• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada; Greenland; North Pole; Wrangel Island; Siberia
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.504.8546; http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/arctic3-3-178.pdf

Although the north coast of Siberia had been charted by the Great Northern Expeditions sent out by Peter the Great in the first half of the 18th century and large parts of the archipelago to the north of Canada had been mapped by the expeditions searching for Franklin, the greater part of the Arctic was still unexplored. The northward extent of Greenland and of the island groups to the west of Greenland was unknown and the opinions of geographers as to the possible distribution of land and sea were divided. Many joined the German geographer, Petermann, in the hypothesis that the known part of Greenland represented only a portion of a large land mass which extended across the North Pole to Wrangel Land, now Wrangel Island (Ostrov Vrangelya). Others believed that the unknown region was one of numerous islands separated by shallow waters. The drift of the Jeannette from 71”35N., 175’06W. to 77’15N., 154’59E. demonstrated that Wrangel Land was not continuous with