Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/183

Rh  in 1871. Leigh Smith's observations were some of the earliest, and were most important; but, owing to his modesty, they have not been taken sufficient notice of either in Britain or abroad; Scandinavian oceanographical investigators have been especially remiss in this direction. "Honour where honour is due!" so we wish here to honour this gallant Arctic explorer—the hero of five Arctic voyages, the discoverer and cartographer of the western half of Franz Josef Land, the most remarkable leader of a band of men, whose ship was crushed in the ice off Franz Josef Land and went down in a quarter of an hour. Leigh Smith, most ably supported by Dr. W. H. Neale, afterwards wintered with his twenty-five men in an improvised hut with practically no food but bear and walrus, and during the following summer effected his own relief by conducting those twenty-five men—loyal because of their trust in him and love for him—in open boats among the Polar pack to Novaya Zemlya over a distance of 500 miles during six weeks. And, let all Scandinavian ocean physicists especially remember, that Leigh Smith was the saviour of Baron Nordenskjold's expedition of 1872–73 from starvation and death in the north of Spitsbergen, and by his good mapping the able guide of Nansen and Johansen in the last lap of their remarkable journey across the Polar Basin.