n asserting that no two of these believe in the possibility
of Nansen's first proposition--to build a vessel capable of living
or navigating in a heavy Arctic pack, into which it is proposed
to put his ship. The second proposition is even more hazardous,
involving as it does a drift of more than 2000 miles in a straight
line through an unknown region, during which the party in its voyage
(lasting two or more years, we are told) would take only boats along,
encamp on an iceberg, and live there while floating across."

After this General Greely proceeds to prove the falsity of all my
assumptions. Respecting the objects from the Jeannette, he says plainly
that he does not believe in them. "Probably some drift articles were
found," he says, "and it would seem more reasonable to trace them
to the Porteus, which was wrecked in Smith Sound, about 1000 miles
north of Julianehaab... It is further important to note that, if the
articles were really from the Jeannette, the nearest route would have
been, not across the North Pole along the east coast of Greenland,
but down Kennedy Channel and by way of Smith Sound and Baffin's Bay,
as was suggested, as to drift from the Porteus."

We could not possibly get near the Pole itself by a long distance, says
Greely, as "we know almost as well as if we had seen it that there is
in the unknown regions an extensive land which is the birthplace of the
flat-topped icebergs or the palaeocrystic ice." In this glacier-covered
land, which he is of opinion must be over 300 miles in diameter, and
which sends out icebergs to Greenland as well as to Franz Josef Land,
[13] the Pole itself must be situated.

"As to the indestructible ship," he says, "it is certainly a most
desirable thing for Dr. Nansen." His meaning, however, is that it
cannot be built. "Dr. Nansen appears to believe that the question of
building on such lines as will give the ship the greatest power of
resistance to the pressure of the ice-floe has not been thoroughly and
satisfactorily solved, although hundreds of thousands of dollars have
been spent for this end by the seal and whaling companies of Scotland
and Newfoundland." As an authority he quotes Melville, and says "every
Arctic navigator of experience agrees with Melville's dictum that even
if built solid a vessel could not withstand the ice-pressure of the
heavy polar pack." To my assertion that the ice along the "Siberian
coast is comparatively thin, 7 to 10 feet," he agai