The travelling parties returned in June, but the ice blocked up the Gaasefjord and the _Fram_ was far up. A few months hard work blasting and cutting enabled them to get the ship several miles nearer the water, but six miles still remained when they realised that their work was in vain. The boats were accordingly sent away for walrus meat, and a fourth winter had to be faced. When the spring once more returned, Captain Sverdrup decided upon sending a party down Wellington Channel to examine the state of the depôts at Beechey Island. They found the house in ruins, old Sir John Ross’s boat wantonly injured, and the depôt robbed. Isachsen and Buy meanwhile explored the south coast of Jones Sound, and all the parties had returned to the ship by July. This year the ice cleared out of the fjord and the _Fram_ was soon beyond Gaasefjord on her return home, after four winters. The explorers arrived in Christiania in September 1902. Captain Sverdrup had very ably conducted a most successful expedition, Lieut. Isachsen had specially distinguished himself as a sledge traveller. Meteorological, magnetic, and tidal observations were regularly taken throughout the long period, and the biological and geological collections were of quite exceptional interest. The discoveries of Sverdrup and Isachsen complete the delineation of the great Parry Archipelago, for Axel Heiberg and the Ringnes Islands must be included in it, especially from a geological point of view. Ellesmere Island, North Devon, and Baffin Island stand apart as more allied to Greenland in character. The Parry Archipelago presents quite a different aspect, both geologically and physiographically, and is fairly uniform in structure, with similar strata representing different geological periods, when wanting in one place supplemented in another. Thus the indications of the has formations discovered by M’Clintock on Prince Patrick Island, and by Sherard Osborn on the north point of Bathurst Island, were repeated in the discoveries of Sverdrup’s expedition. On the other hand in Baumann Sound, on the west coast of Ellesmere Island, there was a coal field and impressions of tertiary plants such as are found on Disco Island and the Noursoak Peninsula in Greenland. On the whole it may be said that the Sverdrup expedition made the largest addition to our Arctic knowledge of any other since the return of the Franklin search expeditions. Captain Gunnar Isachsen continued his affection for Arctic work, and took special interest in bathymetrical researches. He made further valuable oceanographical investigations during his Spitsbergen expedition in 1910. CHAPTER XL ATTEMPTS TO REACH THE NORTH POLE. CAGNI--COOK--PEARY The present writer, throughout the sixty years and more of his connection with polar research, has always deprecated the diverting of exploring energy to dashes for the Pole, if this be the sole object.