The _Discovery_ had also sent out Lieutenant Archer to survey the fiord named after him, which opens out into Lady Franklin Bay; and Lieutenant Fulford had crossed the channel and explored Petermann Fiord. In fact, the expedition's geographical work was of great extent, as was the other scientific work, the most important, as usual, being that done from the ships. Among the odds and ends easily rememberable was the haul of the seine in Sheridan Lake, near the wintering station of the _Alert_, which yielded forty-three char (_Salmo arcturus_), the most northerly freshwater fish; the finding of the nest of the sanderling (_Calidris arenarius_), now in the Natural History Museum, in 82° 33´, and the discovery of the nesting of the grey phalarope and the knot in the same neighbourhood; the thirty-feet seam of Miocene coal worked in Discovery Harbour; and the Eskimo relics at Cape Beechey, near the eighty-second parallel, which, in connection with the encampments on the opposite coast, suggested that there, at the narrowest part of Robeson Channel, had been a crossing place from shore to shore. On the 31st of July, 1876, the _Alert_ was again under steam after her long rest, and one of the most dangerous voyages on record began. The ships, of from five hundred to six hundred tons, were handled as if they were small tugs; blocked, beset, pressed on shore, Nares with consummate skill, constant watchfulness, and never-failing patience, brought them through. But they did not get out of Smith Sound until the 9th of September, and then it was against head winds in stormy weather amid icebergs innumerable that they were slowly worked southwards and homewards. [Illustration: BISHOP PAUL EGEDE] CHAPTER XIII GREENLAND Hans Egede—The house of Eric the Red—Nansen's crossing of Greenland—Nansen and Sverdrup row to Ny Herrnhut—Nordenskiöld's journeys—Berggren's discovery—Nordenskiöld on the inland ice—Glaciers and icebergs—Diatoms and whales—Edward Whymper's expedition—Greenland in Miocene times—Graah—Scoresby—Ryder—The _Germania_ and _Hansa_—The Duke of Orleans—The Eskimos of Clavering Island—Franz Josef Fiord—The drift of the _Hansa_—The Greely expedition—The International Polar stations—Voyage of the _Proteus_—Lockwood reaches 83° 24´—Greely's wagon—The Eskimo house at Lake Hazen—Greely Relief expeditions—The rescue of Greely—Peary—His journey to Independence Bay—His four years' expedition—Reaches 84° 17´—His Polar expedition of 1905—The _Roosevelt_—The voyage to Cape Sheridan—Plan of the northern advance—Peary reaches 87° 6´—Moxon's mariner.