“I was nearly gone. My knife had been lost in cutting out the dogs; and a spare one which I carried in my trousers-pocket was so enveloped in the wet skins that I could not reach it. I owed my extrication at last to a newly broken team-dog who was still fast to the sledge, and in struggling carried one of the runners chock against the edge of the circle. All my previous attempts to use the sledge as a bridge had failed, for it broke through, to the much greater injury of the ice. I felt that it was a last chance. I threw myself on my back, so as to lessen as much as possible my weight, and placed the nape of my neck against the rim or edge of the ice; then with caution slowly bent my leg, and, placing the ball of my moccasined foot against the sledge, I pressed steadily against the runner, listening to the half-yielding crunch of the ice beneath.
“Presently I felt that my head was pillowed by the ice, and that my wet fur jumper was sliding up the surface. Next came my shoulders; they were fairly on. One more decided push, and I was launched up on the ice, and safe.”
On 5th October the stock of fresh meat consisted of one rabbit and three ducks. On the 7th they were fortunate in killing a bear.
Darkness was now creeping in on them, and some remarks of Kane on the Arctic night are well worth quoting: “The intense beauty of the Arctic firmament can hardly be imagined. It looked close above our heads, with its stars magnified in glory, and the very planets twinkling so much as to baffle the observations of our astronomer. I am afraid to speak of some of these night-scenes. I have trodden the deck and the floes, when the life of earth seemed suspended, its movements, its sounds, its colouring, its companionships; and as I looked on the radiant hemisphere, circling above me as if rendering worship to the unseen Centre of light, I have ejaculated in humility of spirit, ‘Lord, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?’ And then I have thought of the kindly world we had left, with its revolving sunshine and shadow; and the other stars that gladden it in their changes, and the hearts that warmed to us there; till I lost myself in memories of those who are not;—and they bore me back to the stars again.”
By the beginning of December, scurvy was making sad inroads among the party. On the 2nd, Dr. Kane wrote: “Had to put Mr. McGary and Riley under active treatment for scurvy. Gums retracted, ankles swollen, and bad lumbago. Mr. Wilson’s case, a still worse one, has been brought under. Morton’s is a saddening one: I cannot afford to lose him. He is not only one of my most intelligent men, but he is daring, cool, and everyway trustworthy. His tendon Achilles has been completely perforated, and the surface of the heel-bone exposed. An operation in cold, darkness, and privation would probably bring on locked-jaw. Brooks grows discouraged: the poor fellow has scurvy in his stump, and his leg is drawn up by the contraction of the flexors at the knee-joint. This is the third case on board—the fourth if I include my own—of contracted tendons.”
On the 7th of December, Bonsall and Petersen, two of the party that left Kane on 28th August, returned to the brig, and the remainder of the party arrived on the 12th. They had gone through a terrible trial. When they arrived at the brig, the thermometer was at −50°; they were covered with rime and snow, and were fainting with hunger. They had journeyed 350 miles, and their last run from the bay near Etah, some 70 miles in a straight line, was through the hummocks at this appalling temperature. For more than two months they had lived on frozen seal and walrus-meat.
Food for the whole party became more and more scarce, and Dr. Kane determined to make a journey to Etah in order to obtain assistance from the Esquimaux, if possible. His views on sledging at this period are interesting: “My plans for sledging, simple as I once thought them, and simple certainly as compared with those of the English parties, have completely changed. Give me an 8 lb. reindeer-fur bag to sleep in, an Esquimaux lamp with a lump of moss, a sheet iron snow-melter or a copper soup-pot, with a tin cylinder to slip over it and defend it from the wind, a good pièce de résistance of raw walrus-beef; and I want nothing more for a long journey, if the thermometer will keep itself as high as minus 30°. Give me a bear-skin bag and coffee to boot; and with the clothes on my back I am ready for minus 60°,—but no wind.
“The programme runs after this fashion. Keep the blood in motion, without loitering on the march: and for the halt, raise a snow-house; or if the snow lie scant or impracticable, ensconce yourself in a burrow or under the hospitable lee of an inclined hummock-slab. The outside fat of your walrus sustains your little moss fire: its frozen slices give you bread, its frozen blubber gives you butter, its scrag ends make the soup. The snow supplies you with water; and when you are ambitious of coffee there is a bagful stowed away in your boot. Spread out your bear-bag, your only heavy movable; stuff your reindeer-bag inside, hang your boots up outside, take a blade of bone, and scrape off all the ice from your furs. Now crawl in, the whole party of you, feet foremost; draw the top of your dormitory close, heading to leeward. Fancy yourself in Sybaris; and, if you are only tired enough, you may sleep—like St. Lawrence on his grid-iron, or even a trifle better.”
