The Arctic Expedition which returned to our shores in the autumn of 1876 may be regarded as having finally decided the question whether the North Pole of the earth is accessible by the route through Smith’s Sound—a route which may conveniently and properly be called the American route. Attacks may hereafter be made on the Polar fastness from other directions; but it is exceedingly unlikely that this country, at any rate, will again attempt to reach the Pole along the line of attack followed by Captain Nares’s expedition. I may be forgiven, perhaps, for regarding Arctic voyages made by the seamen of other nations as less likely to be successful than those made by my own countrymen. It is not mere national prejudice which suggests this opinion. It is the simple fact that hitherto the most successful approaches towards both the Northern and the Southern Poles have been made by British sailors. Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since Sir E. Parry made the nearest approach to the North Pole recorded up to that time; and although, in the interval between Parry’s expedition and Nares’s, no expedition had been sent out from our shores with the object of advancing towards the Pole, while America, Sweden, Russia, and Germany sent out several, Parry’s attempt still remained unsurpassed and unequalled. At length it has been surpassed, but it has been by his own countrymen. In like manner, no nation has yet succeeded in approaching the Antarctic Pole so nearly, within many miles, as did Captain Sir J.C. Ross in 1844. Considering these circumstances, and remembering the success which rewarded the efforts of Great Britain in the search for the North-West Passage, it cannot be regarded as national prejudice to assert that events indicate the seamen of this country as exceptionally fitted to contend successfully against the difficulties and the dangers of Arctic exploration. Should England, then, give up the attempt to reach the North Pole by way of Smith’s Sound and its northerly prolongation, it may fairly be considered unlikely that the Pole will ever be reached in that direction.

It may be well to examine the relative probable chances of success along other routes which have either not been so thoroughly tried, or have been tried under less favourable conditions.

Passing over the unfortunate expedition under Hugh Willoughby in 1553, the first attempt to penetrate within the Polar domain was made by Henry Hudson in 1607. The route selected was one which many regard (and I believe correctly) as the one on which there is the best chance of success; namely, the route across the sea lying to the west of Spitzbergen. That Hudson, in the clumsy galleons of Elizabeth’s time, should have penetrated to within eight degrees and a half of the Pole, or to a distance only exceeding Nares’s nearest approach by about 130 miles, proves conclusively, we think, that with modern ships, and especially with the aid of steam, this route might be followed with much better prospect of success than that which was adopted for Nares’s expedition. If the reader will examine a map of the Arctic regions he will find that the western shores of Spitzbergen and the north-eastern shores of Greenland, as far as they have been yet explored, are separated by about 33 degrees of longitude, equivalent on the 80th parallel of latitude to about 335 miles. Across the whole breadth of this sea Arctic voyagers have attempted to sail northwards beyond the 80th parallel, but no one has yet succeeded in the attempt except on the eastern side of that sea. It was here that Hudson—fortunately for him—directed his attack; and he passed a hundred miles to the north of the 80th parallel, being impeded and finally stopped by the packed ice around the north-western shores of Spitzbergen.

Let us consider the fortunes of other attempts which have been made to approach the Pole in this direction.

In 1827 Captain (afterwards Sir Edward) Parry, who had already four times passed beyond the Arctic Circle—viz., in 1818, 1819, 1821–23, and 1824–25—made an attempt to reach the North Pole by way of Spitzbergen. His plan was to follow Hudson’s route until stopped by ice; then to leave his ship, and cross the ice-field with sledges drawn by Esquimaux dogs, and, taking boats along with the party, to cross whatever open water they might find. In this way he succeeded in reaching latitude 82° 45´ north, the highest ever attained until Nares’s expedition succeeded in crossing the 83rd parallel. Parry found that the whole of the ice-field over which his party were laboriously travelling northwards was being carried bodily southwards, and that at length the distance they were able to travel in a day was equalled by the southerly daily drift of the ice-field, so that they made no real progress. He gave up further contest, and returned to his ship the Hecla.

