The North Pole | Page 6

began to move the ensuing year, his party sought to return,
but the Polaris was caught in the deadly grip of an impassable ice pack.
After two months of drifting, part of the crew, with some Eskimo men
and women, alarmed by the groaning and crashing of the ice during a
furious autumn storm, camped on an ice floe which shortly afterwards
separated from the ship. For five months, December to April, they lived
on this cold and desolate raft, which carried them safely 1300 miles to
Labrador, where they were picked up by the Tigress. During the winter
one of the Eskimo women presented the party with a baby, so that their
number had increased during the arduous experience. Meanwhile the
Polaris had been beached on the Greenland shore, and those remaining
on the ship were eventually also rescued.
In 1875 Great Britain began an elaborate attack on the Pole viâ what
was now known as the American route, two ships most lavishly
equipped being despatched under command of George Nares. He
succeeded in navigating the Alert fourteen miles further north than the
Polaris had penetrated four years previous. Before the winter set in,
Aldrich on land reached 82° 48´, which was three miles nearer the Pole
than Parry's mark made forty-eight years before, and the following
spring Markham gained 83° 20´ on the polar ocean. Other parties

explored several hundred miles of coast line. But Nares was unable to
cope with the scurvy, which disabled thirty-six of his men, or with the
severe frosts, which cost the life of one man and seriously injured
others.
The next expedition to this region was that sent out under the auspices
of the United States government and commanded by Lieutenant--now
Major-General--A. W. Greely, U. S. A., to establish at Lady Franklin
Bay the American circumpolar station (1881). Greely during the two
years at Fort Conger carried on extensive explorations of Ellesmere
Land and the Greenland coast, and by the assistance of his two
lieutenants, Lockwood and Brainard, wrested from Great Britain the
record which she had held for 300 years. Greely's mark was 83° 24´,
which bettered the British by four miles. As the relief ship, promised
for 1883, failed to reach him or to land supplies at the prearranged
point south of Fort Conger, the winter of 1883-84 was passed in great
misery and horror. When help finally came to the camp at Cape Sabine,
seven men only were alive.
While these important events were occurring in the vicinity of
Greenland, interesting developments were also taking place in that half
of the polar area north of Siberia. When in 1867 an American whaler,
Thomas Long, reported new land, Wrangell Land, about 500 miles
northwest of Bering Strait, many hailed the discovery as that of the
edge of a supposed continent extending from Asia across the Pole to
Greenland, for the natives around Bering Strait had long excited
explorers by their traditions of an icebound big land beyond the horizon.
Such extravagant claims were made for the new land that Commander
De Long, U. S. N., determined to explore it and use it as a base for
gaining the Pole. But his ship, the Jeannette, was caught in the ice
(September, 1879) and carried right through the place where the new
continent was supposed to be. For nearly two years De Long's party
remained helpless prisoners until in June, 1881, the ship was crushed
and sank, forcing the men to take refuge on the ice floes in mid ocean,
150 miles from the New Siberian Islands. They saved several boats and
sledges and a small supply of provisions and water. After incredible
hardships and suffering, G. W. Melville, the chief engineer, who was in

charge of one of the boats, with nine men, reached, on September 26, a
Russian village on the Lena. All the others perished, some being lost at
sea, by the foundering of the boats, while others, including De Long,
had starved to death after reaching the desolate Siberian coast.
Three years later some Eskimos found washed ashore on the southeast
coast of Greenland several broken biscuit boxes and lists of stores,
which are said to be in De Long's handwriting. The startling
circumstance that these relics in their long drift from where the ship
sank had necessarily passed across or very near to the Pole aroused
great speculation as to the probable currents in the polar area. Nansen,
who had already made the first crossing of Greenland's ice cap, argued
that the same current which had guided the relics on their long journey
would similarly conduct a ship. He therefore constructed a unique craft,
the Fram, so designed that when hugged by the ice pack she would not
be crushed, but would be lifted up and rest on the