The North Pole | Page 7

ice; he provisioned
the vessel for five years and allowed her to be frozen in the ice near
where the Jeannette had sunk, 78° 50´ N., 134° E. (September 25,
1893). When at the end of eighteen months the ship had approached
314 miles nearer to the Pole, Nansen and one companion, Johansen,
with kayaks, dogs, sledges, and three months' provisions, deliberately
left the ship and plunged northward toward the Pole, March 14, 1895.
In twenty-three days the two men had overcome one-third of the
distance to the Pole, reaching 86° 12´. To continue onward would have
meant certain death, so they turned back. When their watches ran down
Providence guided them, and the marvelous physique of both sustained
them through fog and storm and threatened starvation until they
reached Franz Josef Land, late in August. There they built a hut of
stones and killed bears for meat for the winter. In May, 1896, they
resumed their southward journey, when fortunately they met the
Englishman Jackson, who was exploring the Archipelago.
Meanwhile the Fram, after Nansen left her, continued her tortuous
drifting across the upper world. Once she approached as near as 85° 57´
to the Pole--only fifteen miles less than Nansen's farthest. At last, in
August, 1896, with the help of dynamite, she was freed from the grip of
the ice and hurried home, arriving in time to participate in the welcome

of Nansen, who had landed a few days earlier.
Franz Josef Land, where Nansen was rescued by Jackson, has served as
the base of many dashes for the Pole. It was from its northernmost
point that the illustrious young member of the royal family of Italy, the
Duke of the Abruzzi, launched the party captained by Cagni that won
from Nansen for the Latin race the honor of the farthest north, 86° 34´,
in 1901.
This land, which consists of numerous islands, had been named after
the Emperor of Austria-Hungary by Weyprecht and Payer, leaders of
the Austrian-Hungarian polar expedition of 1872-74, who discovered
and first explored the Archipelago.
It was from Spitzbergen that Andree, with two companions, sailed in
his balloon toward the Pole, in July, 1897, never to be heard from again,
except for three message buoys dropped in the sea a few miles from the
starting-point.
The Northeast Passage was first achieved in 1878-1879 by Adolph Erik
Nordenskjold. Step by step energetic explorers, principally Russian,
had been mapping the arctic coasts of Europe and Siberia until
practically all the headlands and islands were well defined.
Nordenskjold, whose name was already renowned for important
researches in Greenland, Nova Zembla, and northern Asia, in less than
two months guided the steam whaler Vega from Tromsoe, Norway, to
the most easterly peninsula of Asia. But when barely more than 100
miles from Bering Strait, intervening ice blocked his hopes of passing
from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a single season and held him fast for
ten months.
No résumé of polar exploration is complete without mention of Wm.
Barents (1594-96) who, for the Dutch of Amsterdam, made three
attempts to accomplish the Northeast Passage around Nova Zembla;
Wm. Baffin, who discovered Baffin Bay and Smith Sound (1616); Wm.
Scoresby, Sr., who reached by ship 81° 30´ N., 19´ E. (1806), a record
till Parry eclipsed it; Wm. Scoresby, Jr., who changed all ideas of East

Greenland (1822) and made valuable scientific observations, and the
German North Polar expedition of 1869-70. One of the ships of the
latter was crushed in the ice and sank. The crew escaped to an ice floe
on which they drifted in the darkness of an arctic winter for 1300 miles
along the coast of Greenland to Frederiksthaal.
The preceding brief summary gives only an inadequate conception of
the immense treasures of money and lives expended by the nations to
explore the northern ice world and to attain the apex of the earth. All
efforts to reach the Pole had failed, notwithstanding the unlimited
sacrifice of gold and energy and blood which had been poured out
without stint for nearly four centuries. But the sacrifice had not been
without compensation. Those who had ventured their lives in the
contest had not been actuated solely by the ambition to win a race--to
breast the tape first--but to contribute, in Sir John Franklin's words, "to
the extension of the bounds of science." The scores of expeditions, in
addition to new geographical discoveries, had brought back a wealth of
information about the animals and vegetable life, the winds and
currents, deep sea temperatures, soundings, the magnetism of the earth,
fossils and rock specimens, tidal data, etc., which have enriched many
branches of science and greatly increased the sum of human
knowledge.
A brief summer excursion to Greenland in 1886 aroused Robert E.
Peary, a civil engineer in