"As to the indestructible ship," he says, "it is certainly a most desirable thing for Dr. Nansen." His meaning, however, is that it cannot be built. "Dr. Nansen appears to believe that the question of building on such lines as will give the ship the greatest power of resistance to the pressure of the ice-floe has not been thoroughly and satisfactorily solved, although hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent for this end by the seal and whaling companies of Scotland and Newfoundland." As an authority he quotes Melville, and says "every Arctic navigator of experience agrees with Melville's dictum that even if built solid a vessel could not withstand the ice-pressure of the heavy polar pack." To my assertion that the ice along the "Siberian coast is comparatively thin, 7 to 10 feet," he again quotes Melville, who speaks of ice "50 feet high, etc." (something we did not discover, by-the-way, during the whole of our voyage). After giving still more conclusive proofs that the Fram must inevitably go to the bottom as soon as it should be exposed to the pressure of the ice, he goes on to refer to the impossibility of drifting in the ice with boats. And he concludes his article with the remark that "Arctic exploration is sufficiently credited with rashness and danger in its legitimate and sanctioned methods, without bearing the burden of Dr. Nansen's illogical scheme of self-destruction." From an article Greely wrote after our return home, in Harper's Weekly for September 19th, 1896, he appears to have come to the conclusion that the Jeannette relics were genuine and that the assumption of their drift may have been correct, mentioning "Melville, Dall, and others" as not believing in them. He allows also that my scheme has been carried out in spite of what he had said. This time he concludes the article as follows: "In contrasting the expeditions of De Long and Nansen, it is necessary to allude to the single blemish that mars the otherwise magnificent career of Nansen, who deliberately quitted his comrades on the ice-beset ship hundreds of miles from any known land, with the intention of not returning, but, in his own reported words, 'to go to Spitzbergen, where he felt certain to find a ship,' 600 miles away. De Long and Ambler had such a sense of honor that they sacrificed their lives rather than separate themselves from a dying man, whom their presence could not save. It passes comprehension how Nansen could have thus deviated from the most sacred duty devolving on the commander of a naval expedition. The safe return of brave Captain Sverdrup with the Fram does not excuse Nansen. Sverdrup's consistency, courage, and skill in holding fast to the Fram and bringing his comrades back to Norway will win for him, in the minds of many, laurels even brighter than those of his able and accomplished chief."