By March they had reached a point near the crossing of the 70th meridian and 85th parallel, and were still fixed in the ice. Then Nansen, taking with him Lieutenant Johansen, started north by dog-sledges, in an attempt to reach the pole. They could take very few supplies of any sort, and how far north they would be able to travel must depend upon their ability to return, not to the _Fram_, which would drift on, but to the islands of Francis Joseph Land, far away south. The ice, bad at first, grew worse as they proceeded, being one long stretch of hummocks and jagged ditches, with now and then a lane of open water around which they would toil in misery only to find a worse one ahead. On April 7th it became certain that they must turn back. This was “farthest north,” indeed—just above the 86th degree, hardly 275 miles from the North Pole. Then it was a race against death by cold, or drowning, or starvation. One by one the dogs were killed to furnish food for the remainder. At last, after almost superhuman labors and thrilling escapes from freezing and drowning and the attacks of famished bears, they reached Francis Joseph Land, and spent a winter in a hut made out of stones, earth, and raw walrus hides. The next spring they plodded on, and by good chance found the camp of the Jackson Harmsworth surveying party (which a few days later would have gone away in its steamer), by whom Nansen and Johansen were carried to Norway in August, 1896. A week later the _Fram_ came in, with every one well and hearty, having emerged from the ice just northwest of Spitzbergen. Since Nansen’s return another Scandinavian, S. A. Andrée, with two companions, has disappeared into this same desert of ice and silence, in a balloon carrying a boat, sledge, tent, and various supplies. It was his intention to reach the pole if possible, and to do whatever else circumstances permitted. Since his departure, on July 10, 1897, from Spitzbergen, he has not been heard from, except by a pigeon-message two days later. THE SOUTH POLE We have followed up to date the history of adventurous and scientific exploration of the hardly yielding, yet steadily narrowed, circles of unknown coasts and waters about the North Pole. Let us now see what, thus far, has been done to wrest from the ocean and ice of its Antarctic antipodes the secrets of the South Pole. [Illustration: A PENGUIN-ROOST ON THE BEACHES OF VICTORIA LAND. Drawn by the Antarctic explorer Borchgrevink.]