678 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 
Five years later (1855), after relics of the lost ships had been 
found by Dr. Rae, the British Government abandoned the search, 
but the devotion of Lady Franklin, and the determination of the 
public to discover fuller details, led to the splendid private expe- 
dition of the ‘ Fox,” from 1857 to 1859, in which Sir Leopold 
McClintock and Sir Allen Young explored nearly 1,000 miles of 
new coast line under conditions of the greatest difficulty, and dis- 
covered the only document throwing light on Franklin’s fate 
which has been found. It proved that to Franklin belongs the 
honor of first discovering the North-west Passage. 
In 1871 Captain Hall, in the American steamer “ Polaris,” 
entered Smith Sound, and reached the highest latitude so far 
attained (82° 16’ north). In the following year an Austro- 
Hungarian Expedition, under the command of Payer and Wey- 
precht, were carried by drift ice from Nova Zembla, and discovered 
Franz Joseph’s Land, the remote region in which the English 
explorer Jackson and his party have been at work during the 
past three and a half years. 
The Great British Government Expedition of the “ Alert” 
and “ Discovery,” under Sir George Nares, penetrated Smith 
Sound in 1875, and Commander A. H. Markham led a sledge 
party to 83° 20’ north of Greenland, which remained the 
highest observed latitude until Lockwood, of Greeley’s American 
Expedition, reached 83° 24’ in 1882. In 1878-9 the Swedish 
professor Baron Nordenskiold accomplished the North-east 
Passage in the ‘“ Vega,” and circumnavigated the continent of 
“ Eurasia” for the first and only time. Peary, in three suc- 
cessive years (accompanied part of the time by his wife), made 
some of the finest journeys ever accomplished over the inland ice 
of Northern Greenland. Great as these achievements were, they 
have heen excelled by the scientifically-planned expedition of Dr. 
Nansen inthe “Fram.” By relinquishing the time-honoured plan 
of following a coast line, or fighting against drifting ice-floes, 
and allowing the moving ice of the polar basin to carry his ship, 
he succeeded in drifting from near New Siberian Islands to 
Spitzbergen across an absolutely unknown area. In his sledge 
journey, alone with his companion Johansen, he reached 86° 14’ 
north in 1895, an advance of nearly 200 miles on the farthest 
north ever made before; and his expedition, in its safety, suc- 
cess, and exact conformity to the plans previously laid down, 
must be looked upon as the culmination of Arctic travel in the 
Victorian era, unless, as I fully anticipate, it will be equalled, 
if not eclipsed, by the balloon voyage of Dr. Andree. 
Next to the polar areas, Africa is the region in which the 
explorations of the last sixty years have led to the most striking 
advances of knowledge. The trade of centuries on the west coast 
had led to no exploration worthy the name, and it was not until 
