stefansson-wrangel-09-31-027v

20 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

to Kellett’s Land by a year, but after that lapse of time
he was unable to produce his log or any member of his
crew to support his claim.*
*This paragraph and some other
things in this chapter are paraphrased
from the article which is a paper
published by The Royal Geographical Society
and reprinted in full, [past], as Appendix-

The erroneous reports on the extent of the eastern coast
of Kellett’s Land gave fresh support to the false concep-
tion of its size. In 1869 one of the visitors, Captain
Bliven, gave the opinion that it extended several hundred
miles to the north, strengthening the apparent proba-
bility that it was part of “the Arctic Continent.”

The hypothetical continent was still in the minds of
scientists when Lieutenant De Long was fitted out by the
New York “Herald” in 1879. He steered the Jeannette
boldly northward from the Pacific into the ice beyond
Bering Straits, thinking that he could not drift far, for
the “continent” would bar the way. But, fast in the
pack, he did drift far—right across the theoretical conti-
nent and beyond what now proved to be Kellett’s Island
rather than Kellett’s Land.

By 1881 it was feared that De Long’s expedition had
suffered the fate of Franklin’s, and search parties were
outfitted. The expeditions of the American Government,
in the Corwin and Rodgers, sailed from the Pacific
through Bering Straits. Both landed on Kellett’s Land.
The Corwin, under Captain Calvin L. Hooper, remained
only six hours (August 12, 1881), but it was a landing
about which much has been heard, for she carried the
famous author and naturalist, John Muir, and other sci-
entists, among whom the most distinguished is Dr. E. W.
Nelson, now Chief of the United States Biological Survey.
The Rodgers, under Lieutenant R. M. Berry, came a few
days later and remained for three weeks, making the
map which was the only one available for the next thirty-
three years. The American Navy assigned to this map