APPENDIX VII 413 



to the northeast as far as the ship went, and then he would try to 

 find this mysterious land of which he had heard so much; but no 

 one cared to bother with this venturesome Eskimo explorer. 



The only report of land having been seen in this vicinity 

 by civilized men was made by Capt. John Keenan, of Troy, 

 New York, in the seventies, at that time in command of the 

 whaling-bark Stamboul, of New Bedford. Captain Keenan 

 said that after taking several whales the weather became 

 thick, and he stood to the north under easy sail and was busily 

 engaged in trying out and stowing down the oil taken. When 

 the fog cleared off, land was distinctly seen to the north by 

 him and all the men of his crew, but as he was not on a voyage 

 of discovery, and there were no whales in sight, he was ob- 

 liged to give the order to keep away to the south in search 

 of them. 



In June, 1904, Dr. R. A. Harris, of the United States Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey, published in the National Geographic 

 Magazine his reasons for belie\dng that there must be a large 

 body of undiscovered land or shallow water in the polar 

 regions. He based his theory upon the report that Siberian 

 driftwood had been picked up in South Greenland, upon the 

 observations of drifting polar ice, upon the drift of the ship 

 Jeannette, and upon numerous tidal observations made along 

 the northern coast of Alaska and eastward. 



