CHAPTER V 



SHERARD OSBORNE FJORD TO 

 NORDENSKJOLD FJORD 



BEAUMONT AND HIS MEN 



IN the month of May, forty-two years ago, in the very neigh- 

 bourhood through which we are now travelling, one could 

 have seen a remarkable trail of sick people, exhausted and 

 stumbling, fighting their way through the snow for the purpose 

 of mapping the land, and later on in order to save life and results 

 under an immensely toilsome wandering southward. It was 

 Beaumont and his men from Nares' Expedition. 



On our expedition we had passed many historical points, but 

 here more than anywhere else did we feel the contact with those 

 brave Englishmen whose goal was identical with ours, and whose 

 trail we had hitherto followed. As soon as we arrived we dis- 

 covered in the mountain a beacon, which we visited, and here 

 we found Beaumont's report of the 25th of May, 1876, deposited 

 in a beautiful, water-tight copper case. Besides the report, of 

 which I here give a facsimile, we also found an original map of 

 the tracts which had been visited and charted with English 

 thoroughness. We took this record so that it might later on 

 come into the hands of the British Admiralty as a chapter of 

 Polar history, and put down another record in the same beacon, 

 seizing the opportunity to express our admiration for our brave 

 predecessors. 



Lieutenant Beaumont set out from the Alert on the 20th of 

 April with a band of twenty-one men, pulling four sledges on 

 which the loads were so distributed that every man would be 

 pulling 218 pounds — a rather stiff proposition. 

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