ii8 



NATURE 



{May 30, 1878 



THE ENGLISH ARCTIC EXPEDITION^ 



THE edge has been to some extent taken ofif the public 

 appetite for a narrative of our last great Arctic 

 expedition. The two ships had barely touched the Irish 

 shores ere the papers of the day were teeming with details 

 of the adventures and results of the expedition that had 

 left England scarcely eighteen months before amid the 

 enthusiasm of the nation, and with the strongest expecta- 

 tions of eclipsing all previous expeditions, and returning 

 with the long-sought-for secret of the pole. These news- 

 paper narratives were shortly followed by Capt. Nares's 

 report (which we gave in full with a map in Nature, 

 yol. XV. p. 24), followed some months after by a thick 

 Arctic blue-book, which those who have seen it may 

 prefer, with its wealth of maps and illustrations, even to 

 the two handsome volumes before us. (See Nature, 

 vol. XV. p. 505.) Under these circumstances it will not 

 be necessary for us to repeat the story of the Alert and 

 Discovery. We shall endeavour briefly to sum up the 

 main results obtained by the well equipped and much 

 instructed expedition. 



Many a wonderful story lies buried in a blue-book; 

 comparatively few, we believe, have seen the official 

 narratives to which we refer above. The great majority 

 of those, both at home and abroad, who are interested 

 in the expedition commanded by Sir George Nares, have 

 no doubt been waiting for the publication of these 

 volumes, to learn all the details of the story of the hard- 

 ships endured by our ever-brave sailors " far from all 

 men's knowing," in the most inhospitable region under 

 the heavens. The red-tapeism and stupid conservatism 

 of our government are in nothing more forcibly exhibited 

 than in their obstinate adherence to the unattractive " blue- 

 book " for publications of all kinds that may be con- 

 sidered in any way official. In this respect they present 

 a marked contrast to the United States Government, the 

 story of whose Polaris expedition was issued not long ago 

 in a magnificently got-up volume that would do credit 

 even to Messrs. Sampson Low and Co. ; and many of 

 our readers must be familiar with the splendid library, 

 issued at the expense of the Austrian Government, on the 

 productive Novara expedition. 



We are sure Sir George Nares does not expect to be 

 complimented on his skill as a raconteur ; he has wisely 

 ' not attempted to do more than give a plain statement of 

 the proceedings of the expedition day by day from the 

 time it left England till its return. Those of our readers 

 ^who have read the eloquent and methodical narrative of 

 the Payer- Weyprecht expedition, when they look into the 

 one before us, will not fail to be struck with the contrast 

 in this respect. Still, we believe, by many. Sir George 

 Nares's "plain, unvarnished tale" will be preferred to a 

 carefully redacted and condensed narrative ; and we are 

 sure that in his pages the simply told successes and 

 failures of the English Arctic Expedition of 1875-76 will 

 fascinate many a reader : it is almost impossible to make 

 the story of an Arctic Expedition uninteresting. 



"The scope and primary object" of the expedition 

 was, as contained in the " Sailing Orders," "to attain the 

 highest northern latitude, and, if possible, to reach the 

 North Pole, and from winter quarters to explore the 

 adjacent coasts within the reach of travelling parties." 

 Notwithstanding the ambiguous wording of these orders — 

 no doubt " the highest northern latitude possible " was 

 meant — it is a great mistake to imagine, as many did on 

 the return of the expedition, that it was a failure because 

 it did not reach the pole. No doubt it was a primary 

 part of the programme to make the most determined 

 attempt to reach 90° N. lat., and had "the People" not 



' "Narrative of a Voyage to the Polar Sea during 1875-76, in H.M. ships 

 AUri and Discovety." By Capt. Sir G. S. Nares, R.N., K.C.B., F.R.S., 

 Commander cf the Expedition. With Notes on the Natural History, edited 

 by H. W. Feilden, F.G S., C.M.Z.S , Naturalist to the Expedition. Two 

 v.-ls. (London: Sampson Low and Co., 1878.) .^.^ 



been allowed to believe that this was the main object of 

 the expedition, probably their enthusiasm at its departure 

 would have been no greater than when the Challenger 

 left our shores ; but, without doubt, the essential point in 

 this matter was to get as far north as possible. No one 

 who reads Sir George Nares's interesting but often sad 

 pages will hesitate to conclude that if a higher latitude 

 than that attained by the forlorn hope, led by Commander 

 Markham, was not reached, neither officers nor men 

 were to blame. Under hardships that could only be 

 paralleled by those which led to the unknown deaths of 

 the members of the Franklin expedition, was the attempt 

 made to carry out the popular part of the programme — 

 hardships, however, which did not surpass those endured 

 by the sledging parties west and east under Aldrich and 

 Beaumont. This is not the place to enter upon the 

 question of the outbreak of scurvy, to which we have, 

 indeed, referred in a former volume (xv. p. 505). After 

 the searching inquiry of the Scurvy Commission ;_ after 

 all that has been written on the subject in the public and 

 medical journals ; and after a careful perusal of these 

 pages, we are not inclined greatly to blame either Captain 

 Nares or his officers for their neglect of lime-juice. 

 Evidently we have yet much to learn about the causes and 

 means of prevention of scurvy. All we have to do with 

 here is the fact that under the most adverse conditions 

 imaginable officers and men did more than could reason- 

 ably have been demanded of them— though not expected 

 of English sailors— to carry out the purely geographical 

 part of their orders. Markham and his men really 

 reached the highest latitude possible under the circum- 

 stances, 83° 20' 26" N., the highest latitude reached by any 

 expedition. "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la 

 guerre." It was heroic, but it is not what we want. 



The other part of the geographical section of the pro- 

 gramme was carried out with equal faithfulness by the 

 sledge parties under Lieuts. Aldrich and Beaumont, and, 

 in the case of the latter, under even greater hardships 

 and with greater fatality than in the case of the northern 

 party. Lieut. Aldrich succeeded in adding to our maps 

 a stretch of 220 miles of coast along what may be re- 

 garded as the northern boundary of America, while Lieut. 

 Beaumont considerably extended our knowledge of the 

 north coast of Greenland, and has given us reason to 

 believe that it is bordered by islands. Many rectifica- 

 tions were made, moreover, of the geography of the 

 coasts and islands in Kennedy and Robesori channels, 

 and a considerably fuller and more accurate idea of the 

 nature of the coast regions both on the east and west 

 sides of these channels. The fact is that, geographically, 

 there appears to be little to discover in the region around 

 the Alert's winter quarters, and what is really worth 

 knowing in this direction could only be brought to light 

 by an expedition colonised there for some years ; Capt. 

 Howgate's proposed experiment will therefore be 

 anxiously watched. Though it was often difficult to tell 

 where the sea-ice ended and the land began, enough was 

 observed both by Aldrich and Beaumont to indicate that 

 these northern shores are mostly rocky, rising rapidly 

 into hills and mountains, and often, especially on the 

 Greenland side, steep and imposing, and deeply cut into 

 by fiords. Markham saw no sign of land as far beyond 

 his farthest north point as he could see, and seems in- 

 clined to believe that if there is land it must be a great 

 way off. 



Even had the men maintained their health and strength, 

 it is doubtful if any of the sledging parties would have 

 been able to do much more than they did, unless, indeed, 

 they had been able to stay another winter, and make 

 their furthest points bases for farther operations. The 

 great hindrance to progress was the character of the 

 ice which the sledge-parties had to traverse. The nature 

 of this characteristic feature of these regions, the 

 "paliEocrystic ice," as it has been named, is akeady 



