Of Nansen, on the contrary, I ought to say as much as I can, because his extraordinary voyage in the Fram was perhaps more purely an examination of the Arctic Sea than any other ever made. Dr. Fridtjoff Nansen was a young Norwegian who had already made his mark in Greenland, where, soon after 1880, articles began to be found that had belonged to the Jeannette, and apparently must have drifted thence from where she was lost off Siberia. This was only a part of the indications that convinced Dr. Nansen that a current flowed across the unknown polar space from the neighborhood of Alaska to the northeast coast of Greenland, and thence became the great Arctic current that we recognize south of Iceland. He argued that if a vessel could find this current north of eastern Siberia, she would be moved with it until she emerged into the Atlantic. Incidentally she might drift directly over the pole.
With this in view, he raised funds to build and equip a small wooden vessel, furnished with both steam and sails, which was so shaped by the roundness of her bottom, and so amazingly braced and strengthened within, that before any “nips” of the ice would crush her, the pressure would lift her out of water—as, in fact, happened many times in the course of her wonderful excursion. Nansen chose twelve companions,[3] and though some of them were educated men of science, others skilful sea-captains, and others common sailors, all lived and worked together in one cabin as brothers—the happiest and healthiest lot of men that ever ventured into the hyperborean kingdom of desolation.
Leaving Norway in July, 1893, he struggled through the Kara Sea, and it was not until late in September, 1894, that he found himself permanently frozen into the great polar pack, north of the New Siberian Islands; but even then he was neither so far north nor so far west as he hoped to get, and feared that he was south of his supposed current. For the story of the strange life led by those thirteen men on that drifting ship, safe, abundantly provisioned, dry, warm, lighted by electricity (power for the dynamos being gained by a windmill), I can only refer you to Dr. Nansen’s book, “Farthest North,” one of the most interesting Arctic volumes ever penned. Turning, zigzagging, now advancing and again retreating as the constantly moving ice swayed here and there under the pressure of wind or the dragging of currents, they nevertheless made a gradual progress westward.
By March they had reached a point near the crossing of the 70th meridian and 85th parallel, and were still fixed in the ice. Then Nansen, taking with him Lieutenant Johansen, started north by dog-sledges, in an attempt to reach the pole. They could take very few supplies of any sort, and how far north they would be able to travel must depend upon their ability to return, not to the Fram, which would drift on, but to the islands of Francis Joseph Land, far away south. The ice, bad at first, grew worse as they proceeded, being one long stretch of hummocks and jagged ditches, with now and then a lane of open water around which they would toil in misery only to find a worse one ahead. On April 7th it became certain that they must turn back. This was “farthest north,” indeed—just above the 86th degree, hardly 275 miles from the North Pole. Then it was a race against death by cold, or drowning, or starvation. One by one the dogs were killed to furnish food for the remainder. At last, after almost superhuman labors and thrilling escapes from freezing and drowning and the attacks of famished bears, they reached Francis Joseph Land, and spent a winter in a hut made out of stones, earth, and raw walrus hides. The next spring they plodded on, and by good chance found the camp of the Jackson Harmsworth surveying party (which a few days later would have gone away in its steamer), by whom Nansen and Johansen were carried to Norway in August, 1896.
A week later the Fram came in, with every one well and hearty, having emerged from the ice just northwest of Spitzbergen.
Since Nansen’s return another Scandinavian, S. A. Andrée, with two companions, has disappeared into this same desert of ice and silence, in a balloon carrying a boat, sledge, tent, and various supplies. It was his intention to reach the pole if possible, and to do whatever else circumstances permitted. Since his departure, on July 10, 1897, from Spitzbergen, he has not been heard from, except by a pigeon-message two days later.
THE SOUTH POLE
We have followed up to date the history of adventurous and scientific exploration of the hardly yielding, yet steadily narrowed, circles of unknown coasts and waters about the North Pole. Let us now see what, thus far, has been done to wrest from the ocean and ice of its Antarctic antipodes the secrets of the South Pole.
A PENGUIN-ROOST ON THE BEACHES OF VICTORIA LAND.
Drawn by the Antarctic explorer Borchgrevink.