the lost whale-ships "Mount Wollaston " and "Vigilant " as well as to render every possible assistance to the "Jeannette," and who sailed over 12,000 miles, and searched both the American and Asiatic shores-in the report of his second cruise made to Secretary Sherman, renders this appreciative tribute to De Long and his companions :

"I desire to express my unbounded admiration for their fortitude, and their heroic exertions in making the most remarkable retreat over the ice ever made by men, from the place where the vessel sank to Lena Delta; for their brave struggle for existence after reaching the land, and their cheerful resignation to fate when death in its most awful form stared them in the face and claimed them one by one. The diary of Captain DeLong, written almost as he drew his last breath, relates acts of heroism and self-sacrifice which are not excelled in the annals of history. Not the least of them was the devotion of the faithful Alexai, an Innuit from St. Michael's, going out almost daily in search of game, freezing and starving as he was, but bringing the small amount secured to the commanding officer to be distributed fairly to every one of the party, and at night with the temperature at Zero, or perhaps lower, taking off his seal-skin robe to cover his beloved captain. Surely when the final summing up shall be made in the list of heroes who have laid down their lives for the benefit of their fellowmen, the name of Alexai will not be forgotten!"

DeLong's cruise in the "Jeannette," while it ended so disastrously for him and the greater number of his crew, has thrown considerable light on ice navigation, the Arctic tides and currents, and on Herald Island and Wrangell Land, named for Baron Wrangell (now a Russian Admiral) the Russian explorer, who first learned of its existence from the Siberian Indians. It is seldom possible to attain a high latitude in that part of the Arctic. No whalers, so far as known, have ever reached to 74°, (though some have gone in mild seasons as high as lat. 73° 30′ N.), and the ice between Wrangell Land and Point Barrow forms and remains further south than in any other part of the frozen zones. The U. S. Steamers "Corwin" and "Rodgers were able to locate dangerous shoals in the waters of Alaska and adjoining regions, and to make important corrections of some coast lines on the Hydrographic charts. Wrangell Land (about 75 miles from the Siberian coast) was first reached and explored Aug. 11th,

1881, by Capt. Hooper, in the U. S. Revenue Steamer "Corwin." He says in his report :

"Good observations for latitude and longitude, confirmed by sub. sequent bearings and observations taken off the east coast, showed the land on the American Hydrographic Chart to be laid down 18 miles too far south, although the general trend of the coast is very nearly correct."

"No warın current from Bering Sea enters Behring Strait," says Mr. W. H. Dall of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, in his report for 1880, "with the exception of water from the neighboring rivers or the adjacent sounds. This water owes its heat directly to the local action of the sun's rays. The strait is incapable of carrying a current of warm water of sufficient magnitude to have any marked effect on the condition of the Polar Basin just north of it. The currents through the strait are cool and chiefly tidal, but with a preponderating tendency northward. The currents in the Arctic, north of the straits, are largely dependent on the winds [this was Lieut. DeLong's experience], but have tendencies in certain recognized directions. [DeLong found that the drifts of the packs varied constantly, and that he lost much ground some days in travelling on the ice]. Nothing in our knowledge of them offers any hope of an easier passage toward the Pole, or in general, northward through their agency. Nothing yet revealed in the investigation of the subject in the least tends to support the widely spread but unphilosophical notion, that in any part of the Polar Sea we may look for large areas free from ice." In confirmation of these views, we quote the later authority of Dr. Thomas Antisell, in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, No. II, 1883. He says:

