A WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 



" To th; solid ground 

 Of Nature ii-usts the mind which builds for aye." — Wordsworth 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1876 



THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION 



IT is pleasing to be able to begin our fifteenth volume 

 with congratulations to the officers and men of 

 a British Arctic Expedition on their safe return. On 

 another page we give a summary of the results obtained 

 so far as these can yet be known. It will be seen that 

 substantial additions have been made to our knowledge 

 in many directions, and that the expedition must be 

 pronounced a success. True, the Pole has not been 

 reached, but this, in the consideration of all but the mere 

 lovers of sensation, is a small matter ; our explorers have 

 done the next best thing to reaching it, they have proved 

 that the Pole was impracticable this year from the 

 quarter whence success was most to be expected. It 

 is evident from the few hints which have already 

 been published, that when all the tale is told, it will 

 be quite as thrilling, and full of dangers and bravery, 

 as any previous narrative of Arctic exploration. So 

 far as the conduct of the expedition is concerned, 

 it seems to have been all that could be wished ; the 

 original programme was, on the whole, closely stuck to, 

 and the desperately hard and dangerous work was done 

 in the most systematic and economical way at present 

 possible. Everybody seems to have behaved admirably ; 

 there seems to have been no fault whatever to find with 

 anyone ; and so much has Capt. Nares endeared himself 

 to officers and men, that he earned for himself the common 

 title of " the father " of the expedition. 



It was hardly to be expected that an expedition, on 

 such an errand, and with such unprecedented dangers to 

 face as this one has had, would return without casualties ; 

 they have left four of their comrades behind them. Of 

 these one only died as the result of frost bite, the three 

 others succumbing to that most dreaded of all Arctic foes, 

 scurvy. No similar expedition ever left any country so 

 well provided with everything that could be thought of 

 conducive to sustenance and protection. There was an 

 ample supply of fresh provisions of all kinds, sufficient 

 medical staff", and all precautions were evidently taken 

 Vol. XV.— No. 366 



throughout the long winter to keep everyone employed, 

 and cheerful, and duly exercised. Yet, in all the sledge- 

 parties, scurvy broke out with a virulence and to an 

 extent not experienced, we believe, in any recent Arctic 

 expedition. The cause of this outbreak will no doubt give 

 much food for thought for some time to come, some 

 thinking that the unusual length and intensity of the dark- 

 ness may have had something to do with it. The darkness 

 seems to have been m.uch more intense, and certainly was 

 longer-continued than ever before experienced, and such 

 a condition, not to mention its effect on the spirits of the 

 men, must necessarily, one would think, exercise some 

 deleterious physical influence on the body. This is a 

 point deserving of careful consideration ; meantime we 

 cannot but admire the way in which officers and men of 

 these sledge-parties did their work in spite of physical 

 weakness and terrible suffering ; it would, however, have 

 been surprising had the record been otherwise. 



No men could have exerted themselves more to ac- 

 complish the popular, but really minor, object of their 

 expedition, and none could have been more honourably 

 baffled. The ice was met with off" Cape Sabine in 

 78° 41' N., and from that time till the Aleri was 

 compelled to take up her quarters in 82* 2/, it was 

 a constant battle with ice of a thickness never before 

 met with. The ice was from 100 to 150 and even 

 200 feet thick, resembhng more a pell-mell assem- 

 blage of icebergs than the usual floes ; to have been 

 nipped between the masses of such ice would certainly 

 have been fatal. Commander Markham in his daring 

 attempt to carry out the instructions of the expedi- 

 tion by penetrating as far to the north as possible, found 

 the ice piled in such rough and hilly hummocks 

 that progress was only possible at the rate of a 

 mile a day, and he wisely returned after reaching 

 83° 20' N., the highest authentic latitude yet attained. 



Capt, Parry's long and weary journey, which reminds one 

 to a certain extent of that of Commander Markham, was 

 only as far as 82° 45' ; the Austro-Hungarian expedition of 

 1872-4 reached 82° 5', though they saw as far as 83°; 

 while Hall with the Polaris sailed without let or hindrance 

 in 1872 over the same ground as the Alert and Discovery 

 for 700 miles to 82° 16' N. in the short space of one week. 



