1897.] MELVILLE — REMARKS ON POLAR EXPEDITION. 455 



a sea was most hazardous, the underrunning and overrunning of the 

 floes causing them to telescope and rise to heights at times approach- 

 ing loo feet. 



After our ship was solidly frozen in, she was never again released 

 until she was finally crushed on June 12, 1881, after we had drifted 

 twenty-two months in a zigzag course, many times lapping and 

 crossing and recrossing our track. The resultant of our drift was 

 north, 45° west true, distance 1300 miles, when our floe broke up, 

 and the ship was crushed, in latitude 77° 15' N., 155° E., leaving us 

 500 miles in a bee line from the nearest point of succor, the mouth 

 of the Lena river, Siberia. We were left on the ice, thirty-three 

 officers and men, with seven on the sick list, and with the disheart- 

 ening prospect of hauling- our baggage an indefinite distance to 

 clear water. It consisted of eight pieces, giving each man fit for 

 duty a load of 290 pounds to haul. 



Just here, let me call attention to the very important fact that the 

 Jeannette expedition is the first on record where such a long im- 

 prisonment in the Arctic pack was not accompanied by scurvy. 

 The Lady Franklin Bay expedition, under ihe command of Lieut. 

 (now General) A. W. Greeley, U. S. A., was the second up to the 

 date of our wreck which had escaped the dread scourge. Our good 

 fortune, so different from the experience of previous expeditions, 

 can be clearly traced to good food, distilled water, good sanitary 

 conditions, a light, though healthy diet, and abundant outdoor ex- 

 ercise, not of a laborious or wearying nature, every day in the year. 



You will, I am sure, pardon me for introducing a few facts of the 

 drift of the Jeannette, as leading up to the drift of the Fram, for 

 Dr. Nansen put his ship into the ice to commence his drift about 

 where the Jeannette let go, though a little farther to the westward. 

 In other words, the Fram finished the drift that was commenced and 

 prosecuted by the Jeannette involuntarily, for our intent was to go to 

 the northward and eastward. But, after being beset in the pack, and 

 drifting across the north face of Wrangel Land, we were pretty sure 

 that there was no possible retracing of our course, unless, by a swirl 

 or turn of the floe, we might be cast out on the coast of Siberia, as 

 the whaleship Mount Wollaston and others had been, which were 

 visited by the native Tschuckchees and found abandoned. 



As the cartographer of our expedition, I was directed to make a 

 circumpolar chart showing every known current that had been laid 

 down by Arctic explorers, from the time of Barents and Wil- 



