about 15 miles farther north than had been made two years before. In 1896 and 1897 Peary again visited Greenland, bringing home on the former the smaller, and on the latter voyage the larger, the 90-ton meteorite, which had been seen 70 years before by Sir James Ross at Meteor Island, near Cape Sabine, and which had furnished the natives with tools and cutting implements, and is the largest known meteor in the world. Having organized the Peary Arctic Club, of a few of his personal friends, on 4 July 1898 Peary sailed from Saint Johns, Newfoundland, in the Windward; wintered in her in Allman Bay, lat. 79° 10′, long. 75° 20′, on the west side of Smith Sound, rectifying and recharting the whole Bache peninsular and Buchanan Sound country, and on 1 Jan. 1899, sledging along the ice-foot, reached Fort Conger, isolated since General Greely's departure 18 years before. In June Peary pushed westward, crossing the divide of Grinnell Land, and looked down upon the open and ice-free sea beyond. Leaving his headquarters at Etah early in March 1900 and Fort Conger, 15 April, he reached "Lockwood's farthest," 8 May, and a disintegrated pack and an open sea preventing further advance to the Pole, rounded the northern end of the Greenland archipelago, discovering the most northern known land in the world, which he named in honor of the president of the Peary Arctic Club, Cape Morris K. Jesup. Pushing his explorations southeastward to 82° 10′, 61° 30′ W., on 21 May Peary saw before him to the south the peaks of Independence Bay, which he had discovered nine years before, realized that the demonstration was complete, and that the mystery which had surrounded the northern end of Greenland for a thousand years had been dispelled. The winter of 1900-01 was passed in the field, near Lake Hazen, Grinnell Land, and on 6 May 1901 Peary joined the Windward with Mrs. Peary and Miss Peary on board, which had been ice-bound since the previous September at Payer Harbor, near Cape Sabine. Wintering at Cape Sabine, 1901-02, in February, accompanied only by Matthew Henson and natives, Peary returned to Fort Conger and endeavored to attain the Pole, from Cape Hecla as a point of departure, but on 16 May, at 84° 17', the highest then attained by the American flag, he was compelled by insurmountable pressure ridges and the condition of the ice to give up the attempt, and returning to Cape Sabine he was met, 5 August, by the Windward with Mrs. Peary on board, and reached Sydney, C. B., 15 September, thus concluding 12 years of arduous and most successful work. In the spring of 1906 he succeeded in reaching 87° 6′ north latitude in the Roosevelt, or within about 203 miles of the north pole, thus creating another "farthest north" record.

In 1893 Fridtjof Nansen in the Fram, specially constructed for the purpose, entered the ice off the northern coast of Asia and for the next three years drifted northward, one of the objects of the expedition having been to demonstrate the theory of the drift from east to west. On 12 March 1896 Nansen, accompanied by Lieutenant Johansen, left the Fram in lat. 84° and with dogs and sledges pushed his way over the sea ice poleward to 86°

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14' on 20 May, when farther advance was impossible. Retracing his course Nansen and Johansen finally, without dogs, landed on the northern shore of Franz Josef Land, where in a hut and subsisting upon seal and walrus meat the two explorers passed the winter. While advancing southward on 12 May 1897 they were descried by Frederick Jackson from his headquarters at Cape Flora, and remained with him at his camp until his return the following summer. The Fram, under command of Captain Sverdrup, after Nansen's departure, drifted still farther to the north, attaining only 18 miles less than Nansen's highest, and by almost superhuman exertion, was broken out of the ice later in the season, reaching Tromső but a few days after Nansen. The entire party and ship returned together to Christiania, from which they had departed three years before.

Alfred C. Harmsworth (now Lord Northcliffe), the English newspaper proprietor, in 1892 dispatched an expedition led by Frederick G. Jackson, with Lieut. Albert H. Armitage, R. N., second in command, to Franz Josef Land for a thorough reconnaissance of the archipelago and an advance to the north as far as practicable. The Windward remained ice-bound near Jackson's headquarters at Cape Flora for the first winter, and for three succeeding summers visited the station with supplies and reinforcements. The work of Jackson included the charting and mapping of a large portion of the Franz Josef Land Archipelago, though in consequence of unfavorable conditions not attaining a latitude higher than had been previously accomplished. Mr. Harmsworth later presented the Windward to Commander Peary.

In 1899, Prince Luigi, Duke of the Abruzzi (q.v.) in the Stella Polare, reached Teplitz Bay, Rudolf Land, where the ship was beached and winter quarters established. The following spring the sledge parties led by Capt. Umberto Cagni achieved, on 25 April, 86° 33', the highest latitude then attained by man, for which achievement both the Prince and Cagni received upon their return gold medals from the Royal Italian Society and recognition by the scientific bodies of the world. Interest in these achievements is increased by the fact that during the TurcoItalian War of 1912, the Duke D'Abruzzi served as commander-in-chief and Captain Cagni as admiral of a division of the fleet operating against the Tripolitan coast, the latter commanding the landing party, and both continued during the great European War, beginning in 1914, to exercise similar commands in the navy of their country. Some other attempts upon the Pole by the Franz Josef Land route have been made by Walter Wellman and Evelyn B. Baldwin, the latter under the patronage of William Ziegler, whose second expedition, led by Anthony Fiala, left Tromsö in July 1903.

