two, whom they had been too weak
to bury. No story of the Arctic which has come to us from the lips of
survivors, has half the pathos, or a tithe of the pitiful interest,
possessed by this story of Greely.

Studying to-day the history of the Greely expedition, it seems almost as
if a malign fate had determined to bring disaster upon him. His task was
not so arduous as a determined search for the Pole, or the Northwest
Passage. He was ordered by the United States Government to establish an
observation station on Lady Franklin Bay, and remain there two years,
conducting, meanwhile, scientific observations, and pressing exploratory
work with all possible zeal. The enterprise was part of a great
international plan, by which each of the great nations was to establish
and maintain such an observation station within the Arctic circle, while
observations were to be carried on in all at once. The United States
agreed to maintain two such stations, and the one at Point Barrow, north
of Alaska, was established, maintained, and its tenants brought home at
the end of the allotted time without disaster.

Greely was a lieutenant in the United States Army, and his expedition was
under the immediate direction of the Secretary of War--at that time Robert
Lincoln, son of the great war President. Some criticism was expressed at
the time and, indeed, still lingers in the books of writers on the
subject, concerning the fitness of an army officer to direct an Arctic
voyage. But the purpose of the expedition was largely to collect
scientific facts bear-on weather, currents of air and sea, the duration
and extent of magnetic and electrical disturbances--in brief, data quite
parallel to those which the United States signal service collects at home.
So the Greely expedition was made an adjunct to the signal service, which
in its turn is one of the bureaus of the War Department. Two army
lieutenants, Lockwood and Klingsbury, and twenty men from the rank and
file of the army and signal corps, were selected to form the party. An
astronomer was needed, and Edward Israel, a young graduate of the
University of Michigan, volunteered. George W. Rice volunteered as
photographer. Both were enlisted in the army and given the rank of
sergeant.

It is doubtful if any polar expedition was ever more circumstantially
planned--none has resulted more disastrously, save Sir John Franklin's
last voyage. The instructions of the War Department were as explicit as
h