Chapter I: Preface

While abundant material has been put before children with the purpose of making them familiar with the history and industrial development of various parts of the known world, very little has been written to inform them of the work which is now being done in the comparatively unknown regions of the north, or of the history of the early discoveries which have led to it.

The importance of the present determined search for the North Pole is admitted by all thoughtful people, and the subject is one which must increase in interest until the entire North Frigid Zone is correctly mapped and charted.

Accounts of the pioneers in this work of discovery, of Franklin and of Kane, and in our own day of Nansen and Peary, are available only in such exhaustive works as are unsuitable reading for children, and which sometimes tax the patience of the adult. Hence the work done by these intrepid explorers upon the American continent and north of it remains unstudied and unknown.

It is hoped that this book may give our young people sufficient knowledge of the subject to enable them to read farther with intelligence, and that it may also inspire them with interest in the many expeditions that are being sent out.

The descriptions of the strange people who inhabit these cold countries, their dress, their ways of living, their customs, and their manners, all interest the child, and meet his natural desire to hear about other people than those living in the part of the world about him.

No complete history has been attempted, but rather a series of sketches which, it is hoped, will enable the reader to appreciate the achievements of the brave men who have lent and are lending their best efforts to the task of unlocking and wresting from the Frozen North, the secrets so necessary for the advancement of science.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 1818 9
III. FRANKLIN’S FIRST LAND JOURNEY. 1819–1821 14
IV. FRANKLIN’S SECOND LAND JOURNEY. 1825–1827 21
V. THE _EREBUS_ AND THE _TERROR_. 1845 25
VI. ELISHA KENT KANE. 1853 32
VII. WINTER IN RENSSELAER HARBOR. 1853–1854 36
VIII. THE ESKIMOS. 1854 40
IX. HUNTING IN THE ICY NORTH 45
X. HOME AGAIN. 1855 51
XI. NORDENSKJÖLD AND THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE. 1878–1879 59
XII. VOYAGE OF THE _JEANNETTE_. 1879–1881 72
XIII. GREELY IN GRINNELL LAND. 1881–1883 81
XIV. FARTHEST NORTH OF THE GREELY PARTY. 1882 87
XV. LIEUTENANT SCHWATKA IN ALASKA. 1883 94
XVI. NANSEN CROSSES GREENLAND. 1888 104
XVII. THE VOYAGE OF THE _FRAM_. 1893–1896 122
XVIII. PEARY CROSSES GREENLAND. 1891–1897 133
XIX. ANDRÉE’S BALLOON EXPEDITION TO THE POLE. 1897 149
XX. EXPEDITIONS OF 1902 154
XXI. DISCOVERY OF THE NORTH POLE BY ROBERT E. PEARY. 1909 158

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Map of the North Polar Regions

The Aurora Borealis

Sebastian Cabot

The Earth on June 21

The Earth on December 21

Daily Motion of the Heavens as seen at the North Pole

Daily Motion of the Heavens as seen at the Equator

The Midnight Sun

The Change of Seasons

Sir John Franklin

Glacier, English Bay, Spitzbergen

A Ship in the Ice Pack

Icebergs in the Polar Sea

A Post of the Hudson Bay Company

In Winter Quarters

Relics of the Franklin Expedition

Elisha Kent Kane

Fiskernaes, Greenland

An Eskimo Dog Team

Eskimos and their Dogs

Interior of an Eskimo Hut

A Walrus Hunt

A Herd of Seals

Polar Bears

Traveling over the Ice Hummocks

Dragging the Boats over the Ice Floes

Upernavik, Greenland

A Greenlander in his Kayak

Samoyed Huts in Summer

A Samoyed Family in Winter Costume

The “Vega” firing a Salute at Cape Tcheliuskin, the Most Northern
Point of the Old World

Tchuktche and Reindeer

Tchuktche Man and Woman

Hunting Reindeer

The “Jeannette” in the Ice Pack

Bird Cliffs

Musk Ox

An Arctic Snowstorm

Sitka, Alaska, in 1880

Crossing the Coast Range

Tanana Station, River Yukon, in Winter

The Raft on which a Journey of Thirteen Hundred and Three Miles
was made

A Man on Ski

Fridtjof Nansen

A Herd of Reindeer

Nansen’s Camp on the Drift Ice

A Group of Greenland Eskimos

A View in the Interior of Greenland

Sledging across Greenland

Skating off the Coast of Greenland

The Launching of the “Fram”

Boat attacked by Walrus

Nansen and Johansen leaving the “Fram”

Setting Fox Traps

Red Cliff House after the Storm

Godthaab

The “Tent” Meteorite

Andrée begins his Journey

Peary in Arctic Costume

Moonlight in the Arctic Regions

Eskimo Dogs

THE FROZEN NORTH