The Jackson-Harmsworth Polar Expedition

IT is about seven years ago that, after spending eight months in the Arctic, I made up my mind to revisit and explore that alluring part of the earth. It is nearly a year and a half ago that I first published my plans for an expedition to the unknowrl Polar area lying north of Franz Josef Land. Of what I was able to do last winter on the shores of the Kara and Barents Seas you may have heard a little; and to-day I aln glad to be able to say that I am on the evc of leading a fully-equipped expedition to the North. Of the physical yeography of Franz Josef Land you have only recently read a summary. My friend 3¢r. Arthur Montefiore, a Fellow of the Geological Society and of ours, wrote in the June issue of youl Journal a " Note " on the geography of Franz Josef Land, in which he brought together and put into a small compass a mass of detail which may be fotlnd in the pages of Payer. Some information, too, he gathered from the notes that appeared in the old 'Proceedings' of Mr. Leigh Smith's yachting voyages to that country. It is unnecessary, therefore, for me to make more than passing references to this branch of the subject; and I will proceed at once to the main considerations which induced me to select Franz Josef Land as the firKst objective of my expedition. These considerations took the form of distinct advantages, and are four in number: --I. The accessibility of Franz Josef Land late in the summer when approached along the meridian of 45° E. , or some meridian between that of 45° E. and 50° E. This accessibility has been proved, in my opinion, by the voyages of Mr. Leigh Smith and the little Dutch ship the TVillem Barents. II. The northward extension of Franz Jovef Land to a latitude as high as 82 5° at C. Fligely, and some twenty or so miles further if we accept Pa;er's view that G. Sherard Osborne is continuous with tllat portion of the country he called Prince Rodolf's Land. The long stretch of terra firma forms a safe route for advance and retreat, and provides all we need in he way of sites for our depats and cairns. III. Thc still further extension to the north of what, perhaps, I should call thc Franz Josef Land group. Standing on C. Flige], Payer saw, 60 or 70 miles to the north, the high outlines of an icecovered land of apparently large e2rtent.