MIKKELSEN’S EXPEDITION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3772, 14 September 1907, Page 3

MIKKELSEN’S EXPEDITION.

Message From She Explorer. Sladge Trip of SOO Miles. London, September 12. Captain Mikkelsen has cabled from Leffingwell to the Royal Geographical Society, stating that he has made a sledge trip covering 500 miles, and crossed the edge of the Continental shelf twice. Soundings were taken 50 miles off the coast, and beyond 630 metres no bottom was sounded. Mikkelsen states that he will resume his explorations in Beaufort Sea in 1908. [The Anglo-American expedition, led by Mr Einar Mikkelsen, started on May 20th, 1906, for two or three years’ work in the Arctic, in the Duchess of Bedford. Adverse conditions hindered progress, the vessel only reaching Port Barrow on August 15th. Letters were recently received from the Arctic shores of Canada bringing news of the expedition down to the beginning of December. The captain’s despatches were couched in a hopeful strain, but the expedition was not quite so happily fixed as Captain Mikkelsen would have liked in the matter of food supplies. Rather too much reliance had been placed on the game to be found along the northern shores of Canada. With careful husbanding ol his resources, however, he hoped to be able to carry to a successful issue his search for land in the hitherto unexplored area known as the Beaufort Sea. He had been strengthened in his expectation of finding new land by the persistence with which the Eskimos affirmed its existence, and in order to search as wide an area as possible he proposed at the time of writing to send out two parties oyer the ice with the return of spring. One party, which he himself hoped to accompany, was to proceed in a true northeast direction from Flaxman Island. The other party was to start from Cape Halkett, a considerable distance west of Flaxman Island, and, in a northeasterly direction, turn eastwards before returning to the North American mainland. A day or two ago it was reported that Mikkelsen’s ship had been lost, hut that the party was safe,]