The plan of the expedition was to spend the winter at Wrangel Land, and then to push on northward, if possible to the Pole. Unfortunately for De Long’s arrangements, however, the Wrangel Land of the geographers of the day had no real existence, and he was destined never to reach it. For over a century it had been held, on the strength of Chukche reports, that a vast continent existed to the north of Asia, which extended right across the Pole to Greenland. No less an authority than the great Petermann himself believed in it, and the reports of the American whaler, Thomas Long, who discovered Wrangel Land in 1867, and of other whalers who followed him, tended to confirm this theory, for the newly discovered land seemed to be of considerable extent. Accordingly, De Long had every reason to suppose that here he would find comfortable quarters for the winter. He was very soon to be disillusioned, however, for before he was within a hundred miles of the land, the _Jeannette_ was caught in the ice, and from that time onward her story bore a painful resemblance to that of the _Tegetthoff_, without any of its compensations. Drifted constantly westward by the ever-moving pack, now nipped till her seams almost sprang apart, now threatened with a terrible destruction by the frozen waves of ice which rolled down upon her, she was before long reduced to a most pitiable plight. Here is the description penned by her chief engineer, G. W. Melville, of an event which was of almost daily occurrence:— “It was observed that, during the continuance of the wind, the whole body of ice moved evenly before it; but, when it subsided, the mass that had been put in motion crowded and tumbled upon the far-off floes at rest, piling tumultuously upward in a manner terrific to behold. It was in one of these oppressive intervals succeeding a gale, when the roar and crash of the distant masses could be distinctly heard, that the floe in which the _Jeannette_ was embedded began splitting in all directions. The placid and almost level surface of ice suddenly heaved and swelled into great hills, buzzing and wheezing dolefully. Giant blocks pitched and rolled as though controlled by invisible hands; and the vast compressing bodies shrieked a shrill and horrible song that curdled the blood. On came the frozen waves, nearer and nearer. Seams ran and rattled across them with a thundering boom, while silent and awestruck, we watched their terrible progress. Sunk in an amphitheatre about five-eighths of a mile in diameter lay the ship, the bank of moving ice puffed in places to a height of 50 feet, gradually enclosing her on all sides. Preparations were made for her abandonment; but—what then? If the mighty circle continued to decrease, escape was hopeless, death inevitable. To think of clambering up the slippery sides of the rolling mass would be equal folly with an attempt to scale the falling waters of Niagara.”