In the late spring of 1896 Andrée and a party of scientists and workmen, including two friends who had decided to make the desperate essay with him, sailed from Gothenburg in the little steamer _Virgo_ for Spitzbergen. They had on board a balloon made by Lachambre of Paris, the foremost designer of that day, with a gas capacity of more than six thousand cubic meters, the largest bag which had been constructed at that time. The gas container was of triple varnished silk, and there was a specially designed gondola, whose details are of surviving interest. This compartment, in which three men hoped to live through such temperatures as might be expected in the air currents fanning the North Pole, was made of wicker, covered outside with a rubberized canvas and inside with oiled silk, these two substances being considered capable of making the big basket practically air and weather proof. The gondola was about six and one half feet long inside and about five feet wide. It contained a sleeping mattress for one, with provision for a second bed, though the plan was to keep two of the three men constantly on deck, while the third took two hours of sleep at a time. This basket was covered, to be sure, the top having a trapdoor or hatch, through which the voyagers could come up to the deck. Inside and outside the gondola, in various pockets and bags, were fixed the provisions and supplies, while the various nautical instruments, cameras, surveyors’ paraphernalia, and a patent cookstove hung among the ropes, or were fixed to the gondola by specially invented devices. Everything had been thought out in great detail, most of the apparatus had been designed for the occasion, and Andrée had enjoyed the benefit of advice from all the foremost flyers and scientific theorists in Europe. His was anything but a haphazard or ill-prepared expedition. Toward the end of June, Andrée and his party landed on the obscure Danes Island in the Spitzbergen group, where he found a log cottage built some years before by Pike, the British bear and walrus hunter. Here a large octagonal building was thrown up to shelter the balloon from the fierce winds, while it was being inflated. Finally all was ready, the chemicals were put to work, and the great bag slowly filled with hydrogen. Everything was in shape for flying by the middle of July, but now various mishaps and delays came to foil the eager adventurer, the worst of all being the fact that the wind steadily refused to blow from the south, as Andrée had anticipated. He waited until the middle of August, and then returned somewhat crestfallen to Sweden, where he was received with that ready and heartbreaking ridicule which often greets a brave man set out upon some undertaking whose difficulties and perils the fickle and callous public little understands.