260 The National Geographic Magazine 



country and reported their adventures. 

 Other Eskimos have since then been 

 carried away on the ice, and are sup- 

 posed to have reached the northern 

 land, from whence they have not as yet 

 returned. An obscure indication of 

 land to the north was actually perceived 

 from the masthead of the Plover when 

 off Point Barrow." * 



On August 15, 1850, Captain Mc- 

 Clure, anchored off Yarborough Inlet, 

 about half way from Point Barrow to 

 Demarcation Point, writes : 



" The packed ice today, as far as the 

 eye can reach, appears solid and heavy, 

 without a drop of water discernible. 

 The refraction has been considerable, 

 giving to the edge of the pack the ap- 

 pearance of a continuous line of chalk 

 cliffs, from 40 to 50 feet in height. 

 From the light shady tint, which in dif- 

 ferent parts of the pack is distinctly 

 visible, I should be inclined to think 

 that there may be man}' of the same 

 kind of islands as those we have met 

 with, extending to the northward, and 

 impeding the progress of the ice, thereby 

 keeping this sea eternally frozen." f 



Captain Collinson, who wintered at 

 Simpson Cove, 1 853-1854, actually un- 

 dertook a sledge journey in the spring 

 northward, one object of which was to 

 see if land would not be reached. The 

 roughness of the ice caused him soon 

 to abandon the project. He writes : 



" I therefore returned, and with sor- 

 row gave up an attempt which . . . 

 I had looked forward to with much in- 

 terest ; thinking that, with anything 

 like a favorable road, I should reach 

 73 N. latitude, and settle the ques- 

 tion with regard to the open sea, which 

 certainly does not appear to exist here 

 in the same manner as it does to the 

 north of the Asiatic continent." % 



In 1873 Admiral Sherard Osborn read 

 a paper before the Royal Geographic 



*The Polar Regions, p. 240. 

 fMcClure: D c , p. 81. 

 ± Collinson : D. c, p. 312. 



Society in which he predicted the ex- 

 istence of an archipelago or land extend- 

 ing from near Prince Patrick Island up 

 very near to the Pole and thence to 

 Wrangell Island, thus forming the 

 northern boundary of a nearly inclosed 

 sea. * 



A probably less happy prediction was 

 made by Petermann, who contemplated 

 land extending northeasterly from 

 Greenland, thence across the Pole to 

 Wrangell Island. 



Sir Clements Markham is quoted as 

 having said in November, 1896 : 



"Personally, as I do not believe in 

 any land near the Pole, or on this side 

 of it beyond Franz Josef Land, I trust 

 an attempt will be made to explore an- 

 other portion of the Arctic regions. I 

 believe there is land, probably in the 

 form of large islands, between Prince 

 Patrick Land and the New Siberia 

 Islands. ' ' f 



Prentiss discredits there being much 

 land north of Bering Strait, but his 

 reasons for so doing can hardly be re- 

 garded as convincing. 



ADDENDUM 



Since reading the above paper, I ac- 

 cidentally came across a paper by Mar- 

 cus Baker, in Volume 5 of the National 

 Geographic Magazine, entitled "An 

 Undiscovered Island off the Northern 

 Coast of Alaska." He suggests that 

 the supposed land be called Keenan Is- 

 land. The following statements are 

 there furnished by Captain Edward P. 

 Herendeen, who for many years was 

 engaged in whaling : 



" It is often told that natives winter- 

 ing between Harrison and Camden Bays 

 have seen land to the north in the 

 bright, clear days of spring. 



" In the winter of i886-'87, Uzharlu, 

 an enterprising Eskimo of Ootkeavie, 



* Clements R. Markham: The Threshold 

 of the Unknown, pp. 216-224. 



f Prentiss : The Great Polar Current, p. 105 ; 

 see also p. 19. 



