hich only occur in Siberia has been collected
on some of these southward-bound ice-floes. On one occasion a
throwing-stick of a form used exclusively by the Eskimo of Alaska to
cast their harpoons was picked up on the west coast of Greenland,
having obviously been drifted round Cape Farewell, as the boats of
many a whaler shipwrecked in the polar current have been drifted
before. But perhaps the most interesting argument is that derived
from the drift of the "Jeannette." The "Jeannette" (once a British
gunboat, and afterward employed as the "Pandora" in attempting to
repeat the north-west passage) was sent out by the proprietor of the
"New York Herald," under the command of De Long, to push north to the
pole, through Bering Strait, in 1879. In September of that year she
got fast in the ice, and drifted on the whole north-westward for
nearly two years. At last she was crushed in the ice on June 13,
1881, to the north of the New Siberian Islands. The drift of the
"Jeannette" was becoming faster as she got farther west; indeed, it
was possibly the more rapid movement of the current that set the
floes in motion and led to the crushing of the vessel. Three years
after she sank, an ice-floe was found on the south coast of
Greenland at Julianehaab, on which were a number of articles,
including documents relating to the stores and boats of the
"Jeannette," bearing De Long's signature. The relics had a romantic
history, and have given rise to controversy; but before their
authenticity had been seriously questioned they were sacrificed to
the sense of order of a Copenhagen housewife. Nansen is certain that
the relics did come from the "Jeannette," and he believes they were
drifted like the wood and Siberian mud upon an ice-raft across the
pole or in its immediate vicinity.

His resolve was made accordingly "to take a ticket with the ice," as
he phrases it, and so drift across. The point where it would be best
to join the current, Nansen decided to be off the New Siberian
Islands, although Captain Wiggins recommends the most northerly point
of continental land, Cape Chelyuskin, as a more likely starting place.
At first Nansen proposed to follow the "Jeannette" through Bering Sea,
but he has now decided to take the nearer route round the North Cape,
through the Kara Sea, and along the coast of Asia, as the "Vega" went,
striking northward off the Lena Delta. It will require extremely
skilful navigation even to reach the starting po