16 CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



nips, was badly damaged, and forced to return to civilization in 

 the following year. 



But it is due to the efforts of Dr. R. A. Harris that the 

 question as to the existence or non-existence of land north of 

 Alaska and Siberia came to be discussed from a more scientific 

 point of view, as he introduced a new phase of the problem, 

 the proofs furnished by the tide. 



In a clever article he discussed the probabilities of the 

 existence of continental land on the American side of the 

 North Pole, and he deduced the position of land which he 

 thinks must be found some time. He based his theories as to 

 the extent of this unknown land on deductions derived from 

 the remarkable tide conditions, the combined drift of thejcanette 

 and the Fram, the heavy ice, the (supposed) immovable pack 

 north of Alaska, the flight of the birds from Point Barrow north- 

 ward, Captain Keenan's testimony, and the Eskimo legends. 



The article of Dr. Harris was further discussed by Dr. 

 Spencer, who took an opposite point of view and tried to 

 prove that there could be no land between Alaska and the 

 North Pole. He based his theory on the deep water in the 

 Polar Ocean, as found by Nansen, and on the deep channels 

 running north and west between the islands of the Parry 

 Archipelago, concluding that the deep Polar basin extended 

 almost from the Alaskan coast and the western shore of the 

 Parry Islands to the deep water so unexpectedly found during 

 the drift of the Fram. 



Sir Clements Markham summarized every argument for and 

 against the existence of the supposed land during the meeting 

 of the Royal Geographical Society in November, 1906, when 

 the plans of our expedition were for the first time laid before 

 the public. 



Our plans were later very essentially modified, particularly 

 owing to the fact that the whalers on whom we had relied for 

 the transport of our outfit had been caught in the Arctic the 

 year before. We had to provide ourselves with a ship, and 

 with her intended to skirt the Alaskan coast, to buy dogs 

 wherever we could, and to seek winter quarters in Minto Inlet, 

 Wollaston Land. That locality is an interesting field for work, 

 and we hoped to fall in with the Eskimo tribes which Captain 

 McClure and Captain Collingson saw there in 1852. We also 



