John Rae—Wollaston Land and Victoria Strait—Overlaps Franklin's route—M'Clure discovers Prince of Wales Strait—The North-West Passage—Banks Land—M'Clure rescued by Bedford Pim—Collinson's remarkable voyage—In Beaufort Sea—Reaches Banks Strait—Voyage to Cambridge Bay—On Franklin's route—The North-West Passage sailed by Amundsen along the track of the Enterprise—Sir John Barrow—Parry's first voyage—Penetrates Lancaster Sound and discovers the Parry Islands—Stopped by ice in Banks Strait—The search for Franklin—Sir John Ross—De Haven—Penny—Austin—Ommanney—Osborn—Belcher—Kellett—M'Clintock—Drift of the Resolute—Sledge work—Sverdrup's discoveries during his four years in the north.

The second to complete a north-west passage by linking up with Franklin's voyage was Dr. John Rae, an Orkneyman by birth, as energetic as Thomas Simpson and evidently not inferior to him in stamina, for in his Arctic journeys he walked a distance equal to that of the circumference of the earth. In 1846 he had surveyed the Committee Bay district between Boothia and the Melville Peninsula, reaching it from Repulse Bay, and in 1848 and 1849 he had been associated with Richardson in searching for Franklin along the coast from the Mackenzie eastwards. Next year, while in charge of the Mackenzie district, he was again requested to lead a Franklin search expedition, and, starting from Fort Confidence on the 25th of April, was on the sea by the 1st of May. Crossing over to Wollaston Land, and making westward along the coast on the 22nd of May, he rounded Cape Baring, just above the seventieth parallel. Crossing to its continuation, Victoria Land, on a second journey, he travelled eastward, and, going up Victoria Strait, rounded Pelly Point, also just above the seventieth parallel, on the 12th of July, thus practically completing the survey of the southern half of what Collinson was to prove is one large island.

Off Pelly Point, it afterwards appeared, the Erebus and Terror were beset in the ice in September, 1846, and fifty miles to the south-east they had been abandoned in April, 1848; but the only relic found by Rae on this occasion was the doubtful one—picked up in Parker Bay—of the butt-end of a flagstaff on which was nailed a piece of white line by two copper tacks, all three bearing the Government mark. This was the first to be found of anything that could be thought to be a trace of the missing ships, a sort of promise of what he was to meet with four years later; and it is worth noting that, had he not failed in getting across the strait to King William Land, Rae would in 1850 have probably discovered Franklin's fate.

His farthest in these parts was passed in May, 1853, by Captain Richard Collinson, in his sledge journey to Gateshead Island from H.M.S. Enterprise, then wintering in Cambridge Bay. The Enterprise and Investigator had been placed under Collinson's command and sent by way of Cape Horn to search for Franklin from the west, the instructions being that the ships should not part company; but regardless of this, Commander Robert Le Mesurier M'Clure, of the Investigator, happening to get through Bering Strait first, declined to wait for his commanding officer, went off on an expedition on his own account and, by a sledge journey, joined Parry's track when in search of the North-West Passage.

Steering north-east from Franklin Bay, M'Clure reached the south of Parry's Banks Land and followed the coast north-eastwards, discovering Prince of Wales Strait and making his way rather more than half-way up, until, near Princess Royal Island in 72° 50´, he was caught in the ice and imprisoned for the winter. On Trafalgar Day, 1850, M'Clure left the Investigator on a sledge journey up the strait, and at sunrise on the 26th of October, from Mount Observation in 73° 30´, a hill six hundred feet above the sea, he looked over Banks Strait and Melville Sound, and saw the coast of Banks Land terminating about twelve miles further on and thence trending to the north-west, while Wollaston Land, as it proved to be, turned eastward on the other side at Peel Point. That evening Banks Strait was reached at Cape Lord John Russell, and the North-West Passage by Prince of Wales Strait clearly demonstrated. The spot was not bare of vegetation, and there were many traces of animals, for, fortunately for M'Clure, there was no scarcity of game during his three winterings in Banks Land—reindeer in herds, musk oxen occasionally, hares in troops, ducks in plenty, ptarmigan almost as numerous, and bears, wolves, and foxes to feed on them; for instance, the weights of three items in the bag, 1945 lb. of musk ox, 7716 lb. of deer, and 1017 lb. of hare, show fairly good shooting.