It is important to inquire whether the southerly drift which stopped Parry was due to northerly winds or to a southerly current; and if to the latter cause, whether this current probably affects the whole extent of the sea in which Parry’s ice-field was drifting. We know that his party were exposed, during the greater part of their advance from Spitzbergen, to northerly winds. Now the real velocity of these winds must have been greater than their apparent velocity, because the ice-field was moving southwards. Had this not been the case, or had the ice-field been suddenly stopped, the wind would have seemed stronger; precisely as it seems stronger to passengers on board a sailing vessel when, after being before the wind for a time, she is brought across the wind. The ice-field was clearly travelling before the wind, but not nearly so fast as the wind; and therefore there is good reason for believing that the motion of the ice-field was due to the wind alone. If we suppose this to have been really the case, then, as there is no reason for believing that northerly winds prevail uniformly in the Arctic regions, we must regard Parry’s defeat as due to mischance. Another explorer might have southerly instead of northerly winds, and so might be assisted instead of impeded in his advance towards the Pole. Had this been Parry’s fortune, or even if the winds had proved neutral, he would have approached nearer to the Pole than Nares. For Parry reckoned that he had lost more than a hundred miles by the southerly drift of the ice-field, by which amount at least he would have advanced further north. But that was not all; for there can be little doubt that he would have continued his efforts longer but for the SisyphÆan nature of the struggle. It is true he was nearer home when he turned back than he would have been but for the drift, and one of his reasons for turning back was the consideration of the distance which his men had to travel in returning. But he was chiefly influenced (so far as the return journey was concerned) by the danger caused by the movable nature of the ice-field, which might at any time begin to travel northwards, or eastwards, or westwards.

If we suppose that not the wind but Arctic currents carried the ice-field southwards, we must yet admit the probability—nay, almost the certainty—that such currents are only local, and occupy but a part of the breadth of the North Atlantic seas in those high latitudes. The general drift of the North Atlantic surface-water is unquestionably not towards the south but towards the north; and whatever part we suppose the Arctic ice to perform in regulating the system of oceanic circulation—whether, with Carpenter, we consider the descent of the cooled water as the great moving cause of the entire system of circulation, or assign to that motion a less important office (which seems to me the juster opinion)—we must in any case regard the Arctic seas as a region of surface indraught. The current flowing from those seas, which caused (on the hypothesis we are for the moment adopting) the southwardly motion of Parry’s ice-field, must therefore be regarded as in all probability an exceptional phenomenon of those seas. By making the advance from a more eastwardly or more westwardly part of Spitzbergen, a northerly current would probably be met with; or rather, the motion of the ice-field would indicate the presence of such a current, for I question very much whether open water would anywhere be found north of the 83rd parallel. In that case, a party might advance in one longitude and return in another, selecting for their return the longitude in which (always according to our present hypothesis that currents caused the drift) Parry found that a southerly current underlay his route across the ice. On the whole, however, it appears to me more probable that winds, not currents, caused the southerly drift of Parry’s ice-field.

In 1868, a German expedition, under Captain Koldewey, made the first visit to the seas west of Spitzbergen in a steamship, the small but powerful screw steamer Germania (126 tons), advancing northwards a little beyond the 81st parallel. But this voyage can scarcely be regarded as an attempt to approach the Pole on that course; for Koldewey’s instructions were, “to explore the eastern coast of Greenland northwards; and, if he found success in that direction impossible, to make for the mysterious Island of Gilles on the east of Spitzbergen.”

Scoresby in 1806 had made thus far the most northerly voyage in a ship on Hudson’s route, but in 1868 a Swedish expedition attained higher latitudes than had ever or have ever been reached by a ship in that direction. The steamship Sofia, strongly built of Swedish iron, and originally intended for winter voyages in the Baltic, was selected for the voyage. Owing to a number of unfortunate delays, it was not until September, 1868, that the Sofia reached the most northerly part of her journey, attaining a point nearly fifteen miles further north than Hudson had reached. To the north broken ice was still found, but it was so closely packed that not even a boat could pass through. Two months earlier in the season the voyagers might have waited for a change of wind and the breaking up of the ice; but in the middle of September this would have been very dangerous. The temperature was already sixteen degrees below the freezing-point, and there was every prospect that in a few weeks, or even days, the seas over which they had reached their present position would be icebound. They turned back from that advanced position; but, with courage worthy of the old Vikings, they made another attack a fortnight later. They were foiled again, as was to be expected, for by this time the sun was already on the wintry side of the equator. They had, indeed, a narrow escape from destruction. “An ice-block with which they came into collision opened a large leak in the ship’s side, and when, after great exertions, they reached the land, the water already stood two feet over the cabin floor.”21

On the western side of the North Atlantic Channel—so to term the part lying between Greenland and Spitzbergen—the nearest approach towards the Pole was made by the Dutch in 1670, nearly all the more recent attempts to reach high northern latitudes in this direction having hitherto ended in failure more or less complete.