Capt. Otto Sverdrup, of the Nansen expedition, sailed in 1899 to Smith Sound in the Fram, and after having been ice-bound for the winter of 1899-1900 in Rice's Strait, in the autumn of the latter year entered Jones' Sound, where he remained for the next two winters, pushing a line of the extensive exploration northward and westward by the former of which he practically determined the insularity of Grinnell Land and by the latter carrying the flag of his country to

85° 42′ and definitely mapping much coast which had before been inaccurate or imaginary. Captain Sverdrup's surgeon, Dr. Jensen, died during the first winter in Rice's Straits, but with this exception his entire party, after a diligent and arduous three years, returned to Norway in good health (1903).

The year 1909 was particularly eventful in polar research. Not only was the North Pole actually reached by Commander Peary on 6 April, but all previous Antarctic records were eclipsed by Sir E. Shackleton when he on 9 January came up to within 111 statute miles of the South Pole.

Peary prepared for his sixth and successful attempt to discover the North Pole as early as the summer of 1908, but delay on the part of his shipbuilder prevented an earlier start than on 17 Aug. 1908. His vessel was the Roosevelt, and his scientific assistants were as Ross G. Marvin, of Cornell, George Borup, of Yale, and D. B. MacMillan, of Bowdoin. The company included besides, 66 men and 140 dogs. The entire equipment was the very best, and the plan the ripest the experienced explorer could devise. Five separate detachments, each independently equipped and fully provisioned, were to advance a certain distance to relieve or replenish some one of the various divisions at a point definitely prearranged and then return. In this way, one division after another having turned homeward, there remained but a single party to make for the goal.

Setting out from Etah on 17 Aug. 1908, the first objective, Cape Sheridan, was reached on 5 September. There, on the shore of the Arctic Sea, the party wintered. Winter camp was broken on 15 Feb. 1909 and the first of the five detachments proceeded toward Cape Columbia. In accordance with the general plan, relieving parties were met and turned back as soon as their purpose was accomplished. Only five men made the final dash to the Pole-Peary, Matthew A. Henson (Peary's colored servant), and four Eskimos. Five forced marches, under unusually favorable circumstances, brought the long-sought-for goal to view on 6 April 1909. The entire distance from mainland to Pole, 475 statute miles, was covered at the unprecedented average speed of 13 miles per daya feat which in itself would have made the expedition noteworthy.

Observations gave 89° 57' just before the party finally halted. During the 30 hours spent there, a temperature of from -12° to -30° F. prevailed at the Pole. For the most part, the sky was clear, and, save for the "chalky" whiteness of its ice, nothing whatever struck the expectant observers. As was anticipated, no life of any kind was found at the Pole. After making all necessary records and photographs, the party planted the American flag to mark the imaginary pole and turned homeward.

The homeward marches, greatly favored by paths and stations made in the outgoing expedition, were made at an average daily rate of 29.5 miles more than double that of the outgoing average. The Roosevelt, which was used also on the return voyage, reached Indian Harbor on 6 Sept. 1909. From there the news of the great achievement was cabled to the world.

Apart from the momentous discovery itself, data of scientific importance were gathered

along the way; of these, the most important were the soundings made at intervals, which furnished the first conclusive proof of the vast oceanic depths north of the American Arctic lands. In addition, the existence of large land masses still unknown has become even more doubtful since this expedition.

Rear Admiral Peary submitted to the National Geographical Society his data and proof and its special committee found in them conclusive evidence that he had reached the North Pole on 6 April 1909. In recognition of his great achievement, numerous scientific societies have awarded him gold medals and otherwise honored the American polar explorer. See articles on PEARY and COOK, FREDERICK AL

BERT.

America and Canada were, in 1913, rivals in the North. The American Museum-Geographical Society-University of Illinois expedition, whose departure had been postponed for a year through the tragic death of George Borup in an unsuccessful attempt to rescue a comrade from drowning, left New York 4 July with the unknown Crocker Island which Peary believed he descried seven years before from Cape Thomas Hubbard, as its objective. Ensign Fitzhugh Green, U.S.N., Professors Ekblaw, geologist, and Tanquary, naturalist, of the university, and Surgeon Hunt of Bowdoin, made the party under the leadership of Donald B. MacMillan, leader of a Peary 1908 supporting party from Cape Columbia. The expedition, delayed en route, arrived in Smith Sound too late to reach its proposed base, Buchanan Bay, wintered at Etah, whence during the next spring MacMillan and Green, crossing Ellsmere Land, advanced far out upon the sea ice to the location as nearly as could be fixed from Peary's data, not only to find no land but no indications of it. Appearances like those which greeted Peary were clear and positive, both before leaving the mainland and enroute, but MacMillan's conclusion that the land which they appeared to indicate did not exist was positive. Returning by slow marches to his headquarters at Etah, the winter of 1914-15 was spent in such field work as circumstances permitted, no relief ship having arrived. Late in the summer of 1915 Prof. Edmund O. Hovey of the Museum on the auxiliary schooner George B. Cluett, left to bring the MacMillan expedition home, only to report, nine months later, that, disabled, the schooner had failed to reach Etah and had wintered in Parker Snow Bay and he, himself an invalid, had turned back from Cape York to the Danish North Star Bay Station, while two others of the party had proceeded to the South Greenland settlements to report and bring relief. Professor Tanquary arrived in New York June 1916 by way of Copenhagen. The Museum chartered the Danish steamer Danmark to proceed to Smith Sound, gather the scattered members of the expedition and return with them to civilization. Nothing, however, was heard from the Danmark, which, it was later learned, had been hopelessly beset in the ice of Smith Sound and in August 1917, Capt. Robert A. Bartlett, in the chartered Neptune, brought home from the Etah base, MacMillan, Ekblaw and Hunt. Professor Hovey arriving at New York on the same day, by way