48 THE VOYAGE OF THE JEANNETTE. 



withstood the rigors of an Arctic winter better than North- 

 men, such as Danes and Swedes.' I have been seriously 

 thinking of getting another vessel in addition to the one you 

 will have, and starting myself by Dr. Petermann's route. Of 

 course, if I did so I should expect to be out all winter, as I don't 

 quite agree with the Doctor about his three months' idea." 



Not long after dispatching his letter Lieutenant De 

 Long crossed to England to superintend the prepara- 

 tion of the Pandora, since renamed the Jeannette, for 

 the Arctic expedition. He visited the yacht at South- 

 ampton as soon as he arrived, and after careful exam- 

 ination telegraphed to Mr. Bennett, who was in Leices- 

 tershire, that it would be impossible to repair the 

 Jeannette and get her ready for sea early enough to 

 permit the expedition to start that year for the north 

 by Behring Strait, though it would be possible to go 

 either by the Spitzbergen route or by the east coast of 

 Greenland. The Behring Strait route, however, had 

 by this time become firmly fixed in the minds both of 

 Mr. Bennett and of Lieutenant De Long, and it was 

 determined, therefore, to proceed with the repairs of 

 the Jeannette, to send her round the Horn to San 

 Francisco, and be ready to start for the north early in 

 the summer of 1879. 



The reasons which determined the course of the ex- 

 ploration, besides the failures from other points, were, 

 in brief, the existence of the Japan current, flowing- 

 through Behring Strait to the north, and the supposed 

 extent of Wrangel Land. It was hoped that the warm 

 waters of the current would open a way, possibly to 

 the Pole. The experience of whalers was that when- 

 ever they had been obliged to abandon their vessels 

 in those regions, the vessels had been drifted north- 

 ward, and the inference was that the currents generally 