We have already seen that Captain Koldewey was charged to explore the eastern coast of Greenland in the Germania in 1868. In 1869 the Germania was again despatched under his command from Bremerhaven, in company with the Hansa, a sailing vessel. Lieutenant Payer and other Austrian savants accompanied Captain Koldewey. The attack was again made along the eastern shores of Greenland. As far as the 74th degree the two vessels kept company; but at this stage it happened unfortunately that a signal from the Germania was misinterpreted, and the Hansa left her. Soon after, the Hansa was crushed by masses of drifting ice, and her crew and passengers took refuge on an immense ice-floe seven miles in circumference. Here they built a hut, which was in its turn crushed. Winds and currents carried their icy home about, and at length broke it up. Fortunately they had saved their boats, and were able to reach Friedrichsthal, a missionary station in the south of Greenland, whence they were conveyed to Copenhagen in September, 1870. Returning to the Germania, we find that she had a less unfortunate experience. She entered the labyrinth of sinuous fjords, separated by lofty promontories, and girt round by gigantic glaciers, which characterize the eastern coast of Greenland to the north of Scoresby Sound. In August the channels by which she had entered were closed, and the Germania was imprisoned. So soon as the ice would bear them, Koldewey and his companions made sledging excursions to various points around their ship. But in November the darkness of the polar winter settled down upon them, and these excursions ceased. The polar winter of 1869–70 was “characterized by a series of violent northerly tempests, one of which continued more than 100 hours, with a velocity (measured by the anemometer) of no less than sixty miles an hour”—a velocity often surpassed, indeed, but which must have caused intense suffering to all who left the shelter of the ship; for it is to be remembered that the air which thus swept along at the rate of a mile a minute was the bitter air of the Arctic regions. The thermometer did not, however, descend lower than 26° below zero, or 58° below the freezing-point—a cold often surpassed in parts of the United States. I have myself experienced a cold of more than 30° below zero, at Niagara. “With proper precautions as regards shelter and clothing,” proceeds the narrative, “even extreme cold need not cause great suffering to those who winter in such regions. One of the worst things to be endured is the physical and moral weariness of being cut off from external observations during the long night of some ninety days, relieved only by the strange Northern Lights. The ice accumulates all round with pressure, and assumes peculiar and fantastic forms, emitting ever and anon ominous noises. Fortunately, the Germania lay well sheltered in a harbour opening southwards, and, being protected by a rampart of hills on the north, was able to resist the shock of the elements. The sun appearing once more about the beginning of February, the scientific work of exploration began.... The pioneers of the Germania advanced as far as the 77th degree of latitude, in longitude 18° 50´ west from Greenwich. There was no sign of an open sea towards the Pole. Had it not been for want of provisions, the party could have prolonged their sledge journey indefinitely. The bank of ice, without remarkable protuberances, extends to about two leagues from the shore, which from this extreme point seems to trend towards the north-west, where the view was bounded by lofty mountains.” As the expedition was only equipped for one winter, it returned to Europe in September, 1870, without having crossed the 78th parallel of north latitude.

Captain Koldewey was convinced, by the results of his exploration, that there is no continuous channel northwards along the eastern coast of Greenland. It does not seem to me that his expedition proved this beyond all possibility of question. Still, it seems clear that the eastern side of the North Atlantic is less suited than the western for the attempt to reach the North Pole. The prevailing ocean-currents are southerly on that side, just as they are northerly on the western side. The cold also is greater, the lines of equal temperature lying almost exactly in the direction of the channel itself—that is, nearly north and south—and the cold increasing athwart that direction, towards the west. The nearer to Greenland the greater is the cold.22 The next route to be considered in order of time would be the American route; but I prefer to leave this to the last, as the latest results relate to that route. I take next, therefore, a route which some regard as the most promising of all—that, namely, which passes between Spitzbergen and the Scandinavian peninsula.

It will be remembered that Lieutenant Payer, of the Austrian navy, had accompanied Captain Koldewey’s first expedition. When driven back from the attempt to advance along the eastern shores of Greenland, that commander crossed over to Spitzbergen, and tried to find the Land of Gilles. He also accompanied Koldewey’s later expedition, and shared his belief that there is no continuous channel northwards on the western side of the North Atlantic channel. Believing still, however, with Dr. Petermann, the geographer, that there is an open Polar sea beyond the ice-barrier, Payer set out in 1871, in company with Weyprecht, towards the Land of Gilles. They did not find this mysterious land, but succeeded in passing 150 miles further north, after rounding the south-eastern shores of Spitzbergen, than any Arctic voyagers who had before penetrated into the region lying between Spitzbergen and Novaia Zemlia. Here they found, beyond the 76th parallel, and between 42° and 60° east longitude, an open sea, and a temperature of between 5° and 7° above the freezing-point. Unfortunately, they had not enough provisions with them to be able safely to travel further north, and were thus compelled to return. The season seems to have been an unusually open one; and it is much to be regretted that the expedition was not better supplied with provisions—a defect which appears to be not uncommon with German expeditions.

