5^ Chapter I. 



After giving still more conclusive proofs that the 

 Fraiii must inevitably go to the bottom, as soon as it 

 should be exposed to the pressure of the ice, he goes 

 on to refer to the impossibility of drifting in the ice with 

 boats. And he concludes his article with the remark 

 that "Arctic exploration is sufficiently credited with 

 rashness and clanger in its legitimate and sanctioned 

 methods, without bearing the burden of Dr. Nansen's 

 illogical scheme of self-destruction." 



From an article Greely wrote after our return home, 

 in Harpers Weekly for September igth, 1896, he 

 appears to have come to the conclusion that the 

 Jeannette relics were genuine and that the assumption 

 of their drift may have been correct, mentioning 

 "Melville, Dall and others" as not believing in them. 



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He allows also that my scheme has been carried out 

 in spite of what he had said. This time he concludes 

 the article as follows : " In contrasting the expeditions 

 of De Long and Nansen, it is necessary to allude to 

 the sino-le blemish that mars the otherwise magnificent 



o 



career of Nansen, who deliberately quitted his comrades 

 on the ice-beset ship hundreds of miles from any known 

 land, with the intention of not returning, but, in his 

 own reported words, ' to go to Spitzbergen where he 

 felt certain to find a ship 600 miles away.' De Long and 

 Ambler had such a sense of honour that they sacrificed 

 their lives rather than separate themselves from a dying- 

 man whom their presence could not save. It passes 