In May and June a broad warm current is found flowing around the shores of the Šiu Kiu Islands and the Bonin Islands, which it has already reached in April, producing variable winds before the monsoon is established in full influence. This current is felt off the shores of Japan and has already received its Japanese title-the Black Sea or current (Kuro Siwo)-from the remarkable dark color which its waters exhibit when looking over the ship's side, it is a deep blue black, and it can be recognized with ease as soon as it is attempted to be crossed. Cradled in the China Sea, the offspring of the equato

rial drift and its warm currents among the Philippine Islands, when it passes Formosa in early summer it is already a powerful current, and begins to send off lesser currents while proceeding on its northern route. But the waning power of the Kuro Siwo is indicated by the temperature of the months of October, November and December, in which it disappears between latitude 30 and 40°. The whole ocean is cooling down, and the influence of the Asiatic shores as refrigerators is apparent; the N. E. monsoon has set in and continues during the first three months of the new year to bring down the surface of the Pacific to that condition of equilibrium in which no warinth is communicated from the air to the ocean. The S. W. monsoon has ceased to blow, and the Kuro Siwo as a current disappears, although its warming and equalizing diffusion continues in a mild way....The North Pacific Ocean has, practically speaking, no northern outlet ; Bering Strait is but a cul de sac, and is no real gate of entrance into the Arctic Ocean

These are the probably true discoveries of observation, and theoretical reasoning from ascertained facts, which the cruise of the "Jeannette" and consequently of the "Corwin" and " Rodgers," has added to the sum of human knowledge. If DeLong had not believed that Bering Sea was a "real gate of entrance to the Arctic Ocean," that Wrangell Land was a continent, and the open Polar Sea " beyond, he would not have ventured among its treacherous ice-floes-but would have explored a better route.

66

BERING STRAIT.-A description of this entrance to the Arctic Ocean will render the course of the various voyages more clear to the general reader. The strait was named after the famous navigator, Vitus Bering (sometimes called Behring), a Dane, born in 1680, who entered the newly formed navy of Peter the Great in 1704, and in 1728 was appointed to conduct an expedition in the Sea of Kamtchatka. Following the coast northward he rounded, it was supposed, the northeast point of Asia, and reached the strait to which he gave his name.―This strait separates Asia from America, and connects the Pacific with the Arctic Ocean. The narrowest part is near lat. 66°, between East Cape in Asia and Cape Prince of Wales in America, distant from each other in a direction from northwest to southeast, nearly 50 miles. The greatest depth, some 30 fathoms, is towards the middle, and the water is shallower towards the American coast

than the Asiatic. BERING SEA is a part of the North Pacific Ocean, is bounded north by Bering Strait, east by Alaska, south by the Aleutian islands, and west by Kamtchatka, and is also called the Sea of Kamtchatka. BERING ISLAND is the most westerly of the Aleutian islands, in lat. 55° 22' N., long. 166° È. It has an area of 30 square miles, and is noteworthy as the place where Bering, its discoverer, was wrecked, and died in 1741.

RELIEF EXPEDITIONS OF THE U. S. STEAMERS "CORWIN "" 66 AND RODGERS."

In 1879 the American whalers returned late in the season without two of their number-the "Mount Wollaston," under Capt. Nye, of New Bedford, Mass., and the "Vigilant," and also without any intelligence of the "Jeannette"; the former was last seen Oct. 1oth, and the latter, in the same waters, not since Aug. 1879. On May 15th, 1880, Secretary of the Treasury SHERMAN, sharing in the general anxiety, dispatched the Revenue Steamer "Corwin," Capt. C. L. Hooper, from San Francisco, “for the enforcement of the provisions of law and protection of the interests of the U. S. Government on the seal islands and the sea-otter hunting grounds of Alaska; but, additionally, to afford assistance to the two whalers 'Mount Wollaston " and "Vigilant," and to the "Jeannette," if they should possibly be fallen in with." The Corwin reached Ounalaska in June, and on June 11th, encountered the first ice packs north of Kounivak Island, in lat. 60° N., long. 160° W. On the 17th, escaping from the floes, she proceeded to Norton Sound, and thence to St. Lawrence Island, where the inhabitants had been decimated by starvation. In some villages hundreds were found dead and unburied-in two, all were dead, from the intense cold and lack of food. On June 28th, the Arctic Ocean was entered and traversed for 6,000 miles until Oct. 2d; but the "Corwin" could obtain no news of the lost whalers. Capt. Bauldry, of the "Helen Mar" of New Bedford, saw them last 40 miles southeast of Herald

66