Enclosing a record of the visit in a cairn, M'Clure returned to the ship, from which in the spring three sledge parties were sent out—Cresswell's to the north-west finding that Banks Land was an island, Wynniatt's to the north-east reaching Reynolds Point on the north of Wollaston Land, and Haswell's down Wollaston Land to within forty miles of where Rae turned back about a week later—this being the only attempt at searching for Franklin that the expedition undertook after sighting Nelson Head. Released in July, the Investigator retreated down the strait and attempted to circumnavigate Banks Land, finding to the west a coast as precipitous as a wall, the water deep—fifteen fathoms close in, with the yardarms almost touching the cliffs on one hand and the lofty ice on the other—and the pack drawing forty feet of water, rising in rolling hills a hundred feet from base to summit. On shore the hills were as remarkable. Many of them were peaked and isolated by precipitous gorges, about three hundred feet deep. And all the way up them were numbers of fallen trees, in many places in layers, some protruding twelve or fourteen feet, one of these trunks measuring nineteen inches in diameter. Says M'Clure: "I entered a ravine some miles inland, and found the north side of it, for a depth of forty feet from the surface, composed of one mass of wood similar to what I had before seen. The whole depth of the ravine was about two hundred feet. The ground around the wood or trees was formed of sand and shingle; some of the wood was petrified, the remainder very rotten and worthless even for burning." And this forest bed is on the shore of the Beaufort Sea in 74° north latitude, a similar one being in Prince Patrick Island, on the other side of Banks Strait.

After one or two narrow escapes the Investigator entered her last home at the Bay of Mercy, well within the strait, near Cape Hamilton, the most prominent of the three capes discovered from the Dundas Peninsula by Parry's lieutenant, Beechey, thirty-one years before. The winter passed, and on the 11th of April M'Clure left the ship on a sledge journey across to Parry's old quarters at Winter Harbour, which were reached on the 28th, to find nothing but a notice of M'Clintock's having been there in the previous June. Noticing Parry's inscription rock, M'Clure judiciously left on it a statement that the Investigator was in want of relief at Mercy Bay. But all through that year no news from the outside came to Banks Land, and matters became serious owing to the appearance of scurvy, notwithstanding the abundance of fresh meat, for even in January a herd of reindeer trotted by.

Another winter went wearily, each month with a gloomier outlook than the last, and on the 5th of April the first of the scurvy patients died. Next morning M'Clure and Haswell were walking near the ship discussing how they could dig a grave in the frozen ground, when they noticed a man hurriedly approaching from the entrance of the bay, throwing up his arms and shouting at the top of his voice, his face as black as ebony. When he came within talking range the dark-faced stranger called out, "I am Lieutenant Pim, late of the Herald and now in the Resolute; Captain Kellett is in her at Dealy Island." And soon the dog-sledge with two men came into view. Pim's arrival was most fortunate for the sufferers, for the captain, as a desperate resource, was—in spite of the doctor's protests—just about to send off two sledge parties of the invalids to take their chance of escaping somehow, as there was no hope of their recovery in the ship; and on examination by the doctor of the Resolute, it was found that every man of the crew was more or less affected by the disease. So the ship was abandoned in Mercy Bay, and the officers and crew, crossing to the Resolute, reached England by way of Hudson Strait.

