resist any ice she should meet. His journal (Vol. I., p. 116) clearly states his object: "September 6, Saturday. This is a glorious country to learn patience in. I am hoping and praying to be able to get the ship into Herald Island to make winter quarters.”

This statement is in accordance with remarks made on former occasions by Captain De Long, to the effect that the drifting pack was really the last place in which a ship should be put, for then all command over her movements is given up to the ice. The season of 1879 appeared very unfavorable, though the state of the ice to the eastward of our position in the vicinity of Point Barrow was not known to us. By the courtesy of Mr. George Kennan, in June, 1882, I received a copy of the following statement of Captain Barnes, of the whaling barque Sea Breeze, who was the last man to see the Jeannette before she entered the ice :

"When we reached longitude 170°40′ W. we found the ice trending to the NNW., and during the afternoon of September 2 we steered to the NNW. with a fresh SSE. wind. At 9 that evening we saw the topmasts of a vessel to the westward of us heading north. When it became dark we shortened sail and lay aback till light, then kept away to NNW. When it became quite light, at half-past three o'clock, a sail was seen a few miles ahead, and she was soon made out to be a steamer under sail steering about north. The weather, which had been fine, now began to be foggy, with snow, and we found that we were getting into a bight in the ice, with scattering cakes all around, so at 6 A. M. we luffed to the wind under short sail to await clear weather. At that time the steamer was perhaps six miles north of us. Shortly after the fog settled down and shut her in from our sight, but twice during the forenoon it cleared a little and we saw her close-hauled first on one and then on the other tack. In the afternoon it became very thick and remained so for twenty-four hours. During the fogs I worked a little to the westward, over to the packice, and when, on the following day, I headed to the eastward, we soon ran into clear weather and the steamer had gone out of sight. I imagine that he had the clear weather some hours earlier than we did. We last saw the vessel that must have been the Jeannette about 11 A. M., September 3, about 50 miles SW. of Herald Island. In a day or two afterwards the other whalers began to arrive from Icy Cape, and some of them crowded up towards the island, then well in sight, as close as possible. Two of them saw what appeared to them to be the smoke of a steamer in towards the island. In a

short time the ice to the east of this open space began to close in upon the western pack, and we whalemen had to run 50 miles further south and to the east, where we began to see whales, and so did not get near Herald Island again till near the end of September."

Now let us turn to Captain De Long's journal for September 3, 1879 (Vol. I., p. 113). "At daylight the weather became thick and foggy. Sighted a barque to the southeast under full sail. Had her in sight for three hours, when we lost her in the fog. At her nearest she was four miles distant, and we were too anxious about finding a decent opening in the pack to run down and speak her."

The Jeannette was boldly put into the ice and worked up a lead until 3.10 P. M., when the weather was so thick and the ice so closely packed that she was made fast to a floe to await clear weather. The pack surrounding us seemed to have a uniform thickness of about seven feet, two feet being above water. It is somewhat hummocky, but I do not observe any hummock greater in height than six or seven feet. New ice made around the ship during the night, etc. Sounds as of surf heard to the southeast, indicating open water in that direction."*

About 4 P. M. on the 4th of September the Jeannette was about 40 miles east-southeast (true) from Herald Island, which was in sight, and greatly distorted by refraction. On the 5th she encountered pack-ice "from 10 to 15 feet in thickness," and the following day, September 6th, she struggled in the ice and made a few miles towards the island, so that at the end of this final effort she was doubtless within thirty miles of it, and bearing due east from the center of the island. The weather was so thick that observations and bearings could not be taken.

In this connection the log of the whaling barque Coral is very interesting and significant. "September 6, 1879. Fresh breezes from NNE. and NE.; ship under easy sail, working to the northward and eastward in leads of water as yesterday. Herald Island in sight about 30 miles distant. Find a current setting to the northward. Twenty vessels in sight. Heard that Bennett's steamer (the Jeannette) was seen by the Sea Breeze three or four days ago, steering to the northward." From this statement it appears that twenty-one vessels were in close proximity to the Jeannette when she cast her lot with the drifting pack. When the whale-ships returned to San Francisco the news was given out that the Jeannette was last

* De Long's Journal.

seen near Herald Island on September 6, 1879, and her fate was wrapt in mystery until despatches from Siberia about January 1, 1882, announced the presence of survivors at the mouth of the Lena. The salient features of the experience of the Jeannette expedition are doubtless well known to the reader, but I shall briefly draw attention to certain details that have peculiar interest.

"On October 10, 1879, the whale-ships Mount Wollaston, Captain Nye, and Vigilant, Captain Smithers, were last seen by Captain Bauldry, of the Helen Mar, in latitude 71° 50' N. and longitude 173° 45′ W., in a narrow channel of open water. The Helen Mar barely escaped being frozen in by crowding on sail and forcing her way through the rapidly forming new ice. In all probability the two vessels which did not escape were frozen in then and there and never got out of the pack."*

From a careful study of the Jeannette's drift from September 6 till October 10, taken from the journal of Captain De Long, I find that she was very near the position accredited to the Helen Mar on October 10, and was therefore in the vicinity of the two whale-ships beset in the ice. The range of view from the "crow's-nest" of the Jeannette was twelve miles for an object situated on the horizon. There is definite evidence that the two whale-ships never got free from the ice and that their crews perished. "In November, 1880,

one of the whale-ships came ashore on the northern coast of Siberia near Cape North (Svernoi-stove), and was prevented from sinking by the ice which still encircled her. Her crew had disappeared except the few who lay where they had perished, and it is probable that the wreck was that of the Vigilant. Another wreck was reported to have come ashore further west on the same coast, but the report does not seem to have been definitely confirmed."

