Year: 1876

When the two vessels were last seen,
open water lay before them, and they
were bearing straight up northward for
Prudhoe Land and Cape Isabella. The
season was in all respects eminently
favorable, aid there was every reason
for hoping that a very high latitude
would be reached. Unfortunately, as
the recent voyage of the Pandora abun.
dainty demonstrates, there is nothing
more treachcrous than Arctic seas and


Arctic skies. In the morning there may
be a fresh rolling sea, without a CLINT or
ice, and watery sky stretching round
the whole circle of the horizon. BY the
afternoon the wind will spring up great
foes will drift steadily in, and before
night closes the vessel will be hopeless
ly beset. 1t is consequently possible that
Che Alert may have been stopped at Cape
Barrow, in latitude eighty degrees, or
even as far south as Cape Isabella and
Cadogan inlet. On the other hand


when we remember how Hall, IN the lit,
tie Polaris, a mere river steamer of small
power and i'll adapted for ice navigation,
with company, all told, of thirty men,
women and children, including eight
Esqnimaux, steamed up Smith sound and
LenDedy channel in one working season,
a distance OF two hundred and fifty miles,
we cannot but venture TO hope that Capt.
Mares may have been able to push the
Alert through the hitherto unexplored
waters Of Lincoln sea up to the shadowy
and far off Presidents Land, or even, it
may be, to the eighty-fifth parallel. The
Polaris, without the slightest let or
impcdiment, reached as high a latitude
as eighty-two degrees sixteen minutes
north, and at this point saw north
ward of her navigable sea with a
water sky. She was mere wooden
gunboat of three hundred and eighty
seven tons, and had been in no way
strengthened or specially fitted out
for her work while the Alert was
originally powerful vessel Of ,O45 tons,
and has been overhauled and fortified for
her encounters with the ice, and fur
nished with new and powerful engines
and boilers. We know from Mr.. La
mont's experience how steamer, if her
bows are properly ironed for the work,
can charge and crush her way through
the ice which would hopelessly stop the
progress of another vessel, and there is
consequently some reason for believing
that the sledging party, which must now
be well on its way, has possibly not got
more than four, or at the outside five,
degrees to cover before it reaches that
extreme apex of the earth which is, to
use Mr.. Markham's words, ga spot
whe the suns altitude is equal TO its
declination, and where bearings have to
be taken by reference TO time and not to
the Magnet" but which yet is the u
TINA Thute of all artic discovery and the
express goal OF the present expedition


Remembering the achievements of
Parry in 1927, when he left his vessel
on the Spitzbergen coast and made his
way over the great polar pack as far as
eighty-twO degrees forty five minutes
north. we can see no cause to despair of
the success of the sledging parties which
at this moment should be pressing north
ward. Parry, it may he recollected,
found that the vast sea of ice over which
he was travelling drifted to the south
faster than his sledgcs were able to move
toward the north He travelled, as far
as actual distance went, one hundred and
seventy-two miles from his vessel, but
near the end of his journey he perceived
that he was losing more by the southerly
movement than he was gaining by the
days work. To this difficulty the pre-
sent sledge company are not like to be
exposed. In all probability the ice be-
tween Lincoln sea and the pole is no por


ton of the polar pack, and its southwark
drift, even if perceptiblc, will not prove
a serious hindrancc-Londo 7eigrdph