NANSEN'S VOYAGE 91 



rivers. Similar wood from probably the same source is 

 found on the shores of Greenland and of almost all the 

 northerly islands of the Arctic Ocean. Further, the 

 Greenland flora includes a series of Siberian plants 

 apparently from seeds drifted there by some current. 

 Not only do trees and seeds travel by water from Asia 

 westward to America ; at Godthaab, for instance, on 

 the western coast of Greenland, there was found a 

 throwing-stick of a shape and ornamentation used only 

 by the Alaskan Eskimos ; and three years after the 

 foundering of the Jeannette to the north of the New 

 Siberian Islands there were found on the south-west 

 coast of Greenland a number of articles in the drift-ice 

 that must have come from the sunken vessel. For 

 these and other reasons it seemed clear to Fridtjof 

 Nansen that a current flowed at some point between 

 the Pole and Franz Josef Land from the Siberian 

 Arctic Sea to the Greenland coast, and so he set to 

 work to organise his daring expedition to strike this 

 current well to the eastward, trusting to its mercies to 

 take him to or near the Pole. 



In 1893, when the Fram rounded Cape Chelyuskin, 

 Nansen had found the Kara Sea almost as open as 

 Nordenskiold had done, but had met with more diffi- 

 culties among the islands off the Taimyr Peninsula. 

 A famous vessel, the Fram, the first of her kind, built 

 specially for the ice to take her where it listed in the 

 hope that she would drift to discovery like the Tcgett- 

 hoff, and not to disaster like the Jeannette. The 

 general idea was Nansen's, the carrying out of the 

 idea was Colin Archer's. As Nansen says : " We must 

 gratefully recognise that the success of the expedition 



