Credit:
This illustration from London’s “The Graphic” newspaper in 1876 shows a glimpse of the Polar Sea as traversed by Commander Markham and Lieutenant Parr during their spring sledging for the British Arctic Expedition, 1875–1876, seeking the North Pole. The big block of ice in the foreground is estimated to be about 50 to 60 feet (15 to 18 m) high. Captain Nares used the term “palaeocrystic” ice to describe the thick, multiyear, ice they repeatedly encountered in the western Arctic.