Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/509

Rh became captain in 1886. Detailed for duty in the Signal Corps, between 1871 and 1880, he became expert as a forecaster of the weather, established the danger (flood) lines of the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and other rivers; he also constructed and operated two extensive systems of military telegraph lines, one of 1200 miles, covering the Indian and Mexican frontiers of Texas; the other 800 miles through Indian country, in Dakota and Montana.

In 1881 he organized and led the United States Arctic expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, for scientific observations, the most northern of the thirteen circumpolar stations established by eleven nations in accordance with the recommendation of the Hamburg Geographical Congress of 1879, under the plan of Lieutenant Weyprecht, Austrian navy. Lieutenant Greely, with twenty-five men, sailing from St. John, Newfoundland, in the Proteus, landed on the shore of Discovery Harbor, Grinnell Land, 81° 44' N., August 12, 1881, with supplies for three years and a portable house. The ship returning, the party began its scientific and geographical labors, which lasted uninterruptedly two years. In sledge journeys entailing 3,000 miles of polar travel, explorations were made that covered three and one-half degrees of latitude and forty-five degrees of longitude, one-eighth of the way around the earth above the 80th parallel. Grinnell Land was crossed to the western polar ocean, the interior surveyed and its extraordinary physical geography determined, partly ice-capped, partly glacial lakes surrounded by vigorous vegetation. Lieutenant James Booth Lockwood, Sergeant David Legge Brainard and Eskimo Jens passed the northern end of Greenland, and, discovering a new land, traversed one hundred miles of its coasts. May 13, 1882, they reached latitude 83° 24' N., longitude 40° 46' W., the highest latitude ever attained up to that time.

The supply ships failed to reach Lieutenant Greely either in 1882 or 1883, and in the latter year the steamer Proteus, passing Cape Sabine, without establishing the promised depot of supplies, was crushed by ice. Her crew, taking all available food, retreated in the U. S. S. Yantic, leaving a record promising prompt relief. In obedience to his original orders, Greely started south August 9, 1883, and after a boat journey of 400 miles under difficult conditions of ice and weather reached Cape Sabine, September 29. He had brought to the appointed rendezvous his records complete, with every man in health, and had one month's provisions. Finding the record of the