Collinson's was the most remarkable voyage ever accomplished by a sailing-ship in the Arctic regions. It lasted from 1850 to 1855—five years and a hundred and sixteen days—all the way out across the Atlantic and Pacific and home again in safety, traversing a hundred and twenty-eight degrees of longitude in the Arctic sea, coming nearest at the time to completing the north-west passage by ship (up Prince of Wales Strait), finding two north-west passages by sledge (one joining with Parry's discoveries across Banks Strait, the other with Franklin's up Victoria Strait), and approaching nearer than any other naval expedition to the great discovery by travelling up Franklin's route for some distance, and passing within thirty miles of the spot where the vessels he was in search of had been abandoned, though unfortunately, like Rae, he was on the west side of the waterway instead of the east.

Passing Bering Strait in July, 1850, the Enterprise went north from Wainwright Inlet into the Beaufort Sea, until she was stopped by the heavy pack. Trying east, to join with Parry's farthest, and then west, she arrived, on the 28th of August, at 73° 23´ in 164°, and here she turned south after having sailed over eleven thousand miles without having to reef her topsails, an unprecedented run of distance and fine weather combined. Returning in 1851 from wintering at Hong Kong, Collinson, with a southerly wind "too precious to be wasted," made his way up Prince of Wales Strait, knowing nothing of the visit of the Investigator, to find ice blocking his way just at the northern outlet, his furthest north, by ship, 73° 30´, forty miles beyond M'Clure's winter quarters, as given in the record he found in one of the cairns.

Unable to round the corner into Banks Strait owing to the ice block, Collinson returned down Prince of Wales Strait and followed the track of the Investigator half-way up the west coast of Banks Land, though he had found nothing to indicate she had gone in that direction. Finding the ice conditions dangerous, he retraced his route along the coast and went into comfortable winter quarters in Walker Bay, at the entrance of Prince of Wales Strait. By the end of November the natives fishing for salmon-trout had cleared off, as also had the reindeer, hares, and ptarmigan and other birds, and on the 17th of March the ravens, which had been the last to leave, were the first to return. In April sledge parties went out, one of which under Lieutenant Parkes crossed the route of the Hecla along the strait and reached Melville Island at Cape Providence on the way to Winter Harbour, short of which, within sight of Point Hearne, Parkes began his homeward journey, owing to his taking the tracks of sledges and barking of dogs as indicating the presence, not of M'Clure as it did, but of Eskimos, with whom, being without weapons, he was unable to cope.

Released on the 5th of August, the Enterprise proceeded to sea, coasting along past Rae's farthest and Cape Baring, and so, where no ship had been, through Coronation Gulf to Cambridge Bay. Here the winter of 1852-3 was spent, and hence the sledges went up Victoria Strait. At Finlayson Islands, what seemed to be a piece of a companion-door was found among the driftwood, which might have been a relic of the lost ships; but that was all. During the return along the northern coast the Enterprise was beset in Camden Bay, and here the third winter was passed, release not coming until the end of the following July, and Bering Strait not being reached until the 21st of August after a voyage, like that of the Vega, too well managed to yield much adventure. Like all the other Arctic voyages of this period, it failed in the one object it was undertaken to achieve; but in days to come the first ship to sail the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific was to follow Collinson from Cambridge Bay along the route laboriously completed by the surveyors of the mainland from James Cook to Dease and Simpson.

M'Clure claimed and—to have done with the matter—obtained the reward of £10,000 for discovering the North-West Passage through Prince of Wales Strait, though he sailed only half-way up it and, in attempting to get round to Parry's farthest, lost his ship and started sledging on the west side of the pack; while Collinson took his ship much nearer to Parry's course on the east side; and Franklin, by linking up with Dease and Simpson over the ice by way of Victoria Strait, had previously found another of the possible passages, as shown by Collinson's voyage to Cambridge Bay. But surely what was done by M'Clure, and by Collinson in his northerly cruise, was to see where ships could pass when there was no ice in the way, which was no more than had been done by Parry, who had taken his ship within sight of both their farthest, and would have sailed into the Beaufort Sea had not the pack forbidden it. It was Parry, in fact, who discovered the main road, the route by Prince of Wales Strait, like that by Peel Sound taken by Franklin and successfully accomplished by Amundsen, being only one of the many by-roads leading off along his course.