Soon after their return, Payer and Weyprecht began to prepare for a new expedition; and this time their preparations were thorough, and adapted for a long stay in Arctic regions. “The chief aim of this expedition,” says the Revue des Deux Mondes, in an interesting account of recent Polar researches, “was to investigate the unknown regions of the Polar seas to the north of Siberia, and to try to reach Behring’s Straits by this route.” It was only if after two winters and three summers they failed to double the extreme promontory of Asia, that they were to direct their course towards the Pole. The voyagers, numbering twenty-four persons, left the Norwegian port of TromsoË, in the steamer Tegethoff, on July 14, 1872. Count Wilczek followed shortly after in a yacht, which was to convey coals and provisions to an eastern point of the Arctic Ocean, for the benefit of the Tegethoff. At a point between Novaia Zemlia and the mouth of the Petschora, the yacht lost sight of the steamer, and nothing was heard of the latter for twenty-five months. General anxiety was felt for the fate of the expedition, and various efforts were made by Austria, England, and Russia to obtain news of it. In September, 1874, the voyagers suddenly turned up at another port, and soon after entered Vienna amid great enthusiasm. Their story was a strange one.

It appears that when the Tegethoff was lost sight of (August 21, 1872), she had been surrounded by vast masses of ice, which crushed her hull. For nearly half a year the deadly embrace of the ice continued; and when at length pressure ceased, the ship remained fixed in the ice, several miles from open water. During the whole summer the voyagers tried to release their ship, but in vain. They had not, however, remained motionless all this time. The yacht had lost sight of them at a spot between Novaia Zemlia and Malaia Zemlia (in North Russia) in about 71° north latitude, and they were imprisoned not far north of this spot. But the ice-field was driven hither and thither by the winds, until they found themselves, on the last day of August, 1873, only 6´ or about seven miles south of the 80th parallel of latitude. Only fourteen miles from them, on the north, they saw “a mass of mountainous land, with numerous glaciers.” They could not reach it until the end of October, however, and then they had to house themselves in preparation for the long winter night. This land they called Francis Joseph Land. It lies north of Novaia Zemlia, and on the Polar side of the 80th parallel of latitude. The winter was stormy and bitterly cold, the thermometer descending on one occasion to 72° below zero—very nearly as low as during the greatest cold experienced by Nares’s party. In February, 1874, “the sun having reappeared, Lieutenant Payer began to prepare sledge excursions to ascertain the configuration of the land.... In the second excursion the voyagers entered Austria Sound, which bounds Francis Joseph Island on the east and north, and found themselves, after emerging from it, in the midst of a large basin, surrounded by several large islands. The extreme northern point reached by the expedition was a cape on one of these islands, which they named Prince Rodolph’s Land, calling the point Cape Fligely. It lies a little beyond the 81st parallel. They saw land further north beyond the 83rd degree of latitude, and named it Petermann’s Land. The archipelago thus discovered is comparable in extent to that of which Spitzbergen is the chief island.” The voyagers were compelled now to return, as the firm ice did not extend further north. They had a long, difficult, and dangerous journey southwards—sometimes on open water, in small boats, sometimes on ice, with sledges—impeded part of the time by contrary winds, and with starvation staring them in the face during the last fortnight of their journey. Fortunately, they reached Novaia Zemlia before their provisions quite failed them, and were thence conveyed to WardhoË by a Russian trading ship.

We have now only to consider the attempts which have been made to approach the North Pole by the American route. For, though Collinson in 1850 reached high latitudes to the north of Behring’s Straits, while Wrangel and other Russian voyagers have attempted to travel northwards across the ice which bounds the northern shores of Siberia, it can hardly be said that either route has been followed with the definite purpose of reaching the North Pole. I shall presently, however, have occasion to consider the probable value of the Behring’s Straits route, which about twelve years ago was advocated by the Frenchman Lambert.