On 17th January 1855, Dr. Kane wrote: “There is no evading it any longer: it has been evident for the past ten days that the present state of things cannot last. We require meat, and cannot get along without it. Our sick have finished the bear’s head, and are now eating the condemned abscessed liver of the animal, including some intestines that were not given to the dogs. We have about three days’ allowance; thin chips of raw frozen meat, not exceeding 4 oz. in weight for each man per day.”
On 22nd January, Kane and Hans left the brig to make an attempt to reach Etah. Unfortunately, a severe snowstorm came on soon after they reached a half-way hut. After being storm-bound two days, they attempted to push on, but found that the snow had accumulated to such an extent that it was impossible to complete the journey. They returned to the hut, and next day tried the land-ice, but in vain. Kane, however, climbed a hill from which he discovered a trough through the hummock-ridges, and level plains of ice stretching to the south. Had the dogs not been disabled and the moonlight waning, they could now have made the journey; but as it was, they were forced to return to the brig, which they reached thoroughly exhausted.
Petersen and Hans started on 3rd February to make another attempt. They returned on the 5th, having found that the snow had become impassable. At this time only five of the party were able to work, and even these were not free from scurvy. On 28th February Kane had to report: “The scurvy is steadily gaining on us. I do my best to sustain the more desperate cases; but as fast as I partially build up one, another is stricken down. The disease is perhaps less malignant than it was, but it is more diffused throughout our party. Except William Morton, who is disabled by a frozen heel, not one of our eighteen is exempt. Of the six workers of our party, as I counted them a month ago, two are unable to do outdoor work, and the remaining four divide the duties of the ship among them. Hans musters his remaining energies to conduct the hunt. Petersen is his disheartened, moping assistant. The other two, Bonsall and myself, have all the daily offices of household and hospital. We chop five large sacks of ice, cut 6 fathoms of 8-inch hawser into junks of a foot each, serve out the meat when we have it, hack at the molasses, and hew out with crowbar and axe the pork and dried apples, pass up the foul slop and cleansings of our dormitory; and in a word, cook, scullionise, and attend the sick. Added to this, for five nights running I have kept watch from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., catching cat-naps as I could in the day without changing my clothes, but carefully waking every hour to note thermometers.”
Such was the stuff of which Dr. Kane was made!
On the 6th of March, Kane made the desperate venture of sending Hans, the only effective huntsman, on a sledge-journey to find the Esquimaux of Etah. He took with him the two surviving dogs in the lightest sledge. He returned on the 10th, having made the journey successfully. He found that the plight of the Esquimaux, so far as food was concerned, had been worse than those at the brig. Hans, however, assisted in a walrus-hunt, and with his rifle succeeded in killing a walrus. With his share of the meat he returned to the brig, where he was heartily welcomed.
By the end of March, Kane was able to hope that the scurvy was abating. In his journal on 3rd April, he gives a description of the daily routine:—
“At 7.30 call ‘all hands’; which means that one of the well trio wakes the other two. This order is obeyed slowly. The commander confesses for himself that the breakfast is well-nigh upon table before he gets his stiff ankles to the floor. Looking around, he sees the usual mosaic of sleepers as ingeniously dovetailed and crowded together as the campers-out in a buffalo-bag. He winds his way through them, and, as he does so, some stereotyped remarks are interchanged. ‘Thomas!’—our ex-cook, now side by side with the first officer of the expedition,—‘Thomas, turn out!’ ‘Eugh-ng, sir.’ ‘Turn out; get up.’ ‘Ys-sir;’ (sits bolt upright and rubs his eyes.) ‘How d’you feel, Mr. Ohlsen?’ ‘Better, sir.’ ‘How’ve you passed the night, Mr. Brooks?’ ‘Middlin’, sir.’ And, after a diversified series of spavined efforts, the mystical number forms its triangle at the table.