His famous voyage to Melville Island was due to the influence of Sir John Barrow. Barrow, to whom more than any other man this country owes its position in Arctic story, was born in a small thatched cottage at Dragley Beck, near Ulverston, in North Lancashire, in 1764, and, in a remarkable course of promotion by merit, became second secretary of the Admiralty for forty years under twelve or thirteen different naval administrations, Whig and Tory; being so unmistakably the right man in the right place that he was only dispensed with once—on a change of First Lords—and then was reinstated the next year. When he was seventeen he was given the opportunity of a voyage in a Greenland whaler, which he accepted, and that was his only Arctic experience; but even when with Macartney in China and South Africa, he kept up his interest in the north, and in 1817, when at the Admiralty, proposed to Lord Melville his plan for two voyages of discovery, one to the north and the other to the north-west, which opened the new era of Polar exploration.

The voyage to the north was that of Buchan and Franklin in the Dorothea and Trent; that to the north-west was undertaken by John Ross in the Isabella and William Edward Parry in the Alexander. Of this we need only say here that on their return from the north of Baffin Bay, Ross and Parry coasted down the west side and sailed into Lancaster Sound for a considerable distance until Ross—who seems to have had the mountain-finding eye and an unenviable gift for missing straits—declared that it ended in a range of mountains which he appropriately named Croker's; and, that there should be no mistake about them, he gave a very pretty picture of them as a full-page plate in his book. Parry, however, saw no mountains and took the liberty of saying so to Barrow when he reported himself at the Admiralty, the result being the despatch of Parry's expedition in the Hecla and Griper which left Yarmouth on the 12th of May, 1819, and, for the first time after leaving the coast of Norfolk, dropped anchor in the bay named after them in Melville Island, on the 5th of September.

Parry, before his voyage in the Alexander, had had Arctic experience while lieutenant of the Alexandria frigate engaged in protecting the Spitsbergen whale fisheries, and knew thoroughly what he was about. For instance, he worked his crews in three watches, and had both his vessels rigged as barques as the most convenient rig among ice, though the Griper, a strong, slow gunboat, was rather too small to be so treated, being only about half the tonnage of the Hecla, whose measurement was under four hundred. Had she been a little speedier more work might have been done; but what was done was magnificent.

Entering Lancaster Sound, Parry found a strait not blocked by mountains but thirty miles broad leading into a region up to then unknown, except—so it is said—to the Norsemen. On the 12th of August Prince Regent Inlet was discovered and named, it being George IV's birthday. Then North Somerset was sighted and the course laid across Barrow Strait to North Devon and its south-western peninsula known as Beechey Island; then Wellington Channel was descried, and then Cornwallis Island. Griffith Island was discovered on the 23rd of August, Bathurst Island on the 25th, Byam Martin Island on the 27th, where Sabine, the astronomer of the expedition, found they had passed north of the magnetic north pole. Then the south side of Melville Island was coasted along, Dealy Island being found on the 4th of September at noon, and, at a quarter past nine at night, just after passing Bounty Cape (named in honour of the event), the Hecla crossed the 110th meridian west, and became entitled to the Government grant of £5000 for doing so—which Parry shared between the ships.

