 
 September to the New Siberian Islands, 
 built cairns there and deposited records. 
 He may have wintered there, but that 
 would be no object to him. For if there 
 were any open water to the north, and 
 there probably always is in that locality 
 in September, he would certainly go as 
 far as possible to the north of those is- 
 lands, then penetrate the pack in the 
 most favorable place he could find, and 
 keep on through it till he was finally 
 beset or frozen up. 
 
 If, therefore, we may suppose him fast 
 in the pack in October, several hundred 
 miles north of the New Siberian Islands, 
 which way would he drift ? No one can 
 say. We possess no specific data from 
 which to form an opinion. The whole 
 hydrographic, geographic, and meteoro- 
 logical mystery of this unknown region 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 15 
 
 is involved in this question. But my 
 theory is, and De Long's theory was, that 
 the Siberian ice and the drift-wood of the 
 great Siberian rivers are carried across the 
 Pole, or in the vicinity of the Pole, north 
 of Franz Josef Land, and out in the ex- 
 tensive and never-ceasing ice-drift between 
 Spitzbergen and Greenland. Otherwise, 
 where does all that ice come from ? The 
 Kussian polynias may not be so extensive 
 or so constant as many have supposed, but 
 all admit that there are large areas of open 
 water and of loose ice there every year, 
 and possibly all the year round, — the ice 
 always drifting away to the north, per- 
 haps about as fast as it freezes. From 
 what little we know of the ice about the 
 New Siberian Islands, we judge it is not 
 very heavy away from the land. It may 
 have time to grow old and thick before it 
 gets across to Spitzbergen; but that the 
 great mass of that ice-stream, nearly two 
 
16 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 hundred miles wide at Spitzbergen, comes 
 from a wide and probably deep polar sea 
 north of Siberia and north of Franz Josef 
 Land seems as clear to me as it did to 
 Stanley that the Lualaba was the Congo 
 and ran to the ocean. No doubt there is a 
 north end to Greenland, though perhaps 
 not at Cape Britannia, and some of the 
 ice of the " paleocrystic sea " may get out 
 and come down the East Greenland cur- 
 rent ; yet if the whole of it came out 
 there, the ice of that sea would not be so 
 old and heavy, say forty to one hundred 
 feet in thickness. Then very little such 
 heavy ice is found in the East Greenland 
 current — the ice there not averaging 
 over one quarter to one half the thickness 
 of that off the mouth of the Mackenzie 
 River, Banks' Land, Prince Patrick's 
 Island, the head of Smith's Sound and 
 north end of Greenland, though it is 
 much heavier than the ice of Baffin's Bay 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 17 
 
 and of the straits and sounds discharging 
 into it. There is a large body of land in 
 the Antarctic covered by a thick glacier 
 that extends far out into deep water all 
 around its coasts, and ice forms in winter 
 on the deep sea, for hundreds of miles to 
 the north, all around the outside of the 
 glacier ice-cliff, often drifting away and 
 gradually spreading out in ever extending 
 circles from the central land ; yet it must 
 often be many years before it melts, as 
 Sir James C. Koss found the ice about as 
 thick as that which comes out between 
 Spitzbergen and Greenland, — though one 
 year he succeeded in penetrating eight 
 hundred miles of this ice, because it was 
 so loose he could generally sail through it. 
 In the Arctic, however, the polar area is 
 surrounded by continents, and the ice has 
 practically only one opening of conse- 
 quence in which to float out to the south- 
 ward to be melted. No ice of any amount 
 
18 THE JE ANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 gets out through Bering Strait, — cer- 
 tainly very little that could be called polar 
 ice. There is a constant flow of ice out 
 of Baffin's Bay, but it consists almost en- 
 tirely of one-year-old ice, formed in the 
 bay itself and in the various sounds and 
 straits opening into it. The polar ice is 
 packed at the heads of all those straits, 
 in tremendous jams of floes so large and 
 thick that but few of them are needed 
 to block a strait twenty miles wide ; and 
 Arctic explorers are agreed that only a 
 small portion of that polar ice gets through 
 Barrows Strait, the channels between the 
 Parry Islands, Wellington Channel, Jones' 
 Sound, or Smith's Sound. The ice be- 
 tween the Spitzbergen-Franz Josef Land 
 group and Nova Zembla does not drift out 
 far to the south, or it is ice mostly found 
 on the parts of the Barents Sea where it 
 originates. The currents run in, rather 
 than out, to the north of Nova Zembla, and 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 19 
 
 although there may be an eastward drift 
 along the southerly coasts of Franz Josef 
 Land, it is not likely that much ice comes 
 out that way from the polar basin to the 
 eastward and northward of Franz Josef 
 Land. Probably there are lands north 
 of the American continent — perhaps a 
 chain of not very large islands — extend- 
 ing westerly from the meridian of Green- 
 land and of Smith's Sound, as suggested 
 in the Threshold of the Unknown Eegion, 
 which prevent the great mass of the ice 
 in the inclosed area from drifting across 
 the polar sea, or from getting out into the 
 East Greenland current ; so that much of 
 that ice, imprisoned by such islands — 
 partly it may be by prevailing winds driv- 
 ing down to the heads of narrow channels 
 and against the coast — goes on for many 
 years increasing in thickness before it gets 
 away to more southern latitudes where it 
 will melt. The discovery that Wrangell 
 
20 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 Land is an island, and not a prolongation 
 of Greenland, does not disprove this the- 
 ory, nor seriously affect it; for even if 
 there is a larger opening than we sup- 
 posed into this paleoerystic sea, the ice 
 cannot get out there, because there is no 
 current out. On the contrary, the prevail- 
 ing winds keep the ice from floating out 
 in that direction. The fact that the ice 
 in terrible southerly gales, long continued, 
 does not blow away from these American 
 and island coasts more than a few miles 
 tends to prove such an inclosure of this 
 sea as practically to keep the ice from 
 floating out of it. While on the other 
 hand, the ice off the Siberian coasts, out- 
 side the shore ice, does float away to the 
 north, which indicates that there is sea, 
 and not land, in that direction, — a sea 
 that probably extends through to Green- 
 land. The fact that there is a deep sea 
 north of Spitzbergen — deepening the 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 21 
 
 farther you go north — helps this theory. 
 For if the polar sea were entirely inclosed 
 by land, the ice would accumulate faster 
 than it would melt, and the whole sea, 
 however deep, would be covered with ice 
 so thick that it would be akin to a floating 
 glacier, melting only at the edges near the 
 warmer land and at mouths of rivers on 
 its southern coasts. That such is not the 
 case is mostly due to the outflow at the 
 Spitzbergen-Greenland opening. Conse- 
 quently, this ice in the Greenland current 
 is but five to twenty feet thick, much of 
 it only one year old, which tends to show 
 that the ice in this supposed sea, extend- 
 ing from Siberia north of Franz Josef 
 Land, and probably at the Pole itself, 
 is no thicker, and that it may possibly, 
 to some extent, be navigable, — although 
 perhaps not to a 400-ton, 100 horse-power 
 steamer, like the Jeannette. The Baffin's 
 Bay one-year ice was not fairly naviga- 
 
22 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 ble to sailing vessels. They were often 
 crushed by it and constantly beset. Even 
 a small steamer like the Fox cannot al- 
 ways get through it, but it is navigable to 
 steamers like the Alert, Discovery, Pro- 
 teus, Pandora (Jeannette), and the whaler 
 Arctic. Such steamers cannot navigate 
 this Spitzbergen or polar ice, at least 
 with any more safety and certainty than 
 the small sailing vessels of 50 and 100 
 tons of the earlier explorers could sail 
 through the middle-pack of Baffin's Bay. 
 I would like to see a steamer of 10,000 
 tons and 10,000 horse-power, built on the 
 best model that could be devised for re- 
 sisting ice pressure, with a bow armed to 
 split the floes, and formed so as to rise 
 upon them and crush them, of the greatest 
 possible strength consistent with coal-car- 
 rying capacity, with sufficient power to 
 force the great floes apart and to squeeze 
 through between them, commanded by 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 23 
 
 Captain Markham, with Captain Adams 
 of the Arctic to assist him. Such a ship, 
 possibly, could contend with Spitzbergen 
 ice, and steam in between Franz Josef 
 Land and Nova Zembla, around Franz 
 Josef Land and to the Pole, and out by 
 Spitzbergen. 1 She would sail in deep seas, 
 would not draw much more water than 
 the ice, and if there were as many polar 
 stations and expeditions all around the 
 Arctic Circle as there will be a year from 
 now, to retreat to in case of accident, to 
 a corps of expert seal and bear hunters 
 such a trip might not be extra hazardous. 
 Leaving speculation aside, the practi- 
 cal work for England is to send an ex- 
 pedition to Franz Josef Land. The only 
 thorough search for the Jeannette is a 
 search of the whole border of the unknown 
 area. De Long is within it somewhere, 
 
 1 It is now evident that no conceivable ship conld 
 make such a holiday excursion. 
 
24 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 and we do not know where he will come 
 out. If he comes out at all, it is highly 
 probable that he will leave his ship be- 
 hind, crushed or permanently grounded in 
 a stranded ice-pack ; or he may drift hope- 
 lessly about till his provisions are exhaust- 
 ed. There should be a complete search. 
 The Rodgers will remain about Bering 
 Sea. A sledge expedition, starting from 
 where the party are now landed, near 
 Cape Serdze (?), with Colonel Gilder (who 
 was with Schwatka), will probably search 
 the Siberian coast as far west as the 
 mouth of the Kolyma, repeating Wran- 
 gell's longest journey in the reverse di- 
 rection. Lieutenant Ray, U. S. A., of 
 the Signal Service Corps, has established 
 his meteorological station for three years 
 at Point Barrow, and will secure com- 
 munication with the Esquimaux, as far 
 east as the mouth of the Mackenzie River. 
 He will certainly make a search expedi- 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 25 
 
 tion in that direction this winter or next, 
 as he can command the services of a 
 whole Esquimaux tribe, and is prepared 
 for such a journey. There was a rumor 
 of shipwrecked men on that coast, which 
 was not credited, because it was too vague 
 from want of an interpreter, and because 
 none of the Esquimaux at Point Barrow 
 had heard of it, — a very unlikely thing, 
 even if it had any foundation. It is 
 thought that the old Indian (?) was trying 
 to tell of the whaler Vigilant, with dead 
 men aboard, that drifted on to the Siberian 
 coast. Still Lieutenant Ray will undoubt- 
 edly investigate the rumor and examine 
 that coast. Then, another reason why he 
 will do it is that the Bering Sea whalers 
 and the San Francisco geographers all be- 
 lieve that it was impossible for the Jean- 
 nette to penetrate far into the ice north 
 of Wrangell Land, — that stopped the 
 Rodgers. But they have no doubt that 
 
26 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 De Long tried it, and that the winter 
 winds would drift him, beset in the pack, 
 to the south and east. 
 
 Accordingly the present talk in America 
 is of sending an expedition to Melville 
 Island, to search the shores of Banks' 
 Land, Prince Patrick's Island, etc., and 
 the New York Herald urges England to 
 send an expedition down the Mackenzie 
 River to search easterly to Banks' and 
 Wollaston Lands. Yet, I do not see how 
 such a party could help De Long much, 
 even if they should find him, and ques- 
 tion that policy, especially if it should 
 take the place of an English search to 
 Franz Josef Land. But this would be a 
 good opportunity to try again the North- 
 west Passage, by the way of Peel, Sir 
 James Ross, and Simpson's straits, with 
 a good steam whaler chartered for the 
 purpose, with the philanthropic motive 
 of assisting in the search in addition to 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 27 
 
 the glory of making the passage. Such a 
 ship should be prepared to winter, and if 
 caught halfway, to form one of the inter- 
 national circle of meteorological stations 
 round the Arctic, and thus to fill a gap 
 that it would be very desirable to have 
 occupied. Besides, the party should have 
 sledges and Esquimaux hunters, as they 
 might have to abandon their ship. The 
 Proteus has landed Lieutenant Greely at 
 Lady Franklin Bay, where the Discovery 
 wintered in 1875-76. Thus another me- 
 teorological station, for three years, has 
 been established. Lieutenant Greely pro- 
 poses to join in the search by sledging to 
 Cape Joseph Henry. He is well prepared 
 for exploration. Dr. Pavy will probably 
 determine, at last, whether Cape Britannia 
 is the northern point of Greenland, and 
 Greely may possibly cross Grinnell Land 
 to the west from the head of Lady Frank- 
 lin Bay, and continue the search and 
 
28 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 exploration on its western coast. His 
 steam launch may be very convenient for 
 laying out depots for the Cape Joseph 
 Henry and Greenland trips. Living thus 
 through several summers, he may be able 
 to accomplish some surveying that the 
 English expedition did not have time or 
 opportunity for, especially if he has some 
 fresh men sent him every year, as planned. 
 Commander Cheyne also proposes to go 
 to the same place, to try his experiments 
 with balloons. His projects are here re- 
 garded as visionary. His journey to the 
 Pole over the ice does not promise great 
 results, and balloon journeys are too un- 
 certain, even in an inhabited country in 
 the temperate zone. He is lecturing in 
 New York to raise enthusiasm in support 
 of his project, probably supposing that 
 if we were rash enough to support Mr. 
 Bennett and Captain De Long in a daring 
 undertaking, we might even assist his im- 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 29 
 
 practical expedition. When our govern- 
 ment consented to the Jeannette Expe- 
 dition, it was presumed that Wrangell 
 Land was of continental size, or at least 
 that there was a shore running far to the 
 north, or a series of islands that could 
 be followed far into the unexplored area. 
 If De Long had found such a shore, he 
 would have followed it as far as possible, 
 and would have come back the same way, 
 with or without his ship. Our searches 
 in the Corwin, last year and this, and 
 the Eodgers search, were based on that 
 theory, and all these proposed searches on 
 the north coast of this continent and about 
 its northern extensions and islands would 
 have been much more important if Wran- 
 gell Land had extended to the north, as 
 Captain De Long was last seen going up 
 the easterly side, and if beset, would sure- 
 ly have drifted easterly. The Rodgers 
 search, then, would have followed up that 
 
30 THE JEANNETTE SEAKCH 
 
 coast-line. Since the last report from the 
 Rodgers, showing that this theory was 
 wrong, the most hopeful field seems to be 
 to the west, instead of to the east. But, 
 to continue round the circle, there will 
 undoubtedly be one of the international 
 meteorological stations established at 
 Spitzbergen next year, and it is to be 
 hoped they will try to reach Gillis Land, 
 or the west coast of Franz Joseph Land, 
 with sledges. It will be a most important 
 field, with reference to the possible relief 
 of the Jeannette party, and the same can 
 be said, with less emphasis, perhaps, of 
 the proposed similar station at Jan Mayen, 
 and of the proposed station at Nova Zem- 
 bla ; but the Russian station at the New 
 Siberian Islands is very important with 
 reference to the Jeannette search. The 
 Russians may discover cairns of De Long, 
 and if he has not drifted so far as he 
 hoped, these islands may be his line of 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 31 
 
 retreat — to the mouth of the Lena. The 
 proposed trip of Lieutenant Hovgaard, of 
 the Danish navy, to Cape Chelyuskin, and 
 perhaps as far east as the Lena, completes 
 the circle. Probably Lieutenant Hov- 
 gaard places too much reliance on the Sa- 
 moyede report of the two corpses, and the 
 bottle or barrel of whiskey near the mouth 
 of the Yenisei, as it is certainly possible 
 that walrus hunters or adventurous traders 
 may have followed the track of Siberia- 
 koff's vessels to that point. The Jean- 
 nette went into the Arctic on total absti- 
 nence principles, — little if any whiskey 
 among her stores. So that report is capa- 
 ble of an explanation without regard to 
 the Yakut report of the steamer seen off 
 the mouth of the Lena. 
 
