NA TURE 



481 



THE GREELY ARCTIC EXPEDITION 

 Three Years of Arctic Service. An Account of the Lady 

 Frankliti Bay Expedition of 1881-84, and the Attain- 

 ment of the Furthest North. By Adolphus W. Greely, 

 Lieutenant U.S. Army, Commanding the Expedition. 

 Two Vols. (London: Bentley and Son, 1SS6.) 



THE principal incidents of this wonderfully successful 

 and singularly unfortunate Expedition must be 

 familiar to most of our readers. It formed one of the 

 series of International Polar Stations which carried on a 

 year's observations all round the Polar area in 18S2-83. 

 The Greely Expedition, however, took up its quarters at 

 Fort Conger (Si'^ 44' N., 64° 45' W.), Discovery Harbour, 

 Lady Franklin Bay, in August of 1881. This, it will be 

 remembered, was the station of the Discovery in the last 

 English Expedition. The Expedition consisted of twenty- 

 five men, all told. So far as organisation goes, the Expe- 

 dition was a military and not a naval one, under the U.S. 

 Signal Service, which is attached to the War Department. 

 It was certainly a mistake not to have had the naval 

 element substantially represented on such an expedition, 

 and a still greater and more fatal blunder not to have 

 provided the party with a ship in which they might have 

 escaped in case no relief party reached them. No time 

 was lost after landing in erecting a substantial wooden 

 house, observatory, and the various instruments with 

 which the scientific work of the Expedition was to be 

 carried on. Observations in all departments of meteoro- 

 logy seem to have been faithfully and regularly taken 

 according to the prescribed programme, and we have no 

 doubt that most of them were preserved and taken home 

 in the rescue ship. Only a few of the results are given in 

 the appendixes to these volumes ; the observations them- 

 selves will doubtless be sent to the Central Committee to 

 be worked out along with those from other stations. 

 Under the very efficient guidance of Major Greely excel- 

 lent work of various kinds was carried out in the autumn 

 of 1881 and the spring and summer of 1882. The relief 

 vessel which was sent out in the latter year failed to come 

 near Fort Conger, and the party, well provided, continued 

 their work in the autumn of 1882 and up to the end of 

 August 1883. Two vessels were sent out in the summer 

 of 1883 to reach Fort Conger, but through incredible mis- 

 management, completely failed in fulfilling their mission, 

 and even carried back with them the bulk of the pro- 

 visions which they ought to have cached at certain 

 points for the sustenance of the retreating party. It 

 seems a strange perversity and a remarkable piece of 

 red-tapeism in the U.S. Government to have intrusted 

 these relief expeditions entirely to military men. It 

 would surely have been easy to get experienced Arctic 

 navigators for such critical work, and so probably have 

 saved the lives of the poor men who were practically 

 without the means of saving themselves. According to 

 instructions. Major Greely, since no relief reached him, 

 abandoned his station at Fort Conger on September I, 

 1883, and with all his men, who up to this time had 

 enjoyed excellent health on the whole, made his way 

 south in a small steam launch and a boat or two, through 

 Vol. XXXIII. — No. 856 



almost impassable ice. In the end they were forced to 

 land at Cape Sabine about the middle of October, and 

 here, with scarcely any shelter, with only about enough 

 food to sustain one man in these regions, and under the 

 most miserable meteorological conditions, on the bleakest 

 spot in all the Arctic, did these men drearily drag them- 

 selves through the winter. When at last Commander 

 Schley did reach the spot in June 18S4, he found only six 

 out of the twenty-five alive. Yet up to within a few days 

 of the rescue, such observations as were possible were car- 

 ried on, and the conduct of the men, on the whole, was as 

 noble as could be imagined. This fearful sacrifice of life 

 is deplorable, all the more so when it is remembered that 

 it was due to blundering and half-heartedness on the part 

 of those at home. It is easy to ask whether the gains to 

 science are worth all this sacrifice to human life, but the 

 question is not so easily answered. And whatever the 

 answer is, we may be sure that the Greely disaster will 

 never deter humanity from attempting to find out all 

 about the remotest and most inhospitable corners of its 

 little home. 



During the two years that the Expedition remained in 

 Grinnell Land, it did some admirable work, in addition 

 to the scientific observations carried out in the neighbour- 

 hood of the station. One of the most efficient and 

 bravest members of the Expedition was Lieut. Lockwoodi 

 who, alas, did not return to reap the reward of his 

 splendid work. He, along with Sergeant Brainard (who, 

 we are glad to believe, will receive an acknowledgment of 

 his services from the Royal Geographical Society), 

 carried the coast of Greenland far beyond the furthest 

 point reached by Beaumont in the Nares Expedition. In 

 doing this, Lockwood reached the furthest point north- 

 wards yet attained, 83' 23''8 N., only three or four miles 

 beyond Capt. Markham's farthest. Of course he was 

 quite justified in waving the Stars and Stripes over this 

 triumph ; though it should be rem.embered that it is a 

 very different thing to travel along an Arctic coast to 

 trudging straight Polewards over palaeocrystic ice. 

 As far as Lockwood reached, the coast of Greenland 

 is broken up by fjords, and skirted with islands, while 

 the interior seemed an ice-bound land. There now 

 remains only a comparatively small section of the 

 north coast of Greenland to lay down, in order to join 

 the furthest points east and west ; and it is much to be 

 wished that this section were completed. At the same 

 time if an expedition were sent out specially for the 

 purpose, it would be desirable to endeavour to penetrate 

 southwards into the Greenland interior, to test Sir Joseph 

 Hooker's conjecture, " that vegetation may be more 

 abundant in the interior of Greenland than is supposed, 

 and that the glacier-bound coast-ranges of that country 

 may protect a comparatively fertile interior." It was in 

 search of a green interior, it will be remembered, that 

 Baron Nordenskjiild made his remarkable journey a few 

 years ago. He failed to find what he sought for, probably 

 because he struck too far south. 



In another direction Sir Joseph Hooker's prophetic 

 faculty has been amply sustained. " Wc are almost 

 driven to conclude," he wrote in 1877, "that Grinnell Land 

 as well as Greenland, are, instead of ice-capped, merely 

 ice-girt islands." The most noteworthy and novel geo- 

 graphical work done by the Greely Expedition was the 



