FOREWORD xxvii 



1879 by Adolp Erik Nordenskjold. Step by step ener- 

 getic explorers, principally Russian, had been mapping 

 the arctic coasts of Europe and Siberia until practi- 

 cally all the headlands and islands were well denned. 



Nordenskjold, whose name was already renowned 

 for important researches in Greenland, Nova Zembla, 

 and northern Asia, in less than two months guided 

 the steam whaler Vega from Tromsoe, Norway, to the 

 most easterly peninsula of Asia. But when barely 

 more than 100 miles from Bering Strait, intervening 

 ice blocked his hopes of passing from the Atlantic to 

 the Pacific in a single season and held him fast for 

 ten months. 



No resume of polar exploration is complete without 

 mention of Wm. Barents (1594-96) who, for the Dutch 

 of Amsterdam, made three attempts to accomplish 

 the Northeast Passage around Nova Zembla; Wm. 

 Baffin, who discovered Baffin Bay and Smith Sound 

 (1616); Wm. Scoresby, Sr., who reached by ship 81° 

 30' N., 19' E. (1806), a record till Parry eclipsed it; 

 Wm. Scoresby, Jr., who changed all ideas of East 

 Greenland (1822) and made valuable scientific obser- 

 vations, and the German North Polar expedition of 

 1869-70. One of the ships of the latter was crushed in 

 the ice and sank. The crew escaped to an ice floe on 

 which they drifted in the darkness of an arctic winter 

 for 1300 miles along the coast of Greenland to Fred- 

 eriksthaal. 



The preceding brief summary gives only an inade- 

 quate conception of the immense treasures of money 

 and lives expended by the nations to explore the north- 

 ern ice world and to attain the apex of the earth. 