 Of course, an effectual search at the 
 edge of the pack for the Jeannette party, 
 drifting on the ice, will be made every- 
 where, by hundreds of whalers, walrus 
 
32 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 hunters, and sealers that frequent the 
 Arctic seas. Commander Wadleigh did 
 good work this year at St. John's, N. F., 
 Iceland, Hammerfest, and on his Spitz- 
 bergen cruise, in warning all the world to 
 be on the lookout for such a party on the 
 ice, or for such a ship beset in the ice, in- 
 forming them of the possibility of their 
 coming out this way, and giving them pic- 
 tures of the Jeannette. Those vessels are 
 much more likely to pick up De Long, if 
 he ever gets out to frequented waters, 
 than any search expedition. Indeed, those 
 who thought that the Jeannette might get 
 out this year by Lancaster Sound now 
 think that Captain Adams, of the whaler 
 Arctic, made the most important search 
 of the season in his brilliant voyage up 
 Wellington Channel, Barrows Strait, and 
 down Peel Sound. If Sir James C. Ross 
 had had such a season and such a ship as 
 the Arctic, in 1848, he might possibly 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 33 
 
 have found Franklin's ship, and also 
 Crozier, at the time he returned from 
 Back's Eiver and before he started on 
 that last terrible wandering to reach his 
 old Esquimaux friends at Igloolik. 
 
 So the circle of next year's Jeannette 
 search is complete, all but Franz Josef 
 Land, which is left for England. The 
 reasons why England should make such a 
 search are overwhelming. 
 
 First, it offers the best chance of suc- 
 cess and is unprovided for, and England 
 has always taken the lead in philanthropic 
 enterprises. 
 
 Second, England owes it to America to 
 take part in the search. We sent four 
 expeditions in search of Franklin or of 
 the Franklin records, — De Haven, Kane, 
 Hall, and Schwatka. Hall spent five years 
 looking for possible survivors among the 
 Esquimaux of Repulse Bay, Boothia, Re- 
 gent's Inlet, and Igloolik, and for the jour- 
 
34 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 nals of the voyage, and it is extremely 
 probable that some of them did survive 
 for a year or two, and may have reached 
 Igloolik. At any rate, Hall's search had 
 a fair basis of probability. Schwatka 
 tried what Sir Allen Young, in the Pan- 
 dora, failed to accomplish, — a summer 
 search for the records at King William's 
 Land, when the snow was off the ground, 
 — and made a most remarkable sledge 
 journey with only a month's supplies for 
 a year's trip, and lived by hunting, — a 
 course that would not be so safe in higher 
 latitudes. Again, Stanley found Living- 
 stone, provided him with supplies for fur- 
 ther explorations, and relieved the very^ 
 great anxiety of England. 
 
 Third, it is due to Mr. Leigh Smith 
 that England should see what has become 
 of him. He has illustrated England in 
 Arctic exploration more than any other 
 man since the expedition of 1875. Still, 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 35 
 
 I believe lie got to Franz Josef Land 
 this year, probably late in the season, and 
 that he is safe, as he has provisions for 
 wintering. He is in a position to relieve 
 the Jeannette crew, if they get where he 
 is ; but I suppose he is not prepared for 
 extended sledge journeys to search for 
 them, and possibly the Willem Barents 
 crew are there somewhere, needing assist- 
 ance — at least, I have not heard of their 
 return home. 
 
 Fourth, England is almost the only na- 
 tion that has not agreed to establish an 
 Arctic meteorological station for simul- 
 taneous scientific and weather observa- 
 tions. This should not be. Franz Josef 
 Land is just the place where one is most 
 needed to complete the line. There is 
 only one in a very high latitude, the Lady 
 Franklin Bay station (Spitzbergen is un- 
 certain), and Franz Josef Land is most 
 important of all. England has a splendid 
 
36 THE JE ANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 meteorological service, and surely no na- 
 tion is so largely interested in the laws 
 of storms as affecting commerce. Leigh 
 Smith, Captain Markham, and the Wil- 
 lem Barents have shown the way to be 
 perfectly sure and safe to good steamers 
 in ordinary seasons, and the former has 
 even selected a good place and sure har- 
 bor for the station — Eira Harbor. 
 
 Fifth, all English Arctic authorities 
 agree that Franz Josef Land offers the 
 widest and most interesting field for geo- 
 graphical and scientific exploration of 
 any in the Arctic — with also the best 
 chance of carrying the exploration to a 
 very high latitude. 
 
 There are numerous other general rea- 
 sons why England should — and officially 
 too — keep on in her preeminent course 
 of Arctic exploration. Even a generous 
 rivalry with other nations, in such a work 
 as this, is no mean motive. The United 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 37 
 
 States has had six Arctic expeditions, of 
 one kind and another, this year, and has 
 now four government expeditions winter- 
 ing in the Arctic, all doing valuable work, 
 and one running terrible risks, in the ad- 
 vancement of the world's knowledge — 
 and has only begun the business. England 
 has plenty of competent and some expe- 
 rienced naval officers who are anxious to 
 be employed in this service, and I suppose 
 the Alert and Discovery are still good 
 ships for this work. It would not be 
 overdoing it if she should send a fleet to 
 Eira Harbor, with coal transports in addi- 
 tion, and annual supply ships to recruit 
 the crews and carry the mails. One ship 
 could go up the east coast of Wilczek 
 Land, more especially to search for the 
 Jeannette ; another up the west coast of 
 Zichy Land, the line of exploration most 
 generally recommended by English Arctic 
 authorities; and another up Austria 
 
38 THE JEANNETTE SEAECH 
 
 Sound, which would probably reach the 
 highest latitude of all, and perhaps find 
 the Jeannette aground on the north shore 
 of Petermann Land, — by a sledge expedi- 
 tion, — and rescue De Long's party from 
 certain death. 
 
 Why should not Austria Sound be as 
 navigable as Smith's Sound? Payer 
 found smooth ice there generally, — one- 
 year ice, — and large spaces of open water 
 on his return journey, as early as May. 
 His report gives us considerable reason 
 to conclude that it can be navigated even 
 as far as Cape Vienna in August or Sep- 
 tember. It is true that Leigh Smith 
 found the entrance closed in 1880, but he 
 did not seriously attempt to get through 
 then, as he was not prepared to risk being 
 caught for the winter. Probably there is 
 a current or a strong tide up the sound, 
 and those entrances may be blocked with 
 ice-jams ; but the ice is not very heavy, 
 
AND THE POLAR CURRENT 39 
 
 the season may be more favorable, and 
 the Alert could perhaps ram her way- 
 through. 
 
 I would make only one more suggestion. 
 Is it not generally agreed now that Esqui- 
 maux fare — fresh meat and Arctic meat 
 — is the most sure preventive of scurvy ? 
 McClure had no scurvy at Banks' Land 
 and got plenty of game. The Franklin 
 search sledge expeditions, too, usually 
 got plenty of game. Hall lived for years 
 on walrus, seal, reindeer, etc. There are 
 plenty of walrus at Franz Josef Land in 
 summer, and bears winter and summer. 
 If there are bears, there must be seals. 
 All that saved Weyprecht and Payer 
 from scurvy and enabled Payer to make 
 such an extended sledge journey was the 
 skill of his Tyrolean hunters in killing 
 bears. Joe and Hans saved the lives of 
 the Polaris party in their winter drift 
 on the floe by their skill in hunting seals. 
 
40 THE JEANNETTE SEARCH 
 
 If Franklin had had a good corps of hunt- 
 ers, the lives of the whole expedition 
 might have been saved, the scurvy, of 
 which they possibly died, would have been 
 prevented, and they might have lived 
 with or like the Esquimaux, until they 
 got out to where they would have been 
 rescued. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Henry M. Prentiss. 
 
 
THE JEANNETTE 
 
 New York, December 14, 1881. 
 
 To the Editor of the Herald. 1 
 
 According to the Earl of Ellesmere, the 
 naval intimates of McClure said of him 
 when he sailed for the Arctic by the way 
 of Bering Strait to search for Sir John 
 Franklin : " That man will not return by 
 the way he has gone, unless at least he 
 shall meet with Franklin or find reasons 
 connected with his rescue for retracing 
 his course ; he will return eastward, or he 
 will return no more." Commander De 
 Long's friends might have said of him 
 when he sailed in the Jeannette : " That 
 
 1 This letter was -written on the train from Boston 
 to New York, and was published in the New York 
 Herald December IT, 1881, five days before the news 
 came from the Jeannette, December 22. 
 
42 THE JEANNETTE 
 
 man will not return by the way he has 
 gone, unless at least he should find the 
 easterly coast of Wrangell Land extend- 
 ing far to the north ; he will return across 
 the Pole and by the Atlantic, or he will 
 return no more." 
 
 THE JEANNETTE'S COURSE 
 
 Captain Berry has now shown Wran- 
 gell Land to be an island, and that its 
 coast failed him. Consequently De Long's 
 friends now believe that he took to the 
 pack, to penetrate it as far as possible, 
 and if permanently beset to drift with it 
 across the Pole. There are two principal 
 theories as to De Long's course. The one 
 generally accepted by the Bering Strait 
 whalers and by the San Francisco geo- 
 graphers is that when De Long met the 
 polar pack, perhaps where Berry found 
 it, one hundred and fifty to two hundred 
 miles north of Wrangell Land, he en- 
 
THE JEANNETTE 43 
 
 tered the pack there and made his way 
 in the ice as far as possible to the north- 
 ward, and when beset or frozen in drifted 
 with it, and if he got free again in 1880 
 still fought his way northward till again 
 beset. They also believe that the pre- 
 vailing winds north of Wrangell Land 
 are from the west and north, that there is 
 an easterly current, and that De Long is 
 drifting toward the east ; that, therefore, 
 the search should be made on the north- 
 ern coasts of America and of Green- 
 land. 
 
 But my theory is that De Long went 
 to the westward ; that he tried the pack, 
 as Captain Berry did, north of Wrangell 
 Land, penetrating short distances here 
 and there, and finding the ice very for- 
 midable. There being no prospect of pen- 
 etrating it very far, and no favoring cur- 
 rent being discovered, he probably then 
 turned to the westward, hoping to find the 
 
44 THE JEANNETTE 
 
 Russian polynias and to get further to the 
 north on the meridian of the New Sibe- 
 rian Islands. He may not have been 
 able to proceed directly across to the 
 west, and may have followed the coast till 
 near the mouth of the Lena before turn- 
 ing northward again. This would be the 
 surest course to take to reach the New 
 Siberian Islands. 
 
 ACROSS THE POLE 
 
 I believe that De Long would prefer to 
 make the attempt on the meridian of the 
 Lena, because he knew that the prevailing 
 winds at Franz Josef Land are easterly, 
 as observed by Payer and Weyprecht, 
 and that a great current brings down the 
 polar ice between Spitzbergen and Green- 
 land in a constant stream, two to three 
 hundred miles wide, winter and summer. 
 There is great probability that there is 
 a regular ice-drift from the region of the 
 
 
THE JEANNETTE 45 
 
 New Siberian Islands, caused by prevail- 
 ing winds and currents, through a deep 
 sea north of Franz Josef Land, across or 
 near the Pole, and out to the south be- 
 tween Spitzbergen and Greenland. He- 
 denstrom, Anjou, and Wrangell have 
 shown that there are large open seas 
 north of Siberia, or at least that the ice 
 drifts away far to the north of the New 
 Siberian Islands in summer and fall. 
 Therefore the presumption is that there 
 are no islands or lands to the north, while 
 on the other hand Collinson, McClure, 
 Sherard Osborn, McClintock, and Nares 
 have shown that the ice in long-continued 
 and violent southerly gales never drifts 
 away more than a few miles from the 
 shore on the North American and Green- 
 land coasts, from Point Barrow to Cape 
 Britannia. Consequently they reason that 
 there are sufficient undiscovered islands 
 or lands to the north of this continent to 
 
46 THE JEANNETTE 
 
 stop the main body of this ice from drift- 
 ing away across the polar basin. They 
 call this the " paleocrystic sea " — where 
 the ice averages from forty to one hun- 
 dred feet in thickness, grounds in ten or 
 twelve fathoms of water, and is often a 
 century old. 
 
 LAND-LOCKED POLAR ICE 
 
 Very little of the ice of this sea gets 
 through the many narrow channels lead- 
 ing to Baffin's Bay ; and as but a trifling 
 quantity of this thick ice is found in the 
 East Greenland current, it is to be sup- 
 posed that Greenland extends beyond 
 Cape Britannia, or that there are islands 
 or shoals to the north to block the way. 
 The fact that Wrangell Land is not a 
 continent does not disprove the theory of 
 the paleocrystic sea, as the prevailing 
 winds would prevent the ice from drift- 
 ing out to the westward by Wrangell 
 
THE JEANNETTE 47 
 
 Land, even if there are not unknown 
 islands to the northward of Point Barrow 
 to block up the passage. 
 
 FREE POLAR ICE 
 
 The Spitzbergen and East Greenland 
 ice is not like the paleocrystic ; it is only 
 from five to twenty feet thick, not a fifth 
 part as heavy on the average; much of 
 it, even far to the north of Spitzbergen, 
 being only one-year ice, very little of it 
 can come from a paleocrystic sea. It 
 must come from the centre of the polar 
 area, from north of Franz Josef Land and 
 from north of Siberia. I do not believe 
 that the immense amount of drift-wood 
 with which the northern shores of Spitz- 
 bergen are lined and covered can be sat- 
 isfactorily accounted for in any other way 
 than by supposing that it comes from the 
 mouth of the Lena, around by the north 
 of Franz Josef Land. 
 