Dr. Kane’s expedition in 1853–55 was one of those sent out in search of Sir John Franklin. It was fitted out at the expense of the United States Government, and the route selected was that along Smith’s Sound, the northerly prolongation of Baffin’s Bay. Kane wintered in 1853 and 1854 in Van Reusselaer’s Inlet, on the western coast of Greenland, in latitude 78° 43´ north. Leaving his ship, the Advance, he made a boat-journey to Upernavik, 6° further south. He next traced Kennedy Channel, the northerly prolongation of Smith’s Sound, reaching latitude 81° 22´ north. He named heights visible yet further to the north, Parry Mountains; and at the time—that is, twenty-two years ago—the land so named was the highest northerly land yet seen. Hayes, who had accompanied Kane in this voyage, succeeded in reaching a still higher latitude in sledges drawn by Esquimaux dogs. Both Kane and Hayes agreed in announcing that where the shores of Greenland trend off eastwards from Kennedy Channel, there is an open sea, “rolling,” as Captain Maury magniloquently says, “with the swell of a boundless ocean.” It was in particular noticed that the tides ebbed and flowed in this sea. On this circumstance Captain Maury based his conclusion that there is an open sea to the north of Greenland. After showing that the tidal wave could not well have travelled along the narrow and icebound straits between Baffin’s Bay and the region reached by Kane and Hayes, Maury says: “Those tides must have been born in that cold sea, having their cradle about the North Pole.” The context shows, however, that he really intended to signify that the waves were formed in seas around the North Pole, and thence reached the place where they were seen; so that, as birth usually precedes cradling, Maury would more correctly have said that these tides are cradled in that cold sea, having their birth about the North Pole.

The observations of Kane and Hayes afford no reason, however, for supposing that there is open water around the North Pole. They have been rendered somewhat doubtful, be it remarked in passing, by the results of Captain Nares’s expedition; and it has been proved beyond all question that there is not an open sea directly communicating with the place where Kane and Hayes observed tidal changes. But, apart from direct evidence of this kind, two serious errors affect Maury’s reasoning, as I pointed out eleven years since. In the first place, a tidal wave would be propagated quite freely along an ice-covered sea, no matter how thick the ice might be, so long as the sea was not absolutely icebound. Even if the latter condition could exist for a time, the tidal wave would burst the icy fetters that bound the sea, unless the sea were frozen to the very bottom; which, of course, can never happen with any sea properly so called. It must be remembered that, even in the coldest winter of the coldest Polar regions, ice of only a moderate thickness can form in open sea in a single day; but the tidal wave does not allow ice to form for a single hour in such sort as to bind the great ice-fields and the shore-ice into one mighty mass. At low tide, for a very short time, ice may form in the spaces between the shore-ice and the floating ice, and again between the various masses of floating ice, small or large (up to many square miles in extent); but as the tidal wave returns it breaks through these bonds as easily as the Jewish Hercules burst the withes with which the Philistines had bound his mighty limbs. It is probable that if solid ice as thick as the thickest which Nares’s party found floating in the PalÆocrystic Sea—ice 200 feet thick—reached from shore to shore of the North Atlantic channel, the tidal wave would burst the barrier as easily as a rivulet rising but a few inches bursts the thin coating which has formed over it on the first cold night of autumn. But no such massive barriers have to be broken through, for the tidal wave never gives the ice an hour’s rest Maury reasons that “the tidal wave from the Atlantic can no more pass under the icy barrier to be propagated in the seas beyond, than the vibrations of a musical string can pass with its notes a fret on which the musician has placed his finger.” But the circumstances are totally different. The ice shares the motion of the tidal wave, which has not to pass under the ice, but to lift it. This, of course, it does quite as readily as though there were no ice, but only the same weight of water. The mere weight of the ice counts simply for nothing. The tidal wave would rise as easily in the British Channel if a million Great Easterns were floating there as if there was not even a cock-boat; and the weight of ice, no matter how thick or extensive, would be similarly ineffective to restrain the great wave which the sun and moon send coursing twice a day athwart our oceans. Maury’s other mistake was even more important so far as this question of an open sea is concerned. “No one,” as I wrote in 1867, “who is familiar with the astronomical doctrine of the tides, can believe for a moment that tides could be generated in a land-locked ocean, so limited in extent as the North Polar sea (assuming its existence) must necessarily be.” To raise a tidal wave the sun and moon require not merely an ocean of wide extent to act upon, but an ocean so placed that there is a great diversity in their pull on various parts of it; for it is the difference between the pull exerted on various parts, and not the pull itself, which creates the tidal wave. Now the Polar sea has not the required extent, and is not in the proper position, for this diversity of pull to exist in sufficient degree to produce a tidal wave which could be recognized. It is certain, in fact, that, whether there is open water or not near the Pole, the tides observed by Kane and Hayes must have come from the Atlantic, and most probably by the North Atlantic channel.