“It still stands in its simple dignity, an unclothed platform of boards, with a pile of plates in the centre. Near these is a virtuoso collection of cups grouped in a tumulus or cairn, commencing philosophically at the base with heavy stoneware, and ending with battered tin: the absolute pinnacle a debased dredging-box, which makes a bad goblet, being unpleasantly sharp at its rim. At one end of this table, partly hid by the beer-barrel, stands Petersen; at the side, Bonsall; and a limejuice cask opposite marks my seat. We are all standing: a momentary hush is made among the sick; and the daily prayer comes with one heart:—‘Accept our gratitude, and restore us to our homes.’
“The act of devotion over, we sit down, and look—not at the breakfast, but at each other.
“It may sound absurd to those who cannot understand the narrowing interest which we three availables feel in our continued mutual ability, for me to say that we spend the first five minutes in a detail of symptoms. The state of each man’s gums and shins and ankles, his elbows, loins, and kidneys, is canvassed minutely and compared with his yesterday’s report: the recital might edify a specialist who was anxious to register the Protean indications of scurvy. It is sometimes ludicrous, but always sad.
“Now for the bill of fare. ‘Who cooked?’—I am describing a gala-day.—‘It was Morton: he felt so much better that he got up at six; but he caved in soon after’:—
“First, coffee, great comforter to hard-worked men; one part of the genuine berry to three of navy-beans; next, sugar: what complex memories the word brings back!—the veritable sugar has been long ago defunct; but we have its representative molasses twice a week in our tea. Third, butter; there it is in a mutilated vegetable-dish; my own invention, melted from salt beef and washed in many waters: the unskilled might call it tallow. Fourth, a real delicacy not to be surpassed in court or camp, for Morton was up to see to it:—a pile of hot rolls of fine Virginia flour. What else? Nothing else: the breakfast resolves itself into bean-coffee, tallow, and hot bread. Yet a cordial meal it is. I am sorry to hurry over it so uncourteously, for I could dwell with Charles Lamb’s pensive enthusiasm upon the fleshpots; but I have been longer in describing the feast than it takes us to dispose of it. I hurry on with the interesting detail. Dinner is breakfast, with the beans converted into soup instead of coffee; and supper boasts of stewed apples.
“Work commences at nine. Petersen is off with his gun, and the two remaining dearly beloved Rogers arrange their carte: one makes the round of the sick and deals out their daily allowance of raw meat; the other goes to cutting ice. Those who can sit in bed and work, pick eider-down or cotton, for coverlets to our boat-bedding on the escape; others sew canvas bags for the same purpose; and Brooks balls off twine in order to lay up ‘small stuff.’
“At times when the sun comes out very brightly, Brooks and Wilson get permission to go on deck. One of us assists them, and, by the aid of creeping and crawling, these poor cripples manage to sit upon the combings of the hatch and look around in the glorious daylight. The sight seldom fails to affect them. There are emotions among rude, roughly nurtured men which vent themselves in true poetry. Brooks has about him sensibilities that shame me.
“This afternoon, save to the cook, is a season of rest; a real lazy, lounging interval, arrested by the call to supper. The coming night-watch obliges me to take an evening cat-nap. I state this by way of implying that I never sleep o’ daytimes.
“After supper, we have a better state of things than two weeks ago. Then the few tired-out workers were regaled by the groans and tossings of the sick. There was little conversation, and the physiognomy of our smoke-blackened little den was truly dismal. Now daylight pours in from the scuttle, the tea-kettle sings upon the stove, the convalescents rise up on their elbows and spin merry yarns. We are not yet sufficiently jolly for cards; but we are sufficiently thankful to do without them. At nine, silence almost unbroken prevails throughout our dormitory, and the watch-officer slips on his bear-skin, and, full of thoughts of to-morrow, resigns himself to a round of little routine observances, the most worthless of which is this unbroken record of the changing days.”
Kane now became convinced that the brig had little chance of being released from the ice, and he began preparations for a retreat by boat to the Danish settlement of Upernavik.
“Canvas moccasins had been made for every one of the party, and three dozen were added as a common stock to meet emergencies. Three pairs of boots were allowed each man. These were generally of carpeting, with soles of walrus and seal-hide; and when the supply of these gave out, the leather from the chafing-gear of the brig for a time supplied their place. A much better substitute was found afterward in the gutta-percha that had formed the speaking-tube. This was softened by warm water, cut into lengths, and so made available to its new uses. Blankets were served out as the material for body-clothing: every man was his own tailor. For bedding, the woollen curtains that had formerly decorated our berths supplied us with a couple of large coverlets, which were abundantly quilted with eider-down. Two buffalo-robes of the same size with the coverlets were arranged so as to button on them, forming sleeping-sacks for the occasion, but easily detached for the purpose of drying or airing.
