166 EARLIEST POLAR EXPLORATIONS 



search for this way through central North America; they pushed north and 

 west of Labrador ; they penetrated Baffin bay ; they came to the open sea that 

 surrounds the ice pack of the pole, and they sunk their ships there and died 

 like men for the honor of their native lands and the spirit of discovery. 



The geographers and the mapmakers gave them the location of the North 

 Pole; legend-makers threw their deceptive veils over its seas; governments 

 offered rewards for its discovery, and so apace grew the tragedy until today 

 the piles of its victims and sunken treasure mark innumerable spots in the 

 northern wastes. 



Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian, reached 86 degrees 14 minutes April 7, 

 1896. Of known explorers he was the first to draw that negr to the pole. 

 He endured a temperature of 90 degrees below zero. He lived upon food of 

 the vilest kind. So far he advanced, and then was driven back for life. 



In 1266, a few years after the Magna Charta became part of history, a 

 band of Norse sailors, men of Nansen's type and race, lost themselves in the 

 wilds of Iceland. They reached as far north as 75 degrees 46 minutes. That 

 is, it is supposed they did, for traces of their wreckage were found as far north 

 as this latitude centuries afterward, but not beyond. 



If they made record of what they discovered the ice and the polar waters 

 swallowed it up. They did not come within 900 miles of the pole, but even at 

 that the baleful influences of the world of cold came upon them and they 

 perished by King William's Land. * 



Next came John Davis, whose name is now borne by the waters between 

 Greenland and the Cumberland peninsula. He entered Baffin's bay and the 

 Middle Ice, and in 1585 was just on the Arctic Circle at Cape Dyer. Two 

 years later he had only reached latitude 72 degrees 12 minutes and there he 

 quit, with many warnings as to the impossibility of conquering the ice. 



Baffin followed him in 161 6. He was an English navigator and explorer 

 who aged before his time under the strain of Arctic travel. He was pilot of 

 the Discovery, which in 161 5 was dispatched by the Muscovy company to 

 North America in search of the baffling northwest passage. 



The search was given up at latitude yy. The ice between Grinnell Land 

 and Greenland came down upon the Discovery with such force, provisions 

 were so scarce, that it was a question of turning backward and fighting the 

 way to the open sea for safety. Beyond the definite location of Baffin's bay 

 the expedition amounted to but httle. Scurvy attacked the sailors, scientific 

 observations were few, the northwest passage a myth— so said the explorers. 



