DRIFT-WOOD 85 
While most of the drift-wood is brought by the 
Polar current from the Siberian coast, some has 
been traced to Norwegian sources, and pieces of 
North American Pines and other trees have also 
been recognised. Currents from the south also 
transport plants to the Arctic regions as is shown 
by the occasional discovery of seeds of tropical 
plants on the West Greenland coast. 
It was the discovery of pieces of wreckage from 
the American ship, the ‘Jeanette,’ which foundered 
north of the New Siberian Island in 1881 on the 
south-west coast of Greenland, and the study of 
the distribution of Siberian drift-wood that first 
led Nansen}, and more recently other explorers, to 
trust to the motive power of currents as the chief 
factor in Arctic expeditions. 
The logs of drift-wood stranded on a Green- 
land beach after a long sea voyage from their 
native habitat suggest the possibility that some at 
least of the stout petrified stems, which were found 
among the boulders in the beds of the glacial 
streams washed out of the sandstones on the hill- 
sides, might in their day have been carried far 
from home, to be entombed with the waifs and 
strays of a contemporary Greenland flora to which 
they did not belong. 
From Hare Island we visited Upernivik Island 
(lat. 71° N.), on the north side of Umanak Fjord. 
On the south coast there is a small Settlement at 
the foot of the hills commanding a view that it 
would be difficult to surpass for grandeur and 
1 Farthest North, 1897 (Fram Expedition, 1893-6). 
