ng this Greenland winter that
enabled him to get one hundred and ninety-five miles nearer the North
Pole than any one else had ever done.

He also learned from his Arctic friends how to handle dog-teams.

The Eskimos use dogs for travelling as the Laplanders use reindeer. The
dogs are, however, much more difficult to handle, for while they are
hardy, strong, intelligent, and willing, they do not make good servants.
All their training cannot entirely tame them, and they have certain ways
and habits which lessen their usefulness.

They are, for instance, terrible fighters.

Every one who possesses a canine friend knows that this is a very
dog-like attribute, and one of which no dog, large or small, can be
entirely broken.

We all appreciate how unpleasant it is to be out walking with our
favorite French bulldog, and suddenly have our be-ribboned aristocrat
forget the dignity that his long pedigree should give him, and dash from
our side to make tufts of hair fly from somebody else's equally
be-ribboned poodle.

Such an occurrence is serious enough--but it becomes a matter of life
and death when, miles from home in a frozen country, you are depending
on your dogs to bring you safely back again, and your team forgets its
duty and becomes a waving mass of legs and tails, from which you hear
nothing but the howls of the vanquished. A dog-fight often becomes one
of the most terrible catastrophes that can overtake an explorer.

With these fierce little Eskimo dogs, the result of such an encounter
means generally the loss of two or three, and a walk home with the
wounded survivors occupying the sled.

Under the circumstances it is very necessary to understand how to handle
these useful but eccentric beasts. The Eskimos have reduced this
knowledge to a science, and from them Nansen learned to be the master of
those dogs which were of so much service to him in his last and greatest
expedition.

This expedition was undertaken in June, 1893, and its object was to
drift across the pole from Siberia to Greenland.

During Nansen's Arctic experiences he had noticed that the shores of
Greenland were strewn with driftwood of a kind also found on the shores
of Siberia.

The matter caused him some deep thought, and at length he arrived at the
conclusion that there must be a current which crosses the Arctic Ocean
and carries this material from Asia to America.

After much thought, he came to the conclusion that if he could onl