“Our provision-bags were of assorted sizes, to fit under the thwarts of the boats. They were of sail-cloth made water-tight by tar and pitch, which we kept from penetrating the canvas by first coating it with flour-paste and plaster of Paris. The bread-bags were double, the inner saturated with paste and plaster by boiling in the mixture, and the space between the two filled with pitch. Every bag was, in sailor-phrase, roped and becketed; in ordinary parlance, well secured by cordage.
“These different manufactures had all of them been going on through the winter, and more rapidly as the spring advanced. They had given employment to the thoughts of our sick men, and in this way had exerted a wholesome influence on their moral tone and assisted their convalescence. Other preparations had been begun more recently. The provisions for the descent were to be got ready and packed. The ship-bread was powdered by beating it with a capstan-bar, and pressed down into the bags which were to carry it. Pork-fat and tallow were melted down, and poured into other bags to freeze. A stock of concentrated bean-soup was cooked, and secured for carriage like the pork-fat; and the flour and remaining meat-biscuit were to be protected from moisture in double bags. These were the only provisions we were to carry with us. I knew I should be able to subsist the party for some time after their setting out by the food I could bring from the vessel by occasional trips with my dog-team. For the rest, we relied upon our guns.
“Besides all this, we had our camp equipage to get in order, and the vitally important organisation of our system of boats and sledges.
“Our boats were three in number, all of them well battered by exposure to ice and storm, almost as destructive of their sea-worthiness as the hot sun of other regions. Two of them were cypress whale-boats, 26 feet long, with 7 feet beam, and 3 feet deep. These were strengthened with oak bottom-pieces and a long string-piece bolted to the keel. A washboard of light cedar, about 6 inches high, served to strengthen the gunwale and give increased depth. A neat housing of light canvas was stretched upon a ridge-line sustained fore and aft by stanchions, and hung down over the boat’s sides, where it was fastened (stopped) to a jack-stay. My last year’s experience on the attempt to reach Beechy Island determined me to carry but one mast to each boat. It was stepped into an oaken thwart, made especially strong, as it was expected to carry sail over ice as well as water: the mast could be readily unshipped, and carried, with the oars, boat-hooks, and ice-poles, alongside the boat. The third boat was my little Red Eric. We mounted her on the old sledge, the Faith, hardly relying on her for any purposes of navigation, but with the intention of cutting her up for firewood in case our guns should fail to give us a supply of blubber.
“Indeed, in spite of all the ingenuity of our carpenter, Mr. Ohlsen, well seconded by the persevering labours of McGary and Bonsall, not one of our boats was positively sea-worthy. The planking of all of them was so dried up that it could hardly be made tight by caulking.
“The three boats were mounted on sledges rigged with rue-raddies; the provisions stowed snugly under the thwarts; the chronometers, carefully boxed and padded, placed in the stern-sheets of the Hope, in charge of Mr. Sonntag. With them were such of the instruments as we could venture to transport. They consisted of two Gambey sextants with artificial horizon, our transit-unifilar, and dip-instruments. Our glasses, with a few of the smaller field-instruments, we carried on our persons. Our fine theodolite we were forced to abandon. Our powder and shot, upon which our lives depended, were carefully distributed in bags and tin canisters. The percussion caps I took into my own possession, as more precious than gold. Mr. Bonsall had a general charge of the arms and ammunition. Places were arranged for the guns, and hunters appointed for each boat. Mr. Petersen took charge of the most important part of our field equipage, our cooking-gear. Petersen was our best tinker. All the old stove-pipe, now none the better for two winters of Arctic fires, was called into requisition. Each boat was provided with two large iron cylinders, 14 inches in diameter and 18 inches high. Each of them held an iron saucer or lamp, in which we could place our melted pork-fat or blubber, and, with the aid of spun-yarn for a wick, make a roaring fire. I need not say that the fat and oil always froze when not ignited. Into these cylinders, which were used merely to defend our lamp from the wind and our pots from contact with the cold air, we placed a couple of large tin vessels, suitable either for melting snow or making tea or soup. They were made out of cake-canisters cut down. How many kindly festival associations hung by these now abused soup-cans! One of them had, before the fire rubbed off its bright gilding, the wedding-inscription of a large fruit-cake.
