392 ANDREE'S FATAL FLIGHT IN A BALLOON 



borg, the details of the plan and the probable aid of the air currents 

 were worked out between them, their calculations leading to the 

 conclusion that the distance could be traversed in ninety-seven 

 hours. Their study was as thorough as it could be made with the 

 imperfect data at their command, and the results were submitted 

 to several of the Swedish scientists, including the explorer Norden- 

 skiold, one of whom said: 



"If you have faith in such an undertaking, why not rather set 

 out from Spitzbergen and try to reach the North Pole?" 



This first put the great project in which he afterward engaged 

 into Andree's mind, a project among the most daring and adven- 

 turous that man had ever undertaken, considering the state of 

 aeronautical science at that period. Full of his new scheme, which 

 appealed strongly to his enthusiastic soul, he began a series of 

 experiments in aeronautics, obtaining a sum of $1,400 from a 

 memorial fund at Stockholm to assist him. In one of his ascents 

 he crossed the Baltic, with great peril to his life, in a small balloon. 



His great project was first publicly made known in a lecture 

 before the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1895, printed 

 with the title of "Proposed Plan of an Expedition to the North Pole 

 in a Balloon." In this lecture he said, referring to the fact that so 

 far the polar explorer had used only one means of travel, the sledge : 



"The fact remains that in attempting to push on over the polar 

 ice we have lost numbers of men, ships, and money, and several 

 hundred years of time, without having succeeded in crossing the 

 icy desert and reaching the Pole. Is it not time to examine this 

 question and look about for some other means of transportation 

 than the sledge? Yes, it is time, and we will not have to look far 

 to find the means that is particularly adapted for such purposes. 



"This means is the balloon. Not the ideally perfect steerable 

 balloon that is dreamed of and worshipped but has never been seen, 

 but the balloon that we really possess and that is judged so unfavor- 

 ably while only its weak points are noticed and emphasized. Such 



