Schwatka

Schwatka, FREDERICK, Arctic explorer, was born at Galena, Illinois, 29th September 1849, graduated at West Point in 1871, and served as a lieutenant of cavalry on the frontier till 1877, meanwhile being also admitted to the Nebraska bar and taking a medical degree in New York. In 1878-80 he commanded an expedition to King William's Land which discovered and buried the skeletons of several of Sir John Franklin's party, and gathered information which filled up all gaps in the narratives of Rae and M'Clintock, besides performing a notable sledge-journey of 3251 miles. After exploring the course of the Yukon in Alaska, in 1884 he resigned his commission. In 1886 he commanded the New York Times Alaskan expedition, and ascended Mount St Elias to a height of 7200 feet; and in 1891 he led another party to Alaska which opened up some 700 miles of new country in the same quarter. In 1889 he had led an expedition, for the journal America, into Chihuahua, in Northern Mexico. He died 3d November 1892. He published Along Alaska's Great River (1885), Nimrod in the North (1885), The Children of the Cold (1886). See also Schwatka's Search, by W. H. Gilder (1881).