BOOKS.
FRIDTJOF NANSEN'S "FARTHEST NORTH."* THE charm of Dr. Nansen's personality, the reflection in his daring of the old Viking spirit, the glamour that imagination and hero-worship have thrown round the lion of a London season, may possibly tend to make us take him too much upon trust—to prevent us from concerning ourselves too closely with what exactly is his claim to so unique an honour of recognition as that which, in the thoughts of Polar experts, sets him by himself. This would be unfair to him, and also our own loss. Bat let us first trace his story as it reveals itself in the two beautiful volumes that Messrs. Constable have just produced.
Years ago, before even the first crossing of Greenland, Nansen had begun pondering over the North Polar problem. He studied carefully the records by explorers of what they had done, of where they had failed and why. He knew the full significance of the depressing influence of the winter night, of the terror of scurvy which no expedition had escaped, of the south-moving ice which had defeated Parry, of Nares's impregnable, palwocrystic sea. The first he would defeat with electric light, the second with better-chosen food, the last two he would avoid. For he should go neither north from Spitsbergen, nor north through Davis Strait. Every one knows now of his conviction, based upon Siberian relics found at Julianehaab—timber such as Siberian larch and Norway spruce, wreckage from the ill-fated 'Jeannette '—with other evidence, that a current flows from the New Siberian Islands north-west across the Polar area to the Greenland coast. The theory was not his own, it was Professor Mohn's, of Christiania ; bat Nansen believed it to be just, and it deter- mined his resolution. He would have a small ship built strongly enough to resist ice-pressure, and voyaging north- east to the New Siberian Islands, would there hit the current which is known to have taken the ' Jeannette ' north-west until she foundered, would then run the ship into the ice, and with it drift across the Polar area till he found the Greenland coast. He laid his scheme before the Geographical Society of Christiania in 1890; he laid it before our own in 1892. In Norway it met with a better reception than here. For Arctic experts in England, out of the very admiration they felt for the genius and enthusiasm that had evolved so daring a schema, felt it their duty to utter grave warnings against the remote chances of its success. But the money was subscribed, and the work went forward. A ship- of about four hundred tons gross, with a hull in which layer upon layer of varied material was laid till it was from 24 in. to 28 in. in thickness, and strengthened prodigiously by inner stays, was constructed. This ship was of such a section that it was judged the ice would raise her • "Farthest North:" being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'From,' 1893-96, and of a Fifteen Months Stei7h Journey by Dr. Nansen and Lieutenant Johansen. with an Appendix by Otto Sverdrup, Captain of the 'From.' 2 vols. With many Illuitrations,16 Coloured Platen in Facsimile from Dr. Man- tel:en own Sketches, and with Maps. London : Archibald Conetable and Co. as it pressed. On Midsummer Day, 1893, the 'Frani,' fully provisioned for several years, and bearing twelve men besides the leader, steamed away from Lysaker by Christiania. By Tromso and Vardo she steamed or sailed, and north of the head of the White Sea, till they made Goose-Land on the Novaya Zemblya,n coast; then south, in spite of fog and drift-ice, till they came at last to Khabarova at the gates of the Kara Sea. Here they took dogs on board—thirty- four dogs provided by Baron Toll and brought from Berezoff, over tundra and through the Urals, for the draw- ing of the sleighs in case the 'Fram' must be abandoned and a journey made by land or ice. The 'Fram' pushed on again, finding a fair passage through the land water (i e., between the pack and the shore), Sverdrup, her captain, sighting a new island by the way, called " Sverdrup's Island" thereupon. They passed Actinia Bay, where the ' Vega ' under Nordenskiold had lain, and rounded at last Cape Chelyuskin, the most northerly point of the Old World; and then they fell among the walruses and so they got fresh meat. Finally, on September 25th, the 'Frani ' was frozen in in about 78:1° N. latitude, and in the same longitude as the most westerly of the New Siberian Islands. The rudder was shipped, and every preparation was made for the winter night. This is the close of the first scene.
