INTRODUCTION. 



The Arctic Ocean has been for years the nursery of heroic 

 deeds. And had the results of enterprise been even less than they 

 have been in that region of frost and ice. and months-long night, 

 what has been shown there of that which is noblest and most ad- 

 mirable in man would have been worth all that it has cost. The 

 story of war and of battle brings to light much bravery, much en- 

 durance, often much magnanimity; yet the record is stained with 

 so much of bloodshed, and of cruelty, that not infrequently it 

 seems more like a transcript of the baser human passions than of 

 heroic courage and noble achievement. And Arctic discovery, 

 too, is full of pain, for its course is tracked with hardships, and its 

 field is sown with graves. Yet there is BO much of brightness, of 

 hope, of mutual helpfulness, and of novel experience in the record, 

 that we turn to the stories of polar adventure with the same zest 

 with which boys breathe in the probabilities and glorious reckless- 

 ness of such adventurers as Tom Sawyer. 



The book now before the reader falls not a whit behind its 

 predecessors. Indeed, as an unbroken current of hardship, dis- 

 appointments, perils, and final disaster, uncheered with scarce a 

 gleam of that success which was fondly hoped at the outset, the 

 work is without a rival. From the time when this little company 

 of about one-third of a hundred souls, became entangled in the ice 

 masses off Herald Island and Northeastern Siberia, and then em- 

 bedded in the floes, on and on, through the long winters of 1879, 

 1880, and 1881, and through the brief summers of 1880 and 1881, 

 down to the discovery of some of the survivois, and in their im- 

 mense and unparalleled feats of courage, strength, and endurance 

 in crossing the ice-fields after the Jeannette went down, till they 

 reached the Siberian villages and towns, there is one continuous 

 strain of heroism, one incessant and good-humored story of that 

 which is best and most hopeful in the human soul. And so the 

 book becomes in its revelations of character, a work of singular 



