LETTEES FEOM THE ANDRfiE PAETT.i 



THE BALLOON EXPEDITION TO THE POLE — AN ACCOUNT OF THE 

 START BY ANDREE'S FELLOW-VOYAGER, NILS STEINDBERG — LET- 

 TERS RELATING TO THE EXPEDITION FROM STRINDBERG'S FATHER. 



On tbe 11th of last July, one Sunday afternoon, S. A. Andree, with 

 two companions, Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel, ascended from 

 Danes' Island in the balloon "Ornen"(The Eagle) and sailed away 

 northward, hoping by this untried means to reach the North Pole. Dar- 

 ing even to foolhardiness as Andree's project may well seem, it had been 

 very coolly and prudently matured and systematically prepared for. 

 Andree was born in Sweden October 18, 1854, and is now, therefore, 43 

 years old. He is a carefully educated mechanical engineer and man of 

 science. From 1886 to 1889 he filled a chair in the leading Swedish 

 school of technology; he passed the winter of 1882-83 in Spitzbergen 

 as a member of a Swedish meteorological expedition, directing exj)eri- 

 ments and observations in atmospheric electricity, and he has held for 

 some years an important engineering post under the Swedish Govern- 

 ment. In 1876, while on his way to America to serve the Swedish 

 exhibitors at the Centennial Exhibition, he was impressed with the 

 seeming regularity of the trade winds, and thus was led to consider 

 the possibility of balloon voyages across the Atlantic. His coming to 

 America augmented also in another way his interest in ballooning. In 

 a little speech spoken by him into a gramophone, for use at a Swedish 

 Aid Society's fair holding in Brooklyn while he was preparing for his 

 journey to the Pole, Mr. Andree said : 



"It is a great pleasure for me to be able to contribute to the Swedish 

 Aid Society's fair. I have been in America myself and have experi- 

 enced how hard it is to be without work. I was glad many times to 

 make my living by wielding a broom. In spite of that I have many 

 pleasant recollections from that time, because I learned a great deal 

 while staying there. It was there I met the old aeronaut John Wise, 

 from Philadelphia, and it was there I got the first lesson in the manu- 

 facturing of balloons. For me is America, therefore, indeed memorable, 

 and the Americans can rest assured that I should like very much, if I 

 could, to visit them with my balloon via the North Pole." 



Early in 1895 Mr. Andree laid his ideas for a balloon expedition into 

 the Arctic, then pretty well matured, before the Swedish Academy of 



1 Reprinted from McClure's Maguziu'i for March, 1898, by permission of the S. S. 

 McCliire Company. 



SM 97— —26 401 



