A month before President Garfield died of an assassin's shot in September 1881, a party of U. S. soldiers under a young lieutenant, up from Civil War ranks, arrived at Lady Franklin Bay on barren Ellesmere Island, some 600 mi. from the North Pole. This Army detachment's job was to set up one of an international chain of circumpolar stations for scientific observation. For two years the party collected data and specimens, sent out exploring expeditions of which one set a new "farthest North" by getting within 450 mi. of the Pole. A...
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