MacMillan

With Arctic winter and its impossible flying weather only a fortnight off, Explorer Donald B. MacMillan and his fellow Arctic-argonauts (TIME, June 22 et seq.) at Etah, Greenland, last week fumed and fretted at fogs and gales which delayed their work of finding west of them, on Ellesmere Island, a suitable spot for a food and fuel way-station between Etah and Cape Thomas Hubbard (Axel Heiberg Land), from which advance base they were to make search flights still farther west where fabulous "Crocker Land" may or may not await discovery.

The cruising radius of the seaplanes out of Etah was cut down from 1,000 to 700 miles by the absence of a smooth stretch of beach in Etah harbor, the planes not being able to rise from the water with as heavy loads as they could lift from land. The round trip to Cape Hubbard and back is some 600 miles, leaving a margin of safety which Commander R. E. Byrd judged insufficient.

Riding at their anchors, the NA-1, -2 and -3 had to be watched constantly in the rough seas that ran, and kept from the paths of drifting icebergs. The NA2 began to sink, her hull seams opened by battering waves. She was hoisted to the Peary's deck to be caulked and fitted with a new motor.

After several chilly, disappointing visits to the towering, ice-clad peaks across Smith Sound, the NA1 and NA3 settled into a narrow, sheltered neck of water called Flagler's Fjord. It was only a third of the way to Cape Hubbard, but an admirable landing spot. The next days were spent, when weather permitted, plying to and from Etah with stores of oil, gasoline, food, many trips being necessary to stock the depot adequately.

Radio communication between the expedition and the U. S. continued successul, both in code and voice. Signals from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station (Lake Bluffs, Ill.) were received most clearly by Operator Reinartz of the Bowdoin. Beside reports to the U. S. Navy Department and the National Geographic Society from Operator Reinartz of the Bowdoin, Chicago operators distinctly heard Song of the Snow Bunting, Song of the Raven, and Song of the Fox rendered by Singers Imyou-Getook, Kangak, Nu-Ka-pingwa and Ah-Kom-oing-wa.

The snow-burned flyers, nourished on pemmican (food made from beef and dried fruits), chocolate, biscuits, tea, sugar, bacon, butter and the cheaper brands of cigarets, sallied out of Flagler Fjord, established a second base on Ellesmere Island, 120 miles northwest of Etah as the biplane flies.

Maude. Explorer Roald Amundsen's schooner Maude, icebound all last winter in the region of the New Siberian Islands, southwest of Bering Strait, in a fruitless attempt to drift over the North Pole, was reported last week at East Cape, Siberia, free of the ice and bound for Nome, Alaska. Though equipped with radio, the Maude has not been heard from directly for months. Presumably she was been withholding gasoline from her power generators, for use in crashing the floes. Hearing of her return, Explorer Amundsen, in Copenhagen, conferring with German dirigible experts upon a proposed pole-flight in 1926, offered the Maude for sale to satisfy his creditors.