Soon the ice became difficult and the ships had to anchor, but, the conditions improving, the westerly voyage was resumed. Cape Providence was passed and Cape Hay sighted, but the ships could get no further than about half-way between these capes, and they had to return to Winter Harbour, where, on the 26th of September, they were warped to their quarters through a channel cut in the ice. The Hecla, sending down all her upper masts except the main topmast, and the Griper, housing her fore and main topmasts, used the spars to support a roof which completely enclosed their upper decks and made them both snug for the winter, which did not seem so long owing to the efforts of the officers to keep every one amused and on the move. Parry, a host in himself, was well seconded by his lieutenant, Beechey, late of the Trent, James Clark Ross, one of his midshipmen, Captain Sabine, and Lieutenant Liddon, the commander of the Griper, who was almost disabled with rheumatism, and Lieutenant Hoppner, also of the Griper. A couple of books of plays on board proved a real treasure; owing to them the Royal Arctic Theatre was started, the pioneer of so many amateur theatrical ventures in the Polar seas, and the North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle came into existence, the first of ship newspapers. On Christmas Day there was a dinner of roast beef which had been on board since May, the condition of which, as Parry said, was an excellent testimony to the antiseptic properties of a cold atmosphere; and the food generally was good and abundant, and the management and supplies far better than on many subsequent expeditions. In the spring, game was found in fair quantity, nearly four thousand pounds of musk ox, deer, hares, geese, ducks, and ptarmigan being brought on board.

In May the vessels were afloat again, though ice-bound, and, in June, walking, not sledging, journeys were organised, the furthest points reached being Cape Fisher to the north and Cape Hoppner to the west. On the 1st of August the vessels moved out of the bay to the westward, and six days afterwards Beechey called attention to the land with the three capes already mentioned. "The land," says Parry, "which extends beyond the 117th degree of west longitude, and is the most western yet discovered in the Polar Sea to the north of the American continent, was honoured with the name of Banks Land out of respect to the late venerable and worthy President of the Royal Society."

On the 16th Cape Dundas was named, but progress was impossible. For a week Parry made every endeavour to pass, but the floes, forty to fifty feet thick, heaped up by the tides from the east and the west so as to form a wide-stretching landscape of hill and dale, barred the way right across Banks Strait; and no further west could be attained than 113° 46´ 43·5?, in latitude 74° 26´ 25?. Thence Parry returned, hoping to get through on another voyage, and bidding farewell to the North Georgian Islands, as he called them, or the Parry Islands, as we now know them, he came home by the way he went out, through Lancaster Sound. Needless to say, the very next season the whalers followed on Parry's track, and Lancaster Sound became the highway to a very profitable fishing-ground.

Among the Parry Islands in 1851 were several vessels in search of Franklin. Sir John Ross, aged seventy-four, was there in the schooner-yacht Felix on a private expedition chiefly memorable for the story of his having sent off a carrier pigeon from his winter quarters at Cornwallis Island, which reached his home—North-West Castle, Stranraer, Wigtownshire—three thousand miles away, in five days. Lady Franklin's vessel, the Prince Albert, was there, with Captain Forsyth and Parker Snow on board, an old fruit schooner, and therefore the speediest sailing-craft among the crowd. The Grinnell expedition of the two American brigs, Advance and Racer, under De Haven, was also there, to drift afterwards up Wellington Channel and down again back into Baffin Bay; as was a British Government expedition of the two whaling brigs, Lady Franklin and Sophia, under Captain William Penny, who was to discover the sea open north of Wellington Channel. In addition to these was the British squadron under Captain Horatio Austin in H.M.S. Resolute, with H.M.S. Assistance, Captain Erasmus Ommanney, and the old Cattle Conveyance Company's boats known as H.M.S. Intrepid, Lieutenant Cator, and H.M.S. Pioneer, Lieutenant Sherard Osborn, these two being screw steamers used as tenders, which proved of great value as tugs and ice-breakers.

On the 23rd of August Captain Ommanney found Franklin's winter quarters on Beechey Island, and four days afterwards Captain Penny came upon the gravestones marking where the three men, two of the Erebus and one of the Terror, had been buried in 1846, though nothing was discoverable of the route intended to be taken by the ships. The news was important, and the Prince Albert, acting as despatch vessel, was immediately sent home with it, to return next year with Kennedy and Bellot to make a discovery of her own. Soon Captain Austin's four ships departed, also to return in the following year, Sir Edward Belcher, in the Assistance, being then in command, Kellett being in the Resolute, M'Clintock in the Intrepid, and Sherard Osborn again in the Pioneer. Belcher's attempt ended in his abandoning his vessels in the ice; one of them, the Resolute, as though in mute protest, drifting from 74° 41´ for a thousand miles, to be picked up by Buddington off Cape Dyer in Baffin Bay, bought from him by the American Government and presented to Great Britain, refitted as she used to be, as a much-appreciated token of goodwill.

