702 APPENDIX 



of the leads in our sled-boats and others on treacherous new ice. Space 

 will not allow me to enter into details of this return trip. It will 

 suffice to say that on November 5, 1919, we again reached landfast ice, 

 and November 7th we sighted land. Next day we camped on dry 

 ground after having lived on sea ice uninterruptedly for 238 days, hav- 

 ing experienced neither hunger nor thirst, danger nor hardships. 



THE SCIENTIFIC RESULTS OBTAINED 



The scientific results obtained during the trip are as follows : We 

 discovered that no permanent current exists in the Beaufort Sea be- 

 tween the North latitudes 72.5° and 74°. All drifts of ice in that ter- 

 ritory have been proven by our astronomical observations and our 

 meteorological records to be governed by the wind exclusively.* This 

 dispels a theory almost universally entertained. 



We have definitely proved that Keenan Land does not exist. The 

 drift of our ice floe was right through the territory where Keenan 

 Land is marked on the map published in 1912 by the American Geo- 

 graphical Society and the American Museum of Natural History, and 

 instead of finding land we found a depth of more than 1,600 fathoms 

 without reaching bottom. The value of the great number of soundings, 

 bottom and no bottom, obtained can only be realized by hydrographers, 

 but I might say they are considered valuable. 



We have confirmed what the whole Stefansson Expedition has 

 proved, that the Arctic Sea is not as inhospitable as people think. 

 My party of five men were able to live for 8 months safely and com- 

 fortably on it and never went without a meal. It is true that I was 

 taken sick with asthma, but then people get asthma in every country 

 and climate. So far as we could judge we could have lived on the 

 ice eight years as easily as eight months. 



After landing in the Colville delta, I proceeded east to Flaxman 

 Island and there obtained another set of observations on the stars 

 Vega and Capella, which I had observed before starting on the trip. 



ever attempted in the Arctic, contains a sentence that deserves to become a 

 classic. In it he sums up thus a journey over 200 miles of moving and treach- 

 erous ice in darkness, fog and storm: "We started from a point a little over 

 200 miles from shore on October 9th and reached land November 8th without 

 accident or hardship." It is a little hard to realize that, apart from Storker- 

 son's mental attitude toward them and his skill in meeting them, this journey 

 had every terror of darkness and ice and storm that has taxed alike the 

 strength, courage and descriptive powers of the explorers of the past. There 

 was no affectation in Storkerson's simple summary of the journey. He an- 

 notated the statement later by saying: "We took every ordinary precaution 

 and no extraordinary circumstance came up." But was it not Napoleon who 

 said: "I make circumstances"? [Note by V. Stefansson.] 



*It is possible that further study may show that the ice movement was 

 not entirely controlled by the local winds and that Storkerson's statement 

 is here too emphatic. [Note by V. Stefansson.] 