“We carried spare tins in case the others should burn out: it was well we did so. So completely had we exhausted our household furniture, that we had neither cups nor plates, except crockery. This, of course, would not stand the travel, and our spare tin had to be saved for protecting the boats from ice. At this juncture we cut plates out of every imaginable and rejected piece of tinware. Borden’s meat-biscuit canisters furnished us with a splendid dinner-service; and some rightly feared tin jars, with ominous labels of Corrosive Sublimate and Arsenic, which once belonged to our department of Natural History, were emptied, scoured, and cut down into tea-cups.”
The 17th of May was fixed as the date of setting out, and each man was to be allowed 8 lb. of personal effects. Until the boats were hauled a considerable distance from the brig, the party returned to it at night. When the last farewell to the brig was made, the entire ship’s company took part in the ceremonial. It is best described in Dr. Kane’s own words:—
“We read prayers and a chapter of the Bible; and then, all standing silently round, I took Sir John Franklin’s portrait from its frame and cased it in an india-rubber scroll. I next read the reports of inspection and survey which had been made by the several commissions organised for the purpose, all of them testifying to the necessities under which I was about to act. I then addressed the party: I did not affect to disguise the difficulties that were before us; but I assured them that they could all be overcome by energy and subordination to command, and that the 1300 miles of ice and water that lay between us and North Greenland could be traversed with safety for most of us, and hope for all. I added that as men and messmates it was the duty of us all, enjoined by gallantry as well as religion, to postpone every consideration of self to the protection of the wounded and sick; and that this must be regarded by every man and under all circumstances as a paramount order. In conclusion, I told them to think over the trials we had all of us gone through, and to remember each man for himself how often an unseen Power had rescued him in peril, and I admonished them still to place reliance on Him who could not change.”
On reaching the boats, the party were regularly mustered and divided between the two. A rigid inspection was made of every article of personal equipment. Each man had a woollen under-dress and an Esquimaux suit of fur clothing—kapetah, nessak, and nannooke complete, with boots of their own make. One pair of boots was made of canvas faced with walrus-hide, and another inside these made of the cabin Brussels carpet. In addition to this, each man carried a rue-raddy—a shoulder-belt to drag by—adjusted to fit him comfortably, a pair of socks next his skin, and a pair of large goggles for snow-blindness, made Esquimaux-fashion by cutting a small slit in a piece of wood. The provision-bags and other stores were numbered, and each man and officer had his own bag and a place assigned for it, to prevent confusion in rapid stowing and unstowing. Excluding four sick men, who were unable to move, and Dr. Kane, who had to drive the dog-team and serve as common carrier and courier, they numbered but twelve men, which would have given six to a sledge—too few to move it. It was therefore necessary to concentrate the entire force upon one sledge at a time.
The routine established by Dr. Kane was the most precise:—“Daily prayers both morning and evening, all hands gathering round in a circle and standing uncovered during the short exercise; regulated hours; fixed duties and positions at the track-lines and on the halt; the cooking to be taken by turns, the captains of the boats alone being excused. The charge of the log was confided to Dr. Hayes, and the running survey to Mr. Sonntag. The thermometer was observed every three hours.”
Dr. Kane prepared the hut at Anoatok for the reception of the sick, and carried a large part of the provisions there. During the first fortnight after the sledges left the brig he journeyed between 700 and 800 miles in doing this work by means of his dog-sledge—a mean travel of about 57 miles a day.
Before reaching open water on the 16th of June, enormous difficulties had to be overcome, and one man lost his life through an injury to his back in making an attempt to keep one of the sledges from going through the ice.
The boats had now to be caulked and swelled to prepare them for a long and adventurous navigation.
Nearly the whole Esquimaux settlement followed and assisted them as far as the open water, and Dr. Kane thus describes the scene near the time of bidding them farewell:—
“Each one has a knife, or a file, or a saw, or some such treasured keepsake; and the children have a lump of soap, the greatest of all great medicines. The merry little urchins break in upon me even now as I am writing:—‘Kuyanake, kuyanake, Nalegaksoak!’ ‘Thank you, thank you, big chief!’ while Myouk is crowding fresh presents of raw birds on me as if I could eat for ever, and poor Aningnah is crying beside the tent-curtain, wiping her eyes on a bird-skin!
