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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Japan. This was accomplished after the 

 overtures of Portugal, Holland, Eng- 

 land, Spain, and Russia had failed, by 

 the untiring industry and consummate 

 tact of Commodore Matthew Perry. 

 The history of Perry's negotiations and 

 final success in this delicate task is an 

 enduring example of prudence and per- 

 sistence. 



The Frigid Zone and the region of the 

 North Pole, the objective point of recent 

 expeditions, has been from time to time 

 penetrated by expeditions under the au- 

 thority of the Navy Department, and 

 within the last half century new lands 

 have been added to the map of the world, 

 the whaling industry has received a pow- 

 erful impetus, and new species of ani- 

 mals and valuable minerals have been 

 discovered. 



The Jeanette expedition set out from 

 San Francisco in 1879, under the com- 

 mand of Lieutenant Commander De 

 Long, to whose enthusiasm for Polar 

 research the inception of the expedition 

 was due. The Jeanette was crushed in 

 the ice north of Siberia, and the party, 

 after traversing the ice on sledges, set 

 out for the land in boats, of which one 

 was lost, a second reached the Lena 

 River with but two survivors, and a 

 third, containing Chief Engineer Mel- 

 ville and Lieutenant Danenhower, ar- 

 rived at the Lena in October, i88t, and 

 after months of search found the bodies 

 of De Long and his companions, which 

 were brought to New York and interred 

 with military honors. 



General Greely, in 1881, was appointed 

 to establish thirteen circumpolar stations 

 in the Arctic regions, and a division of 

 his party reached the farthest point north 

 up to that time. The survivors of Gree- 

 ly's party were rescued by the naval re- 

 lief expedition under Rear Admiral 

 Schley in 1884. 



But of all the expeditions into the 

 Arctic region none surpass in brilliancy 

 those of a civil engineer in the Navy, 

 Robert E. Peary. In 1886 and 1887 he 

 made a reconnaissance of the Greenland 

 coast. In 1893 and 1895 he made an- 

 other voyage to the Arctic Highlands. 

 In 1906 he reached 87 degrees 6 minutes, 



the nearest approach to the North Pole in 

 the American Arctic cruise, the results 

 of which may prove of tremendous in- 

 terest and value to the world. Endowed 

 with the experience of similar service 

 and a thoroughly modern equipment, his 

 present effort should go far toward the 

 reclamation of the great ice-locked 

 North. 



In 1882 another cruise under the au- 

 thority of the Department was made in 

 Bering Sea and the north coast of 

 Alaska, and a valuable report was made 

 concerning the currents and the move- 

 ments of the ice in those waters. And 

 in 1899, when the results of the first ex- 

 pedition through the Amazon had long 

 been reflected in the profitable trade in 

 rubber, cocoa, and nuts, the U. S. S. 

 Wilmington ascended the same great 

 river for 2,300 miles, gathering new geo- 

 logical and commercial information, and 

 in general examining into the feasibility 

 of penetrating the South American Con- 

 tinent. 



Besides the great world-wide benefits 

 that have accrued from these expeditions, 

 out of a great number of which only a 

 few of the important ones have been 

 mentioned, they have proven of inesti- 

 mable value in the more technical mat- 

 ters of the laws of storms, the climatol- 

 ogy of the oceans, the ocean currents, 

 fog conditions, and the construction and 

 publication of charts. Special study and 

 research along these lines is being con- 

 tinuously and with increasing efficiency 

 carried on by the Hydrographic Office 

 and the Naval Observatory. 



The fruits of these expeditions of re- 

 search and of the specialized work of the 

 Department Bureaus do not fall to the 

 United States alone, but to the family of 

 nations, and it is possible to consume 

 much more than the time allotted to me 

 in the multiplication of these peaceful 

 achievements of our Navy. Suffice it to 

 mention, in concluding this phase of the 

 subject, the laying of the Atlantic and 

 Pacific cables, and the famine and relief 

 cruises of the Jamestown and Constella- 

 tion to Russia and Ireland. 



The scope of the Navy's activities in 

 its peaceful calling is broad. In the gov- 



