4 i2 MODERN VIKINGS IN THE ARCTIC SEAS 



Sverdrup returned in 1902, after a four years' absence. The 

 chief results of his expedition were the discovery and mapping of 

 the southwest and west coast of Ellesmere Land and of the islands 

 named, together with valuable meteorological observations and a 

 representative natural history collection. 



Leaving Sverdrup's record, we now take up that of another 

 Norwegian explorer, Captain Roald Amundsen, who won the dis- 

 tinguished honor of being the first to carry a vessel through the 

 Northwest Passage, and thus completed the work of McClure more 

 than fifty years before. 



Captain Amundsen had been on various polar voyages before 

 the one in question. A second lieutenant in the Norwegian Navy, 

 his Arctic experience began with observations in the East Green- 

 land current in 1891. In 1897 he was granted leave of absence to 

 join the Belgian Antarctic expedition, and was first officer of the 

 "Belgica" during its two years in the Antarctic ice fields. But his 

 chief experience in the polar seas, that on which his future fame 

 will rest, was his daring expedition of 1903-06. In this expedition 

 he had Dr. Frederick A. Cook as a shipmate. 



Leaving Christiania, Norway, on June 17, 1903, in a tiny seal- 

 ing vessel, the "Gjoa," driven by gasoline engines, he made his way 

 northward to Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, his purposes being 

 two in number, to re-locate the Magnetic Pole and to endeavor to 

 navigate the Northwest Passage. 



Following Amundsen's track, we make our way through Lan- 

 caster Sound and Barrow Strait, its western continuation, and 

 thence southward through Peel Sound and Franklin Strait, sepa- 

 rating the Princess of Wales Island on the west from North Somer- 

 set Island and Boothia Peninsula on the east. The latter is the most 

 northerly extremity of the American continent, which here sends a 

 tract of land far northward into the Arctic Sea. He was now in the 

 vicinity of King William's Land, the scene of Sir John Frank- 

 lin's fate. 



'Amundsen had not reached this locality in his little ship with- 