48 THE JEANNETTE 
 
 THE NOKTHWEST COURSE 
 
 I believe De Long preferred the north- 
 west course, rather than the northeast, 
 from Wrangell Land, and hoped to come 
 out by Spitzbergen, rather than by the 
 northerly point of Greenland. Hence 
 I think the coasts of Franz Josef Land, 
 Siberia, Nova Zembla, and Spitzbergen 
 the most hopeful lines of search for the 
 Jeannette party. Still, there is an ab- 
 solute uncertainty as to the course Lieu- 
 tenant De Long took, and possibly he 
 did not know that the prevailing fall and 
 winter winds north of Wrangell Land 
 were from the north and west. Baron 
 Nordenskjold came out of Bering Strait 
 before De Long went in, and did not meet 
 him. Consequently, De Long may not 
 have known that Nordenskjold observed 
 almost constant northerly and westerly 
 gales at Cape Serdze Kamen the whole 
 
THE JEANNETTE 49 
 
 preceding fall and winter. As nearly all 
 the whalers caught in the ice in the north- 
 ern part of Bering Sea have always drifted 
 away into the unexplored region, and as 
 the ice in that sea drifts far to the north 
 in southerly gales, De Long may have 
 thought the position two hundred miles 
 north of Wrangell Land as good a place 
 to start from as any for his daring voy- 
 age, or drift, across the Pole. 
 
 THE EASTERLY DRIFT 
 
 If De Long went in there, we may al- 
 most say we know, since Nordenskjold's 
 observations, that he must have drifted 
 to the eastward rather than to the west- 
 ward; then the most important field of 
 search is on the northern coasts of this 
 continent, and this brings us to the ques- 
 tion of the Northwest Passage. There are 
 three sound reasons now for trying the 
 Northwest Passage : — 
 
50 THE JE ANNETTE 
 
 First, and much the most important, 
 the search for the Jeannette. 
 
 Second, the advantage of having an in- 
 ternational polar station, even for only 
 one winter, halfway between our Point 
 Barrow and Lady Franklin Bay stations, 
 if the expedition did not succeed in mak- 
 ing the whole passage the first year. 
 
 Third, the glory of making the passage, 
 as it has never been made by a ship. 
 
 THE SEARCH 
 
 As to the search, it is necessary. For 
 the second time in the history of polar 
 research, an expedition is probably lost in 
 the Arctic. There is to be another great 
 Franklin search, with this difference : that 
 was an English and American search of a 
 limited segment of the polar circle; this 
 will be a universal search of the whole 
 border of the unknown region, partici- 
 pated in by nearly all the civilized nations 
 
THE JEANNETTE 51 
 
 of the earth. The whole Siberian coast 
 will probably be searched by Captain Berry, 
 Nordenskjbld, Lieutenant Hovgaard, and 
 the Russians. The Russian international 
 polar station at the mouth of the Lena, 
 or at the New Siberian Islands, will be 
 very important, for I believe De Long 
 built cairns and left notice of his progress 
 there, if he was not prevented :Jrom land- 
 ing by heavy weather or ice, as he was at 
 Wrangell and Herald islands. Spitzber- 
 gen and Nova Zembla will be interna- 
 tional stations, and England will search 
 Franz Josef Land, I hope, on all its coasts 
 and sounds with a large government ex- 
 pedition for the Jeannette and for Leigh 
 Smith. I think this the best chance for 
 rescuing the Jeannette party. England 
 is the only important nation that has 
 not agreed to form an international polar 
 station, and it is to be hoped, now that 
 she goes to Franz Josef Land, she will 
 
52 THE JEANNETTE 
 
 go there to stay, as there is no other 
 such promising field for scientific and 
 geographical research. All the interna- 
 tional polar stations will be Jeannette 
 search stations as well, and will send out 
 sledge expeditions. 
 
 WHALERS TO THE RESCUE 
 
 Five hundred whalers, walrus hunters, 
 and sealers will search for the Jeannette 
 at the edge of the pack in all the seas 
 that they frequent, from the Kara Sea to 
 Spitzbergen and East Greenland, up Lan- 
 caster Sound, and in Bering Sea. The 
 Herald and Captain Wadleigh, in his last 
 summer cruise in the Alliance, have inter- 
 ested the whole Arctic business world in 
 the search. There remains the northern 
 coast of this continent. Lieutenant Ray, 
 at Point Barrow, will probably be able 
 to search halfway to the mouth of the 
 Mackenzie River, and Lieutenant Greely, 
 
THE JEANNETTE 53 
 
 at Lady Franklin Bay, will probably go 
 northwest to Cape Joseph Henry, and 
 will find out whether Cape Britannia is 
 the termination of Greenland. But there 
 is a tremendous gap between Greely and 
 Eay. There ought to be three expedi- 
 tions to fill it: one to make the North- 
 west Passage, one to Melville and Prince 
 Patrick islands, and one up Jones Sound 
 to search the west coasts of Ellesmere, 
 Grinnell, and Grant Lands. 
 
 THE MACKENZIE RIVER 
 
 The proposed Hudson Bay Company 
 search is desirable, but it is not sufficient. 
 Such expeditions cannot carry extra pro- 
 visions to relieve a starving crew, or, if 
 they do, they cannot get very far. A 
 hundred miles either way from the mouth 
 of the Mackenzie is about all they would 
 accomplish, if they were to carry extra 
 provisions of any consequence. What is 
 
54 THE JEANNETTE 
 
 needed is a ship loaded with provisions, 
 like the Rodgers. Then, as to the inter- 
 national polar stations. It is possible, 
 if a ship attempts the passage and does 
 not find the Jeannette party, and returns, 
 that she may have to winter somewhere 
 between Dolphin and Union Strait and 
 Bellot Strait. If so, the party could make 
 all the simultaneous meteorological and 
 scientific observations made at the other 
 stations. There are to be eight or ten 
 such stations all around the Arctic next 
 winter, and the establishment of these 
 winter stations is especially important to 
 our American Signal Service. 
 
 THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 
 
 It is generally agreed by all Arctic 
 authorities that the Northwest Passage 
 can be made by such a ship as the Jean- 
 nette, or the Rodgers, by way of Peel 
 Sound, Sir James Ross, Dease and Simp- 
 
THE JEANNETTE 55 
 
 son straits, following the coast-line every- 
 where, and navigating the coast water. 
 Sir Allen Young and Mr. MacGahan of 
 the Herald, thought of trying it when 
 they went in the Pandora (Jeannette) to 
 make the summer search for the Franklin 
 records at King William Land ; but they 
 were not prepared to winter, found the 
 season unfavorable, and turned back when 
 near Bellot Strait. Captain Adams, of 
 the whaler Arctic, thought he could have 
 made the passage this year. He went fur- 
 ther down Franklin Strait than any ship 
 ever went before, except Franklin's ships, 
 and then was not stopped by ice, but by 
 the interests of his owners. It might be 
 difficult or impossible to navigate the Vic- 
 toria Strait, where Franklin's ships were 
 stopped, because, from northwest winds 
 and tides down McClintock Channel, and 
 slack water caused by the meeting of the 
 Baffin's Bay and western tides, that strait 
 
56 THE JE ANNETTE 
 
 has always been found packed full of 
 paleocrystic ice. But the great body of 
 warm fresh water poured down by Back's 
 Great Fish River tends to keep open Sir 
 James Ross and Simpson straits, and 
 thus to make the passage possible. When 
 we consider what Collinson, McClure, and 
 Franklin accomplished, navigating these 
 narrow and crooked channels obstructed 
 with numerous rocks and shoals, and with 
 strong tides, in sailing vessels, it seems 
 almost certain that a powerful steamer 
 could make the passage, and probably in 
 one season, if so fortunate as to have one 
 like that of 1881. 
 
 WORK FOR THE RODGERS 
 
 I propose, if no one else wants to try 
 the passage, that Captain Berry, with the 
 Rodgers, 1 should attempt to come home 
 
 1 The Rodgers was burned in winter quarters at St. 
 Lawrence Bay. 
 
THE JEANNETTE 57 
 
 that way next August. He will pick up 
 Iris Siberian sledge party by that time. 
 He can safely leave Bering Sea and Point 
 Barrow to the whalers and to Lieutenant 
 Kay. If he has to winter, your corre- 
 spondent, Colonel Gilder, is familiar with 
 the only questionable part of the North- 
 west Passage, and if worst came to worst, 
 could show them how to live like Esqui- 
 maux, and guide them out to Hudson's 
 Bay. There is nothing better for Captain 
 Berry to do. He will not run the risk 
 of losing a government expedition, trying 
 to discover unknown lands to the north 
 of Bering Sea. This is the best line of 
 search left him after his sledge party's 
 return. 
 
 A UNITED EFFORT 
 
 There is a great awakening of interest 
 in Arctic matters, and there is to be a 
 grand assault made next year on all the 
 
58 THE JEANNETTE 
 
 Arctic mysteries, — meteorological, hy- 
 drographical, geographical, and scientific, 
 — a very complete and thorough Jean- 
 nette search, and the wide space between 
 Kay and Greeley ought to be effectually 
 filled by a searching ship starting from 
 Bering Sea. 
 
 H. M. Peentiss. 
 
THE RESULTS OF THE JEANNETTE 
 EXPEDITION 1 
 
 To the Editor of the Herald. 
 
 In 1879, the Wrangell Land route to 
 the far north was considered one of the 
 most important that was left to be ex- 
 plored. From the information obtained 
 by Wrangell, the discoveries of Kellet, 
 of John Rodgers, and of various whaling 
 captains, and according to the theories 
 of such eminent Arctic authorities as 
 Clements Markham and Dr. Petermann, 
 Wrangell Land was generally supposed 
 to be a large mass of land stretching far 
 to the north, — perhaps even to the Pole 
 itself, — and Dr. Petermann believed it 
 
 1 Never published. See Appendix, Letter from 
 the Herald. 
 
60 THE RESULTS OF 
 
 to be the other end of Greenland pro- 
 longed across the Pole. The very slight 
 rise and fall of the tides, the accumula- 
 tion of ancient stratified ice of extraor- 
 dinary thickness, indicated that the sea 
 north of America was mostly inclosed, — 
 a sort of Arctic Mediterranean. All other 
 routes, except that by Franz Josef Land, 
 had been abandoned as impracticable. 
 
 De Long undoubtedly planned to fol- 
 low the coast of Wrangell Land as far 
 north as possible with his ship, to find a 
 harbor and winter there, to make advance 
 depots of provisions that fall, and to fol- 
 low the coast with sledges in the spring. 
 He would make all the scientific obser- 
 vations, explore a large part of the un- 
 known region, and attain a high latitude. 
 It was the general belief of people best 
 acquainted with the subject that he would 
 accomplish all this, and all the geographi- 
 cal societies were anxious to see some- 
 
THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 61 
 
 body make the attempt. De Long hoped 
 to reach the Pole, but that was more than 
 good judges expected. 
 
 The Jeannette, however, was caught in 
 the pack and drifted across the Wrangell 
 Land of the maps, — across where the 
 Blevin Mountains were laid down ; and it 
 was discovered that the fabled Wrangell 
 Land of the last fifty years was merely 
 an ordinary island of small importance. 
 The theories of geographers had to be 
 readjusted, and this route of Arctic ex- 
 ploration was proved to be a geographical 
 illusion. The subsequent exploration of 
 the island and of the seas for one hun- 
 dred and fifty miles farther north by the 
 Eodgers Search Expedition was a most 
 fortunate and valuable supplement to De 
 Long's discovery, for which Lieutenant 
 Berry is entitled to the highest credit; 
 yet the important disclosure that Wran- 
 gell Land was an island and an impracti- 
 
62 THE RESULTS OF 
 
 cable base for higher exploration belongs 
 to De Long, and would have been pub- 
 lished to the world if the Rodgers had 
 never sailed in search of the Jeannette. 
 
 Consequently, it is now settled that 
 there is no coast left by which any 
 further very great advance can be made 
 into the unexplored region except in the 
 Franz Josef archipelago, — another step 
 towards the solution of the great Arctic 
 problem. 
 
 THE GREAT POLAR CURRENT 
 
 The Jeannette drifted in the ice nearly 
 two years, and thus established the exist- 
 ence of an Arctic drift or current. There 
 is no reasonable doubt that the ice regu- 
 larly drifts from the northwest of Wran- 
 gell Land in about the same general direc- 
 tion as the course of the Jeannette, as indi- 
 cated on Lieutenant Danenhower's chart. 
 There may be variations in different years, 
 
THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 63 
 
 but there is probably a moderately regu- 
 lar annual drift in the general direction, 
 whether caused by a current or by the 
 preponderance of the prevailing winds. 
 This movement was so constant and direct 
 in the spring of 1881, and so powerful 
 in May and June along to the east and 
 northeast of the New Siberian Islands, 
 that it is beyond doubt that the ice from 
 the region to the northwest of Wrangell 
 Land floats off to the north and west, 
 and consequently to the Atlantic, to be 
 melted in more southern latitudes. It does 
 not drift out through Bering Strait. It 
 cannot forever stay in the polar basin, for 
 if that sea were entirely inclosed on the 
 line of the Arctic Circle, it would be filled 
 with ice to the depth of one or two thou- 
 sand feet, if not everywhere to the bottom, 
 — an enormous glacier, a polar ice-cap! 
 For the mean annual temperature is 
 so low in the polar regions that not half 
 
64 THE RESULTS OF 
 
 the annual accumulation of ice and snow 
 could ever be melted in those latitudes. 
 At 75° or 80° ice freezes in still water to 
 seven or eight feet in thickness, while in 
 summer three or four feet of the surface 
 of the pack melts away ; but at the Pole 
 and within the 80th parallel — a circle of 
 fourteen hundred miles in diameter — 
 more ice must freeze, and less can be 
 melted. 
 
 The polar sea, however, — over large 
 areas, — is so deep, and has such gyrat- 
 ing and conflicting currents, that the ice 
 never becomes absolutely fixed over its 
 whole surface, and there is no doubt at 
 all that the great mass of the polar ice 
 drifts out of the Arctic Ocean through 
 the deep and broad opening between 
 Spitzbergen and Greenland into the At- 
 lantic, in a constant and regular stream, 
 — the discharge of an incipient glacier. 
 
 Lieutenant Danenhower graphically 
 
THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 65 
 
 characterizes the region north of Wran- 
 gell Land, where the Jeannette drifted for 
 more than a year in a complicated series 
 of rhomboids and circles, as the " Arctic 
 doldrums," — a locality where there is 
 no current, or merely slight currents in 
 the nature of eddies, and no prevailing 
 winds. 
 
 From the east of "Wrangell Land the 
 drift is probably north and east, and is 
 obstructed by islands to the north of 
 America and to the north of Greenland, 
 so that some of that ice may be a cen- 
 tury in getting out by the north point 
 of Greenland into the Atlantic ; and this 
 accumulates by crushing into masses and 
 by the excess of the annual freezing and 
 snow-fall over the annual melting, until it 
 becomes fifty to one hundred feet thick. 
 No relic of any of the whaling ships, nor 
 of whole fleets of whalers, frozen in or 
 beset in Bering Sea and drifted away 
 
M THE RESULTS OF 
 
 northerly into the unknown region, has 
 ever again been seen, while on the other 
 side of the Arctic Ocean the driftwood of 
 the Lena River is piled up in heaps on 
 the shores of Spitzbergen. 
 
 The Jeannette drift indicates that the 
 ice from the northwest of Wrangell Land 
 floats off to the north of Franz Josef Land 
 and joins the great East Greenland cur- 
 rent. The large mass of fresh water from 
 the Lena, Yana, Kolyma, Olenek, and 
 other Siberian rivers — especially in the 
 summer — must give a considerable im- 
 petus towards the beginning of a current, 
 and must assist the movement of the ice 
 out by the New Siberian Islands, across 
 by the way of the Pole, or at least to the 
 north of Franz Josef Land. 
 
