THE EXPEDITION AND ITS OBJECTS 5 
Canadian Mounted Police. If she should be beset 
in the ice and forced to drift, it was expected that 
certain theories about the direction of Arctic cur- 
rents would be tested, and there would also be op¬ 
portunity for dredging and sounding. 
Both of these main objects were accomplished: 
Stefansson ultimately found new land and the 
Karluk engaged in an Arctic drift, but neither re¬ 
sult was attained in quite the way which was planned 
when we were getting the ship ready in May and 
June, 1913. We returned—some of us—rather 
earlier than we had expected, for we were prepared 
to be away until September, 1916, and contrary 
to one of the theories of Arctic currents we did not 
drift across the Pole to the Greenland shore. Be¬ 
fore we started some of the newspaper accounts 
of the expedition said that the ship might be 
crushed in the ice; the newspapers are more often 
correct than they are supposed to be. 
Travelling to Herschel Island on the Mary 
Sachs and the Alaska , small schooners equipped 
with gasolene engines, the southern party, under 
Dr. R. M. Anderson, who had been Stefans- 
son’s only white companion on his previous 
expeditions, was to map the islands already dis¬ 
covered east of the mouth of the Mackenzie 
River; to make a collection of the Arctic flora 
and fauna; to survey the channels among the 
