478 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



there. This she did not succeed in doing, or at least she left no cairns or other 

 marks by which her presence there could become known. They examined the 

 shore-line with their glasses while approaching and leaving the land, north and 

 south, and saw nothing but perpendicular cliffs of slate, from loo to 300 feet high, 

 the sloping banks of the river being the only place for miles where a party travel- 

 ing over the ice would be able to effect a landing. Had a landing been made 

 cairns would, of course, have been erected, and records of the cruise left. It 

 seems equally certain that had the Jeannette landed either to the north or to the 

 south, and remained any considerable time to explore, this place would have been 

 visited, since it has natural advantages as a landing place over all other parts of 

 the coast. As the first object of Capt. DeLong's voyage seemed to have been to 

 land and explore Wrangel Land, it was to be presumed, Capt. Hooper concludes, 

 that, had he succeeded in reaching it at all, he would have left an exploring 

 party, even though he .might not have gotten his vessel into winter quarters there. 

 In view of these facts it is believed that the Jeannette did not reach the eastern 

 part of Wrangel Land at all, and that if she reached any part of it she did not re- 

 main long enough to make any extended explorations. It seems equally clear 

 that no accident befell the vessel while in the vicinity of Herald Island or Wrang- 

 el Land, both from the absence of any record of the event at those places, and 

 from the fact that Capt. Hooper is reasonably certain from his own observations, 

 and the reports of the natives with whom he communicated, that her people have 

 not landed on any part of the coast of Siberia, between Cape Jakan and East 

 Cape, or between Cape Prince of Wales and the Mackenzie River on the Amer- 

 ican side; nor had they passed along either coast in the vessel. The Corwin's 

 party were unable to discover the slightest trace of her or her people, although 

 during their two seasons in the Arctic they cruised a distance of about 15,000 

 miles and examined every accessible part of the sea thoroughly (including the ice- 

 pack as far as it was possible to penetrate), and over 1,000 miles of coast line. 

 Therefore, taking into consideration the position of the Jeannette when last seen, 

 the almost absolute certainty that she did not make an extended stay at Wrangel 

 Land or Herald Island, if she reached those places at all, and the reasonable 

 supposition that she met with no accident, during the first winter at least, that 

 necessitated the desertion of the vessel, it seems to Capt. Hooper strongly proba- 

 ble that she entered the pack northeast of Herald Island and was carried by it in 

 a northeasterly direction. This being the case, in view of the fact that not one of 

 the whaleships that have from time to time, in the history of this ocean, been car- 

 ried north in the pack has drifted to the southward again, and knowing as they do 

 from the testimony of every Arctic navigator how futile would be any attempt to 

 resist the force of the pack when once fairly in motion, he may, he thinks, con- 

 clude that the Jeannette will not return by the way of Behring's Straits, but will 

 continue to move toward the north and east; and although Capt. DeLong will 

 undoubtedly take advantage of every lead in the endeavor to carry out his origi- 

 nal plan of making the east coast of Greenland or Melville Sound, his move- 

 ments will be controlled almost entirely by the drift of the ice. Should he, there- 