Captain Hall’s expedition in the Polaris (really under the command of Buddington), in 1871–72, will be probably in the recollection of most of my readers. Leaving Newfoundland on June 29, 1871, it sailed up Smith’s Sound, and by the end of August had reached the 80th parallel. Thence it proceeded up Kennedy Channel, and penetrated into Robeson Channel, the northerly prolongation of Kennedy Channel, and only 13 miles wide. Captain Hall followed this passage as far as 82° 16´ north latitude, reaching his extreme northerly point on September 3. From it he saw “a vast expanse of open sea, which he called Lincoln Sea, and beyond that another ocean or gulf; while on the west there appeared, as far as the eye could reach, the contours of coast. This region he called Grant Land.” So far as appears, there was no reason at that time why the expedition should not have gone still further north, the season apparently having been exceptionally open. But the naval commander of the expedition, Captain Buddington, does not seem to have had his heart in the work, and, to the disappointment of Hall, the Polaris returned to winter in Robeson Channel, a little beyond the 81st degree. In the same month, September, 1871, Captain Hall died, under circumstances which suggested to many of the crew and officers the suspicion that he had been poisoned.23 In the spring of 1870 the Polaris resumed her course homewards. They were greatly impeded by the ice. A party which got separated from those on board were unfortunately unable to regain the ship, and remained on an ice-field for 240 days, suffering fearfully. The ice-field, like that on which the crew of the Hansa had to take up their abode, drifted southwards, and was gradually diminishing, when fortunately a passing steamer observed the prisoners (April 30, 1872) and rescued them. The Polaris herself was so injured by the ice that her crew had to leave her, wintering on Lyttelton Island. They left this spot in the early summer of 1872, in two boats, and were eventually picked up by a Scotch whaler.

Captain Nares’s expedition followed Hall’s route. I do not propose to enter here into any of the details of the voyage, with which my readers are no doubt familiar. The general history of the expedition must be sketched, however, in order to bring it duly into its place here. The Alert and Discovery sailed under Captains Nares and Stephenson, in May, 1875. Their struggle with the ice did not fairly commence until they were nearing the 79th parallel, where Baffin’s Bay merges into Smith’s Sound. Thence, through Smith’s Sound, Kennedy Channel, and Robeson Channel, they had a constant and sometimes almost desperate struggle with the ice, until they had reached the north end of Robeson Channel. Here the Discovery took up her winter quarters, in north latitude 81° 44´, a few miles north of Captain Hall’s wintering-place, but on the opposite (or westerly) side of Robeson Channel. The Alert still struggled northwards, rounding the north-east point of Grant Land, and there finding, not, as was expected, a continuous coast-line on the west, but a vast icebound sea. No harbour could be found, and the ship was secured on the inside of a barrier of grounded ice, in latitude 82° 31´, in the most northerly wintering-place ever yet occupied by man. The ice met with on this sea is described as “of most unusual age and thickness, resembling in a marked degree, both in appearance and formation, low floating icebergs rather than ordinary salt-water ice. Whereas ordinary ice is from 2 feet to 10 feet in thickness, that in this Polar sea has gradually increased in age and thickness until it measures from 80 feet to 120 feet, floating with its surface at the lower part 15 feet above the water-line. In some places the ice reaches a thickness of from 150 to 200 feet, and the general impression among the officers of the expedition seems to have been that the ice of this PalÆocrystic Sea is the accumulation of many years, if not of centuries; “that the sea is never free of it and never open; and that progress to the Pole through it or over it is impossible with our present resources.”

The winter which followed was the bitterest ever known by man. For 142 days the sun was not seen; the mercury was frozen during nearly nine weeks. On one occasion the thermometer showed 104° below the freezing-point, and during one terrible fortnight the mean temperature was 91° below freezing!

As soon as the sun reappeared sledge-exploration began, each ship being left with only half-a-dozen men and officers on board. Expeditions were sent east and west, one to explore the northern coast of Greenland, the other to explore the coast of Grant Land. Captain Stephenson crossed over from the Discovery’s wintering-place to Polaris Bay, and there placed over Hall’s grave a tablet, prepared in England, bearing the following inscription: “Sacred to the memory of Captain C.F. Hall, of U.S. Polaris, who sacrificed his life in the advancement of science, on November 8, 1871. This tablet has been erected by the British Polar Expedition of 1875, who, following in his footsteps, have profited by his experience”—a graceful acknowledgment (which might, however, have been better expressed). The party which travelled westwards traced the shores of Grant Land as far as west longitude 86° 30´, the most northerly cape being in latitude 83° 7´, and longitude 70° 30´ west. This cape they named Cape Columbia.

