Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/187

 Polar Explorations 169 H. Gilder wrote Ice Pack and Tundra (1883) on the same subject. A Polar expedition which accomplished its important work and yet met with disaster was that of Greely, which co-operated with eight other international stations meteorologically. His disaster was due to inefficiency in the efforts of those at home to get the annual supplies through. One of Greely's assist- ants, Lieutenant Lockwood, reached the highest latitude up to that time: 83° 24'. Lockwood's journal of his trip farthest north is given in vol. I of the Report mentioned below and also is described in The White World (1902) by David L. Brainard, now General Brainard, who accompanied Lockwood, under the title "Farthest North with Greely," an excellent account of this memorable effort. Charles Lanman in Farthest North (1885) tells the life story of Lieutenant Lockwood, who died later at winter quarters of starvation. This was the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, but it is seldom referred to except as the Greely Expedition. A full account is given in Report on the Proceedings of the United States Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, Grinnell Land, by A. W. Greely ( 1 888) ; and Greely also wrote Three Years of Arctic Service (1886). Winfield S. Schley, afterwards Admiral Schley, commanded the second re- lief expedition, and it was his energy and determination which put his ships at Cape Sabine just in time to save the survivors, who had to be carried on board. Schley made a report pub- lished in House Documents of the 49th Congress and wrote, with J. R. Soley, The Rescue of Greely (1885). Evelyn B. Baldwin led the first Ziegler expedition and tells the story in The Search for the North Pole (1896), and Anthony Fiala headed the second Ziegler expedition, recorded in his Fighting the Polar Ice (1906). Not only was the outer approach towards the Pole hazard- ous and difficult, but the mathematical point lay in the midst of a wide frozen ocean with hundreds of miles of barrier ice constantly on the move and frequently splitting into broad "leads" of open water, interposing forbidding obstacles to progress or to return. One American had set his heart on reaching this "inaccessible spot," and after twenty-three years of amazing perseverance, Robert Edwin Peary succeeded, 6 April, 1909, in placing the flag of the United States at the