LOST IN THE ARCTIC. 81 



sideration, appear likely to be useful. The debt of gratitude 

 which we owe to the nation which sent the Rescue and 

 Advance to search for Franklin can never be forgotten." 



The probability that DcLong would retreat to the must 

 of Northern Siberia, in case of disaster to his ship, had been 

 repeatedly affirmed by Mr. George Kennan, author of "Tent 

 Life in Siberia," who has traveled over four thousand miles 

 in sledges in Northeastern Siberia. As early as November, 

 1880, Mr. Kennan suggested that the Secretary of the Navy 

 should request the governor of Eastern Siberia to take 

 measures to have natives of the North Siberian coast look 

 out for the Jeannette and her crew; and, in subsequent let- 

 ters, he earnestly urged the importance of making prepara- 

 tions on the coast for the prompt discovery and relief of the 

 Jeannette's survivors, in case they landed there. 



Lieutenant Howgaard, a Danish naval officer who had 

 made the northeast passage with Nordenskiold, also believed 

 that the Jeannette should be looked for in that direction, 

 and was actively engaged in collecting funds to enable him 

 to go over the track which he had sailed in the Vega, for 

 the purpose of searching the northern coast of Siberia. He 

 laid his plans before the Royal Geographical Society, at 

 their meeting above referred to, December 12th, and soon 

 afterward started for the United States on the same errand. 



'For a second time," wrote a correspondent of the New 

 York Herald, "in the history of polar research, an expedi- 

 tion is probably lost in the Arctic. There is to lie another 

 great Franklin search, with this difference, that was an 

 English and American search of a limited segment of the 

 polar circle ; this will be a universal search of the whole 

 border of the 'unknown region,' participated in by nearly all 

 the civilized nations of the earth. The whole Siberian coast 

 will probably be searched by Captain Berry, Nordenskiold, 

 Lieutenant Howgaard, and the Russians. The Russian 

 international polar station, at the mouth of the Lena or at 

 the New Siberian Islands, will be very important; for I 

 6 



