GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 



A Thousand Days in the Arctic. By Frederick G. Jackson, Knight, etc. 

 "With Preface by Admiral Sir F. Leopold M'Clintock. 8mo, pp. 

 i-xxiii 4- 1-940, with many illustrations, including five original 

 maps. New York and London : Harper & Brothers. 1899. $6. 

 " This is an unvarnished tale of a thousand consecutive days spent in 

 the Arctic, printed almost word for word as it was written ... in 

 our hut, or tent, when on sledging and boating journeys in Franz Josef 

 Land. It is a simple, true account and statement of facts incident to 

 our life and work there — plain facts, penned by a plain man." Such is 

 the deprecatory note modestly prefixed by one of the foremost explorers 

 of the decade to the published record of his work. Frederick G. 



Jackson, a Briton of characteristic physique and intelligence, is one of 

 the legion lured by the ignis fatuus of the northern Pole ; at the same time 

 he is one of that division of the legion whose dreams are sane and whose 

 strivings are sensible. On studying the conditions it seemed to him prob- 

 able that Franz Josef Land (discovered and named by Weyprecht and 

 Payer in 1873) might afford an overland route to the Pole ; and, after much 

 unsuccessful search for means, he at last effected a conjunction with Mr 

 Alfred C. Harmsworth, who equipped an expedition for geographic work 

 in the little-known land. Fortunately the patron was not more dazzled 

 by the purely polar gleams than his explorer ; it was his chief desire 

 that Jackson and his companions should " add to our knowledge of the 

 geography and the fauna and flora of Franz Josef Land and the area 

 lying immediately north of it " (p. 774). Thus it was on a practical basis 

 that the Windward, with the Jackson party on board, weighed anchor 

 on July 12, 1894. A southei'ly point on Franz Josef Land was 



reached without great delay, and a landing was effected ; but before the 

 transfer of goods was completed the vessel was caught in the ice, and re- 

 mained until the break-up of 1895, when she returned to England, leav- 

 ing Jackson and his six companions on one of the most desolate spots 

 ever touched by explorers. Nearly a year later the solitude was broken 

 by that most marvelous accident of Arctic exploration, the meeting with 

 Nansen and Johansen, who remained a month before embarking on the 

 Windward on her return trip of 1896, while the British party remained 

 another year, to be brought out by the same vessel in the summer of 

 1897. During the three years of their arctic sojourn Jackson and 



his experts were seldom idle. In the spring of 1895 a long sledge journey 

 was made northward, resulting in the discovery that the supposed con- 

 tinuous land is but an archipelago. Later in the season a perilous, not 

 to say foolhardy, sea-trip was made in a half-seaworthy whale-boat, 

 which resulted in a map of the southern coast and the location of the 

 southwesternmost point of Franz Josef Land. Another sledge journey 



