POLE EXPLORERS LOST?

Disaster In The North.

Ship of Anglo-American Expedition Is Sinking -- Party Missing.

[By Telegraph To The Tribune]

Toronto, Sept. 5 --

The steamer Midnight Sun reached Athabasca Landing to-day, bringing in the Hudson's Bay Company's furs from the Far North and news from the Arctic Circle.

One of the passengers, Mr. Harrison, gives information that the Duchess of Bedford, the ship belonging to the Anglo-American Expedition, had filled with water, and would probably sink.

Captain Mikkelson, Mr. Leffingwell and another man had left the ship in February, with sixty days' provisions for the supposed land to the north.

Since then no word whatever has been received of them, but one of their train of dogs has returned, and this is taken as almost positive evidence that the party will never be heard from again.

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Christiania, Sept. 6 --

Captain Roald Amundsen was seen here to-day in regard to the alarming news that the steamer Duchess of Bedford, upon which the Anglo-American Arctic exploration expedition, under Captain Elmar Mikkelsen, was making its way into the north, had been lost.

Captain Amundsen said he believed the members of the expedition were alive. He thinks that in all likelihood they had sufficient time to save themselves and place their stores on the ice before their vessel sank. If this is so they have with them provisions to last for seventy days. Altogether, Captain Amundsen takes a very hopeful view of the situation of the expedition.

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The Anglo-American Arctic exploration expedition sailed from Victoria, B.C., in May of 1906 on board the Duchess of Bedford to seek a large stretch of land believed to exist in the Beaufort Sea, and incidentally to conduct scientific work. It numbers fifteen persons, including Ernest Leffingwell, a Chicago geologist, and George Howe and Ernest (sic) Stefanssen, both of Harvard University.

It was the plan of the expedition to sail from Victoria to Kadiak (sic), and thence to Siberia to obtain sixty dogs, thence through Bering Strait, skirting the shore to Banks Island, where a depot was to be made, and from which various scientific expeditions were to be taken out over the ice. It was planned for Mikkelson and Leffingwell to leave the ship in the spring of 1907 and journey over the ice in a northwest direction, taking provisions for 140 days.

The expedition was heard from in March this year. The letters then received were dated November 21 and 23, 1906, and had been carried over the ice fields to Point Barrow, where they were delivered to the Canadian Mounted Police. Mr. Leffingwell said the Duchess of Bedford was then frozen in solid ice about two hundred miles off Point Barrow, and that the preparations for penetrating into the unknown country to the north were almost completed. The entire party of fifteen were in good health. Mr. Leffingwell said they might not return for two years.