304 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
tunately shut up by the ice in Mussel Bay—an unusual thing—and, not having 
provisions enough for wintering, the supply of food taken for the crew of one 
vessel was too small to feed so many mouths; the difficulties were further in- 
creased by their being obliged to receive and give rations toa number of ship- 
wrecked walrus hunters, who otherwise would have starved. 
The expedition, useful in other respects, was a perfect failure in its main ob- 
ject, that of getting far to north. 
As these two last expeditions were wholly with the object of making a great. 
progress Poleward, I shall offer a few remarks on the various routes to the Pole, 
either already attempted or in prospect, before describing Nordenskjéld’s most 
recent and grandly successful Arctic voyage to the northeast; thinking it may be 
of interest to those who have not made Arctic voyages especially their study, to 
point out the various routes to the North Pole that have been attempted, and to 
mention the difficulties that have been encountered, and their causes, in the ef- 
forts to make the northwest passage, which has been discovered, but has never 
been made in the true sense of the word, that is, by a vessel passing from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, or wice versa, northward of the American Conti- 
nent. 
Contrary to the theories of many presumably good Arctic authorites, who 
advocate narrow channels of the sea for Arctic navigation, such channels have, 
in practice, been found the worst possible for this purpose, especially when their 
direction lay in anything approaching to a north and south course, as they have 
always been blocked with impenetrable ice in one part or other. As examples 
of this, I may mention Smith Sound, which was found completely sealed up by 
the ice-pack at its northern outlet in 1875. In the narrow Fury and Hecla Strait, 
Parry’s advance westward was stopped by close packed ice at its western open- 
ing in 1823. 
Franklin’s northward progress through Wellington Channel must have been 
stopped in a similar manner in 1845, for he turned back the same year. In 
1846, '47, °48, the ships of the same good and noble but unfortunate navigator 
were shut up dy and abandoned zm the ice, near the south entrance of the some- 
what narrow channel, named by me Victoria Strait in 1851; the pressure of the 
ice-pack coming down from the northwest through McClintock Channel, and 
checked in its progress by King William’s Land, must, from my experience of it, 
have been immense. Franklin’s officers did not at that time know—a fact ascer- 
tained by me in 1854—that King William’s Land was an island, and that, by 
passing eastward of it, the ice pressure might in a great measure have been 
avoided. 
Bellot Strait, which bounds the extreme north point of America in latitude 
71° 57 N., was found impraeticable by the Fox, in 1858-9, in consequence of 
the ice-pack at its western end. 
Prince of Wales’s Strait—another narrow channel—separating Banks Land 
from Wollaston Land, was of easy access from the south, both by McClure in 