 This drift of the Jeannette destroys 
 some theories as to Arctic currents that 
 have met with wide acceptance among 
 the hydrographers. Sir Wyville Thomp- 
 
THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 67 
 
 son thought that the Gulf Stream ran 
 into the Arctic by the north end of Nova 
 Zembla along the coasts of Russia, Siberia, 
 and North America, and by the northerly 
 point of Greenland, — thus making a cir- 
 cuit of the polar sea, — and joined the 
 great East Greenland current out into 
 the Atlantic. But the drift of the Tege- 
 thoff by Nova Zembla northeasterly, and 
 around to the north and west in a semi- 
 circle to Franz Josef Land, discredited 
 that theory, and this Jeannette drift gives 
 it a final quietus. 
 
 Thus the course of the Jeannette drift 
 throws new light upon the obscure ques- 
 tion of Arctic currents. In addition, it 
 suggests a possibility of 
 
 A NEW SCHEME OF POLAR EXPLORATION 
 
 A ship might drift in the ice — or upon 
 the ice — from the New Siberian Islands 
 to the north of Franz Josef Land, and 
 
68 THE RESULTS OF 
 
 possibly far to the north and near or 
 across the Pole, and out into the Atlantic 
 between Spitzbergen and Greenland. 
 
 Much has been learned of Arctic hy- 
 drography by the involuntary movements 
 of ships beset in the pack. The aban- 
 doned H. M. S. Resolute drifted from 
 Barrows Strait to Labrador, and this 
 drift of the Eesolute, together with that 
 of McClintock in the Fox, of De Haven 
 with the first Grinnell Expedition, and 
 of the Polaris party on the ice floe, deter- 
 mined the currents out of Lancaster and 
 Smith's sounds through Baffin's Bay and 
 Davis Strait to Labrador and Newfound- 
 land. The drift of the Hansa was a strik- 
 ing proof of the East Greenland current. 
 The wonderful drift of the Tegethoff — 
 from Nova Zembla far to the northeast, 
 and around and back and finally to Franz 
 Josef Land — demolished some hydro- 
 graphic theories and showed the great 
 
THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 69 
 
 and increasing depth of the polar sea 
 the farther the vessel was borne towards 
 its centre. Thus involuntarily Franz Jo- 
 sef Land was discovered ; and though the 
 expedition was a miserable failure as to 
 its main object — the Northeast Passage 
 — and though Payer and Weyprecht left 
 their ship behind on top of a grounded 
 ice-floe, yet the expedition was otherwise 
 a grand success and made the most bril- 
 liant Arctic discovery of this generation. 
 
 » If the Jeannette had been forced up by 
 the pressure on to a solid floe, like the 
 Tegethoff, she might possibly have been 
 drifted out by Spitzbergen in another year 
 or two, might have got clear of the ice 
 the second or third year, before round- 
 ing Cape Farewell, and might perhaps 
 have sailed back to New York safe and 
 sound, thus making the tour of the 
 world by a new route, — across the Pole. 
 Again, if De Long had gone into camp 
 
70 THE RESULTS OF 
 
 for the season on the largest and heaviest 
 floe he could find after the Jeannette was 
 crushed, he might have drifted out in one 
 year to the vicinity of Spitzbergen. Then, 
 dragging his boats to open water, he would 
 probably have found walrus hunters, or 
 even some search expedition, at Spitz- 
 bergen. 
 
 For a long time before she was crushed 
 the Jeannette had been drifting at the 
 rate of twelve miles a day, and there is 
 every reason to suppose that those ice- 
 fields keep on at that rate across the polar 
 basin all summer ; but twelve geographi- 
 cal miles a day would have covered the 
 distance of fourteen hundred miles in four 
 months, and De Long's ice-floes would 
 have passed by Spitzbergen before the 
 next winter. It is absolutely possible 
 that a ship could drift in the ice from the 
 New Siberian Islands to opposite Spitz- 
 bergen between June and October. But 
 
THE JE ANNETTE EXPEDITION 71 
 
 a winter drift might be quite different. 
 Then Siberia is in a state of congelation, 
 and all its rivers are at their lowest stage. 
 In the deep seas of the polar basin, the 
 pack, though always in motion, is frozen 
 up and to a certain degree consolidated, 
 and no intelligent prediction can be made, 
 at present, of what the winter drift would 
 be. Most likely it would prove to be 
 very inconstant and irregular. 
 
 AN IDEAL POLAR SHIP 
 
 No doubt it was very hazardous for 
 De Long to put the Jeannette into that 
 twenty-foot ice and to run the risk of get- 
 ting beset. He had a perfect right to 
 take the risk, — that was a part of the 
 original plan, — and the ship did not be- 
 long to the navy. The whalers, sealers, 
 and walrus hunters take just such risks 
 every year. No practicable ship could 
 be devised that would endure the direct 
 
72 THE RESULTS OF 
 
 maximum pressure of the polar ice ; such 
 ice must go under her and lift her out of 
 water, or must go through her side. No 
 ship, however, has yet been built solely 
 for the purpose of polar exploration, ex- 
 cept the Eira. The whalers and sealers 
 must have large carrying capacity. Other 
 Arctic ships have been selected somewhat 
 at random. 
 
 Possibly a ship could be modeled 
 mainly with reference to escaping the 
 pressure ; of such a shape that the ice 
 would naturally run under her, with a 
 rudder and screw that could be unshipped 
 and lifted out of water, with no protrud- 
 ing keel, forefoot, or stern-post, or with 
 a rudder-post that could be raised with 
 the rudder, so that there would be nothing 
 to prevent the ice from running under 
 the ship and nothing to be injured or car- 
 ried away, — the strongest possible ship, 
 with all kinds of composite sheathing, an 
 
THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 73 
 
 outer skin partly covered with steel plates, 
 and an inner skin and layers of felting 
 with another sheathing inside the felting ; 
 with many compartments, braces, trusses, 
 and bulkheads; with a solid bow and 
 large steam power, to ram the floes so as 
 to force them apart, — built mainly for 
 strength, coal-capacity, steam-power, and 
 to rise to pressure. 
 
 Very likely, when firmly frozen in dur- 
 ing the winter, the ship could not rise to 
 pressure, but no Arctic exploring ship 
 that has yet drifted, beset, through the 
 Arctic night has ever been crushed in the 
 winter. The summer is the dangerous 
 time, when the floes are more broken and 
 the ship gets free. 
 
 With such a ship, a man like De Long 
 might proceed to the New Siberian Is- 
 lands by either way, from Bering Strait 
 by Cape Chelagskoi, or from the North 
 Cape by Cape Chelyuskin, and get as far 
 
74 THE RESULTS OF 
 
 north as possible in September, for all 
 Arctic waters are less encumbered by ice 
 in August and September, and then he 
 might deliberately put his ship into the 
 ice and ram her through the polar pack 
 until she was finally beset and frozen in, 
 to drift with the winds and the currents — 
 whither ? I believe he would drift to the 
 Atlantic. He should be so equipped as 
 to be able to live on the largest and thick- 
 est floe in his vicinity all winter, if he 
 should lose his ship, and he should have 
 all kinds of boats provided for all possible 
 emergencies. And thus, in any case, he 
 would have a fighting chance of getting 
 out alive, to give the world the benefit of 
 his discoveries. 
 
 In this random ice-voyage he might 
 discover new lands ; he would sound and 
 record the depth of the sea; he might 
 dredge a new submarine fauna, — per- 
 haps the surviving remnant of a past geo- 
 
THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 75 
 
 logical age, — and lie would be a living 
 proof of the polar drift, and should give 
 many new data to the meteorologists and 
 to the hydrographers. 
 
 De Long contemplated the chance of 
 an involuntary drift when he started. If 
 Wrangell Land should fail him, he had 
 determined to put his ship into the pack, 
 and, if caught, to see where he would 
 drift and what he would discover. He 
 hoped to drift across the Pole to the At- 
 lantic. 
 
 DE LONG DISCOVEKED NEW LANDS 
 
 The Jeannette, Henrietta, and Bennett 
 islands are a northeasterly extension of 
 the New Siberian group. De Long's most 
 important work, however, was in explor- 
 ing new seas. Von WrangelTs Siberian 
 " polynia " is a myth. 
 
 In all their tremendous dog -sledge 
 northerly journeys over the Siberian seas, 
 
76 THE RESULTS OF 
 
 Von Wrangell, Hedonstrom, and Anjou 
 always came to open water. They never 
 failed to find the sea free from ice late in 
 the summer as far as they could see from 
 the Liakhoff Islands. Petermann, Kane, 
 Hayes, and many others, based their (ex- 
 ploded) theory of " the Open Polar Sea " 
 very largely on these polynias of the 
 Russians. Now De Long has abolished 
 the polynias from our Arctic maps, and 
 he would easily agree with Nares, with 
 Payer, and with everybody else, at the 
 present day, that there is no " Open 
 Polar Sea ; " that is, at least, not in the 
 winter. In August that sea is open along 
 the shore all around. The ice-pack 
 grounds, in many places, in thirty or 
 sixty feet of water. This " land-water " 
 freezes every winter and melts in summer. 
 The ice is melted away from wide areas, 
 or driven off by the currents, opposite the 
 mouths of all the rivers ; but the ice-fields 
 
THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 77 
 
 themselves drift away to the north from 
 Bering Sea, and generally from the Si- 
 berian coast. The polynia opposite the 
 Lena does not wholly depend upon the 
 warmth of the Lena water, but largely 
 upon the enormous quantity of water 
 poured out by the summer flood, and upon 
 the drift to the northward that is caused 
 by the surplus of waters of all those Sibe- 
 rian rivers. 
 
 It was very unfortunate for De Long 
 that more was not known of the local dis- 
 tribution of the tribes along the Siberian 
 coast. He should have steered his boats 
 for the mouth of the Yana or for Upper 
 Bulun. Melville has detailed the geo- 
 graphy of all that region, — another valu- 
 able result of the Jeannette Expedition. 
 Many and painful have been the sacrifices 
 while man has been slowly acquiring his 
 present knowledge of his planet, and there 
 have been none more heartrending than 
 
78 THE JEANNETTE EXPEDITION 
 
 the tragedy of the Lena. Still future 
 generations will honor the promoter of 
 the Jeannette Expedition for his philan- 
 thropic liberality, and De Long will have 
 everlasting fame for his daring enterprise 
 and heroic martyrdom in a noble cause. 
 The world will never rest content until the 
 earth is fully explored, nor until all its 
 phenomena attainable to human science 
 shall be known and utilized. 
 
 Henry M. Prentiss. 
 
 Bangor, Me., November 6, 1883. 
 
THE NORTH POLE AND THE SOUTH 
 POLE 1 
 
 At the North Pole, the Arctic Ocean 
 is probably a thousand fathoms deep, 
 while the South Pole is at the centre of 
 a glaciated table-land thousands of feet 
 above the level of the sea. The Arctic 
 Ocean discharges its ice in fields, some of 
 of it a century old, and a hundred feet 
 thick, mostly by an ocean current through 
 the narrow gap between Spitzbergen and 
 Greenland ; while the Antarctic ice floats 
 off, in the form of great tabular icebergs 
 hundreds of feet high, one or two thou- 
 sand feet thick, and often miles in area, 
 in all directions, as along the spokes of 
 a wheel, from the ice cliffs encircling the 
 
 1 Published in the Overland Monthly, July, 1890. 
 
80 THE NORTH POLE AND 
 
 whole glaciated surface of the Antarctic 
 continent. The South Pole will be finally 
 attained by a sledge expedition, across 
 seven hundred miles of inland ice ; while 
 the only way to reach the North Pole is 
 to float across it. 
 
 The more we know of the earth, the 
 smaller it seems, and we shall inevitably 
 explore every hole and corner of it. If 
 one may judge by what has been accom- 
 plished since Columbus set sail from 
 Palos, another century should complete 
 the work. Three quarters of the world 
 was then unknown ; yes, nine tenths of it 
 was to Europeans an unexplored region : 
 while now, since Stanley has filled the 
 last important gap in the map of Africa, 
 less than one sixtieth part of the earth's 
 surface remains to be explored. 
 
 The men who plant a scientific obser- 
 vatory at the South Pole, and there main- 
 tain it for three years, will win undying 
 
THE SOUTH POLE 81 
 
 fame. It may cost millions of money, 
 the work of a thousand men, the loss of 
 a hundred lives, but money is a drug in 
 the markets of the world, and human life 
 is cheap; and neither the men nor the 
 money will be found wanting. 
 
 We have been blindly groping in the 
 Arctic darkness for a century past, hunt- 
 ing for a Northwest Passage ; for Sir 
 John Franklin ; for the Open Polar Sea. 
 Parry even sought in one of his four Arc- 
 tic voyages to reach the Pole itself, by a 
 boat expedition through and over the float- 
 ing ice north of Spitzbergen, but found 
 that he was traveling against the stream. 
 Disraeli ordered Nares to go to the North 
 Pole, and Nares followed the coast-lines 
 of Smith Sound, discovered by Kane, 
 Hayes, and Hall ; and when the land 
 ended, Markham failed in his attempt to 
 reach the Pole over the floating ice of the 
 Arctic Ocean. 
 
82 THE NORTH POLE AND 
 
 De Long started for the Pole by way 
 of Bering Strait, to follow the coast- 
 line of Wrangell Land, which was as- 
 sumed by Petermann to be the westerly 
 end of Greenland prolonged across the 
 Pole, and by Clements Markham to be 
 the southerly end of an extensive Arctic 
 land. But finding Wrangell Land to be 
 only a small island, De Long allowed his 
 ship to be frozen in, as he had boldly 
 decided to keep on to the northward, 
 and, if necessary, to float in the pack to 
 destruction, or to new discoveries. 
 
 Many of the most important Arctic 
 discoveries have been made by such in- 
 voluntary drifting. The Resolute, the 
 Fox, and above all the Polaris party on 
 the ice floe, determined the currents of 
 Lancaster and Smith sounds, of Baffin's 
 Bay and of Davis Strait, to Labrador 
 and Newfoundland ; and the drift of the 
 Hansa proved the East Greenland cur- 
 
THE SOUTH POLE 83 
 
 rent. Payer drifted a year and a half in 
 the Tegethoff, and discovered Franz Josef 
 Land, and from his drift we can infer 
 that the opening between Franz Josef 
 Land and Cape Chelyuskin is mostly 
 closed by lands or islands. De Long's 
 drift began in what Danenhower graph- 
 ically termed the "Arctic doldrums," 
 north of Wrangell Land, where, frozen 
 into the pack, he floated about at the 
 mercy of every wind, backward and for- 
 ward, round and round, for a year before 
 he got fairly started ; then he was carried 
 by the ice in a northwesterly course five 
 hundred miles toward the Atlantic, and 
 discovered three islands ; but his ship was 
 crushed at a point northeast of the New 
 Siberian Islands. The Jeannette had 
 been drifting fast in a direct course for 
 months before she sank, and if she had 
 not been wrecked she would have drifted 
 in another year to the north of Franz 
 
84 THE NORTH POLE AND 
 
 Josef Land, and out between Spitzbergen 
 and Greenland into the Atlantic. Dr. 
 Nansen says that the articles abandoned 
 on the ice by De Long, picked up three 
 years after off the coast of Greenland and 
 carried to Denmark, are of such a char- 
 acter as to establish their own identity. 
 The driftwood on the north coast of 
 Spitzbergen comes mostly from the Lena 
 River. The ice of the polar sea would 
 become a glacier if it were not brought 
 out to warmer latitudes by some ocean 
 current, and undoubtedly the great body 
 of the polar ice does come out between 
 Greenland and Spitzbergen. 
 
