s 305 miles, or 5 deg.
5'. We got fully 4 deg. north, from 77 deg. 43' to 81 deg. 53'. To give the course
of the drift is a difficult task in these latitudes, as there is a
perceptible deviation of the compass with every degree of longitude
as one passes east or west; the change, of course, given in degrees
will be almost exactly the same as the number of degrees of longitude
that have been passed. Our average course will be about N. 36 deg. W. The
direction of our drift is consequently a much more northerly one than
the Jeannette's was, and this is just what we expected; ours cuts hers
at an angle of 59 deg.. The line of this year's drift continued will cut
the northeast island of Spitzbergen, and take us as far north as 84 deg.
7', in 75 deg. east longitude, somewhere N.N.E. of Franz Josef Land. The
distance by this course to the Northeast Island is 827 miles. Should
we continue to progress only at the rate of 189 miles a year it would
take us 4.4 years to do this distance. But assuming our progress to
be at the rate of 305 miles a year, we shall do it in 2.7 years. That
we should drift at least as quickly as this seems probable, because
we can hardly now be driven back as we were in October last year,
when we had the open water to the south and the great mass of ice to
the north of us.

"The past summer seems to me to have proved that while the ice is
very unwilling to go back south, it is most ready to go northwest as
soon as there is ever so little easterly, not to mention southerly,
wind. I therefore believe, as I always have believed, that the drift
will become faster as we get farther northwest, and the probability
is that the Fram will reach Norway in two years, the expedition
having lasted its full three years, as I somehow had a feeling that
it would. As our drift is 59 deg. more northerly than the Jeannette's,
and as Franz Josef Land must force the ice north (taking for granted
that all that comes from this great basin goes round to the north of
Franz Josef Land), it is probable that our course will become more
northerly the farther on we go, until we are past Franz Josef Land,
and that we shall consequently reach a higher latitude than our drift
so far would indicate. I hope 85 deg. at least. Everything has come right
so far; the direction of our drift is exactly parallel with the course
which I conjectured to have been taken by the floe with the Jeannette
relics, and which I pricked out on the chart prepar