INTR OD UCTION 3 3 



even sooner, if it is summer, there is every likelihood of 

 our getting the ship free and being able to sail home. 

 Should she, however, be lost before this — which is 

 certainly possible, though, as I think, very unlikely if 

 she is constructed in the way above described — the "^ 

 expedition will not, therefore, be a failure, for our home- 

 ward course must in any case follow the polar cur- 

 rent on to the North Atlantic basin ; there is j^lenty 

 of ice to drift on, and of this means of locomotion 

 we have already had experience. If the Jcamiettc 

 expedition had had suf^cient provisions, and had re- 

 mained on the ice-floe on which the relics were ulti- 

 mately found, the result would doubtless have been 

 very different from what it was. Our ship cannot 

 possibly founder under the ice-pressure so quickly but 

 that there would be time enough to remove, with all 

 our equipment and provisions, to a substantial ice-floe, 

 which wc should have selected beforehand in view of 

 such a contingency. Here the tents, which we should 

 take with us to meet this contingency, would be pitched. 

 In order to preserve our provisions and other equip- 

 ments, we should not place them all together on one 

 spot, but should distribute them over the ice, laying 

 them on rafts of planks and beams which we should 

 have built on it. This will obviate the possibility of 

 any of our equipments sinking, even should the floe 

 on which they are break up. The crew of the Hausa, 

 who drifted for more than half a year along the east 