“My heart warms to these poor, dirty, miserable, yet happy beings, so long our neighbours, and of late so staunchly our friends. Theirs is no affectation of regret. There are twenty-two of them around me, all busy in good offices to the Docto Kayens; and there are only two women and the old blind patriarch Kresuk, ‘Driftwood,’ left behind at the settlement.
“But see! more of them are coming up,—boys ten years old are pushing forward babies on their sledges. The whole nation is gipsying with us upon the icy meadows.
“We cook for them in our big camp-kettle; they sleep in the Red Eric; a berg close at hand supplies them with water; and thus, rich in all that they value,—sleep and food and drink and companionship,—with their treasured short-lived summer sun above them, the beau ideal and sum of Esquimaux blessings, they seem supremely happy.
“Poor creatures! It is only six months ago that starvation was among them: many of the faces around me have not yet lost the lines of wasting suspense. The walrus-season is again of doubtful productiveness, and they are cut off from their brethren to the south, at Netelik, and Appah, until winter rebuilds the avenue of ice. With all this, no thoughts of the future cross them. Babies squall, and women chatter, and the men weave their long yarns with peals of rattling hearty laughter between.
“Ever since we reached Pekiutlik, these friends of ours have considered us their guests. They have given us hand-sledges for our baggage, and taken turn about in watches to carry us and it to the water’s edge. But for them our dreary journey would have been prolonged at least a fortnight, and we are so late even now that hours may measure our lives. Metek, Myouk, Nessark, Erkee, and the half-grown boys have been our chief labourers; but women, children, and dogs are all bearing their part.
“Whatever may have been the faults of these Esquimaux heretofore, stealing was the only grave one. Treachery they may have conceived; and I have reason to believe that, under superstitious fears of an evil influence from our presence, they would at one time have been glad to destroy us. But the day of all this has passed away. When trouble came to us and to them, and we bent ourselves to their habits,—when we looked to them to procure us fresh meat, and they found at our poor Oomiak-soak shelter and protection during their wild bear-hunts,—then we were so blended in our interests as well as modes of life that every trace of enmity wore away. God knows that since they professed friendship, albeit the imaginary powers of the angekok-soak and the marvellous six-shooter which attested them may have had their influence, never have friends been more true. Although, since Ohlsen’s death, numberless articles of inestimable value to them have been scattered upon the ice unwatched, they have not stolen a nail. It was only yesterday that Metek, upon my alluding to the manner in which property of all sorts was exposed without pilfering, explained through Petersen, in these two short sentences, the argument of their morality:—
“ ‘You have done us good. We are not hungry; we will not take, (steal)—You have done us good; we want to help you: we are friends.’ ”
Kane and his men were delayed by a gale till 19th June, when they embarked in three boats. Of the original nineteen men, three had died. Another, Hans Christian the Esquimaux, had fallen in love, and remained behind. The party now, therefore, consisted of fifteen. They made first for Hakluyt Island, where the boats had to undergo further repairs. In the morning of 22nd June, they pushed forward through a snowstorm for Northumberland Island, where a number of auks were secured. Murchison Channel was crossed on 23rd June, and they encamped for the night near the base of Cape Parry. Soon after leaving here they encountered a gale from the north-west, and had great difficulty in escaping from the drifting ice. By good luck, however, they landed at the breeding-grounds of a large number of eider ducks, and were able to gather 1200 eggs a day. Here they remained three days, until the storm abated. They now made for Cape Dudley Digges, which they reached on 11th July. Here they obtained an abundance of birds, and scurvy grass. The ice ahead barred their passage, and they were nothing loath to spend a week where there was plenty of food. On 18th July they again set out, but in doing so were unfortunate enough to lose their best shot-gun and their kettle, owing to the capsizing of one of the boats. Cape York was reached on 21st July. Here they left the coast-line and entered the ice-pack. On the 28th the daily allowance of food was restricted to 5 oz. of bread-dust, 4 oz. of tallow, and 3 oz. of bird-meat. The Red Eric was broken up for fuel, so that the whole party had now to be transported in two boats. The short rations soon began to tell on their strength, and the old symptoms of scurvy came back again. It was at this crisis that a seal was seen, and the incident is thus described by Dr. Kane:—
“It was an ussuk, and so large that I at first mistook it for a walrus. Signal was made for the Hope to follow astern, and, trembling with anxiety, we prepared to crawl down upon him.
