The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897

Nansen returned from his famous voyage before The Great Round World came into existence, and so you might perhaps like to have us tell you about him.

He is a young Norwegian, only thirty-six years old; very young to have made such a great record.

At the age of nineteen he entered the University of Christiania and devoted himself to the study of zoölogy, or the science of animals and animal life, from man to the lowest form of life.

When he was twenty he made a voyage into the Northern seas for the purpose of studying animal life in high latitudes.

When he returned he was made Curator of the Natural History Museum in Bergen, Norway. A curator is a person in whose charge the valuable collections in a museum are placed. He is the caretaker or custodian of all the priceless treasures the museum contains.

Six years later Nansen made a trip across Greenland on snow-shoes.

There had long been a theory that in the interior of Greenland there were fertile spots capable of cultivation.

Nansen proved that Greenland is covered with a huge ice-sheet, and is, in fact, one vast glacier which rises slightly toward the interior, the surface of the ice-cap being only occasionally interrupted by mountains which protrude from the ice.

Nansen believed that an Arctic explorer should be able to live the same life as the natives of the land he was exploring, and during his winter in Greenland he lived much with the Eskimos, sleeping in their rude huts of stone and dirt, and joining in their hunts on land and sea.

He learned many useful lessons of these people. One was how to make and manage a kayak, or Eskimo boat, which he declares to be the handiest, lightest, and absolutely best small boat constructed.

It was the knowledge that he gained during this Greenland winter that enabled him to get one hundred and ninety-five miles nearer the North Pole than any one else had ever done.

He also learned from his Arctic friends how to handle dog-teams.

The Eskimos use dogs for travelling as the Laplanders use reindeer. The dogs are, however, much more difficult to handle, for while they are hardy, strong, intelligent, and willing, they do not make good servants. All their training cannot entirely tame them, and they have certain ways and habits which lessen their usefulness.

They are, for instance, terrible fighters.

Every one who possesses a canine friend knows that this is a very dog-like attribute, and one of which no dog, large or small, can be entirely broken.

We all appreciate how unpleasant it is to be out walking with our favorite French bulldog, and suddenly have our be-ribboned aristocrat forget the dignity that his long pedigree should give him, and dash from our side to make tufts of hair fly from somebody else's equally be-ribboned poodle.

Such an occurrence is serious enough—but it becomes a matter of life and death when, miles from home in a frozen country, you are depending on your dogs to bring you safely back again, and your team forgets its duty and becomes a waving mass of legs and tails, from which you hear nothing but the howls of the vanquished. A dog-fight often becomes one of the most terrible catastrophes that can overtake an explorer.

With these fierce little Eskimo dogs, the result of such an encounter means generally the loss of two or three, and a walk home with the wounded survivors occupying the sled.

Under the circumstances it is very necessary to understand how to handle these useful but eccentric beasts. The Eskimos have reduced this knowledge to a science, and from them Nansen learned to be the master of those dogs which were of so much service to him in his last and greatest expedition.

This expedition was undertaken in June, 1893, and its object was to drift across the pole from Siberia to Greenland.

During Nansen's Arctic experiences he had noticed that the shores of Greenland were strewn with driftwood of a kind also found on the shores of Siberia.

The matter caused him some deep thought, and at length he arrived at the conclusion that there must be a current which crosses the Arctic Ocean and carries this material from Asia to America.

After much thought, he came to the conclusion that if he could only build himself a vessel which would withstand the pressure of the ice, and once get into the stream, he and his vessel would be carried with the rest of the drift from Asia to America, and in the course of the trip would be borne right across the North Pole.

It was a bold scheme, and for a time no one would listen to it, but Nansen's reputation stood him in good stead here, and finally convinced people that he must have a good foundation for his belief.

With the aid of a few wealthy persons and the assistance of the King of Sweden, Nansen was able to have a suitable vessel built, and to make preparations for the undertaking.

The greatest danger to Arctic travel is the pressure of the ice. When the winter comes on, and the sea tries to freeze over, the currents and the tides, and the unthawed blocks of ice that have been left from the last winter, cause a terrible disturbance. The ice, in its endeavor to pack itself solidly together, slides over itself with groans and creaks that sound like human cries.

The force the ice exerts under these circumstances is enormous, so great indeed that it can crush big ships, and crack their sides as though they were no stronger than eggshells.

Nansen could not hope to build a ship which should be strong enough to withstand this pressure, but he did hope to make one that would be able to rise above the ice, and escape the crushing altogether.

His object was to have the sides so shaped that the ice would encounter a rounded surface on which it could not get any hold, and would therefore slide lower and lower down the sides of the ship until it at last met under the keel, lifting the ship above the dangerous pressure.

The vessel, which Nansen called the Fram, was built according to his own plans, and when finished was a clumsy-looking craft.

In an ordinary sea she pitched and rolled so badly that everybody on board was seasick, and during the first few days of her trip the sailors were one and all afraid that she would roll completely over and go to the bottom.

In the ice she behaved exactly as Nansen had expected she would, and, once frozen to the ice, gave the explorer no anxiety that she would be crushed or wrecked.

For three long years Nansen and his party were away on their expedition. Steaming from Norway to the coast of Siberia, where he took his pack of dogs on board, Nansen headed for the Polar Sea, and made all the speed he could to reach the farthest north possible before the winter set in, and was finally frozen into the ice where he supposed the current must be which was to bear him across the North Pole.

To his infinite joy, he found, after weeks of uncertainty, that he was actually drifting with the ice, and that his theory was correct.

He did not go as directly north as he had hoped, and on March 14th, 1896, after nearly three years of patient drifting, he made up his mind that the Fram had gone as far north as she would go, and that henceforth she would take a southerly course.