Report of the President 55 



Acknowledgment should be made to Messrs. James 

 Douglas, J. P. Morgan and Arthur Curtiss James and the 

 State Geological Survey of Oklahoma for important aid in the 

 advancement of the department's work. 



The Curator has continued to serve as Chairman of the 



Committee in charge of the Crocker Land Expedition. On 



_,.-": the 17th of Mav was received the first dis- 

 Crocker Land , . . . _ . . _ 



. patch of the year from Mr. Donald B. 



MacMillan, the leader of the Expedition, 



reporting all well and plans for advance toward the object 



of the expedition as being well in hand. Ten days later 



letters from Mr. MacMillan and various members of the 



staff were received. These confirmed the telegraphic report, 



gave some of the experiences of the winter, deplored the 



failure of the wireless to send or receive messages and told of 



a trip by Mr. Ekblaw accompanying Mr. Knud Rasmussen to 



examine and report upon a large iron meteorite on the shores 



of Melville Bay which is probably a fourth member of the 



Cape York series, three of which are at this Museum. This 



new meteorite was discovered by Kood-Look-too and sold to 



the Danish government. 



On 23 November, through the kindness of Mr. Knud 



Rasmussen, the Museum received a letter from Mr. Ekblaw, 



reporting that Mr. MacMillan, leader, accompanind by Ensign 



Fitzhugh Green, engineer and physicist, journeyed 125 miles 



northwest from Cape Thomas Hubbard across the ice of the 



Polar Sea in a search for Crocker Land. For two days Messrs. 



MacMillan and Green thought that they saw land, but this 



proved to be a mirage, and they finally concluded that Crocker 



Land does not exist, at least within the range originally ascribed 



to it. The journev out and back from Cape Thomas Hubbard 



occupied two months and proved to be extremely perilous. 



The party crossed thirty-eight leads on thin ice, lost most of 



their dogs on the journey, and oh the day after they got back 



to Cape Thomas Hubbard " the ice on the Polar Sea broke up 



and became a hideous, grinding chaos of broken ice, on which 



they would certainly have perished had they not got back as 



they did." 