 The polar ice north of Bering Sea 
 drifts northeasterly around the north 
 point of Greenland, northwesterly north 
 of Franz Josef Land, and northerly 
 across the Pole, and then out into the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 The polar sea is two thousand miles in 
 
THE SOUTH POLE 85 
 
 diameter. Though comparatively shal- 
 low north of the continents, it is over 
 eight thousand feet deep north of Spitz- 
 bergen, and grows deeper towards the 
 north. It is always covered by fields 
 of ice ; the ice constantly accumulates ; it 
 freezes not only through the six months' 
 night of winter, but more or less all the 
 year round. The ice is never stationary ; 
 fields crush against fields, floes against 
 floes; they pile up at the edges, and 
 over-ride and under-run each other. That 
 part of the sea north of America and 
 west of Grinnell Land is probably in- 
 closed to some extent by islands, or pos- 
 sibly northwesterly winds are prevalent, 
 and drive the ice down against all those 
 island coasts, from Banks' Land and the 
 Parry Islands to the north end of Green- 
 land, so that some of the ice gets to be 
 a century old, partially stratified, and a 
 hundred feet thick, before it ever gets 
 
86 THE NORTH POLE AND 
 
 out to the Atlantic to be melted. All the 
 Franklin search expeditions found such 
 ice on those northwestern shores. Cap- 
 tain Nares called it the " paleocrystic 
 ice." All the narrow channels flowing 
 towards Baffin's Bay are choked up with 
 it, and that is the reason why no ship 
 could ever get through any of them. The 
 Kara Sea also is an Arctic eddy, in which 
 much of the ice is very old and thick. 
 
 The principal advantage to be gained 
 by drifting across the North Pole woidd 
 be to determine the hydrography of the 
 polar ocean. Even if there were an 
 island at the Pole, no regular scientific 
 station could ever be maintained there. 
 A ship might drift there, and even win- 
 ter there, and the party might get out 
 alive in boats by way of Spitzbergen, but 
 no regular communication could with cer- 
 tainty be kept up with a station on such 
 an island. 
 
THE SOUTH POLE 87 
 
 The coasts of the islands of the Franz 
 Josef group, and probably of other islands 
 and lands not yet discovered, of Jones' 
 Sound, and the west coast of Grinnell 
 Land, the northeast coast and north end 
 of Greenland, will eventually be explored, 
 and the geography, the amount of land 
 and water, the depth and the currents of 
 the polar sea, and all other Arctic ques- 
 tions of interest to science, will be in- 
 vestigated. Another expedition, larger 
 than Dr. Nansen's, should cross Greenland 
 in its widest part, from Sabine Island 
 to Upernavik, or from Scoresby Sound 
 to Disco. 
 
 The Northwest Passage can now be 
 made in any favorable season by some 
 Arctic yachtsman and sportsman like 
 Leigh Smith in the Eira, just for the sake 
 of sport, for glory, and incidentally for 
 science, by avoiding the channel where 
 Franklin was beset and taking the back 
 
88 THE NORTH POLE AND 
 
 channel around the east side of King 
 William's Island, and by Dease and 
 Simpson Strait, following the land-water. 
 Still, such an expedition should be pre- 
 pared to winter on the way ; and, in case 
 of disaster, to come out overland with 
 hunters and magazine rifles, perhaps to 
 Hudson's Bay, in the track of Schwatka 
 and Gilder. 
 
 The one important Arctic expedition 
 of the future, however, will follow Nor- 
 denskjold by Cape Chelyuskin, or more 
 likely will follow his track backward from 
 Bering Strait by Cape Chelagskoi, to the 
 open water at the mouth of the Yana and 
 of the Lena ; push north the same year, or 
 the next, in September, when that sea is 
 most open, to the region northeast, and 
 as far northeast as possible, of Bennett 
 Island, where the Jeannette sank; pro- 
 ceed north until beset, and then drift in 
 the pack across or near the Pole to the 
 
THE SOUTH POLE 89 
 
 Atlantic. The ship may run aground on 
 Franz Josef Land, or may be crushed, 
 or may be forced up on top of the ice as 
 the Tegethoff was, and so may float to 
 the Atlantic before the ice melts from 
 under her. No hollow ship can endure 
 the direct crushing force of the paleo- 
 crystic ice ; but a ship might be designed 
 of the greatest practicable strength and 
 solidity, of such shape that when nipped 
 the ice would tend to run under the ship 
 and lift her entirely out of water. If the 
 ship were crushed, the crew could prob- 
 ably escape over the ice, and with boats. 
 Parry, Kane, the Hansa crew, Payer, 
 Leigh Smith, the Proteus and Polaris 
 parties, and numerous others, have made 
 such voyages out of the Arctic with boats, 
 or by floating out on the ice-floes. No 
 exploring expedition that has tried it, or 
 that was not disabled by scurvy, ever 
 failed to succeed in such an attempt. 
 
90 THE NORTH POLE AND 
 
 Franklin was not properly equipped ; he 
 waited too long, and, instead of trying to 
 go back by boat the way he had come, 
 planned a land route south across British 
 America. Greely succeeded, but he did 
 not find the support he had a right to 
 expect at the mouth of Smith Sound. 
 De Long had inconceivably bad luck : he 
 had to start against the current ; his 
 boats were too heavy ; too much time was 
 lost in various ways, so that he was too 
 late in the season ; he met a furious gale, 
 which swamped one of his boats, and 
 partially disabled the crews of the two 
 others ; while his own boat's crew was 
 the unluckiest of all, in missing the na- 
 tives. If De Long had known all we 
 now know of the Lena Delta, he would 
 have been saved. If he had floated all 
 summer, and wintered on the largest and 
 thickest floe he could find near where his 
 ship went down, he would have had a fair 
 
THE SOUTH POLE 91 
 
 chance of escaping safely by way of Spitz- 
 bergen. 
 
 The Antarctic, however, is by far the 
 most important field of future polar ex- 
 ploration. 
 
 First, a steamer should circumnavigate 
 the Antarctic continent. Sir James Ross 
 sailed round it; but as the Erebus and 
 Terror were sailing ships, he could not 
 always closely follow the coast. Besides, 
 his principal object was to make a mag- 
 netic survey, and to locate the southern 
 magnetic pole. But no steamer has ever 
 been to the Antarctic continent. All 
 attempts at Antarctic explorations ceased 
 over forty years ago. Probably no har- 
 bor could be found where a ship could 
 winter; hardly a spot has ever been 
 found where a boat could land. Ross 
 landed once at the risk of his life, on a 
 narrow ledge at the foot of an ice cliff ; 
 
92 THE NORTH POLE AND 
 
 D'Urville landed in a bay surrounded by- 
 cliffs of glacier ice; Wilkes and the 
 United States Exploring Expedition never 
 found a chance to land; and "Weddell, 
 who sailed into the Antarctic south of the 
 Atlantic, never reached the land. 
 
 Ross sailed along an ice cliff two hun- 
 dred feet high, in water two thousand 
 feet deep, for four hundred miles. That 
 was fifty years ago, before anything was 
 known of the glacial period. He knew 
 nothing of glaciated continents ; he could 
 hardly call it land ; so he named that cliff 
 the " Great Icy Barrier." At the height 
 of the great ice age, a ship might have 
 sailed for a thousand miles along such a 
 cliff, a hundred or more miles out from 
 the American coast, from off Cape Cod 
 to Newfoundland and Labrador ; or along 
 the European coast from a hundred miles 
 off Ireland to the North Cape. If the 
 ice should ever entirely melt from the 
 
THE SOUTH POLE 93 
 
 Antarctic continent, it might not all 
 prove to be solid land. The European 
 ice-sheet once spread out smoothly from 
 the Scandinavian highlands over the Gulf 
 of Bothnia and the Baltic, Denmark, the 
 German Ocean, and the British Isles, and 
 far out to sea. The extensive ice cliff 
 that Ross discovered proves the existence 
 of a far more extensive land, as the ice 
 cliff in a deep sea off Great Britain in 
 the glacial period must have indicated the 
 continent of Europe. 
 
 At the foot of the volcanoes Erebus 
 and Terror, at the west end of Ross's 
 Great Icy Barrier, there were still no 
 harbors, as all the bays were filled with 
 glaciers. The glacier not only comes to 
 the sea level, but runs far out to sea, all 
 around the Antarctic continent, at least 
 as far as is known ; still some place will 
 undoubtedly be found in that more than 
 five thousand miles of coast, where a 
 
94 THE NORTH POLE AND 
 
 party can be landed with coal, supplies, 
 and materials to build and maintain a 
 permanent station, from which sledge 
 expeditions can go over the inland ice to 
 the South Pole. Dr. Nansen has shown 
 that such traveling is practicable, by- 
 crossing Greenland, three hundred miles, 
 two years ago, over such inland ice. 
 
 A scientific station at the South Pole 
 could be established and maintained for 
 several years for half the money that was 
 spent in the search for Franklin. A 
 thousand men, relays, and a progressive 
 system of stations, with annual supply 
 ships, — the expedition should be on some 
 such scale to insure a perfect success. 
 For all this sledging, Scandinavian hunt- 
 ers, equipped like Doctor Nansen' s Green- 
 land party, would seem far more suitable 
 than the English sailors, who often made 
 sledge journeys of a thousand miles in the 
 Franklin search. 
 
THE SOUTH POLE 95 
 
 For a preliminary survey, any good 
 steam whaler could probably pass through 
 the loosely packed ice to the Antarctic 
 coast, steam around the South Pole in one 
 season, and find a landing place suitable 
 for a station. Open water would be found 
 along an ice cliff for most of the way 
 in January, February, and March. The 
 Arctic Ocean is crammed full of ice ; it 
 is jammed against the shores, the narrow 
 openings out of that sea (all but Bering 
 Strait) are choked with it as it is carried 
 out by currents toward the Atlantic, and 
 navigation along Arctic coasts is corre- 
 spondingly difficult. But as there is no- 
 thing to prevent the ice from radiating 
 off the coasts of the Antarctic continent, 
 very little obstruction would be met. 
 There would be many icebergs to be 
 avoided, but the daylight would be al- 
 most continuous. The winds or currents 
 might carry the ice against the land on 
 
96 THE NORTH POLE AND 
 
 some coasts, but it would be mostly ice 
 that was only a year or so old. 
 
 A party might land somewhere and 
 make a dash for the interior ; but no- 
 thing very important can be done in the 
 way of inland exploration, without a large 
 force of men, plenty of time, and a per- 
 manent station. 
 
 What is the advantage to be gained ? 
 
 Many chapters have been written on 
 the advantages of polar exploration, but 
 there is room for only a few suggestions. 
 
 The southern hemisphere is ten degrees 
 colder than the northern ; how cold is it 
 at the South Pole, if in the centre of a 
 high tableland on a glaciated continent ? 
 To understand the past history of the 
 earth, we must know all about glaciated 
 continents. We have only two of them 
 left, and the Antarctic is more impor- 
 tant than Greenland, for it is larger, 
 colder, and more completely glaciated. 
 
THE SOUTH POLE 97 
 
 The glacial period still exists to-day in 
 the Antarctic, in as severe a form as 
 ever in Northern America or in Northern 
 Europe. 
 
 "We are just beginning to make a scien- 
 tific study of the weather. We can never 
 perfect that science, however, even if the 
 world should unite in an international 
 service, until we learn all about the 
 weather conditions of the polar regions. 
 We have learned much of that unknown 
 force called electricity, and are begin- 
 ning to suspect that this globe is a great 
 electrical machine with magnetic poles 
 of positive and negative electricity, and 
 that all planets and suns must be elec- 
 trified, and even that gravitation may be 
 the result of electric attraction. When 
 Franklin caught the lightning with his 
 kite, the world may well have said, " Very 
 curious, but what is the good of it ? " 
 Discoveries that to our ignorance seem 
 
98 THE NORTH AND SOUTH POLE 
 
 unimportant often lead to great results. 
 The questions relating to the southern 
 magnetic pole are some of the most im- 
 portant that scientists would like to inves- 
 tigate in the polar regions. The whole 
 civilized world could well afford to con- 
 tribute to a great scientific Antarctic ex- 
 ploration. 
 
THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 
 
 I sent the preceding paper to Dr. 
 Nansen several months before it was pub- 
 lished in the " Overland," and he penciled 
 an interrogation point at the end of the 
 opening sentence, "At the North Pole 
 the Arctic Ocean is probably a thousand 
 fathoms deep." The opinions of experts 
 in Arctic matters have generally favored 
 the conception of shallow seas throughout 
 the Arctic area, because the sea had al- 
 ways been found shallow north of the 
 continents as far as soundings had been 
 taken. Yet the great oceanic depression 
 occupied by the Atlantic was known to 
 continue northward west of Spitzbergen, 
 and the most northerly sounding showed 
 a depth of over 8000 feet about 150 miles 
 
100 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 
 
 north of Spitzbergen, while now Nansen 
 has extended the Atlantic basin far to- 
 wards the centre of the polar area and 
 across some 1400 miles, nearly to the 
 New Siberian Islands, with soundings of 
 10000 to 12000 feet. 
 
 Now, although Prince Kropotkin ad- 
 mits that 2000 fathoms 300 miles from 
 the Pole indicates an equal depth at the 
 Pole and far beyond it, he says the 3000 
 fathoms line passes within a hundred 
 miles from Boston, and suggests that 
 the great ice-current in which the Pram 
 drifted may run in a deep trough, or 
 downward fold of the earth's crust, some 
 300 miles wide, along the north side of a 
 submarine oceanic ridge, of which Spitz- 
 bergen and Franz Josef Land are the 
 visible projections, and which may extend 
 far to the eastward towards Siberia, and 
 that the sea may grow shallow again the 
 other side of this comparatively narrow 
 
THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 101 
 
 depression, thus rendering possible the 
 existence of land about the Pole. 
 
