In the earlier years of this long record occurred the strange voyages of the Zeni, and Eric the Red, Icelandic outlaw, with his discovery and colonization of Greenland,--strange stories of hot springs in that far country, with which the monks warmed their monastery and cooked their food; a tribute of walrus tusks toward the expenses of the Crusades; tales of the rich green pastures, and herds of grazing cattle, of these colonists, and later their mysterious and complete disappearance, leaving only a scattered ruin here and there to show that they ever existed. ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS Beginning with the earliest authentic expedition (1526), it is possible to touch only on the most important incidents of the record of this later phase of the subject. The time from 1526 to date may be roughly and generally divided into three periods: The first, from 1526, the time of the first North Polar expedition by England, to about 1853, the close of Great Britain’s Franklin search expeditions. In this period the preponderance of British efforts over those of all other nations combined was so great as almost to obscure them and make this period preëminently British. In this period British navigators essayed every route to the polar regions, attempted the Northeast and Northwest Passages again and again, and wrote some of the most brilliant pages of Great Britain’s history over the names of Hudson, Davis, Baffin, Ross, Parry, Franklin, McClintock, and others. [Illustration: From “On the Polar Star,” by the Duke of the Abruzzi. Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co. THE HUT OF THE DUKE OF THE ABRUZZI _From a photograph taken by moonlight in the Arctic regions._] The second period covers from about 1850 to 1895, In this period other nations--the United States, Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Norway--showed equal activity with Great Britain, and the names of Kane, Hayes, Hall, Lockwood, Brainard (United States), Nares and Markham (Great Britain), Koldewey and Weyprecht (Germany), Payer (Austria), Nordenskjöld (Sweden), and others were written indelibly into Arctic history. In this period the record of farthest north which had been held by Great Britain was wrested from her in 1882 by Lockwood and Brainard of the United States. THE NORTH POLE ATTAINED The third period is from 1895 to date. In this period, while other valuable work was being done,--as Amundsen’s navigation of the Northwest Passage, Sverdrup’s extensive discoveries in the North American archipelago, Erichsen’s completion of the last gap in the north Greenland coast line,--three men, Nansen, Abruzzi, and Peary, each having for his object the attainment of the North Pole, pushed in succession far beyond the farthest of their predecessors, penetrating the inmost regions of the north, and the last named attaining the Pole which had been the prize of centuries.