Prof. Dall says: "We do not know, of course, what had been the wanderings of the hulk before she had stranded, but the resultant of her drift for one year was about 200 miles in a SW. (true) direction. This is in the direction of the prevalent winds (NE.) in this region, which, as has been previously pointed out, govern the motion of the ice much more than the currents; but it is also evident that no such overmastering current as has been claimed for this region could have been experienced by this vessel." The above was written before the experience of the Jeannette was fully known. From it and some other considerations it seems most probable that the two whale-ships

* From the work of Prof. W. H. Dall on the Currents of Bering Sea.

did not drift to the SW. nor pass between Herald and Wrangell Islands, which are only thirty miles apart. If such had been the case it is more than likely that those islands would have been visited, records deposited, and signals erected to attract the attention of whalers, who frequent the vicinity and occasionally visit Herald Island. In the two seasons following both islands were visited by the Corwin and the Rodgers, and no traces were found.

As the whale-ships were in the vicinity of the Jeannette on October 10, 1879, when all three were drifting with the ice, it is very probable that all had similar experiences during the first six months. The Jeannette drifted back and forth over the 180° meridian in a locality north of Wrangell Island, where currents seemed to meet, and not until more than a year of such erratic movements did she take up a continuous drift to the northwest. Doubtless the whale-ships were involved in the same conflicting currents, and a few miles difference in position from the Jeannette might have given the mastery to the SW. current, or the ships might have been carried beyond Wrangell Island and then to the SE., reaching the vicinity of Cape North in a little more than one year. The information given by the natives and the marking on the harpoons show conclusively that the wreck seen off the Siberian coast was that of the Vigilant.

Let us return to the fortunes of the Jeannette and see how widely they differed from those of the whale-ships beset in the same locality. After making many gyrations and erratic movements north of Herald and Wrangell Islands in the variable currents, the Jeannette finally crossed the 180th meridian to the westward and took up a continuous drift to the northwestward. She had made a zig-zag course for nearly sixteen months, often doubling on her track, and had traversed about 1300 miles, though making good a resultant of only 220 miles to the northwest of the place where she was imprisoned. The outlook for 1881 seemed more encouraging, for the water was deepening and the drift becoming more uniform in one direction, while the jarring of the ship and the portentous ice movements almost ceased until spring came.

The journal for January, 1881, shows that the prevailing winds were between S. by E. and E. (true), and that it was the most windy month up to that time. The drift for the month was 99 miles NW. by W., which, combined with the increase of soundings, made us hope that we were in the influence of a definite current and would no longer be subjected to the tantalizing delays caused by conflicting

currents and ice blockades in shallow waters. Occasionally the ship's course would be deflected to the NE., and the water deepening very rapidly, would revive Captain De Long's hopes for reaching Atlantic waters by way of Smith Sound or to the eastward of Greenland.

February 28, 1881, he writes that he still hopes to be pushed to the NE. by the outflow of the great Siberian rivers.

March 21, 1881. "Soundings in 68 fathoms and an indicated slight drift to NW. Every time we go NE. we deepen our water, and shoal it again when we go NW." From March 16 to April 13 the soundings increased from 60 to 85 fathoms, and then commenced to decrease the drift during the 28 days being 54 miles N., 28° W. On April 21 the soundings showed 81 fathoms, and on the 25th only 35 fathoms, which was due to a strong east gale.

The greatest drift was recorded April 25, 1881, forty-seven miles to the WNW. in four days. The resultant drift of the Jeannette during the last five and a half months that she was afloat amounted to 400 miles N., 60° W., or an average of 24 miles per day.

I shall not detain the reader with the details of that terrible experience, drifting in the pack for twenty-one wearisome months, nor of the remarkable struggle for life during the retreat from the crushed and sunken ship to the distant and inhospitable Lena Delta. It was a prolonged and emphasized repetition of history.

The similarity of our experience to that of the Tegetthoff is striking, though ours was greatly intensified by the tragic events of the Lena Delta. The eloquent words of Lieutenant Payer might have been as aptly used by us: Happy it is for men that inextinguishable hope enables them to endure all the vicissitudes of fate which are to test their powers of endurance, and that they can never see as at a glance the long series of disappointments in store for them. We must have been filled with despair had we known that evening that we were henceforth doomed to obey the caprices of the ice; that the ship would never float again on the waters of the sea; that all the expectations with which our friends but a few hours before saw the Tegetthoff steam away to the north were now crushed; that we were, in fact, no longer discoverers, but passengers against our will in the ice. From day to day we hoped for the hour of our deliverance. At first we expected it hourly, then daily; then from week to week; then at the seasons of the year and changes of the weather; then in the chances of new years! But that hour never came yet the light of hope, which supports man in all his sufferings