424 GEOGRAPHIC CONQUESTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



McClure and Collin.son were sent out in 185(» to attempt the search 

 from the west through Bering Strait, McChu-(> started without wait- 

 ing for Collinson. He gradually worked his way eastward, wind- 

 ing back and forth through inlets and around headlands and islands, 

 man}' of which he was the first to discover, and at last emerged through 

 McClures Strait into Barrow Strait. Finally, in Bafhns Bay, he was 

 compelled to abandon his ship, the Investigator, and push on over the 

 ice. Fortunateh' he was met ))v a Franklin search expedition coming 

 from the east, under Sir Edward Belcher. By his feat, the first com- 

 pletion of the Northwest Passage, McClure gained the prize of i>50,()()0 

 that had been oli'ered ])v Parliament ninety-two years before. 



Nine years of unceasing effort had failed to find awj record of 

 Franklin's terrible fate. But Lady Franklin was still undaunted. In 

 1857 she e(iuip[)cd the steam yacht Fox and sent it to the Arctics, 

 commanded l)y McClintock, the most untiring master of sledge work. 

 Eight hundred miles of coast line were minutely examined. In the 

 early sunmier of 1859 McClintock stumbled upon a human skeleton in 

 King William Land, and alK)ut the same time his companion, Hol)son, 

 found a record of the Franklin expedition, stating briefly its history 

 between 1845 and 1848. 



The result of the many Franklin search expeditions was the mapping 

 more or less accurately of the network of islands extending along the 

 northern coast of North America. 



Meanwhile Kane, Hall, and Nares were completing the surveys of 

 Smith Sound, Grinnell Land, and the adjacent shores of GretMiland. 

 The Greely expedition proved that to the north of Greenland was an 

 open channel and gained what is still most northerly land, 83^ 24'. 

 Later Peary followed this channel in his brilliant crossing of North 

 Greenland, and proved conclusively that Greenland was an island. 



Nordenskjold had already spent twenty years adding to the maps of 

 Greenland, Spitzbergen, and the Kara vSea, when, in 1878, he determined 

 to reach Bering Strait b}' crawling around the headlands and islands 

 of Northern Asia. Without any hindrance he had arrived almost in 

 sight of Bering Strait when the tantalizing ice closed in l)efore him 

 and for ten months his ship was held motionless. Then the ice mass 

 deigned to part and allow the Yega to sail the few remaining miles to 

 and through the strait, and thus complete the Northeast Passage. 



Franz Josef Land, which has lately been a favorite base in the 

 "dash for the pole," was discovered and explored by Payer and Wey- 

 precht in 1872-73; later Jackson, 1895-90, Baldwin, 1899, and Abruzzi, 

 1900, have extended our knowledge of this region and shown that 

 beyond the islands is an ice-covered sea. 



In the early nineties Dr. Nansen originated a new method of attack 

 of the North Pole, "the drift theory." His experiment of allowing 

 his ship, which was speciall}' constructed to elude rather than to resist 



