The Alaska daily empire., 1914-12-30
PERRY STILL BELIEVES
 IN CR0CKERLAND

"It is almost an a1lom in Arctic exploration that one can never be entirely sure of what he sees until he has his foot on it," Admiral Robert E. Poary said in Washington recently, when informed that "dash" Of 125 miles by Donald B. NcAIllan across the ice from Cape Thomas Hubbard In search of Crocker Land had been fruitless, says the New York World.
 Gen Thomas IT, Hubbard, long one of the most active promoters Of Arc tice expeditions repeated almost the same phrase in his home at No. 16 West Fiftgeight street. New York, as Ehaying been repeatedly used by Perry in frequent conversations here on. the subject of Arctic sights.
 "It is impossible positively to ldenti- fy land in the Arctic Gen Hub bard quoted Peary "by Q distant view latitude produce optical illusions, and whatappears at a distance to be land may be due to mirage"
 Despatch 10 Museum
 Mir. MacMilian's report on his dash cannot arrive here for several months. The news of failure came to the American Museum of Natural History in a brief despatch which was picked up and forwarded by motor boat party on the way to Etah driven back by the ice
 This news said that MacMillan's dash occupied two months and he had returned to his base barely twen- ty-four hours before the ice on which he had been travelling was converted into a tmbline sea in which tho ex- plorer could not have lived had he been caught in it. It reported Mac Milan and all of his party well.
 Perhaps this ends for the time the search for continent that turned out to be a mirage. Crocker Land is the name given by Poary in 1906 to certain apparent mountainous heights which he reported having seen in the summer Of that year from land ele vations of 2,OO0 foet at Cape Thonas Hnbbard
 The scientists of the Geodetic Sur yey had written on probebleaexten- sive land areas in that region, basine their conclusions on the action of the tides.
 Various whalers had previously said they had actually called close to land there and a tribe of EsLimos spoke confidently of long visit there one year when some of their own people had been carried hither by adverse winds and frozen in for several months when tribc like themselves enter tained them
 Ease Of MaoMillan Trip.
 All of these data were behind the ntimation of the MacNillan trip, which started feom New York in July, 1913, to establish a base near Etah and to head for the promised con tnent last February.
 Stefansson had the same ambitious plan and the Canadian Government backed him in it. He was to approach Crocker Land from a different direc- ton. The last heard of him was in March of this year when he cult his ship the Karluck, and set out with three companions on long tramp toward his objective over the ice.I fields
 Tho statement from the American l Museum of Natural History through Edmund Otis Hoyey, was that Mac. Milan and Ensign Fitahugh Green engineer and physicist of the party set out together for the run across the frozen sea.
 "The trip out and back lasted two months and proved extremely peril ous' according to the museum re- port, as related by Mir. Hovey who Is one of the committee behind the expedition. "Thirty-eight leads were
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