“Petersen, with the large English rifle, was stationed in the bow, and stockings were drawn over the oars as mufflers. As we neared the animal, our excitement became so intense that the men could hardly keep stroke. I had a set of signals for such occasions which spared us the noise of the voice; and when about 300 yards off, the oars were taken in, and we moved in deep silence with a single scull astern.
“He was not asleep, for he reared his head when we were almost within rifle-shot; and to this day I can remember the hard, careworn, almost despairing expression of the men’s thin faces as they saw him move: their lives depended on his capture.
“I depressed my hand nervously, as a signal for Petersen to fire. McGary hung upon his oar, and the boat, slowly but noiselessly sagging ahead, seemed to me within certain range. Looking at Petersen, I saw that the poor fellow was paralysed by his anxiety, trying vainly to obtain a rest for his gun against the cut-water of the boat. The seal rose on his fore-flippers, gazed at us for a moment with frightened curiosity, and coiled himself for a plunge. At that instant, simultaneously with the crack of our rifle, he relaxed his long length on the ice, and, at the very brink of the water, his head fell helpless to one side.
“I would have ordered another shot, but no discipline could have controlled the men. With a wild yell, each vociferating according to his own impulse, they urged both boats upon the floes. A crowd of hands seized the seal and bore him up to safer ice. The men seemed half crazy; I had not realised how much we were reduced by absolute famine. They ran over the floe, crying and laughing and brandishing their knives. It was not five minutes before every man was sucking his bloody fingers or mouthing long strips of raw blubber.
“Not an ounce of this seal was lost. The intestines found their way into the soup-kettles without any observance of the preliminary home-processes. The cartilaginous parts of the fore-flippers were cut off in the mêlée, and passed round to be chewed upon; and even the liver, warm and raw as it was, bade fair to be eaten before it had seen the pot. That night, on the large halting-floe, to which, in contempt of the dangers of drifting, we happy men had hauled our boats, two entire planks of the Red Eric were devoted to a grand cooking-fire, and we enjoyed a rare and savage feast.
“This was our last experience of the disagreeable effects of hunger. In the words of George Stephenson, ‘The charm was broken and the dogs were safe.’ The dogs I have said little about, for none of us liked to think of them. The poor creatures Toodla and Whitey had been taken with us as last resources against starvation. They were, as McGary worded it, ‘meat on the hoof,’ and ‘able to carry their own fat over the floes.’ Once, near Weary Man’s Rest, I had been on the point of killing them; but they had been the leaders of our winter’s team, and we could not bear the sacrifice.”
Within a day or two after killing the large seal, another was shot, and from that time forward they had a full supply of food. On the 1st of August they sighted the Devil’s Thumb, and were soon among the Duck Islands. A few days after this they met an Upernavik oil-boat, and received some scanty news of the world. They learnt that a squadron under Captain Hartstene had left for the north in search of them a short time before. On the 6th of August they arrived at Upernavik, where they were well received by the Danes—eighty-three days after leaving the Advance. The squadron under Hartstene returned in time to convey Dr. Kane and his party to America.
The results of Dr. Kane’s expedition were very important. Ross had declared that Smith Sound was a bay, and although Captain Inglefield in 1852 proved that it was a sound, he reached only 78° 28′. Kane extended our knowledge up to 81° 22′, and all indications tended to show that Kennedy Channel led to the Polar Ocean.
No one can read Kane’s book without being impressed by the noble character of the man. He was a hero in the highest sense of the word. It is sad to relate that he died in Havana on the 16th February 1857, when only thirty-seven years of age.
The object of Dr. Hayes’ expedition may be given in his own words:—
“The plan of the enterprise first suggested itself to me while acting as surgeon of the expedition commanded by the late Dr. E. K. Kane, of the United States Navy. Although its execution did not appear feasible at the period of my return from that voyage in October 1855, yet I did not at any time abandon the design. It comprehended an extensive scheme of discovery. The proposed route was that by Smith Sound. My object was to complete the survey of the north coasts of Greenland and Grinnell Land, and to make such explorations as I might find practicable in the direction of the North Pole.
“My proposed base of operations was Grinnell Land, which I had discovered on my former voyage, and had personally traced beyond latitude 80°, far enough to satisfy me that it was available for my design.
