all portion of the provisions had been transferred to the
floe when the vessel parted from it. The devices for sustaining their
lives during the journey form interesting reading. Strange to relate, no
one was seriously ill and no deaths occurred during this remarkable ice
voyage.

After drifting a while the _Polaris_ was purposely beached on the
Greenland shore and the stores placed on land, where a house was built
in which to spend the second winter. In the spring two boats were
constructed in which the company started southward along the coast,
where they were finally picked up by a whaling vessel.

The conquest of the northeast passage was not achieved until the latter
part of the century. In 1878 Baron Nordenskjold, a Swedish explorer
commanding the _Vega_, entered the Arctic and sailed eastward along the
Russian and Siberian coast. Nordenskjold was the first navigator to
double Cape Chelyuskin, the northern cape of Asia. The _Vega_ reached
Bering Strait where she was nipped by the ice-pack. In the following
spring she reached Japan in safety.

In 1879-80 Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka set out on an overland
expedition northwestward for Hudson Bay, to gather knowledge concerning
the great Arctic Plain of North America. Schwatka's was probably the
longest sledge journey ever made up to that time. With a small party of
men, his dog sledges covered a distance of three thousand miles.
Schwatka found the skeletons of several members of Sir John Franklin's
party. These he buried on King William Land.

[Illustration: Peary's ship, the _Roosevelt_]

In 1881 the De Long expedition, in the steam cruiser _Jeannette_, met
disaster off the Siberian coast. The _Jeannette_ was sunk and her
officers and crew in three boats abandoned her. One boat was never
heard of afterward. De Long and his party starved in the delta swamps of
the Lena River. Chief Engineer Melville and his party were rescued in
the Lena River.

In 1881 also the International Polar Conference attempted to establish a
chain of stations around the pole as far north as possible. The United
States and several of the European nations were represented in the
organization. Two expeditions were sent out by the United States; one at
Point Barrow, under Lieutenant Ray, the other at Lady Franklin Bay,
opposite the Greenland coast, in latitude 81 deg. 40'. The latter was in
charge of Lieutenant, now General Greely. In a sledge journey along the
north coast of Greenland,