No Man's Land— Spitzbergen 



45 5 



storm, they took to the boat and reached 

 a haven. 



Another remarkable drift was the ex- 

 perience of part of the crew of the 

 Polaris in 1870. The Polaris had been 

 pushed into an impassable ice-pack, 

 where she was anchored to a floe. 



"For two months the ship drifted 

 slowly southward, when a violent gale 

 disrupted the pack and nearly destroyed 

 her. Part of the terror-stricken crew, 

 escaping in the darkness to the ice-pack, 

 experienced the horrors of a mid-winter 

 ice-drift, whose appalling dangers and 

 bitter privations can scarcely be appre- 

 ciated. . Five months later, after a drift 

 of 1,300 miles, the despairing party were 

 picked up by the Tigress, off I^abrador, 

 April 30, 1873, not only unreduced in 

 numbers, but with a girl baby born to the 

 Eskimo, Hannah." 



The drift of the Pram, 1893-1896, is so 

 well remembered that it is not necessary 

 to describe it again. 



It is also interesting to note the long 

 distance Peary drifted on his last polar 

 dash, while waiting for a lead to close 

 and for a storm to abate. On his next 

 campaign he will take advantage of this 

 drift by starting west of Cape Columbia 

 and by aiming for a point considerably 

 away from the Pole. (See page 450.) 



The many expeditions setting forth 

 from Greenland and Franz Josef Land 

 have nearly completed the exploration of 

 the eastern half of the polar area, but the 

 map shows a vast untraversed region 

 north of Alaska and Bering Strait. 



In the preparation of the map the 

 Editor has received much assistance from 

 the expert staff of the Mathews Northup 

 Co., who also drafted, engraved, and 

 printed it. The insert of the Smith 

 Sound region is largely based on Pearv's 

 latest map, and that of Franz Josef Land 

 on the surveys and revisions of the 

 Ziegler Expedition. 



A limited number of polar maps have 

 been printed on linen and may be ob- 

 tained from the National Geographic So- 

 ciety at 50 cents each. 



The reader who is interested in Arctic 

 exploration and wishes a concise narra- 

 tive of the different expeditions, will find 

 the "Hand Book of Arctic Discoveries," 

 by Major General A. W. Greely, U. S. 

 Army, an indispensable and welcome 

 guide. A second edition of this volume 

 has just been published by Messrs Little, 

 Brown & Company, of Boston. General 

 Greely gives a vivid summary of Arctic 

 history, condensed from about 70,000 

 pages of original narrative. 



NO MAN'S LAND-SPITZBERGEN 



THE discovery of Spitzbergen ex- 

 cited little interest at the time, 

 but it was prominently brought 

 to the attention of the world by the first 

 voyage of Henry Hudson, in 1607, to 

 discover a passage by the North Pole to 

 China and Japan. 



Hudson's voyage was of vast industrial 

 and commercial importance, for his dis- 

 covery and reports of the vast number of 

 walruses and whales that frequented the 

 seas gave rise to the Spitzbergen whale 

 fishery. Enterprising Holland sent its 

 ships in 1613, bringing in its train later 

 whalers from Bremen, France, and other 

 maritime centers. 



The whale fishery, as the most impor- 

 tant of Arctic industries — from which 

 Holland alone drew from the Spitzber- 

 gen seas in no years, 1679-1778, prod- 

 ucts valued at about ninety millions of 

 dollars — merits brief attention. 



Grad writes : "The Dutch sailors saw 

 in Spitzbergen waters great whales in 

 immense numbers, whose catch would be 

 a source of apparently inexhaustible 

 riches. For two centuries fleets of 

 whalers frequented the seas. The rush 

 to the gold-bearing places of California 

 and the mines of Australia afford in our 

 dav the only examples at all comparable 

 to the host of men attracted by the north- 

 ern fishery." * 



