ons. In 1920 he completed the North-East Passage. This was the third time it had been navigated — the first man to traverse it being Nordenskidld, the Swedish explorer. In 1922 Amundsen left the expedition, and the Maud was then commanded by Captain Wisting. The latter started with the Maud from Wrangel Is. in August 1922; but also on this occasion the drift in the ice across the Polar Basin failed to follow the right direction, and the plan had to be aban- doned. The Maud returned to Bering Strait in 1925. Professor H. U. Sverdrup was _ scien- tific leader of the expedition. He spent a year among the Chukches in North Siberia and made particularly interesting studies among these natives. Amundsen left the Maud expedition in 1922 because he had conceived the idea of flying across the North Pole. He tried to carry this into effect in 1925. Accompanied by Ellsworth, an American, he started from Svalbard on May 21, 1925 with two aeroplanes on the first flight towards the Pole. The Norwegian airman, Captain Riiser-Larsen, piloted one of the planes. The expedition reached 87°43’ N., when they had to make a forced landing in an open lane of water. The one plane had to be left behind in the ice, and with the other Amundsen and his companions got back to Spitsbergen (Svalbard). In 1926 Amundsen and Ellsworth organised a flight by airship across the Polar Basin and an Italian airship, which was named Norge, was pur- 199