While experienced whalers strongly advocated the square rig, Archer decided to ignore their advice and rigged the Fram as a fore-and-aft three-masted schooner, which style of rig proved, under the circumstances, to be most suitable. The slight increase in leakage is believed by Archer to be due in part to the drawing of the oakum out of the seams and in part to the expansion and contraction of the timbers. While the Fram was not subjected to such tremendous ice convulsion s as have been many other Arctic ships, yet her experiences were very severe and may be considered to prove that the design and system of construction adopted were the most efficient possible.
The Fram.
The most extensive, if not the most important, of the treatises that form this volume, relate to regions and investigations with which the voyage of the Fram were only incidentally connected. Reference is had to the papers on the geological formations of Cape Flora, Franz Josef Land, by Professors Nansen, Pompeckj and Nathorst. Dr. Nansen most cordially acknowledges his great indebtedness to Mr. Jackson and Dr. Reginald Koettlitz, respectively the leader and geologist of the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition to Franz Josef Land, 1894-1896. The latter of these gentlemen, in a spirit of broad scientific generosity, accorded