The coast of Greenland was explored as far east as longitude 50° 40´ (west), land being seen as far as 82° 54´ north, longitude 48° 33´ west. Lastly, a party under Commander Markham and Lieutenant Parr pushed northwards. They were absent ten weeks, but had not travelled so far north in the time as was expected, having encountered great difficulties. On May 12, 1876, they reached their most northerly point, planting the British flag in latitude 83° 20´ 26´´ north. “Owing to the extraordinary nature of the pressed-up ice, a roadway had to be formed by pickaxes for nearly half the distance travelled, before any advance could be safely made, even with light loads; this rendered it always necessary to drag the sledge-loads forward by instalments, and therefore to journey over the same road several times. The advance was consequently very slow, and only averaged about a mile and a quarter daily—much the same rate as was attained by Sir Edward Parry during the summer of 1827. The greatest journey made in any one day amounted only to two miles and three quarters. Although the distance made good was only 73 miles from the ship, 276 miles were travelled over to accomplish it.” It is justly remarked, in the narrative from which I have made this extract, that no body of men could have surpassed in praiseworthy perseverance this gallant party, whose arduous struggle over the roughest and most monotonous road imaginable, may fairly be regarded as surpassing all former exploits of the kind. (The narrator says that it has “eclipsed” all former ones, which can scarcely be intended to be taken au pied de la lettre.) The expedition reached the highest latitude ever yet attained under any conditions, carried a ship to higher latitudes than any ship had before reached, and wintered in higher latitudes than had ever before been dwelt in during the darkness of a Polar winter. They explored the most northerly coast-line yet traversed, and this both on the east and west of their route northwards. They have ascertained the limits of human habitation upon this earth, and have even passed beyond the regions which animals occupy, though nearly to the most northerly limit of the voyage they found signs of the occasional visits of warm-blooded animals. Last, but not least, they have demonstrated, as it appears to me (though possibly Americans will adopt a different opinion), that by whatever route the Pole is to be reached, it is not by that which I have here called the American route, at least with the present means of transit over icebound seas. The country may well be satisfied with such results (apart altogether from the scientific observations, which are the best fruits of the expedition), even though the Pole has not yet been reached.

Must we conclude, however, that the North Pole is really inaccessible? It appears to me that the annals of Arctic research justify no such conclusion. The attempt which has just been made, although supposed at the outset to have been directed along the most promising of all the routes heretofore tried, turned out to be one of the most difficult and dangerous. Had there been land extending northwards (as Sherard Osborn and others opined), on the western side of the sea into which Robeson Channel opens, a successful advance might have been made along its shore by sledging. M’Clintock, in 1853, travelled 1220 miles in 105 days; Richards 1012 miles in 102 days; Mecham 1203 miles; Richards and Osborn 1093 miles; Hamilton 1150 miles with a dog-sledge and one man. In 1854 Mecham travelled 1157 miles in only 70 days; Young travelled 1150 miles and M’Clintock 1330 miles. But these journeys were made either over land or over unmoving ice close to a shore-line. Over an icebound sea journeys of the kind are quite impracticable. But the conditions, while not more favourable in respect of the existence of land, were in other respects altogether less favourable along the American route than along any of the others I have considered in this brief sketch of the attempts hitherto made to reach the Pole.

The recent expedition wintered as near as possible to the region of maximum winter cold in the western hemisphere, and pushed their journey northwards athwart the region of maximum summer cold. Along the course pursued by Parry’s route the cold is far less intense, in corresponding latitudes, than along the American route; and cold is the real enemy which bars the way towards the Pole. All the difficulties and dangers of the journey either have their origin (as directly as the ice itself) in the bitter Arctic cold, or are rendered effective and intensified by the cold. The course to be pursued, therefore, is that indicated by the temperature. Where the July isotherms, or lines of equal summer heat, run northwards, a weak place is indicated in the Arctic barrier; where they trend southwards, that barrier is strongest. Now there are two longitudes in which the July Arctic isotherms run far northward of their average latitude. One passes through the Parry Islands, and indicates the sea north-east of Behring’s Straits as a suitable region for attack; the other passes through Spitzbergen, and indicates the course along which Sir E. Parry’s attack was made. The latter is slightly the more promising line of the two, so far as temperature is concerned, the isotherm of 36° Fahrenheit (in July) running here as far north as the 77th parallel, whereas its highest northerly range in the longitude of the Parry Islands is but about 76°. The difference, however, is neither great nor altogether certain; and the fact that Parry found the ice drifting southwards, suggests the possibility that that may be the usual course of oceanic currents in that region. North of the Parry Islands the drift may be northwardly, like that which Payer and Weyprecht experienced to the north of Novaia Zemlia.

