Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1909-01-08
The White OCEAN
A Year Alone Within the
Arctic Circle.
A New Workers. Lonesome Life
North Of Alaska.
E. D. LeffingweII Back to Civil.
zation Again.

New York, Jan. ERNEST DeKov4n
LettingWell of Knoxville, H., or Flax
man Island, Beaufort Sea, as the case
happens to be, dropped into town
yesterday to have little talk with
some people here who take an interest
IN men who go out to learn things
heretofore unknown about places far
up beyond the Arctic Circle. Mr..
LefiingWell found a ready audience, for
he had just returned and was the last
to return of the Mikkelsen- Leffingwell
expedition organized three years ago
by Capt Ejnar Mikkelsen to hunt for
frozen continent in the untracked
sea north of the coast of Alaska.
He was the last to return because
after the party had spent a year and
more in the white ocean that lies be-
You'd the track of the most adventure
Gus whaler and had demonstrated with
a reasonable certainty that there is no
| land where the maps now show a clean
sweep of blue Leffingwell had preferred
to face the silence of this No Mans
Land alone for longer time. and had
stayed after the rest of the party had
taken ship for the south to make maps
and geological surveys of an unmapped
land From midsummer OF 1907 until
the first of last August he had his
headquarters in a hut made from the
wreck of the:DuchesS of Bedford the
expeditions ship, with Point Barrow,
300 miles to the westward the nearest
outpost of the world below him.
AS a result of this stay alone in the
wilderness Mr. Leffingwell has a map
of the coast of northern Alaska for a
strip of 200 miles and extending from
the shore of Beaufort Sea back over
hundred miles to the Arctic Yukon
divide. Which means that he has
lifted, if for ever so little way, the
fog curtain that hides the most
northerly fringe of the United States
domain
"Nope-no hardships,' was the way
Mr.. Leffingwell stalled a tentative at
tempt Of an interviewer to get some
thing which every Arctic explorer is
supposed to have in his stock If
"reminiscences THAT is. no real hard
ships Put it down that the worst
hardship l suffered was the depletion
of my stock of cigars. Honestly, that
was the worst. -
"Of course I did not have
DeImonico bill of fare to interest me
during the time I was living alone and
there was not much company. How
ever. sometimes a man is his own best
company. so there was no great harm.
no great hardship. Just lack of cigars
that was all"
How Leffingwell with the rest Of .he
expedition went out over the frozen
sea and found no land where land was
expected to be found and how the
Duchess of Bedford had all of her
caulking pulled out by the ice and sunk
in shallow water off the lea of tlaXman
Island has been told already by Capt.
Mikkelsen when he returned last April
and by other members of the party.
What Mr.. Leffingwell had to say
yesterday about his existence under a
low sun and in perpetual night is the
last chapter of the Mikkelsen-Letling-
well expedition, heretofore untold.
Before the others left we all had
pitched in and built a cabin on Flax
nan Island out of part OF the lining OF
the ship which has been rendered use
less. 1t wasn't much of cabin, but 1t
lid very well. There We're cracks IN
it., as | discovered later when the
winter wind-and this Arctic variety Is
the last word on winds-beSan to ZIP
over the ice and circulate through the
cabin.
Il was alone part of the time and the
rest of my stay there was enlivened, II
YOU could call it by that term, by the
presence first of a native family Of !Is-
.limos and later by two white pros
occtors. who had been working about
Gfty miles to the eastward. These pros
sectors were a queer pair; they had
been working all the streams there
aboutS. even as far as the mouth OF
the Frazer River and they hadn't found
mere than a color Of placer gold in all
heir experience. But they re tiere yet
md [ don't doubt that they will die
here. still hunting for gold.
IL spent seven months In the heid III
9O7 and six months in 1905. / had two
lhingS | wanted to dO-to make map
II the country. as correct as possible
md to make a geological survey Of the
strip of land frort the coast back TO
he mountains composing the Arctic
Iukon divide In mapping the coun-
;rv | haze as precedent only the very
vague and almost totally incorrect
.harts made by the Franklin party and
,ther explorers Of the early nineteenth
century. So erroneous were these maps
that in several instances l found noun
ta:nS marked at 1000 feet attltuue
which were according to my measure
ncnts 1000 or 10000 feet high.
THAT is a weird country. In the brief
months of SIMMER it is SHOW free save
ior the glaciers at the heads Of several
f the eight or ten rivers that flow from
the mountain watershed down to the
sea. There is no timber on the side OF
th,. mountains save the Scrubby VIII