SVERDRUFS DISCOVERIES 185 



Jones Sound as far as 120 was searched and mapped, 

 the most northerly of the Parry Islands known up to 

 then being Finlay Island, North Cornwall, and Graham 

 Island. But in 1898 Captain Otto Sverdrup went up 

 Smith Sound in his old ship the Fram on an endeavour 

 to sail round the north coast of Greenland from west 

 to east. He had to winter in Rice Strait, near Pirn 

 Island, and finding, to put it sportingly, that he was 

 to a certain extent trespassing on Peary's preserves, 

 decided to devote his attention to the unknown region 

 approachable through Jones Sound. In 1899, there- 

 fore, he took the Fram up the sound, and, failing 

 to pass through Cardigan Strait, spent the three 

 following years among the fiords at the north-western 

 end. 



From here he sent his sledge and ski parties far and 

 wide, west and south and north over an approximate 

 area of a hundred thousand square miles. Long 

 stretches of coast-line were explored and named, in a 

 few cases unnecessarily, though, strange to say, the 

 unnecessary names were all royal ones, King Oscar 

 Land being the west of Ellesmere Land, Crown Prince 

 Gustav Sea and Prince Gustav Adolf Sea being the 

 Polar Ocean, and King Christian Land being simply 

 Finlay Island. Separated from Finlay Island by 

 Danish Sound and from North Cornwall by Hendrik- 

 sen Sound, he found two large islands, which just as 

 John Ross named Boothia after his principal patron, 

 the distiller Sverdrup named Ellef Ringnes and 

 Amund Ringnes after two of his supporters, the 

 brewers ; his other discovery, Axel Heiberg Land 

 which seems to be Peary's Jesup Land sighted in 1898 