The great feature of these years was the wonderful sledge work; by it mainly the northern coasts of the islands discovered by Parry were surveyed and other islands added to the archipelago, including the westernmost, Prince Patrick, named after the Duke of Connaught, who was at first known as Prince Patrick instead of Prince Arthur. The sledges fitted out by Austin traversed 1500 miles of coast-line, 850 of which were new, the routes radiating between Osborn's 72° 18´ and Bradford's 76° 25´, M'Clintock going farthest, 760 miles, to 114° 20´ in 74° 38´. Those next year from Kellett at Dealy Island covered 8558 miles, radiating from Pim's 74° 6´ (to rescue M'Clure) to M'Clintock's 77° 23´, a run to 118° 20´ and back of 1401 miles, while Mecham reached 120° 30´ on a trip of 1163 miles; and Belcher from his winter quarters in Northumberland Sound, in 76° 52´, aided by Richards and Osborn, was almost as busy further north.

Thus practically the whole belt of land and sea westward between and including Lancaster Sound and Jones Sound as far as 120° was searched and mapped, the most northerly of the Parry Islands known up to then being Finlay Island, North Cornwall, and Graham Island. But in 1898 Captain Otto Sverdrup went up Smith Sound in his old ship the Fram on an endeavour to sail round the north coast of Greenland from west to east. He had to winter in Rice Strait, near Pim Island, and finding, to put it sportingly, that he was to a certain extent trespassing on Peary's preserves, decided to devote his attention to the unknown region approachable through Jones Sound. In 1899, therefore, he took the Fram up the sound, and, failing to pass through Cardigan Strait, spent the three following years among the fiords at the north-western end.

From here he sent his sledge and ski parties far and wide, west and south and north over an approximate area of a hundred thousand square miles. Long stretches of coast-fine were explored and named, in a few cases unnecessarily, though, strange to say, the unnecessary names were all royal ones, King Oscar Land being the west of Ellesmere Land, Crown Prince Gustav Sea and Prince Gustav Adolf Sea being the Polar Ocean, and King Christian Land being simply Finlay Island. Separated from Finlay Island by Danish Sound and from North Cornwall by Hendriksen Sound, he found two large islands, which—just as John Ross named Boothia after his principal patron, the distiller—Sverdrup named Ellef Ringnes and Amund Ringnes after two of his supporters, the brewers; his other discovery, Axel Heiberg Land—which seems to be Peary's Jesup Land sighted in 1898—to the west and north-west of these, being so called after his other munificent patron.

His farthest south was Beechey Island, his farthest west Cape Isachsen in Ellef Ringnes Land, his farthest north Lands Lokk in Grant Land, in latitude 81° 40´ and longitude about 92°, within sixty miles of Aldrich's farthest along the north-eastern coast, the gap afterwards traversed by Peary. Within these limits the amount of coast detail filled in was remarkable. Owing to the favourable condition of the ice and the excellent management in all ways, the sledges frequently did their fifteen miles and more a day. Though the expedition lost its doctor during the first winter, there was little trouble as regards health; and game was in plenty right up to the far north where Hare Fiord tells of hares in hundreds.

