Connecticut western news., 1884-07-23
THE GREELY EXPEDITION
A STORY OF HEROIC ACHIEVEMENT.
The Party Accomplishing Mere Than All
 Other Arctic Explorers.

MT. George Kennan, of Washington, who has taken an active interest in the recent attempts to relieve Greely's party and who went before the Arctic Relief Board last spring to urge the offering of such reward as would secure the coop eration of the whalers in the search, was asked by an Associated Press reporter what he thought of the news received from St. Johns. He replied:
 'It is story of remarkable and he- roic achievement in the field clouded by disaster, due to incompetence in Wash ington. If Lieut.. Greedy and his party had all returned in safety to the United States, as they might have done had they been properly supported, their Arc- tic record, in point of skillful manage ment and success, would have been un- paralleled. No other Arctic expedition has ever spent two consecutive winters and part of 0 third in such high lati- tudes and achieved such results without a casualty or a single case of serious ill., ness. If Lieut.. Greedy had found at the mouth of Smiths Sound the shelter and food which he had & right to expect there, he would probably have brought his entire party back to tine United States iR perfect health, after three win ters in the highest northern attitudes that have ever been reached, and after 8 series of sledging campaigns, which for boldness and skillful execution have rarely, if ever, been surpassed"
 "Could the disaster which befell his party have been averted with the knowl- edge available at the time the relief ex- rnditi0na uvnrn fitted init 9n
 "Unquestionably; and that is the pity of it. It doubles the grief which must be felt in the face of such terrible catastrophe, to thiuk that two ships on successive years, and probably third, were in position to land stores which would have saved the lives of those eighteen dead men. Beebe, in 1882, anchored in Payer Harbor, just north of Cape Sabine, with ship full of stores; Darlington, the next summer, anchored in the same place also with a ship full of stores; and few days later the Yantic, with four months provisions on board, was only thirty miles away. Any one of these three ships might have landed stores enough exactly where Greedy afterward made his winter camp, to have carried that brave party through; but their commanding officers were not ordered to do so, and they did not think of it."
 "If Lieut.. Darlington had landed stores on his way north at Littleton Island, in accordance with what was known as his supplementary instruc- tions,' would such stores have been of any use to Lieut.. Greedy ?"
 ''As it turned out, not the slightest There were few hundred rations on Littleton Island, but Greedy could not get across the tossing ice of Smiths Sound to avail himself of them. The place to land stores, as pointed out by Dr. Hoadley, Mir. Merriam, and others, and as shown by the example of the Mares expedition, was the western coast of the Sound-the coast that Greedy must come down-not the opposite coast, which Greedy might never reach. It is to the caches made by the British expe- dition of 1875 on the western coast that the few survivors of Lieut.. Greely's party mainly owe their lives"
 "How important are the discoveries made by Lieut.. Greedy ?"
 "From the point of view of an Arctic geographer, they are of first-class im- portance. Lieut. Greedy has not only taken away from Commander Markham, of the British navy, the blue ribbon of Arctic discovery for the highest latitude ever attained in any part of the world, but he has greatly extended the limits of the Mares explorations, both in Greenland and Grinnell Land, and has given & severe blow to Capt Mares 'Pal@ocrystic Ice and the theories which the latter founded upon it. The fact that two of Greely's sledge parties were stopped by open water in the polar basin, and that both were at times adrift in strong currents which threatened to carry them heiplessly away northward, would seem to show that the polar basin is not the solid sea of ancient immov- able ice which Mares described, and which he declared was never navigable. Lieut.. Greely's explorations extended over three degrees of latitude, and nearly forty degrees of longitude. He has virtually ascertained the true outline of | Grinnell Land; has crossed from east to west and on the northern coast of Green land; has gone one degree of latitude and ten degrees of longitude beyond the furthest point reached by Capt. Nares's accomplished sledging officer, Lieut.. Beaumont. These achievements alone reflect the highest credit upon Lieut. Greedy and his men; but to them must, of course, be added the great mass of scientific knowledge gathered by the party during their two years at Lady Franklin Bay, the records of which have fortunately been saved. When these observations shall have been collated and put in order they will, I think, be found not second in importance to any furnished by the circles of international polar stations"
 INTERVIEW WITH DR. BEssELLs.
 Dr. Bessells, Chief of the Scientific Staff of the Polaris, upon being asked what he thought of the work Greedy had done, said:
 "As to the real scientific work of the expedition we, as yet, know very little, but Greedy probably followed his instruc- tions and made all the observations re- quired by the international conference held at Hamburg. As one of the geo. graphical features of the expedition we may mention that Lieut.. Lockwood and Sergeant Brainard reached latitude S3 degrees 24 minutes north, getting about four miles north of the highest point reached by Captain Markham of the English expedition under Sir George Mares on May 12, 1876. The highest point reached by the international sta tion officer is apparently an island, which they have named after Lieut.. Lockwood. From an elevation of ?, ,000 feet they saw no land to the north, which proves that Greenland actually does not extend be- yond the S4th parallel, as I have proved myself several years ago on theoretic grounds by means of tidal wave observa- tions. The tidal wave, following the east coast of Greenland, passes along its northern border and enters Robeson Channel. Another point of geographi- cal interest Is the fact that the expedition