Life in the Arctic. 



marks the end of the expedition. At six 'oVloek on the night of October 

 15, 1872, the floe to which the " Polaris " was anchored in Smith's sound 

 broke up with thundering noise. All hands were set at work to dis- 

 charge the ship's store on the ice, for it was evident she would not 

 survive the "nip" that was inevitable when the ice began to move. 

 In a dreadful blinding snow-storm, accompanied by a tremendous 

 northern gale, the work of unloading was in progress. One-half of the 

 party under Tyson was on the floe, disposing of the stores, when with 

 a detonation like a frigate's broadside the floe was wrenched asunder 

 and the ship lurched out into the blackness of the night, leaving 

 Tyson and his party compassless on a drifting cake of ice. The ship 

 floated for some time, and those on board were picked up by a whaler 

 and brought to Dundee, Scotland. Tyson and his party drifted 

 southward on the ice floe for six dreary months through the Arctic 

 night, and were finally rescued on April 30 of the next year. When 

 the chip cast loose from the floe Tyson found himself on a floe piece 

 about five miles square ; his rescuers picked him off a cake about five 

 hundred feet square. Gradually as he drifted southward with warmer 

 water the ice had been melting, and had succor been another day late 

 his story would never have been known. He had drifted through 

 forty-six degrees of latitude, or about three thousand miles— almost 

 as far as from New York to Liverpool. 



Then came the English expedition under Sir George Nares. He 

 reached the highest point yet attained, having passed the eighty-third 

 degree of latitude only to report laconically : " The pole impracticable."' 



In 1872 Austria fitted out an expedition and sent it to Franz Josef 

 Land under the charge of Weyprecht and Payer. They got as far as 

 Franz Josef Land, and were there ice bound for three years. They 

 finally made their escape much after the fashion of the " Jeannette's " 

 crew, and reached Novaya Zemlya, where they were picked up and 



And now we come to the Jeannette expedition. 



Unlike the other expeditions that had been sent to the pole this 

 was a private enterprise. Mr. James Gordon Bennett, the rival of 

 established governments in his munificent patronage of geographical 

 science, bought from the English government the steam yacht " Pan- 

 dora," in which Captain Allen Young had made a polar journey in 



