LOST IN THE ARCTIC.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XX, Issue 2063, 6 January 1925, Page 7

LOST IN THE ARCTIC.

A DANISH "ROBINSON CRI7SOE." After an adventurous voyage to the Arctic in search of a missing explorer, the tiny Danish schooner Sokongen has readier Aberdeen (states the Daily Chroniole.) The explorer, Peter Freuchen, a Dane, was rescued when his food was almost exhausted.. fJo had left Copenhagen in 1!)20, and nothing had been heard of him for three years. On the voyage to the North the Salcongen carried stores for Greenland trading stations. After as? lair passage across the .North Atlantic she reached Cape Farewell, in the south of Greenland, an.d proceeded up Davis Strait. She encountered very bad weather, and Captain Pedersen and his crew had hard work making their way through the ice and dodging icebergs that, were moving southwards. After a ha missing passage North Star Bay, one of the Danish Company's stations, was reached, and there some stores were landed. Hearing from the Eskimos that the explorer had gone to Baffin Laud, Captain Pedersen set off for Ponds Bay. They fun ml Freuehen suffering from frost bite and in a bad state of health. 1 His toes had been frozen off, his food was running short, and be was living oil seal, walrus, reindeer and fish, which he shot and caught. Four of the expxlorcr's Eskimo helpers were also lost—two men and twu women. Owing to Freuehen's condition the natives had set out with dogs and sledges to try to secure assistance. Their intentions were to cross the ice on Lancaster Sound to North Devon; thence they were to make their way over Jones Sound to Ellesmere Island, and finally afterwards to Cape York. Owing to the severity of the winter, however, their plans were frustrated, and they had to turn back and were stranded on the north of Bylot Island, where they were discovered by Captain Pedersen,' who took them and their dogs and sledges on board the schooner. The only boat which touches Ponds Islet, where the explorer was found, is a Canadian police vessel which calls once a year to land two constables and a seregant of the Canadian North-West Mounted Police and, take those who have been there back to Canada. The explorer, however, had evidently been taken ill after the boat had gone, and as it would not be back for another year, and the police had probably moved on, the Eskimos had set out for help.