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274 quite say with Mr. Philips, that "in all the world's history the story has no parallel." This story has already been told by different persons from different points of view; but by none who had a better right to tell it and from whom the world had a better right to ask for it than Engineer Melville, who after De Long's death was the titular commander of the expedition. The earlier part of the expedition, up to the crushing of the Jeannette by the ice, being already familiar, is but lightly dwelt upon. The real interest begins when the men took to the ice, and increases till the end of the search for De Long's party. The book abounds with incidents that help to realize what Arctic life really is. The constant imminence of its dangers was shown when the floe on which the party were encamped split through the center of De Long's tent; "and had it not been for the weight of the sleepers on either end of the rubber blanket those in the middle must inevitably have dropped into the sea." A strong picture of the straits to which men may be reduced for food appears in the observation that walrus-hide may have the solitary advantage over hemp for ropes, in that "upon a pinch it can be eaten. Indeed, fresh walrus-hide, roasted with the hair on, is toothsome at any time, and many members of our company feasted on it after consuming their rations of pemmican.'" We have views of what traveling on the ice is when we are told that the men did not mind having their toes protruding through their moccasins so long as the soles of their feet were clear of the ice, but they could not keep them clear; and in the incident of their finding—having, in order to keep all their things together, to go thirteen times over each mile—that, after marching from twenty-five to thirty miles a day for two weeks, they had been drifted back twenty-four miles. Finally, at the beginning of winter, on the 6th of August, they were able and glad to take to the sea, in three boats. They kept together till some time after the 10th of September, when they were separated in a furious storm, and one of the boats was never afterward heard from. It was agreed they should all endeavor to land at Cape Barkin, and meet there. How they landed, and what befell either of the two parties that survived the sea-voyage, are graphically told by Engineer Melville, from his own experiences and from the narratives of Nindeman and Noros and the notes left by Captain De Long.

The account of the Greely Relief Expedition is brief, but testifies to the value of Greely's work—that there is no one living competent to criticise his conduct of the expedition on which he was sent, "beyond affirming that he performed the greatest amount of scientific work possible at least expense, and made good his retreat from depot to depot, until he arrived at the point of safety, where our Government had promised to deposit supplies and have a vessel awaiting to carry him and his band away from the 'Land of Desolation.' "Not daunted by what he has seen and experienced of Arctic traveling, Mr. Melville has started again for the north pole, expecting to reach it, and to confirm a theory he has formed of the proper way of getting there. Believing that no vessel can penetrate the ice-barrier much beyond where explorers have gone, he figures to himself a firm or nearly firm ice-cap interspersed with frequent islands, covering the sea from the eighty-fifth parallel to the pole, and that a properly equipped expedition can cross this and return upon it, the whole distance both ways being only a hundred miles greater than his party traversed from the Jeannette to the Lena Delta; and he believes that the results to accrue from reaching the pole will more than pay for all that has been spent in other efforts.

association of gentlemen engaged in scientific investigation was formed in the spring of 1882, under the designation of the Society for Psychical Research, the object of which was stated in its prospectus to be to examine the nature and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon another, apart from any recognized mode of perception; the study of hypnotism, mesmeric trance, clairvoyance, and allied phenomena; a careful investigation of data regarding apparitions; and an inquiry into the phenomena commonly called spiritual. Among the members of this society were Lord Rayleigh, the Bishop of Carlisle,