GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS. (ARCTIC REGIONS.) 



309 



Arctic Regions. Nothing definite or satis- 

 factory has come from Prof. S. A. Andr6e, who 

 set out for the pole on a balloon voyage July 11, 

 1897. (See Annual Cyclopaedia for 1897, page 

 336.) A small cork case was found in Norway in 

 June, 1899, containing a slip of paper signed 

 "Andrfie," saying that all was well, but by the 

 date it appeared that it must have been thrown 

 out only eight hours after his departure. In 

 April, 1898, a report came from a mail carrier in 

 Alaska saying that one of his carrier pigeons had 

 been found, with a message to the efl'ect that he 

 was on land in northern Alaska, but this seems 

 to have been a fraudulent report. In January, 

 1899, came another statement that a heap of 

 ropes and other material had been seen on an 

 inaccessible ice floe between Iceland and Green- 

 land in July, 1898, which might have been the 

 wreck of the balloon. Still another unauthenti- 

 cated report came from Siberia, where the wreck 

 of a balloon and the bodies of three men were 

 said to have been found in January, 1899. A 

 buoy found Sept. 11, 1899, on the north side of 

 King Charles island, northeast of Spitzbergen, 80 

 latitude and 25 east longitude, was opened at 

 Stockholm, Oct. 2. It was found that the buoy 

 was the so-called " north pole buoy " which the 

 explorer was to have dropped when passing the 

 north pole. A later telegram says : " At the ex- 

 amination of the buoy Capt. Svedenborg, who 

 was present at the ascent of the balloon, said that 

 the ring of the buoy did not seem to be made fast. 

 The buoy, therefore, could not have been let down 

 by means of a cord. It was then opened. First 

 of all the copper cover fixed to the rim under- 

 neath the buoy was sawed off, and some sea 

 sand fell out. A copper head with a tube of the 

 same material attached was then taken out. In- 

 side this was some water. The copper tube was 

 then sawed off. In the lower part of the tube 

 was an India-rubber plug, and on it a little sand. 

 Inside the tube was a coating which seemed to 

 resemble paper, but which a microscopical ex- 

 amination showed to be the growth of algse. 

 Prof. Nathorst declared that the buoy could not 

 have been carried from the pole to King Charles 

 island. Capt. Svedenborg expressed the opinion 

 that the buoy had been thrown out empty. Prof. 

 Montelius said it had not been shown that the 

 buoy had been thrown out empty. The upper 

 part was not further unscrewed. Prof. Nor- 

 denskjold said that a search would be made next 

 year at King Charles island." 



A dispatch from St. Petersburg in October gave 

 an account of a scheme to send to the frozen 

 seas one of Russia's new ice-breaking steamers, 

 the Yermak, to force a way through the ice. " On 

 the Yermak's first voyage she encountered drift 

 ice in the Baltic. This ice was about 5 feet thick, 

 and there was not the slightest difficulty in get- 

 ting the Yermak through this obstruction, as 

 she went comparatively easy at 9 knots, the 

 engines working slowly. Before going into the 

 ice the vessel had been slowed down to 10 knots, 

 so as to reserve the powers of the engine-room 

 staff for the harder work which was to come. 

 The worst piece of ice encountered was estimated 

 at 25 feet thick, and the ship went nearly 

 through this formidable obstruction before she 

 was brought up by it. The greatest depth of 

 field ice reported by Dr. Nansen is 12 feet." 



Dr. A. G. Nathorst led an expedition to east- 

 ern Greenland to search for Andree, but found 

 no traces of him. Some valuable observations 

 were made. The Franz Josef fiord was found to 

 be quite different from its representation on the 

 German map, as far as the interior of the fiord is 



concerned, the outer part being in the main as 

 given on the map. It narrows instead of widen- 

 ing toward the inner end, which lies 2 of longi- 

 tude farther east than the map indicates. It is 

 thus much smaller than it is represented, and 

 the Petermann spit/e is probably only two thirds 

 as high as Payer supposed. The southern branch 

 of the fiord east of Payer spitze, found to be a 

 sound, and named the Antarctic Sound, from the 

 name of the vessel, led to a hitherto unknown 

 fiord, very large, which was called King Oscar's 

 fiord. It stretches southward to Davy Sound, and 

 sends two branches eastward, connecting it with 

 the sea. On the western side it sends two branches 

 into the interior; of these, the southern divides 

 into two branchlets, the northern into three. 

 They extend nearly as far west as the interior 

 of Franz Josef fiord. The fiords were mapped, as 

 was also the interior of Hurry inlet. 



Walter Wellman, who made an attempt to 

 reach the north pole in 1894, set out again in 

 June, 1898, with a more carefully prepared ex- 

 pedition. He returned this year, reaching Tromso 

 Aug. 17, 1899, on the steamer Capella. The party, 

 in which were a scientific staff and a number of 

 Norwegians, reached Franz Josef Land July 27, 

 1898. Three days later they were at Cape Te- 

 gethoff, latitude 80, on the coast of Hall island, 

 in the eastern section of the group, w r here they 

 landed and put up a house for winter quarters, 

 called Harmsworth House, and here the main 

 party wintered. But an expedition was made as 

 far north as 81, and an outpost was established 

 there. A house was built of rocks and roofed 

 with walrus hides, to which they gave the name 

 Fort McKinley. This was on Wil'czek Land. Two 

 Norwegians Paul Bjorvig and Bert Bentzen, 

 the latter of whom had been with Nansen in the 

 Fram were left there, while the main party re- 

 turned to Cape Tegethoff . In February Mr. Well- 

 man went northward with 3 Norwegians and 45 

 dogs, and reached Fort McKinley Feb. 28. Here 

 he found that Bert Bentzen had died two months 

 before, and during all that time his companion, 

 who had made a compact with him that if either 

 should die the survivor would not bury him till 

 help came, had kept the body beside himself in 

 the little house. He said he had managed to 

 keep up his spirits by reciting Ibsen's poetry. 



" Pushing northward through rough ice and 

 severe storms, with a continuous temperature of 

 ten days between 40 and 50 below zero, the 

 party found new lands north of Freedom island, 

 where Nansen landed in 1895. By the middle of 

 March all were confident of reaching latitude 87 

 or 88, if not the pole itself. Then began a suc- 

 cession of disasters. Mr. Wellman, while lead- 

 ing the party, fell into a snow-covered crevasse, 

 seriously injuring one of his legs and compelling 

 a retreat. Two days later the party was aroused 

 at midnight by an icequake under them, due to 

 pressure. In a few moments many dogs were 

 crushed and the sledges destroyed. The members 

 of the expedition narrowly escaped with their 

 lives, though they managed to save their sleeping 

 bags and some dogs and provisions. Mr. Well- 

 man's condition became alarming, and the Nor- 

 wegians dragged him on a sledge, by forced 

 marches, nearly 200 miles to headquarters. After 

 reaching headquarters other members of the ex- 

 pedition explored regions hitherto unknown, and 

 important scientific work was done by Lieut. 

 Evelyn B. Baldwin, of the United States Weather 

 Bureau; Dr. Edward Hofman, of Grand Haven, 

 Mich. ; and A. Harlan, of the United States Coast 

 Survey. The expedition killed 14 bears and many 

 walruses." 