 It has seemed to me, however, that 
 the form of the polar basin and its broad 
 connection with the Atlantic, as well 
 as the general slope of the continental 
 masses about it, naturally indicated that 
 its greatest depth would be somewhere 
 near its centre. The gentle inclination 
 towards the north of British America and 
 of Siberia would naturally continue for a 
 long distance under the polar sea, as the 
 soundings show. De Long found only 
 a few hundred feet of water the whole 
 length of his drift from Wrangell Land to 
 the New Siberian Islands; Berry found 
 about 500 feet at his farthest, north of 
 Bering Strait ; but the sea deepens rap- 
 idly north of Point Barrow and towards 
 the mouth of the Mackenzie, soundings 
 of 800 feet and over having been taken 
 all along within 100 miles of that coast. 
 
102 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 
 
 Scientific opinion now favors the theory 
 of the general geological permanency of 
 continental masses and of oceanic basins ; 
 that when the planet first cooled, there 
 were large areas of depression and of ele- 
 vation, such as we now see on the moon ; 
 and although the continental masses and 
 the comparatively shallow surrounding 
 seas, and the ocean floors as well, have 
 had intermittent periods of local eleva- 
 tion and depression, that nevertheless the 
 earth has on the whole, in a broad and 
 general way, maintained its original form, 
 and the great oceanic hollows have al- 
 ways remained; the decadent continents 
 always encroaching upon the sea around 
 their borders, but never trespassing very 
 seriously on the distant ocean depths. 
 
 So when Nansen finds the shallow Si- 
 berian sea rapidly changing to a fathom- 
 less ocean — and is obliged to improvise 
 a new sounding apparatus — at a point 
 
THE NOKTH POLAR BASIN 103 
 
 about 400 miles north of the Siberian 
 coast, it is like Prince Kropotkin, on his 
 way home from Boston, sailing off from 
 the shallow seas over the submarine mo- 
 raines left by the inland ice of the gla- 
 cial period — George's Bank, Stellwagen's 
 Bank, the Grand Banks — and across the 
 3000 fathoms line of the Atlantic. 
 
 As the Asiatic continental mass ends 
 some 300 miles off the north coast, anal- 
 ogy would indicate a similar result on the 
 other side of the " Arctic gulf," all the 
 conditions being similar, and thus we 
 should find a deep ocean, and no more 
 islands, at an equal distance north of the 
 Parry Islands and before getting halfway 
 to the Pole, a third part of the way north 
 of Point Barrow. 
 
 But if the Pole is somewhere near the 
 centre of an ancient and permanent oce- 
 anic depression, no land would be likely 
 to exist there. If the region were vol- 
 
104 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 
 
 canic, there might be volcanic islands, 
 as in the South Seas. The neighboring 
 lands, however, as far as we know them, 
 are not volcanic; at least there are no 
 active volcanoes nearer than Iceland. 
 
 Yet the theory I have held for many- 
 years as to the depth of the polar sea 
 and as to the absence of land there was 
 largely based upon the Arctic ice condi- 
 tions, upon the character of the ice in 
 the current west of Spitzbergen, upon the 
 very existence of such a current, and upon 
 the fact that it has no polar icebergs. 
 
 If the extensive polar basin is mostly of 
 oceanic depth, there must be an oceanic 
 circulation, as is indicated by Nansen's 
 deep-sea temperatures, and much Gulf 
 Stream water must pass into it, partly 
 perhaps between some easterly extension 
 of the Franz Josef group — far beyond 
 Payer's discoveries — and Cape Chelyus- 
 kin; but probably most of the Atlantic 
 
THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 105 
 
 water goes up along the west side of Spitz- 
 bergen and spreads out over the bottom 
 of the polar basin as an under-current. 
 The discharge of the Siberian and Ameri- 
 can rivers is an important element in the 
 matter of Arctic currents, and cannot be 
 neglected, but is entirely inadequate to 
 account for the immense body of water 
 that flows out of the Arctic seas. 
 
 Sir Clements Markham said last No- 
 vember : — 
 
 " Personally, as I do not believe in any 
 land near the Pole, or on this side of it 
 beyond Franz Josef Land, I trust an at- 
 tempt hereafter will be made to explore 
 another portion of the Arctic regions. I 
 believe there is land, probably in the form 
 of large islands, between Prince Patrick 
 Land and the New Siberia Islands." 
 
 That is a broad gap to fill. I do not 
 believe in much land north of Bering 
 Strait, for the ice drifts away freely far 
 
106 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 
 
 to the north in prolonged southerly gales, 
 and analogy would suggest the prolonga- 
 tion of the Atlantic basin towards the 
 Pacific at Bering Strait, and the deep 
 water north of Point Barrow points in 
 the same direction. But in these previous 
 papers I have repeatedly suggested suffi- 
 cient reasons for expecting to find more 
 or less land north of America. 
 
 Therefore I think favorably of the pro- 
 ject of exploration to the north, westward 
 from Jones' Sound. 
 
 The nearest continental extension to- 
 wards the Pole, as far as appears, is at 
 the north end of Greenland ; but Admiral 
 Markham found the sea grow deeper as 
 he went north over the floe-ice, and Nares 
 reported to Disraeli that the Pole was 
 impracticable from that base of attack. 
 I think that Greely would agree with 
 Nares, although very likely there are still 
 other islands beyond Cape Washington. 
 
THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 107 
 
 Nansen tried for the Pole, of course, 
 and got halfway to it, setting a mark, in 
 something less than a century since Parry's 
 farthest, that it may take another century 
 to surpass. He went three and one half 
 degrees further north than Parry, two 
 and five sixths degrees further north than 
 Markham and Lockwood, and got within 
 three and three fourths degrees, or within 
 226 geographical miles, of the Pole, — al- 
 most as near to it as from New York to 
 "Washington. If we accept Kropotkin's 
 dictum, however, that there is a region of 
 some 1400 miles by 1000 that we know 
 less about than any such extensive region 
 on the planet Mars, then adventurous 
 men will try to get there, and nothing 
 can prevent them. There seems to be 
 something magnetic about the North Pole 
 — an idea, cultivated by a century of he- 
 roic endeavor, that even drove a romantic 
 world-ruler like Disraeli to give formal 
 
108 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 
 
 instructions to a naval officer to go and 
 hoist the British flag upon it. If men 
 must try for it again, the only way to get 
 there, previous to the invention of a prac- 
 ticable flying-machine, is to drift there in 
 an Arctic ship like the Pram, As for 
 Mr. Andree, he should make a few trial 
 thirty-day balloon voyages about the cen- 
 tre of some large inhabited continent, be- 
 fore trying his first great experiment in 
 such an unfavorable locality as Spitz- 
 bergen. 
 
 Nansen was frozen in some 260 miles 
 west of where the Jeannette was crushed, 
 although nearly 100 miles further to the 
 north (still he was then to some slight 
 extent under the lee of the northern ex- 
 tension — that De Long had discovered 
 — of the New Siberian group), and the 
 Jeannette, even if she had not sunk, 
 might not have drifted north of the point 
 where the Fram was beset. But if Nan- 
 
THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 109 
 
 sen could have attained a point two or 
 three hundred miles to the northeast of 
 the place where the Fram was beset, or 
 could have crossed through the ice-cur- 
 rent to a point " as far northeast as pos- 
 sible of Bennett Island," he would prob- 
 ably have had a better chance of drift- 
 ing across the Pole. It might be found 
 impracticable to go up the east side of 
 the New Siberian Islands, the eastern 
 coasts of which group are probably always 
 blocked by the ice-stream driving against 
 them from the eastward ; but as these 
 islands stand in the way of the ice-cur- 
 rent, the seas in their lee are left open 
 after the ice of the previous winter is 
 out of the way ; and Nansen may know, 
 or may not know, whether he could have 
 got further to the northeast across the 
 current if he had been on hand earlier in 
 the season to try the ice everywhere in 
 that direction. Indeed, from De Long's 
 
110 THE NORTH POLAR BASIN 
 
 experience it seems hardly probable that 
 Nansen could have crossed the stream of 
 heavy floe-ice, after passing to the west 
 of Bennett Island, that De Long's party 
 traveled over on their retreat; for al- 
 though Sverdrup worked the Fram across 
 the current through the pack for 180 
 miles above Spitzbergen, this feat was 
 possible only because the pack begins to 
 open up and spread out in that vicinity. 
 
 Nansen's voyage might be repeated 
 several times without any nearer approach 
 to the Pole. 
 
 Captain Berry had a more open sea- 
 son in 1881 than De Long in 1879, and 
 reached a position 150 miles north and 
 east of where the Jeannette was frozen 
 in ; and it is very likely that, being fur- 
 ther away from continental influences 
 and further away from "Wrangell Land, 
 a ship might drift nearer the Pole, start- 
 ing from Berry's farthest point, than the 
 
THE NOETH POLAR BASIN 111 
 
 Jeannette would have drifted; still, as 
 far as we can judge it would take five 
 or six years to get across, and it would 
 be mostly luck whether the ship drifted 
 across the Pole or passed by at some dis- 
 tance on either side. 
 
 But there is no longer any pressing 
 need of going to the North Pole, for Nan- 
 sen has probably discovered about all 
 there is to be discovered in that part of 
 the Arctic. The result of any further 
 attempt, very likely, would not justify 
 the expense and probable waste of human 
 life and energy; for all the salient fea- 
 tures of the north polar basin are now 
 known, and Nansen has just given us the 
 key to the whole Arctic mystery, — just 
 as when Stanley arrived at the mouth of 
 the Congo there was nothing left to do 
 in the exploration of Africa but detail 
 work. 
 
 March 13, 1897. 
 
NANSEN'S " FARTHEST NORTH " 1 
 
 Nansen's scheme, his ship, his drift, as 
 well as his sledge-journey over the mov- 
 ing ice, are each and all perfectly unique 
 in Arctic annals, — a new departure in 
 polar exploration; and each and all are 
 so supremely successful that others may 
 rush iu, with a light heart, to follow in 
 his footsteps, expecting that on a second 
 trial they might drift nearer the Pole, or 
 another dash might be made for the Pole 
 with dog-sledges. 
 
 It is very doubtful whether a better 
 start could be made from the New Sibe- 
 rian Islands. The Fram was frozen in, 
 September 25th, at the edge of the pack 
 
 1 Since sending the preceding paper to the printer, 
 Nansen's hook, Farthest North, has heen issued. 
 
NANSEN'S " FARTHEST NORTH " 113 
 
 at the most northerly point of the open 
 water, about 280 miles north of the mouth 
 of the Lena; and after drifting north- 
 westerly a few days over a sea that was 
 nearly a mile in depth, the ship then 
 floated southeasterly, in about five weeks, 
 over 100 miles to a position 100 miles 
 west of Bennett Island. But the sea had 
 been growing shallow for the last fort- 
 night, until on November 9th the depth 
 was only fifty-seven feet, which indicates 
 a very near approach to the New Sibe- 
 rian archipelago. Thence the drift was 
 almost directly north for the next 100 
 miles, into water over two miles deep. 
 Dr. Nansen does not express any opinion 
 as to whether a better position could be 
 reached for entering the pack, as he was 
 too late in the season to do much explor- 
 ing, but I think he would agree with me 
 that the chances are against a fairer start ; 
 and besides, another time he might get 
 
114 nansen's "farthest north" 
 
 frozen in earlier in the season and much 
 farther south, just as the Jeannette was 
 frozen in three weeks earlier than the 
 Fram, and very far south of the latitude 
 attained by Berry, in Bering Sea. 
 
 A ship starting from the same region 
 would be likely to drift over much the 
 same course, with no more chance of 
 veering to the north than to the south of 
 the track of the Fram ; and as to the 
 dash to the Pole, Nansen thought if he 
 had had the dogs from the Olenek he 
 could have got much farther, but it seems 
 quite evident that if he had got very 
 much farther he would have fared far 
 worse, for the polar pack is better travel- 
 ing in March and April than in the sum- 
 mer months. Besides, a man should have 
 Nansen's experience, and in fact be Nan- 
 sen, to dare such things ; and although 
 he only beat the Fram eighteen miles in 
 the race for the Pole, still I am glad 
 
NANSEN'S " FARTHEST NORTH " 115 
 
 that Nansen made the venture. That 
 plan of spending the winter at Franz 
 Josef Land with nothing but cartridges 
 was sublime ; but I hope nobody else will 
 try it and arrive too late in the season. 
 
 This trip to the Pole over the ice is 
 very enticing. Dr. Pavy wanted to try it 
 (over again) from Cape Joseph Henry, 
 Peary from Greenland. No one will start 
 from Franz Josef Land, because the drift 
 will be against him, but others may try 
 it from some later-to-be-discovered lands 
 north of the Parry Islands. I don't be- 
 lieve Esquimaux could do it with dogs, — 
 I don't believe polar bears could do it ; 
 for game is scarce inside the eighty-sixth 
 degree, probably even in summer, 1 — not 
 to mention obstacles like pressure-ridges, 
 " rubble-ice," and open lanes of water. 
 
 1 The bears must live on seals, and seals must live 
 on fish, and there are no fish in deep oceans so far 
 from land, — certainly none in such an ocean. 
 
116 nansen's "fakthest north" 
 
 The Fram is a grand ship for the pur- 
 pose for which she was built, — to drift 
 beset in the polar pack ; and in that un- 
 precedented three years' drift she endured 
 every kind and degree of pressure that 
 such ice as she encountered could exert. 
 Yet it is by no means certain — in fact 
 it is quite improbable — that the Fram 
 could withstand the pressure of the paleo- 
 crystic ice, or even of the heavy pack-ice, 
 twenty feet thick on the average, that 
 Berry found north of Bering Sea. 
 
 The Fram was lying in open water, 
 moored to a floe, when frozen in, and 
 surrounded by a few large floes of " toler- 
 ably thick ice," as Nansen describes it. 
 This ice had probably formed on the sea, 
 one hundred to two hundred miles to the 
 southward, the preceding winter, and had 
 drifted north. So the ship remained, 
 during her whole drift, in the midst of a 
 very extensive field of new ice mixed with 
 
HANSEN'S " FARTHEST NORTH " 117 
 
 year-old ice, which had grown to be three 
 and four years old before she got free. 
 Yet the unbroken floes were only seven 
 or eight feet thick, and such was the ice 
 that repeatedly over-rode the floe in which 
 the Fram was frozen, and that was broken 
 up against her side or split against her 
 wedge-shaped stern. No one who has 
 seen the paleocrystic ice will believe that 
 any ship could live in it for long, and a 
 ship, once in it, might have to live in it 
 for many years. (To be pushed far up 
 an inclined plane on the first encounter 
 would be her only salvation.) But there 
 is no question of anybody voluntarily en- 
 tering the paleocrystic ice. Yet Nansen 
 speaks in this way of the old ice seen on 
 his poleward journey : — 
 
 " Sometimes it happened that we passed 
 through places where the ice was 'un- 
 usually massive, with high hummocks, so 
 that it looked like undulating country 
 
118 nansen's "farthest north " 
 
 covered with snow.' This was undoubt- 
 edly very old ice, which had drifted in the 
 polar sea for a long time on its way from 
 the Siberian Sea [?] to the east coast of 
 Greenland, and which had been subjected 
 year after year to severe pressure. High 
 hummocks and mounds are thus formed, 
 which summer after summer are partially 
 melted by the rays of the sun, and again 
 in the winters covered with great drifts 
 of snow, so that they assume forms which 
 resemble ice-hills rather than piles of sea 
 ice resulting from upheaval." 1 (This 
 was in latitude 85.°) 
 
 When in latitude 86° he writes in his 
 diary : " I will go on one day longer, how- 
 ever, to see if the ice is really as bad far- 
 ther northward as it appears to be from 
 the ridge, thirty feet in height, where we 
 are encamped. We hardly made four 
 miles yesterday. Lanes, ridges, and end- 
 
 1 Vol. ii., pp. 140, 141, Farthest North. 
 
 
119 
 
 less rough ice, it looks like an endless 
 moraine of ice-blocks ; and this continual 
 lifting of the sledges over every irregular- 
 ity is enough to tire out giants. Curious, 
 this rubble-ice. For the most part it is 
 not so very massive, and seems as if it 
 had been forced up somewhat recently, 
 for it is incompletely covered with thin, 
 loose snow, through which one falls sud- 
 denly up to one's middle. And thus it 
 extends mile after mile northward, while 
 every now and then there are old floes, 
 with mounds that have been rounded off 
 by the action of the sun in the summer, — 
 often very massive ice." l 
 
 Again — in contrast to the above — 
 on the homeward journey, Nansen says : 
 " The ice we are now stopping in seems 
 to me to be something like that we had 
 around the Fram. We have about got 
 down to the region where she is drift- 
 
 1 Vol. ii., pp. 167, 168, Farthest North. 
 
120 NANSEN'S " FARTHEST NORTH " 
 
 ing." 1 He easily recognizes the differ- 
 ence. 
 
