The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-05-31
RASMUSSEN MAKES IMPORTANT EPOCH
 IN EXPLORATION

Copenhagen, Denmark, May 31.-By
 his discovery that the so-called Peary
 Channel at. the Northern end of
 Greenland does not exist. Knud Ras-
 mussen, the young Danish explorer,
 has solved a problem of great impor-
 tance to the geogra phicaI world. Be
 sides this. the explorer and his com
 panions mapped the region connecting
 Greenland with Perry Land, and made
 fresh discoveries of land which they
 baptized Christian x Land.
 Additional details have been receiv
 ed here of the brilliant feats of the
 Danish expedition which has just ter
 minated a scientific task that has at
 tracted many explorers since Nansen,
 by crossing the icefelds of the inter for of Greenland, proving that only unusual endurance and hardness were
 required for successful exploration in those regions.
 Knud Rasmussen started on his ex- petition on July 10, 1910, when he embarked with his companions on the schooner Motor and sailed from Co., penhagen to the Melville coast in Northwestern Greenland.
 Rasmussen was peculiarly well fit ted for the task he had undertaken. He is a native of Greenland, having l been born at Jacobs Harbor in 1879. ! His father was a Danish clergyman. | who was thoroughly acquainted with l a number of Eskimo dialects, and his l mother was a pure-blooded Eskimo. knud himself spoke Eskimo from his 1 infancy and later studied the language i philologica1Iy so that he knows it at 1 the present day perhaps better than any other person
 Knud Rasmussen has been, throughout his life intensely interested l in exploration, and a youth under took voyages in Scandinavia, the Fa- roe Islands and Iceland, all the time l. ircr Soio aJac When this expedition reached the Greenland coast the explorer estab- 1ished a station there for the benefit of the scattered Eskimo population. The expedition was equipped with sufficient provisions to last six years, and it was part of Rasm ussen's plan to estab1ish~a commercial depot near Cape York, on the northern side of Melville Bay, where there is a, com paratively numerous tribe of Polar Els kimos, who hitherto had been virtu- ally out of communic ton with the civilized world This was to be un-
 der the auspices of the Danish Royal Committee for the privileged com
 merce of Greenland.
 According to the teIegrams receiv- ed from Thorshavn in the Farce Isl ands, Rasmussen not only succeeded in carrying out these plans, but also the second part of his program, which l included the ethnographica1 and eth
 nologicaT exploration of the practical ly unknown regions of Northern Greenland. It was Rasmussen's in teition to map Melville Bay, to cross the glaciers of the inland icef1eIds, to explore the "Peary Channel and also Crocker Island, discovered by Peary in latitude 85.
 MT. Freuchen, another Dane, was the principal companion of Rasmus l sen in his explorations and on his 70 Greenland continent, sharing with him in the honor of deciding the question of he exisence of he ttPeary Channel When Peary made his discoveries at the northern end of Greenland dur 1 ing his voyages in 1S91-1892 and 1s93- l 95, and when he explored Indepen- 1 dence Bay, which stretched from east l to west, he was inclined to believe l that the bay continued farther west 1 ward and terminated it's course in the
 supposed "Peary Channel" He bap- l tized the final point of his attainment Navy Cliff East of this prom ontory 1 a huge glacier, the Academy pro ] jected into the sound
 l During his voyage of 1S981902 Peary reached the northern point of Peary Land in latitude 83.39, which was the limit of Greenland proper. He and most of the Polar explorers who followed him believed Peary Land to i be an island separated from the con | tinent by Independence Bay and ''Peary Channel"
 Some doubt still existed as to this, and other explorers made efforts to determine the facts. MT. Koch, of 1 the Danish expedition, reached Cape Bridgman in 1907, following up i Peary's explorations. In the mean time, however. the Danes, Mylius, l Erichsen, Hoegh, Hagen and Bropd- l lund, had lost their lives in trying to l esta bIish inc existence or nOn-exiSf-
 ence of the "Peary Channel" Einar Mikkelson also tried to pene- 1 trate the region while he was search ing for the diaries of his head com patriot Mylius Erichsen, but had not
 sufficient time to attain his goal and l narrowly escaped death.
 The news of Knud Rasmussen's dis
 covery has settled once for all this