The ' Fram ' began to drift, and Nansen remained on her for a year, five months and a half longer. The story of this time recalls Clough's beautiful lines :— " For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main."
That was it exactly,—on the whole, they drifted north and west. Often the wind would shift to the north-west, and then the 'Fram' went southwards ; but again it veered, blowing from south-east, and held so for days on end, and that was the prevailing quarter. It was a time of creeping slowly, of conquering, with months of interval, first one degree of latitude and then another; but it justified Nansen's belief in the general drift of the ice, though not the theory of the "current." A " current " due to the warm-water displace- ment by the great Northern rivers presupposes a shallow Polar sea. But on August 7th Nansen found a depth of 2 085 fathoms !
To those who have read the records of previous Arctic Expeditions, the story of the • Fram's ' winter night will come as a revelation almost passing belief. That her leader, with his weight of responsibility, should have experienced intense anxiety could not well be otherwise. But this apart, the whole is a marvellous picture of perfect content, of cheerful- ness, amusement, and active occupation. They played cards, they read from the library, they held athletic competitions. They were never in darkness, thanks to the moon and their electric light. They fitted up a windmill on the deck which drove the dynamo :— " We cleared up in the hold to make room for a joiner's work- shop down there ; our mechanical workshop we had in the engine- room. The smithy was first on deck and afterwards on the ice ; tinsmith's work was chiefly done in the chart-room, shoemaker's and sailmaker's and various odds of work in the saloon. And all these occupations were carried on with interest and activity during the rest of the expedition. There was nothing, from the most delicate instruments down to wooden aloes and axe-handles, that could not be made on board the 'Fram.' When we were found to be short of sounding-line a grand rope-walk was con- structed on the ice."
The behaviour of the ' Fram ' under ice-pressure was a triumphant vindication of Colin Archer, her designer's, genius, and of Nansen's faith in her :—
"The ice is restless, and has pressed a good deal to-day again. It begins with a gentle crack and moan along the side of the ship, which gradually sounds louder in every key. Now it is a high plaintive tone, now it is a grumble, now it is a snarl, and the ship gives a start up. The noise steadily grows till it is like all the pipes of an organ ; the ship trembles and shakes and rises by fite and starts, or is sometimes gently lifted" [she was once lifted loft.!] "There is a pleasant, comfortable feeling in sitting listening to all this uproar and knowing the strength of our ship. Many a one would have been crushed long ago. But outside the ice is ground against our ship's sides, the piles of broken-up floe are forced under her heavy invulnerable hull, and we lie as if in a bed."
They had many passages with bears ; Peter Henricksen was bitten in the side by one and drove it off with his lantern, but this same bear took three of the dogs, for it crept in among them on the deck unseen.
So the first winter wore away, the summer came and passed, and they were drifting still. Fall of deep interest as is the account of all this period, space compels us to pass it over and to come to the second winter, the point of anticlimax in this work. Nansen's resolution had now been taken to leave the 'Fraw,' and with dogs, boats, sleighs, and one companion to make a march for the Pole. The whole of this is admirably revealed,—his self-questionings upon the right or the wrong of it ; his consultations with Captain Sverdrup as they two walked out in the moonlight on the ice ; his doubts as to whom he should choose for a companion ; his rule of duty for those who should be left behind. That winter was one of constant work. Sleighs were made for the whole crew, should they be compelled to quit the ship. At the New Year it was very nearly being so. A great "pressure-ridge" fell upon the Fram.' Everything was carried out on to the ice, and momentarily it seemed that the 'Fram' must be abandoned. But this, too, passed, and the ordinary work went on. With his own hands Nansen made from bamboo and sail-cloth a " kayak " for himself, and a second was made for his companion.