 Again lie sums up, as follows : " The 
 ridges were fairly high in some places, 
 and reached a height of twenty-five feet 
 or so. I had a good opportunity here 
 of observing how they assume forms like 
 ice-mountains, 2 with high, straight sides, 
 caused by the splitting of old ridges 
 transversely in several directions. I have 
 often on this journey seen massive high 
 hummocks with similar square sides, and 
 of great circumference, sometimes quite 
 resembling snow-covered islands. They 
 are of ' paleocrystic ice,' as good as any 
 one can wish." 3 Nansen adds that no 
 real icebergs were ever seen by him nor 
 by the men on the Fram during this ex- 
 pedition — nothing but sea ice. 
 
 1 Vol. ii., p. 179, Farthest North. 
 
 2 Icebergs, of inland fresh-water glacier ice. 
 
 3 Vol. ii., p. 184, Farthest North. 
 
121 
 
 Yet, in spite of the ice conditions that 
 Nansen found the farther he traveled 
 north, he suggests a future drifting expe- 
 dition " through Bering Strait and thence 
 northward." 
 
 No doubt if the season proved favorable 
 and if the ship could get as far north as 
 Lieutenant Berry did in the Rodgers, — 
 one hundred and fifty miles northeasterly 
 from where the Jeannette was frozen in, 
 — the drift would be across the Pole, or 
 very near it. I feel forced to conclude, 
 however, from Nansen's description of 
 the ice in the region towards the Pole, 
 and from the formidable character and 
 evident age of the ice towards the Green- 
 land side of the current which passes 
 Spitzbergen, some 100 miles to the west- 
 ward of the line in which the Pram would 
 have drifted if she had not got free — 
 ice which even a Scoresby could never 
 penetrate — that, possibly, it might take 
 
122 nansen's "farthest north" 
 
 ten years for a ship to drift directly 
 across the Pole from north of Bering Sea. 
 For, indeed, it is across the Pole prob- 
 ably, and between the Pole and Green- 
 land, that the paleocrystic ice slowly and 
 gradually works out into the East Green- 
 land stream, and consequently this drift 
 may not be half so rapid as that by the 
 route of the Jeannette and the Pram. 
 
 I can hardly believe that any conceiv- 
 able vessel could " stand the racket " in 
 such heavy ice for that length of time. 1 
 Por even the Pram got strained so that 
 she leaked badly in three years of ice- 
 pressure — not so very much worse than 
 that of the middle-pack of Baffin's Bay. 
 While, if the ship were crushed halfway 
 across, no news of her discoveries could 
 ever transpire. 
 
 Dr. Nansen believes in deep water at 
 
 1 See Payer's New Lands within the Arctic Circle, 
 and De Long's Voyage of the Jeannette. 
 
NANSENS " FAETHEST NORTH 123 
 
 the Pole. His drift gives new data in 
 favor of that theory, for he says: "For 
 various reasons, I am led to believe that 
 in a northerly direction also this deep sea 
 is of considerable extent. In the first 
 place, nothing was observed, either dur- 
 ing the drift of the Pram or during our 
 sledge expedition to the north, that would 
 point to the proximity of any considerable 
 expanse of land ; the ice seemed to drift 
 unimpeded, particularly in a northerly 
 direction. The way in which the drift 
 set straight to the north as soon as there 
 was a southerly wind was most striking. 
 It was with the greatest difficulty that 
 the wind could head the drift back to- 
 wards the southeast. Had there been 
 any considerable expanse of land within 
 reasonable distance to the north of us, 
 it would have blocked the free movement 
 of the ice in that direction. Besides, the 
 large quantity of drift-ice, which drifts 
 
124 HANSEN'S " FAETHEST NORTH " 
 
 southward with great rapidity along the 
 east coast of Greenland all the way down 
 to Cape Farewell and beyond it, seems 
 to point in the same direction. Such ex- 
 tensive ice-fields must have a still larger 
 breadth of sea to come from than that 
 through which we drifted. Had the 
 Fram continued her drift, instead of 
 breaking loose to the north of Spitzber- 
 gen, she would certainly have come 
 down along the coast of Greenland ; but 
 probably she would not have got close in 
 to that coast, but would have had a cer- 
 tain quantity of ice between her and it ; 
 and that ice must come from a sea lying 
 north of our route." 1 
 
 It was unfortunate that Nansen was so 
 enamored of the old theory of the shal- 
 lowness of the polar basin. He says : " I 
 presupposed a shallow polar sea," 2 and 
 
 1 Vol. ii., pp. 707, 708, Farthest North. 
 
 2 Vol. i., p. 368, Farthest North. 
 
125 
 
 other references could be made. Conse- 
 quently he did not provide any deep-sea 
 sounding apparatus, when everything else 
 was provided. Although enough incom- 
 plete soundings were taken to prove the 
 oceanic depth of the whole route covered 
 by the drift of the Fram, yet no sound- 
 ing-line appears ever to have reached the 
 bottom from July 22, 1895 (2056 fath- 
 oms), to July 8, 1896 (1841 fathoms) in 
 a distance of some 500 miles. The im- 
 provised apparatus was too clumsy, and 
 was always breaking. Yet, after proving 
 the theory of the drift, the depth of the 
 sea was of the next importance, and a 
 continuous and regular line of deep-sea 
 soundings all the way, with a correspond- 
 ing table of deep-sea temperatures, and of 
 specimens of the sea bottom, would have 
 been of paramount value for all time. 
 
 Dr. John Murray, of the Challenger, 
 would also have wished " to observe the 
 
126 nansen' s "farthest north" 
 
 temperature of the ocean at all depths and 
 seasons of the year;" ... "to sound, 
 trawl, and dredge, and study the charac- 
 ter and distribution of marine organ- 
 isms." 
 
 The Franz Josef Land route to the Pole 
 has been the only one left — in the minds 
 of the leading Arctic experts — for the 
 last sixteen years since the Jeannette 
 Expedition. It is scarcely necessary to 
 remark that Nansen has left Jackson 
 nothing better to do than to direct his 
 efforts to the eastward, and there is much 
 valuable work yet to be done in that 
 direction. 
 
 Jackson's plan for his expedition was 
 only in theory when Nansen sailed, be- 
 cause that was before Harmsworth came 
 forward to provide the ways and means. 
 The nearest parallel in Arctic history to 
 that romantic and fortunate meeting of 
 Nansen with Jackson was when McClure, 
 
nansen's "farthest north" 127 
 
 at the Bay of Mercy in 1853, who had 
 come in from the Pacific and had not 
 seen a stranger for three years, saw Lieu- 
 tenant Pirn coming alone over the ice — 
 "this solitary helper out of the frozen 
 deep." Everybody will remember that 
 McClure then abandoned the Investiga- 
 tor, taking refuge in another of the 
 Franklin search ships on the Atlantic 
 side, thus completing the Northwest Pas- 
 sage on foot. 
 
 March 20, 1897. 
 
PEARY'S NEW PLAN FOR REACHING 
 THE POLE. 
 
 Lieutenant Peary's latest plan is to 
 go by ship up Smith's Sound, in the track 
 of Hall, Nares, and Greely, and to es- 
 tablish a colony of "Arctic Highlanders" 
 — men, dogs, women, and children, with 
 all their belongings — at the entrance of 
 the Sherard Osborn fiord, which is very 
 near the north end of the mainland of 
 Greenland. Thence, after establishing 
 advance stations and depots, he expects 
 to follow the coasts and channels of the 
 North Greenland archipelago, which by 
 many is supposed to extend far towards 
 the Pole. 
 
 Although from general considerations 
 previously stated, and especially from the 
 
 
peary's new plan 129 
 
 meeting of the tides in Kennedy Channel, 
 I do not coincide in the belief that the 
 Greenland archipelago extends very far 
 north, it is at least the nearest of known, 
 and probably of unknown lands to the 
 Pole, and any plan of Lieutenant Peary's 
 must claim our very serious attention. 
 His first plan of a cross-country route to 
 the Pole over the inland ice, with the aid 
 of dogs, was absolutely original, and his 
 first great trip was a tremendous success. 
 His second trip was elaborately planned, 
 and failed in its main objects only from 
 circumstances that could hardly have been 
 foreseen. Yet on this second trip he had 
 many valuable, even though painful ex- 
 periences, which will throw a brilliant 
 light on the path of future sledge-expe- 
 ditions across glaciated continents. For 
 as Livingstone pointed the way for Stan- 
 ley, and De Long for Nansen, so Peary 
 has established the method for exploring 
 
130 peary's new plan 
 
 the Antarctic Continent and reaching the 
 South Pole. 
 
 The navigation of Smith's Sound is 
 exceedingly difficult, and annual supply- 
 ships cannot be counted upon with such 
 certainty as at Franz Josef Land, or at 
 South Victoria Land, in the Antarctic. 
 The Alert and Discovery made successful 
 voyages both ways. So did the Proteus 
 on her first trip. The Polaris was beset 
 and destroyed on her way back ; the Nep- 
 tune could not reach Greely, and the 
 Proteus was crushed on her second trip. 
 
 The Esquimaux colony could probably 
 subsist by hunting, although not so well 
 at Sherard Osborn fiord, and the ship 
 might not reach so high a point; but 
 Hall's expedition found seals and plenty 
 of musk-oxen at Newman Bay, not quite 
 so far up, at Thank God Harbor seals, 
 even the large phoca barbata, were very 
 abundant, and there is every reason to 
 
peaky's new plan 131 
 
 assume that there are musk-oxen, seals, 
 and even occasional bears throughout the 
 archipelago, though probably less abun- 
 dant towards the extreme northern part. 
 
 The colony at the head of Robeson 
 Channel would be the most available 
 base from which thoroughly to explore 
 and map out the whole North Greenland 
 archipelago with all its channels. Then 
 Peary might follow the course of the 
 migrations of the Esquimaux and of the 
 musk-oxen around to the north of the in- 
 land ice, through the Peary Channel to 
 Independence Bay, and thence down the 
 east coast of Greenland to Cape Bis- 
 marck, living mostly on the musk-oxen 
 that he would be likely to find on the 
 way, with an occasional seal or bear. He 
 would thus accomplish the plans that he 
 was prevented by so many accidents from 
 carrying out on his last sledge- journey, 
 and complete the exploration of all that 
 
132 peary's new plan 
 
 North Greenland region, a work in which 
 he has already borne so distinguished a 
 part. 
 
 Believing, however, in a deep ocean at 
 the Pole that must extend very far, on 
 the American side, towards Greenland, I 
 cannot but feel that the north-polar part 
 of Peary's scheme is impracticable. Let 
 us suppose that the islands should extend 
 to latitude 84°, and that Peary should 
 start from that position as well prepared 
 as Nansen was when he finally left the 
 Pram, with all the dogs his party could 
 manage; then he would have 360 geo- 
 graphical miles of the polar pack to trav- 
 erse, — 720 miles in all, — and he would 
 have the current either across his course 
 or partially against him from the start, 
 and directly against him, undoubtedly, 
 before he got halfway to the Pole ; and 
 on his way back he would be in imminent 
 danger of being drifted out into East 
 
PEARY'S NEW PLAN 133 
 
 Greenland seas. As to the difficulty of 
 traveling over the polar pack, we have 
 the testimony of Nansen and of Admiral 
 Markham ; and we should remember that 
 there would be little or no game to be 
 found anywhere near the Pole on those 
 deep seas. 
 
 Nansen got north about 130 miles, 
 partly across but somewhat with the drift, 
 and then went southwesterly some 360 
 miles, partly across, indeed, but mostly 
 with the drift. This journey lasted 
 through a very long Arctic season of 
 some five and one half months, and his 
 course led him over little such ice as 
 Peary would be likely to meet with from 
 the start. 
 
 Peary may not find so rapid a current 
 in this region north of Greenland as 
 Nansen found on the other side of the 
 Pole, and the movement of the ice may 
 not so seriously affect his journey as the 
 
134 peahy's new plan 
 
 preceding comparison might suggest. 
 There are many indications that the main 
 stream of the polar current flows along 
 the general course of the drift of the 
 Fram, though the Jeannette relics may- 
 have been carried over a more northern 
 route and at a faster rate, since they were 
 borne the same distance in two years as 
 the Fram in three. The Jeannette was 
 fairly in the current when the articles 
 were left upon the floe, but it looks as if 
 the Fram lost half a year before she got 
 well into the stream. Nansen's drift back 
 to the southeast for a hundred miles, after 
 the ship was frozen in, points to the ex- 
 istence of an oceanic eddy to the west- 
 ward of the submarine bank on which 
 the New Siberian group of islands stands 
 — the Jeannette current passing north- 
 westerly through the deep sea to the 
 north of the islands. There are similar 
 eddies in the Arctic seas — the Kara Sea, 
 
135 
 
 and the central part of Baffin's Bay, which 
 is occupied by the middle-pack. 
 
 Sir Wyville Thompson's theory of a 
 current circling about the polar sea — 
 passing into it at Nova Zembla and com- 
 ing out on the east side of Greenland — 
 would necessarily have led to the infer- 
 ence that the whole central part of the 
 polar area was occupied by a broad eddy ; 
 a great Sargasso sea, which instead of 
 being covered with floating seaweed, drift- 
 wood, and all the derelicts of the Atlantic, 
 would have been entirely filled with an- 
 cient and massive ice — perhaps a polar 
 ice-cap. 
 
