346 A rctic and A nt arctic Exploration [part i 
appendix which will prove most valuable to polar students 
and navigators. He here gives a list of all the Kara Sea 
expeditions from Stephen Burrough in 1556 to the date 
at which he wrote, with the results of their voyages ; and 
then, with the information derived both from books and 
from his own experience, he explains the causes of the 
prevalence of obstructive ice and of its absence. His 
conclusion is that steamers should very rarely fail to get 
through the ice of the Kara Sea 1 . 
The great literary achievement of Fridtjof Nansen 
was the publication of the valuable work entitled In 
Northern Mists — Arctic Exploration in Early Times (1911). 
It is a monumental work, entailing an incredible amount 
of careful research, and the materials are put together 
and presented with the skill and judgment of a master 
hand. In his deeply interesting introduction, Nansen 
answers the question " What were they seeking in the ice 
and cold/' by a quotation from the old Norse chronicle, 
the King's Mirror : — 
t If you wish to know what men seek in this land, or why men journey 
thither in so great danger of their lives, then it is the threefold nature 
of man that draws him thither. One part of him is emulation and 
desire of fame, for it is a man's nature to go where there is likelihood 
of great danger, and to make himself famous thereby. Another part 
is the desire of knowledge, for it is man's nature to wish to know 
and see those parts of which he has heard, and to find out whether 
they are as it was told him or not. The third part is the desire of gain, 
seeing that men seek after riches in every place where they learn 
that profit is to be had, even though there is great danger in it. 
Nansen himself puts it more tersely yet scarcely less 
impressively. "From first to last the history of polar 
exploration is a single mighty manifestation of the 
power of the unknown over the mind of man/' 
1 Through Siberia (Heinemann, 1914). Appendix on the navigation of 
the Kara Sea. 
