Only a few attempts have been made through Bering Strait. The first was Cook's, in 1776; the last the Jeannette expedition (1879-81), under De Long, a lieutenant in the American navy. Scarcely anywhere have polar travellers been so hopelessly blocked by ice in comparatively low latitudes. The last-named expedition, however, had a most important bearing upon my own. As De Long himself says in a letter to James Gordon Bennett, who supplied the funds for the expedition, he was of opinion that there were three routes to choose from--Smith Sound, the east coast of Greenland, or Bering Strait; but he put most faith in the last, and this was ultimately selected. His main reason for this choice was his belief in a Japanese current running north through Bering Strait and onward along the east coast of Wrangel Land, which was believed to extend far to the north. It was urged that the warm water of this current would open a way along that coast, possibly up to the Pole. The experience of whalers showed that whenever their vessels were set fast in the ice here they drifted northwards; hence it was concluded that the current generally set in that direction. "This will help explorers," says De Long, "to reach high latitudes, but at the same time will make it more difficult for them to come back." The truth of these words he himself was to learn by bitter experience. The Jeannette stuck fast in the ice on September 6th, 1879, in 71° 35' north latitude and 175° 6' east longitude, southeast of Wrangel Land--which, however, proved to be a small island--and drifted with the ice in a west-northwesterly direction for two years, when it foundered, June 12th, 1881, north of the New Siberian Islands, in 77° 15' north latitude and 154° 59' east longitude. Everywhere, then, has the ice stopped the progress of mankind towards the north. In two cases only have ice-bound vessels drifted in a northerly direction--in the case of the Tegethoff and the Jeannette--while most of the others have been carried away from their goal by masses of ice drifting southward. On reading the history of Arctic explorations, it early occurred to me that it would be very difficult to wrest the secrets from these unknown regions of ice by adopting the routes and the methods hitherto employed. But where did the proper route lie?