attained. Greeley's expedition became
the subject of a tragedy almost comparable to the great Franklin
disaster. The vessels sent with supplies failed to reach their
destination. For four years Greeley and his men remained in the Arctic
regions. Of the twenty-three men in the party only six were found
alive when Captain Schley of the United States Navy at last brought
relief.

{140}

After the Greeley expedition the fight towards the Pole was carried on
by a series of gallant explorers, none of whom, strange to narrate,
were British. Commander R. E. Peary, of the United States Navy, came
prominently before the world as an Arctic navigator in the last decade
of the nineteenth century. In 1892 he crossed northern Greenland in
the extreme latitude of 81 deg. 37', a feat of the highest order.

Still more striking was the work of Dr Fridtjof Nansen, which attracted
the attention of the whole world. Nansen had devoted profound study to
the question of the northern drift of the polar waters. It had often
been observed that drift-wood and wreckage seemed, in many places, to
float towards the Pole. Trees that fall in the Siberian forests and
float down the great rivers to the northern sea are frequently found
washed up on the shores of Greenland, having apparently passed over the
Pole itself. A strong current flows northward through Bering Strait,
and it is a matter of record that an American vessel, the _Jeanette_,
which stuck fast in the ice near Wrangel Land in 1879, drifted slowly
northward with the ice for two years, and made its way in this fashion
some four hundred miles towards the {141} Pole. Dr Nansen formed the
bold design of carrying a ship under steam into one of the currents of
the Far North, allowing it to freeze in, and then trusting to the polar
drift to do the rest. The adventures of Nansen and his men in this
enterprise are so well known as scarcely to need recital. A stout
wooden vessel of four hundred tons, the _Fram_ (or the _Forwards_), was
specially constructed to withstand the grip of the polar ice. In 1893
she sailed from Norway and made her way by the Kara Sea to the New
Siberian Islands. In October, the _Fram_ froze into the ice and there
she remained for three years, drifting slowly forwards in the heart of
the vast mass. Her rudder and propeller were unshipped and taken
inboard, her engine was taken to pieces and packed away, while on her
deck a windmill was erected to generate el