Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/174

170 Ross and his nephew took a number of soundings in a thoroughly systematic way. During recent years we have a good line of soundings across the Polar Basin taken by Nansen and Sverdrup during the drift of the Fram. The author took a large number of soundings during 1896, 1897 and 1898, on board the Windward and on board Major Andrew Coats' yacht Blencathra in the Barents Sea, from the shores of Europe to Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land, and between Hope Island and Spitsbergen almost up to Wiche Islands. The Prince of Monaco and the Duke of Orleans have made series of interesting and important soundings between Spitsbergen and Greenland as far as 81° N., while Baron Nordenskjold, Leigh Smith and Makarof have sounded to the north of Spitsbergen. Amundsen, Sverdrup and others have taken soundings in the straits and sounds of the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The most important work done by Peary during his last expedition was a series of soundings along his route to the North Pole which indicated more or less the conformation of the Polar Basin according to ideas established largely by Nansen's soundings. But it is most unfortunate that in the most important of these soundings Peary did not actually touch bottom. It would have been of more interest than any