elp us in our
struggle farther north.

Before we reached this odd little oasis, but several hundred miles
beyond the Arctic Circle, we came to a most significant point in our
upward journey, marking as it did the grimness of the task before us. No
civilized man can die in this savage Northland without his grave having
a deep meaning for those who come afterwards; and constantly, as we
sailed on, these voiceless reminders of heroic bones told their silent
but powerful story.

At the southern limit of Melville Bay we passed the Duck Islands, where
is the little graveyard of the Scotch whalers who were the pioneers in
forcing the passage of Melville Bay and who died there, waiting for the
ice to open. These graves date back to the beginning of the nineteenth
century. From this point on, the arctic highway is marked by the graves
of those who have fallen in the terrible fight with cold and hunger.
These rude rock piles bring home to any thoughtful person the meaning of
arctic exploration. The men who lie there were not less courageous, not
less intelligent, than the members of my own party; they were simply
less fortunate.

Let us look along that highway for a moment and consider these
memorials. At North Star Bay are one or two graves of men from the
British ship _North Star_, which wintered there in 1850. Out on the Cary
Islands is the nameless grave of one of the ill-fated Kallistenius
Expedition. Still farther north, at Etah, is the grave of Sontag, the
astronomer of Hayes's Expedition; and a little above it, that of Ohlsen
of Kane's party. On the opposite side are the unmarked places where
sixteen of Greely's ill-fated party died. Still farther north, on the
eastern or Greenland side, is the grave of Hall, the American commander
of the Polaris Expedition. On the western, or Grant Land side, are the
graves of two or three sailors of the British Arctic Expedition of 1876.
And right on the shore of the central Polar Sea, near Cape Sheridan, is
the grave of the Dane, Petersen, the interpreter of the British Arctic
Expedition of 1876. These graves stand as mute records of former efforts
to win the prize, and they give a slight indication of the number of
brave but less fortunate men who have given the last possession of
mortal life in their pursuit of the arctic goal.

The first time I saw the graves of the whalers on Duck Islands I sat
there, in the arctic sunlight, looking at those headboards, sobered with
a realizat