stefansson-wrangel-09-32-100v

400 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

doubtful or have at least been compelled to retreat before the ad-
vance of knowledge. In this class are Sannikov Land, the existence
of which has been rendered doubtful by the voyage of the Taimyr
and the Vaigatch, and Crocker Land reported by Peary.

It seems to me that Crocker Land should still be granted a period
of grace. MacMillan marched into the edge of it (as plotted by
Peary) and found only sea ice. Had he taken soundings and
found abysmal depths, the case against land being there would be
impregnable. But he took no critical soundings, and the soundings
taken on our journey aimed towards the same general locality in
1917 grew no deeper as we went away from the known lands but
continued to be of a “continental shelf” character for 150 miles
as we traveled towards Crocker Land. I suggest that we let
Crocker Land bide till the vicinity is sounded and shown to be
deep water, or till the region is explored so thoroughly that we
know it is not merely hiding.

Some Arctic lands, as has been remarked, have shown striking
aptitude in hiding. The strait between Cape Chelyuskin and
Nicholas II Land is but 60 miles wide and the land to the
north is high, even mountainous, and yet that passage was trav-
ersed by Nordenskiold in 1878 and Nansen in 1893 without either
of them suspecting that it was a strait. The discovery remained
for Vilkitsky in 1913.

It is only about 60 miles north from Cape Parry to Nelson
Head on Banks Island and Nelson Head is a bold cape with high
hills or low mountains just behind it—3,000 or 4,000 feet high.
I have at various times spent altogether several months at Cape
Parry, and nearly every day I climbed the highest hills there (300
or 400 feet) with field glasses to look northward for bears and
seals and incidentally for land. And yet, only two or three times
have I seen Nelson Head, but each of those times I saw it clearly,
well above the sky line.

In 1853 Leopold McClintock, to me the most capable and admir-
able of the entire noble line of British naval men who laid the
American Arctic bare to our eyes, was at what we now call Cape
McClintock at the northern end of Prince Patrick Island and did
not see the large land which we discovered sixty-two years after-
wards lying only 30 or 40 miles to the northeast. Nay more,
he says in the record which we found in his cairn at Cape McClin-