There is one great attraction for men of science in the route by the Parry Islands. The magnetic pole has almost certainly travelled into that region. Sir J. Ross found it, indeed, to be near Boothia Gulf, far to the east of the Parry Islands, in 1837. But the variations of the needle all over the world since then, indicate unmistakably that the magnetic poles have been travelling round towards the west, and at such a rate that the northern magnetic pole has probably nearly reached by this time the longitude of Behring’s Straits. The determination of the exact present position of the Pole would be a much more important achievement, so far as science is concerned, than a voyage to the pole of rotation.

There is one point which suggests itself very forcibly in reading the account of the sledging expedition from the Alert towards the north. In his official report, Captain Nares says that “half of each day was spent in dragging the sledges in that painful fashion—face toward the boat—in which the sailors drag a boat from the sea on to the sand;” and again he speaks of the “toilsome dragging of the sledges over ice-ridges which resembled a stormy sea suddenly frozen.” In doing this “276 miles were toiled over in travelling only 73 miles.” Is it altogether clear that the sledges were worth the trouble? One usually regards a sledge as intended to carry travellers and their provisions, etc., over ice and snow, and as useful when so employed; but when the travellers have to take along the sledge, going four times as far and working ten times as hard as if they were without it, the question suggests itself whether all necessary shelter, provisions, and utensils might not have been much more readily conveyed by using a much smaller and lighter sledge, and by distributing a large part of the luggage among the members of the expedition. The parts of a small hut could, with a little ingenuity, be so constructed as to admit of being used as levers, crowbars, carrying-poles, and so forth, and a large portion of the luggage absolutely necessary for the expedition could be carried by their help; while a small, light sledge for the rest could be helped along and occasionally lifted bodily over obstructions by levers and beams forming part of the very material which by the usual arrangement forms part of the load. I am not suggesting, be it noticed, that by any devices of this sort a journey over the rough ice of Arctic regions could be made easy. But it does seem to me that if a party could go back and forth over 276 miles, pickaxing a way for a sledge, and eventually dragging it along over the path thus pioneered for it, and making only an average of 1¼ mile of real progress per day, or 73 miles in all, the same men could with less labour (though still, doubtless, with great toil and trouble) make six or seven miles a day by reducing their impedimenta to what could be carried directly along with them. Whether use might not be made of the lifting power of buoyant gas, is a question which only experienced aËronauts and Arctic voyagers could answer. I believe that the employment of imprisoned balloon-power for many purposes, especially in time of war, has received as yet much less attention than it deserves. Of course I am aware that in Arctic regions many difficulties would present themselves; and the idea of ordinary ballooning over the Arctic ice-fields may be regarded as altogether wild in the present condition of the science of aËronautics. But the use of balloon-power as an auxiliary, however impracticable at present, is by no means to be despaired of as science advances.

After all, however, the advance upon the Pole itself, however interesting to the general public, is far less important to science than other objects which Arctic travellers have had in view. The inquiry into the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism within the Arctic regions; the investigation of oceanic movements there; of the laws according to which low temperatures are related to latitude and geographical conditions; the study of aerial phenomena; of the limits of plant life and animal life; the examination of the mysterious phenomena of the Aurora Borealis—these and many other interesting subjects of investigation have been as yet but incompletely dealt with. In the Polar regions, as Maury well remarked, “the icebergs are framed and glaciers launched; there the tides have their cradle, the whales their nursery; there the winds complete their circuit, and the currents of the sea their round, in the wonderful system of oceanic circulation; there the Aurora is lighted up, and the trembling needle brought to rest; and there, too, in the mazes of that mystic circle, terrestrial forces of occult power and of vast influence upon the well-being of man are continually at work. It is a circle of mysteries; and the desire to enter it, to explore its untrodden wastes and secret chambers, and to study its physical aspects, has grown into a longing. Noble daring has made Arctic ice and snow-clad seas classic ground.”