 This speculation suggests Melville's 
 theory 1 of an " immovable ice-cap, held in 
 place by undiscovered islands, occupying 
 the space within the eighty-fifth degree of 
 latitude." Nansen's discoveries have at 
 
 1 In the Lena Delta, by Chief Engineer George W. 
 Melville, U. S. Navy, p. 475. 
 
136 PEARY S NEW PLAN 
 
 least displaced this theoretical ice-cap, 
 and have pushed it farther over towards 
 the American side. In that case it might 
 not be far across from the last island north 
 of Greenland to the edge of the ice-cap, 
 an inference which seems to be sustained 
 by Melville, as he says on the same page, 
 " Having reached the firm ice-cap, which 
 covers the earth to the north of 85°, the 
 travel will be smooth and easy." 
 
 Although I can find no place in the 
 polar basin for either the smooth "im- 
 movable ice-cap," or for the rough, broken 
 and revolving ice-cap of a deep Sargasso 
 sea, yet it seems to me now, that in the 
 region west of Grinnell Land and half- 
 way between the Parry Islands and the 
 Pole the ice may have a very sluggish 
 movement, even if there are no islands to 
 hold it in place. 
 
 The powerful East Greenland current 
 has a general tendency to draw all the 
 
peary's new plan 137 
 
 surface water, with its icy burden, out 
 from the polar sea towards the Atlantic. 
 This strong suction exerts its greatest 
 force in the direction of the polar current 
 along to the northward of the earlier por- 
 tion of the course of the Fram, although 
 quite in the line, it may be, of Sverdrup's 
 drift the latter part of the way. The 
 currents flowing through the numerous 
 channels that lead to Baffin's Bay, the 
 northwest winds that may preponderate, 
 and perhaps islands, constantly tend to 
 hold down the paleocrystic ice against the 
 North American and North Greenland 
 
 Between the respective spheres of in- 
 fluence of the great polar stream and of 
 the currents leading to Baffin's Bay, there 
 may be an area of slow and irregular 
 drift in which the ice may have time to 
 grow very old. I have written across the 
 face of my polar map, from opposite the 
 
138 peaky's new plan 
 
 mouth of the Mackenzie to a point north- 
 west of Grinnell Land and far towards 
 the Pole, " The Paleocrystic Sea." 
 
 In consideration of all the foregoing 
 reasons, I am not sure that the movement 
 of the ice in a southerly and easterly- 
 direction would interfere so seriously as 
 might be supposed with Peary's projected 
 journey, although I still think that the 
 rough and broken character of the pack 
 would prevent the attainment of the 
 North Pole. Peary, like Nansen, would 
 know when to turn back, and would in 
 this way make a valuable contribution to 
 geographical and hydrographical science. 
 He might also surpass Nansen's highest 
 latitude, and set a new mark to tempt 
 the ambition of future explorers. 
 
 April 14, 1897. 
 
THE ANTARCTIC 
 
 In the Antarctic, there is everything to 
 be done. Yet I have little to add to my 
 "The North Pole and the South Pole" 
 paper on this subject, except that steam- 
 ers have been down there since 1890, and 
 Borchegrevink has found not only a place 
 to land, but even a very suitable place for 
 a station, at Cape Adair, an especially 
 convenient headquarters for work at the 
 south magnetic pole — perhaps the most 
 pressing and timely work to be done in 
 the Antarctic, — but too far away and 
 badly situated for an attack on the South 
 Pole. 
 
 Admiral Nares prefers WeddelTs route, 
 and Dr. John Murray theorizes that the 
 nearest coast to the South Pole would be 
 
140 THE ANTARCTIC 
 
 directly south of the farthest point at- 
 tained by Weddell in 1823, southeastward 
 from Cape Horn and east of Graham's 
 Land. Weddell sailed to 75° S., and 
 Captain Larsen and other sealers have re- 
 cently steamed down the east coast of 
 Graham's Land and found a loose pack 
 and much open water. 
 
 Indeed, it is probable that Ross and 
 Weddell, so long ago, found the two deep- 
 est indentations in the Antarctic land and 
 the two best routes for a near approach 
 to the Southern Pole. For it seems quite 
 certain that the warm tropical current 
 that flows south along the east coast of 
 South America must sink beneath the cold 
 Cape Horn current and have an influence 
 towards keeping the water open east of 
 Graham's Land. The prevailing westerly 
 winds, too, may blow the ice away from 
 Graham's Land and loosen up the pack. 
 
 The Australian current and the pre- 
 
THE ANTARCTIC 141 
 
 vailing winds may have a similar influ- 
 ence east of Victoria Land, where Sir 
 James Ross reached 78° S. and explored 
 the whole coast in two successive voyages. 
 Captain Kristensen had little difficulty in 
 following Ross's course in 1894-95, reach- 
 ing 74° S., and could easily have gone 
 farther. No one had undertaken this 
 voyage since Ross in 1841 and 1842, and 
 Kristensen with his small sealing steamer 
 Antarctic has shown how superior steam- 
 ers are to sailing vessels for such work. 
 
 Dr. Murray suggests that a proper sta- 
 tion could probably be found at Mac- 
 murdo Bay, near Mt. Erebus, and such a 
 base would be very desirable for the ex- 
 ploration of the inland ice, for Ross's icy 
 barrier, a broad, smooth glacier, level and 
 free from crevasses, would afford good op- 
 portunity for sledge traveling, besides be- 
 ing the nearest known coast to the South 
 Pole, the shortest distance. It extends 
 
142 THE ANTARCTIC 
 
 so far inland towards the south that no 
 land, no mountains, no high inland-ice 
 horizon can be seen behind it (Ben Nevis 
 could not have been seen from Geikie's 
 ice-cliff), and it would probably take a 
 man a long way towards the Pole before 
 reaching any high altitude. It would be 
 only some seven hundred miles to the 
 Pole, about the distance Peary went over 
 the inland ice to the northeasterly end of 
 Greenland at Independence Bay. 
 
 The success of Peary's journeys, how- 
 ever, depended upon the use of Esqui- 
 maux dogs; and whether Arctic dogs 
 would live to be carried across the equa- 
 tor on shipboard is not known. If a few 
 out of many should live, large numbers 
 could be bred from such a stock on some 
 Antarctic island. 
 
 But even Peary's dogs froze to death 
 on his second journey across the inland 
 ice of Northern Greenland, and the bliz- 
 
THE ANTARCTIC 143 
 
 zards would be still worse, perhaps, on 
 the probably high glaciated continent of 
 the Antarctic, which is supposed to be 
 still colder than the Arctic. 
 
 Then Peary, at the end of his terri- 
 ble journey to Independence Bay, found 
 the musk-ox, and on both trips men and 
 dogs took a vacation and recuperated, get- 
 ting new life and strength for dogs and 
 men — as dogs on such a trip are equal 
 to men, and more useful than men; for 
 when they break down there is no moral 
 objection to their being killed and eaten 
 by the men or by the other dogs, which 
 is quite as advantageous. 
 
 As far as I can learn, Peary would 
 never have been able to get back across 
 the inland ice if he had not had the good 
 fortune to lay in a new stock of energy 
 for men and dogs in the shape of musk- 
 ox meat. 1 
 
 1 See Appendix, The East Greenland Musk-Ox. 
 
144 THE ANTARCTIC 
 
 Dogs had never been used on inland 
 ice when I wrote my " Overland " paper 
 in 1889, and I remember figuring out an 
 elaborate plan of a grand campaign on 
 the Franklin-search system of support- 
 ing man-sledges, to establish a scientific 
 station at the South Pole, — an ambi- 
 tious project, and perhaps impracticable. 
 It is evident that Peary's remarkably 
 successful work in Greenland must be the 
 basis for similar undertakings in the ex- 
 ploration of the Antarctic Continent, and 
 the plan of his last journey, improved 
 and corrected from his experience, must 
 be used in any serious attempt to get to 
 the South Pole. 
 
 Peary's advanced depot, upon which 
 the success of his whole trip depended, 
 was drifted over and rendered unfindable ; 
 and it is plain that the future explorer 
 of inland ice will have to flag his whole 
 course as far as stations are established 
 
THE ANTARCTIC 145 
 
 and depots are laid down, just as the 
 teamsters bush their roads across the 
 northern lakes. A line of large bamboo 
 poles could perhaps be deeply and firmly 
 set, with small and durable flags or alumi- 
 num vanes at the top. Very likely many 
 of them would be buried in the snow- 
 drifts, and some might be blown down 
 or broken off, but not all of them, and 
 such a line could be followed if the poles 
 were not set too far apart. 
 
 Then with a considerable force of men 
 to lay out the preliminary stations and 
 depots, and with great packs of dogs — 
 that it would take years to breed — and 
 a system of supporting sledges, the final 
 party of a few men with many dogs could 
 be sent off to complete the journey to the 
 Pole. 
 
 But it would be a mistake to start too 
 early in the spring, for the blizzards in 
 which many of the dogs would freeze to 
 
146 THE ANTARCTIC 
 
 death would be less likely to occur later 
 in the season. I fear there will have to 
 be much painful experience before the 
 South Pole is attained. Still, it is pos- 
 sible of attainment, which can hardly be 
 said with certainty of the North Pole, 
 even though Nansen got so near it, and 
 has shown us the only way to get there, 
 with his drifting ship and his original 
 system of traveling over the polar pack 
 with dogs and kayak-sledges. 
 
 March 13, 1897. 
 
 1 For a full understanding of the whole Antarctic 
 question, see Dr. John Murray's remarkable paper 
 (and map), " The Renewal of Antarctic Exploration," 
 in The Geographical Journal (Royal Geographical So- 
 ciety) of January, 1894, with the " discussion " follow- 
 ing the reading of the paper. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 21 Eccleston Square, S. W., London, 
 18 December, 1881. 
 
 My dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the 
 receipt of your letter, dated November 25th, 
 inclosing a paper on Arctic research, and of 
 your second letter dated December 1st. I 
 have read your paper with much interest, and 
 perceive that it is the result of extensive read- 
 ing and much thought. It is both gratifying 
 and interesting to find that Arctic questions 
 are studied with so much care. I therefore 
 regret the more that, owing to the author not 
 having been personally engaged on Arctic ser- 
 vice, it is not considered to be adapted for pub- 
 lication in the Proceedings of the Royal Geo- 
 graphical Society. 
 
 I agree with you that a search down the 
 
148 APPENDIX 
 
 Mackenzie would be fruitless. My opinion is 
 that De Long shaped a course westward and 
 northward, and that if the Jeannette ever 
 reached a harbor, it was on an unknown shore 
 to the north of Siberia. I saw Mr. Gordon 
 Bennett to-day, and he assures me that De 
 Long was instructed to endeavor to meet Nor- 
 denskjold before proceeding on his own dis- 
 coveries. Consequently he must certainly have 
 gone westward. 
 
 On the 20th I shall accompany Lord Aber- 
 dare, with a Deputation, to urge upon the 
 First Lord of the Admiralty the urgent neces- 
 sity for sending a steamer to relieve Mr. Leigh 
 Smith, and consequently to visit Franz Josef 
 Land next season. I trust that we may be 
 successful, but it is by no means certain. 
 
 I only wish that we could persuade our 
 Government to undertake an adequate ex- 
 ploration of Franz Josef Land, and to send 
 another steamer to search for the Jeannette. 
 But I regret to say that I see very little hope of 
 it. My very strong opinion, and in this I con- 
 cur with Lieutenant Hovgaard, is that a search 
 
APPENDIX 149 
 
 ought to be undertaken to Cape Chelyuskin, 
 and northwards on or near the meridian of 
 that cape. I hope that Hovgaard, who has 
 gone to America to collect funds, may be suc- 
 cessful, and that if he goes to Cape Chelyuskin, 
 Lieutenant Schwatka may accompany him, to 
 conduct the sledging work. 
 
 I believe that you are right in supposing 
 that the drift along the south shore of Franz 
 Josef Land is from east to west ; but there is 
 nothing but mere conjecture to indicate the 
 direction of currents north of Siberia. . . . 
 Ever, yours very truly, 
 
 Clements R. Markham. 
 
 Henry M. Prentiss, Esq., 
 
 Bangor, Maine, United States. 
 
II 
 
 The Herald, New York, 
 November 14, 1883. 
 
 Dear Sir, — We have carefully consid- 
 ered your communication, dated November 6. 
 While we are nattered by the views you so 
 kindly take, we are unable to publish the mat- 
 ter. In view of all the facts that have been 
 presented concerning the unfortunate expedi- 
 tion, we scarcely need explain to you that it 
 would be inappropriate for the Herald to pub- 
 lish it. Of course, any other journal in the 
 country could better afford to do it, in view 
 of our relations to the expedition, than the 
 Herald. From this you will probably un- 
 derstand the feeling which prompts us to re- 
 turn you the MS., in case you desire to use it 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Remaining very truly yours, 
 
 J. G. Bennett. 
 
 H. M. Prentiss, Esq., 
 
 Bangor, Maine. 
 
in 
 
 THE EAST GREENLAND MUSK-OX 
 
 Sir Clements Markham, in his The 
 Threshold of the Unknown Region, pages 
 308-11, says that Clavering in 1823 found 
 twelve natives at Cape Borlase Warren, in 
 seventy-five degrees north, on the east coast 
 of Greenland; but Captain Koldewy did not 
 find any Esquimaux about there in 1869, 
 though there were abundant traces of them. 
 " As the Melville Bay glaciers form an impas- 
 sable barrier, preventing the ' Arctic High- 
 landers' from wandering southward on the 
 west side, so the ice-bound coast on the east 
 side would prevent the people seen by Clav- 
 ering from taking a southerly course;" and 
 again, Markham theorizes, " These considera- 
 tions lead to the conclusion that there are, or 
 have been, inhabitants in the unexplored region 
 
152 APPENDIX 
 
 to the north of the known parts of Greenland." 
 Yet skeptics may well have thought this utter- 
 ance a trifle far-fetched in 1873, before the 
 discoveries of Nares and of Greely in Grinnell 
 Land. 
 
 But even if Koldewy did not find the men, 
 he found whole herds of musk-oxen in the 
 same region. Now since Peary has found the 
 musk-ox at Independence Bay, and has thus 
 established the connecting link in the chain of 
 evidence, we find that Markham's theory is 
 proven, that the men as well as the musk-oxen 
 could and must have come around the north 
 end of Greenland from Smith Sound ; the 
 course of the previous migration from the 
 American continent having been either up 
 Smith Sound or by the west coast of Grinnell 
 Land, across to Lady Franklin Bay, where 
 the musk-ox is abundant, and where there 
 are numerous old traces of the Esquimaux, 
 and across the sound to Newman Bay, where 
 Hall found the musk-ox and killed a great 
 many. Thence the Esquimaux as well as the 
 
APPENDIX 153 
 
 musk-oxen must have passed around the north- 
 erly limit of the inland ice of Greenland, ex- 
 plored by Peary, to Independence Bay, and 
 thence southerly along the east coast of Green- 
 land to the region where Clavering and Kol- 
 dewey found them. So much for polar theo- 
 ries when based on facts and common sense. 
 Nansen has just proved another — and the 
 most important yet. 
 
 
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