With hunting episodes the story is pleasantly varied, one in particular being so graphically described by Sverdrup that as a sample we may be forgiven a rather long quotation. "The bear," says Sverdrup, "was determined to go up a difficult stony valley a little north of our tent, and, try as the dogs would to prevent it, up the valley it went. Schei and I ran full speed northward along the ice-foot, and soon heard that the dogs had brought it to bay. We made a short cut across some hills of grit, and, when we reached the top of one of them, saw the bear on the other side of the valley, sitting on a hill-top, which fell almost sheer away. But on the north side it was accessible, and here it was probably that the bear had climbed it. There sat the king of the icefields enthroned on a kind of pedestal, and the whole staff of yelping dogs standing at a respectful distance. I tried a couple of shots, but overrated the distance, and the bullets went over the bear's head. I then told Schei to go and shoot it whilst I looked on at the further development of the drama. The bear's position was a first-rate one. It had taken its stand on a little plateau high up on a mountain crag; this little ledge was reached by a bridge not more than a good yard in width, and there stood the bear, like Sven Dufva, ready with his sledgehammer to fell the first being that should venture across. His majesty was not visible to Schei until he came within a few feet of him, but then it was not long before a shot was heard. The bear sank together, and a few seconds afterwards all the dogs had thrown themselves on to it. They tugged and pulled at the bear's coat, tearing tufts of hair out of it, and before we knew what they were doing, had dragged the body to the edge of the plateau, where it shot out over the precipice. The dogs stood amazed, gazing down into the depths where the bear was falling swiftly through the air—but not alone, for on it as large as life were two dogs which had clung so fast to its hair, that they now stood planted head to head, and bit themselves still faster to it in order to keep their balance. I was breathless as I watched this unexpected journey through the air. The next moment the bear in its perpendicular fall would reach the projecting point of rock, and my poor dogs!—it was a cruel revenge the bear was taking on them. I should now have only three dogs left in my team. The bear's body dashed violently against the rock, turned a somersault out from the mountain wall and fell still further, until, after falling a height of altogether at least a hundred feet, it reached the slopes by the river, and was shot by the impetus right across the river-ice and a good way up the other side. And the dogs? When the bear dashed against the mountain they sprang up like rubber balls, described a large curve, and with stiffened legs continued the journey on their own account, falling with a loud thud on to the hardly packed snow at the bottom of the valley. But they were on their legs again in a moment, and set off as fast as they could go across the river after the bear. Not many minutes afterwards the whole pack came running up, but when they were driven away from the carcase, they lay down again to await their turn. I hurried back to camp to fetch the dog harness; we put a lanyard through the nose of the mighty fallen, and set off. The dogs knew well enough that this meant food for them, and the nearer we came to camp the harder they pulled. In fact, I had to sit on the carcase to keep them back, and, jolting backwards and forwards, on this new kind of conveyance I made my entrance into camp, in the light spring night." But bears were few, compared with the musk oxen, which, with the reindeer and hares, and with the wolves and foxes, and stoats and lemmings, seals and walruses, narwhals and white whales, represented the Arctic mammalia.

The most singular experience met with was perhaps the sledge journey through the ice tunnel on the return across the Simmons Peninsula in 1900. Descending a valley which became narrower and narrower Sverdrup and Fosheim began to think it was going to end in a canyon, but without any warning they were stopped by a high wall of ice, perpendicular and inaccessible to any one without wings. Looking about, Sverdrup found a large hole which proved to be the beginning of a tunnel through the glacier. Through this lofty vault they sped. From the roof hung threateningly above their heads gigantic blocks of ice, seamed and cleft and glittering sinisterly; and all around were icicles like steel-bright spears and lances piercing downwards on them. Along the walls were caves after caves, with pillars in rows like giants in rank; and over all shone a ghostly whitish light which became bluish as they went. "I dared not speak," says Sverdrup. "It seemed to me that in doing so I should be committing a deed of desecration; I felt like one who has impiously broken into something sacred which Nature had wished to keep closed to every mortal eye. I felt mean and contemptible as I drove through all this purity. The sledges jolted from block to block, awakening thunderous echoes in their passage: and it seemed as if all the spirits of the ice had been aroused and called to arms against the intruders on their church-like peace."