28 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [Aug. 



and disappeared. The men passed Etah in three small 

 boats on their way southward. Late in the fall of the 

 same year a party of men were seen drifting far out in 

 tlie ice of Smith Sound. They zigzagged back and forth 

 across the channel, and finally succeeded in landing at 

 Eskimo Point on the Ellesmere Land coast, some thirty 

 miles west of Etah. Greely and his men were obeying 

 orders and going to their death. They walked north- 

 ward to Cape Sabine, built a hut there, and died one by 

 one until only seven were left. 



In 1884 two ships sent by the United States govern- 

 ment, under the command of Captain, later Admiral, 

 Schley, arrived at Etah in search of the lost expedition. 

 An examination of the cache established at Littleton 

 Island in 1882 revealed the fact that Greely and his 

 men had not passed that point. The two ships steamed 

 through the ice to Cape Sabine. There, on Brevoort 

 Island, a note was found informing the searchers that 

 Greely and his men were in camp some three miles 

 away, on the opposite shores of Bedford Pim Island. In 

 a few days the two ships passed Etah with the living 

 and the dead, bound south to report to the homeland 

 the result of their search. 



In 1897 another ship steamed past this spot. It was 

 Peary on a reconnaissance of the Smith Sound route 

 to the Pole. The year 1898 saw the flags of two nations 

 go by, the American expedition under the command of 

 Peary, and the Norwegian expedition in the old Fram, 

 under the leadership of Sverdrup. An exceptionally 

 hard year prevented progress toward the north, with 

 the result that 1899 saw both ships anchored in Etah 

 Harbor. The years 1900-01 again saw the ships of 

 Peary engaged in the work, bringing supplies, and taking 



