The New International Encyclopædia/Wellman, Walter

WELLMAN, Walter (1858—). An American journalist and explorer, born in Mentor, Ohio. He received a common-school education. ln 1869 he founded the Cincinnati Evening Post, and after 1884 lie was the Washington correspondent successively of the Chicago Herald and the Chicago Times-Herald. In 1892 he attempted to locate the first landfall of Columbus, and built a monument on Watling Island, in the Bahamas, on the spot which he regarded as answering the description; and in 1804 he led an expedition to the Arctic regions and reached a point on the eighty-first degree of latitude, northeast of Spitzbergen. In 1898-90 he led another expedition to the Arctic regions, making Cape Tegetthoff in Franz Josef Land his base of operations, and spending the winter of 1898-99 there. He established an outpost at Cape Heller, near the eighty-first parallel, and from this place in the early spring of 1899 started on a 'dash for the pole,' but at the end of March, by which time the party had reached a point off the coast of Rudolf Land, near the eighty-second parallel, he was compelled by an accident to retreat. Later a party under Baldwin, a member of the expedition, first definitely marked the eastern limits of Franz Josef Land. Wellman also reported the discovery of some twenty new lands or islands. Accounts of the second polar expedition were published by Wellman in McClure's Magazine, vol. xiv. (New York, 1900), in the Century Magazine, vol. xxxv. (n. s.) (New York, 1899), and the National Geographical Magazine, vol. x. (Washington, 1899).