540 FARTHEST NORTH 



northerly one than the Jcanncttes was, and this is just 

 what we expected ; ours cuts hers at an angle of 59°. 

 The line of this year's drift continued will cut the north- 

 east island of Spitzbergen, and take us as far north as 

 84° 7', in 75' east longitude, somewhere N.N.E. of Franz 

 Josef Land. The distance by this course to the North- 

 east Island is 827 miles. Should we continue to pro- 

 gress only at the rate of 189 miles a year it would take 

 us 4.4 years to do this distance. But assuming our 

 progress to be at the rate of 305 miles a year, we shall 

 do it in 2.7 years. That we should drift at least as 

 quickly as this seems probable, because we can hardly 

 now be driven back as we were in October last year, 

 when we had the open water to the south and the great 

 mass of ice to the north of us. 



" The past summer seems to me to have proved that 

 while the ice is very unwilling to go back south, it is 

 most ready to go northwest as soon as there is ever so 

 little easterly, not to mention southerly, wind. I therefore 

 believe, as I always have believed, that the drift will 

 become faster as we get farther northwest, and the 

 probability is that the Pram will reach Norway in two 

 years, the expedition having lasted its full three years, 

 as I somehow had a feeling that it would. As our 

 drift is 59' more northerly than the Jeamicttcs, and as 

 Franz Josef Land must force the ice north (taking for 

 granted that all that comes from this great basin goes 

 round to the north of Franz Josef Land), it is probable 



