Still farther north, on the eastern or Greenland side, is the grave of Hall, the American commander of the Polaris Expedition.

On the western, or Grant Land side, are the graves of two or three sailors of the British Arctic Expedition of 1876.
And right on the shore of the central Polar Sea, near Cape Sheridan, is the grave of the Dane, Petersen, the interpreter of the British Arctic Expedition of 1876.

These graves stand as mute records of former efforts to win the prize, and they give a slight indication of the number of brave but less fortunate men who have given the last possession of mortal life in their pursuit of the arctic goal.
The first time I saw the graves of the whalers on Duck Islands I sat there, in the arctic sunlight, looking at those headboards, sobered with a realization of what they meant.

When I first saw Sontag's grave, at Etah, I carefully replaced the stones around it, as a tribute to a brave man.

At Cape Sabine, where Greely's party died, I was the first man to step into the ruins of the stone hut after the seven survivors were taken away years before--the first man, and I stepped into those ruins in a blinding snowstorm late in August, and saw there the mementos of those unfortunates.
Passing the Duck Islands on the upward voyage, approaching Cape York in 1908, and thinking of the graves there, I little dreamed that a loved member of my own party, Professor Ross G.Marvin, who ate at my table and acted as my secretary, was fated to add his name to this long list of arctic victims, and that his grave, in uncounted fathoms of black water, was to be the most northerly grave on this earth.
We reached Cape York on the first day of August.