Arctic winter, the six months' darkness in silence and desolation, the excessive cold, and the dangers of starvation. It is impossible here to go into any of the details which rendered the tale of Arctic voyages one of the most stirring in human history. All we are concerned with here is the amount of new knowledge brought back by successive expeditions within the Arctic Circle.
This region of the earth's surface is distinguished by a number of large islands in the eastern hemisphere, most of which were discovered at an early date. We have seen how the Norsemen landed and settled upon Greenland as early as the tenth century. Burrough sighted Nova Zembla in 1556, in one of the voyages in search of the north-east passage, though the very name (Russian for Newfoundland) implies that it had previously been sighted and named by Russian seamen. Barentz is credited with having sighted Spitzbergen. The numerous islands to the north of Siberia became known through the Russian investigations. of Discheneff, Bering, and their followers; while the intricate network of islands to the north of the continent of North America had been slowly worked out during the search for the north-west passage. It was indeed in pursuit of this will-of-the-wisp that most of the discoveries in the Arctic Circle were made, and a general impetus given to Arctic exploration.
It is with a renewed attempt after this search that the modern history of Arctic exploration begins. In 1818 two expeditions were sent under the influence of Sir Joseph Banks to search the north-west passage, and to attempt to reach the Pole. The former was the objective of John Ross in the Isabella and W. E. Perry in the Alexander
