ARCTIC EXPLORATION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIII, Issue 47, 25 February 1902, Page 2

ARCTIC EXPLORATION.

Captain Bernier, the Canadian explorer, has come to London to raise the £10,000 still required to complete the sum of £30,000 which he estimates his expedition to the North Pole -will cost. He will sail from Vancouver in a special ship of 300 tons, with a. staff of six scientists and eight navigating officers, and proceed to a position 150 miles N.E. of the point where the American vessel Jeanette was caught in the ice. lie claims that he would only become jammed in the ice at a point 150 miles nearer to the pole than the Jeanette. Drifting at the same rate as the Jeanette he would pass within 100 miles to 150 miles of the Pole in two years and a half. From that point part of the expedition would leave the vessel, after having made preliminary investigations of the ice. During these investigations the explorers leaving the ship will be in wireless telegraphic touch with the ship and will plant at intervals of one mile numbered aluminium tubea» eighteen feet loru^ containing condensed provisions, and acting as landmarks. This portion of the work will be done by relays of men. Captain Bernier will not leave the ship uptil these shafts have been erected to within about fifty miles of the Pole. He will then leave his ship in charge of the second in command, and proceed north until the Pole is reached and soundings are taken.

This sounds a very much more systematic and scientific attempt or, the Pole than poor Andre's rough, and ready and fatal flight in his balloon.