New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1882-03-19
ARCTIC GUESSWORK.


The enthusiasm for Arctic exploration does
not appear to have been chilled by the fate OF
the Jeanette and the heartrending sutierngs
of her men. A cable dispatch states that the
Danish Chamber has voted an appropriation
for a polar expedition which is to set out III
July. According to the international scheme
of Arctic exploration that Government was
TO send a colony to some point on the
Greenland coast. 1t may be that the
approDratiOn is made for this purpose.
Lieutenant Hovgaard, of the Danish Navy,
who was with Baron NOrdeGs(dOld IN the vega,
and who made so accurate a forecast of the
.Jeannettes line of diff, has recently UNI
folded new theory concerning the proper
tious of land and water in the Arctic belt, and
if is possible that the course of the projected
expedtion may be shaped in accordance with
his conclusions. In q lecture before the Royal
Geographical Society at Copenhagen he cx-
dressed a belief that Franz Josef Land extended
long way eastward, and that there
was another Arctic colony north OF
WrangelI Island. He inferred that there
must he sound stretching across
the North Pole between these two Are
tic continents His conclusion was that the
best route to the Pole lies between Cape
Chelyuskin and the east coast OF Franz Josef
Land. and thence northward through his
imaginary sound. If the money voted by the
Chamber is to be used in equippng an old
time exploring expedition, and not in planting
a CORDS of trained observers IN high ATTITUDES,
if il probable that his opinions will have great
weight in determining its curse and destina-
ton
The same issue which contained this brief
announcement of an appropriation for a
Arctic expedition presented a curious common
tary upOn the faulty of theoretical assump-
tons respecting that mysterious quarter of the
globe. Lieutenant Danenhowcr, writing to his
mother from Yakutsk, refers to the voyage Of
the Alliance, of which he had heard for the
first time through Russian newspaper. That
cruise was made it will be remembered north OF
Spitzbergenin the expectation that the Jeanette
would drift close to the Pole, and that her crew III
abandoning her would direct their rctrcatto that
island. Lieutenant Dmcnhower's comment
is that the Jeanette might have dnitcd out
in that quarter if she could have held to-
crtber ten years The force Of this remark
will be better appreciated if it be borne III mind
that the Jeanette, during her first halt-ycar
in the pack, is reported to have drifted only
forty miles, so that the Corwn, which
reached Herald Island eleven months after the
doomed vessel entered the ice, must have been
within IL hundred miles of her. The
drift subsequently was much more rapid,
but even under the most favorable cOndi-
| tons the vessel could not have emerged
before the close Of decade in the quarter
where the Alliance searched for her. Yet the
theories upon which that cruise was based
embodied the most widely approved cOnjec-
lures respecting polar currents and the disri-
bntion of land and water within the Arctic
! Zone 1t may be that the inscription over the
crystal palace gates of the weird spirit of the
North reads: "All theory abandon ye who
enter here; and that the first explorer
| to enter that mystic court will DO he who