The winter passed and the spring came, and after several false starts, at length on March 14th Nansen and Lieutenant Johansen, the companion he had finally chosen, with two "kayaks," packed each on its sleigh, and with twenty- eight dogs, left the ship for good and all. In the whole history of Arctic travel, we can recall nothing that at all touches this moment in, so to say, the pathos of its daring, not even when Parry and young Ross started north on their sleigh journey that memorable day from Hecla Cove. They pushed north till April 8th, when they were in 86° 13-6' N. latitude, Nansen's "farthest North." For here they were stayed by the same conditions which had stopped Parry and Markham before them,—the ice was moving south almost as. fast as they went north. With that Nansen set his face for Franz Josef Land, four hundred and fifty miles away. The genius of a Defoe could scarcely contrive a more absorbing story than we have in this second volume of the book. These two men, cut off from the faintest gleam of help from others, went on and on into the west, usually with sleighs over ice and hum- mocks, sometimes in kayaks over water lanes. One by one the dogs gave up and were killed for the others' food. They had adventures with bears, adventures with walruses, they had daily risks from blindness and freezing and storms, they fed on blood and blubber and inconceivable foods, they slept night after night in their sleeping-bags immersed in a "wet compress" as they thawed and dried their clothes upon their own bodies. They had to throw away the sleeping-bag, they had to throw away their very medicines that the load might be more light ; yet, except once, when Nansen had lumbago, they were never even momentarily ilL But it would not be fair to give all this part of the story away ; it is too wonderful, too fine. In the end they came to open water, and had to kill their last two dogs ; for then they took to their kayaks for good, and came at last to Franz Josef Land, forewarned by foxes and birds and especially by the Roseate Gull. The specimens of this species brought back by Nansen are only the second immature ones ever seen. They went into winter quarters on "Frederick Jackson Island," and slept and fed away the time, and in the spring they fell in with Mr. Jackson. The meeting between these two men—the coalblack, long-haired, wild-looking wanderer and the trim Englishman scented with soap—is now historic, as is also the return of Nansen and Johansen in the- ' Windward' to Norway.
Captain Sverdrup's appendix is not the least interesting part of the tale, for it deals with that continued drift of the- ' Fram ' which ended at last off North Spitsbergen and com- pleted the triumph of Nansen's scheme. Such is the meagre outline of an achievement which it is no exaggeration what- ever to characterise as Titanic and sublime.
That the problem which has taxed the thought of science the world over, that has enlisted the money and activities of successive centuries, that is surrounded with the sadness of accustomed tragedies and has defeated all, should have been solved "off his own bat," and without the loss of a life, or even sickness, by a young Norwegian, is almost unrealisable at. first. But as we read his book we begin to understand. His genius wins upon us with every page. Infinite attention to details and unfailing readiness of resource, limitless enthu- gleam and enduring faith in his purpose and his plan, a frame of iron and a lion's heart, it would have been almost strange if this man had failed. Six months ago a consensus of scientific opinion pointed to the North Pole as situate among an archipelago of islands set in a shallow sea, and the "Polar origin of life" was still a possible theory. We know now almost certainly that at the Pole there is a depth of ocean continuous with the Atlantic itself, and, almost as certainly, that land was never there.
We, of all nations, can afford to be generous to Dr. Nansen. Hudson, Baffin, Burrough, Davis, Parry, through these and many others we have a birthright in the Polar world. Nansen's point of new departure was the cumulative experience of those we sent before ; and if Markham now holds the record for England only, England may again hold it for the world.
Those who read The First Crossing of Greenland will need to be told nothing of Dr. Nansen's style. In this new book there are introspective passages which might perhaps have been left out, but they were born of infinite solitude, and so will be kindly met. The series of coloured reproductions of the explorer's water-colour sketches is not the least of the graces of these stately volumes. That such a work, excellently translated, exhaustively illustrated with maps and cross- references, and bearing yet no evidence of haste, should have been turned out exactly six months to a day after Dr. Nansen's return, is a really remarkable publishing feat.
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