HISTORICAL SUMMARY 109 
island. Lockwood attempted to pass his previous record, but 
was prevented by the loose ice and the rugged mountains along 
the northern coast. As no relief ship arrived and parts of the 
supplies were running short, a retreat was decided upon, and 
the party started south in a steam launch and two boats, on the 
11th of August. Great trouble was experienced in the heavy 
ice, and they were obliged to abandon their boats on the 10th of 
September, after having been beset by the ice for two weeks. 
Land was reached at Cape Sabine on the 29th of September, 
where a poor shelter of stones and canvas was erected, in which 
the party passed the winter. Their provisions comprised the 
remainder of the food taken with them, and a small quantity 
landed from the Proteus after that vessel sank from an ice nip 
while trying to reach Greely a few weeks earlier in the season. 
The bulk of their provisions was obtained from the caches left 
by Nares in 1875. Exposure to the weather had nearly ruined 
everything left in the caches, but their contents, even in this 
shape, were of great assistance to these famished men; without 
them all would have succumbed; as it was, only seven survived 
the hardships and starvation, when the rescue steamer arrived 
on the 22nd of June, 1883. 
The next Arctic work was the crossing of the Greenland ice- 
cap, in 1893, by Nansen, who landed on the eastern side, and 
with a few companions succeeded in passing over the immense 
fields of ice and snow, coming out on the coast of the western 
side to the southward of Disko. 
Lieutenant r. E. Peary, United States navy, spent eight / 
winters in the regions about Smith sound. During these 
years none of the ships engaged to take supplies to him were 
able to penetrate more than the southern portion of Smith 
sound, and consequently Peary had to haul all his provisions 
and outfit over the very rough ice in dog-sleds two hundred 
miles before he arrived at the original starting point of Beau- 
mont and Lockwood. This was a handicap of the severest des- 