“Accepting the deductions of many learned physicists that the sea about the North Pole cannot be frozen, that an open area of varying extent must be found within the Ice-belt which is known to invest it, I desired to add to the proofs which had already been accumulated by the early Dutch and English voyagers, and, more recently, by the researches of Scoresby, Wrangel, and Parry, and still later by Dr. Kane’s expedition.
“It is well known that the great difficulty which has been encountered, in the various attempts that have been made to solve this important physical problem, has been the inability of the explorer to penetrate the Ice-belt with his ship, or to travel over it with sledges sufficiently far to obtain indisputable proof. My former experience led me to the conclusion that the chances of success were greater by Smith Sound than by any other route, and my hopes of success were based upon the expectation which I entertained of being able to push a vessel into the Ice-belt, to about the 80th parallel of latitude, and thence to transport a boat over the ice to the open sea which I hoped to find beyond. Reaching this open sea, if such fortune awaited me, I proposed to launch my boat and to push off northward. For the ice-transportation I expected to rely, mainly, upon the dog of the Esquimaux.”
Dr. Hayes had a strong belief in the existence of an open Polar Sea, but it may here be mentioned that subsequent exploration proved that his views were not correct. On the other hand, the view of the old geographers that for a long distance around the Pole the sea was covered with immovable ice has also been disproved. Throughout the whole year the ice is found to be more or less in motion, except where it is in contact with the land.
Dr. Hayes expected to be able to start with two vessels,—one a small steamer, to be taken out under sails, and the steam-power only to be used when actually among the ice; the other a sailing vessel, to be employed as a tender or store-ship. He found, however, that the fund which he had raised with great difficulty would only enable him to fit out and man one small sailing vessel.
A fore-and-aft schooner of 133 tons register, named Spring Hill, was purchased, and after some necessary alterations, was rechristened United States.
August Sonntag, the astronomer of Kane’s expedition, early volunteered to accompany Hayes. On his return to the United States he was appointed to the Dudley Observatory, Albany, and to accompany Dr. Hayes he sacrificed the fine position of Associate Director of that institution.
Including Dr. Hayes, the party numbered fifteen persons. They left Boston on 7th July 1860, and after a rough passage crossed the Arctic Circle on 30th July. The first iceberg was met on the previous day. Some rough weather was experienced in Davis’ Strait, and is thus described by Hayes:—
“We were running before the wind and fighting a wretched cross-sea under reefed fore and mainsail and jib, when the fore fife-rail was carried away;—down came everything to the deck, and there was left not a stitch of canvas on the schooner but the lumbering mainsail. It was a miracle that we did not broach to and go to the bottom. Nothing saved us but a steady hand at the helm.
“Notwithstanding all this knocking about, everybody seemed to take it for granted that this sort of thing is very natural and proper, and a part of the engagement for the cruise. It is at least gratifying to see that they take kindly to discomfort, and receive every freak of fortune with manly good-nature. I really believe that were affairs otherwise ordered they would be sadly disappointed. They are ‘the small band of brave and spirited men’ they read about in the newspapers, and they mean to show it. The sailors are sometimes literally drowned out of the forecastle. The cabin is flooded at least a dozen times a day. The skylight has been knocked to pieces by the head of a sea, and the table, standing directly under it, has been more than once cleared of crockery and eatables without the aid of the steward. My own cabin gets washed out at irregular intervals, and my books are half of them spoiled by tumbling from their shelves in spite of all I can do to the contrary. Once I caught the whole library tacking about the deck after an unusually ambitious dive of the schooner, and the advent of a more than ordinarily heavy rush of water through the ‘companion-way.’ ”
Land was first sighted on the 31st July, and proved to be the southern extremity of Disco Island. Owing to a calm, Proven was not reached till 6th August. The entry into the harbour is thus described by Dr. Hayes:—
“We were escorted into the harbour of Proven by the strangest fleet of boats and the strangest-looking boatmen that ever convoyed a ship. They were the far-famed Kayakers of Greenland, and they deserve a passing notice.
“The Kayak of the Greenlander is the frailest specimen of marine architecture that ever carried human freight. It is 18 feet long and as many inches wide at its middle, and tapers, with an upward curving line, to a point at either end. The skeleton of the boat is made of light wood; the covering is of tanned seal-skin, sewed together by the native women with sinew thread, and with a strength and dexterity quite astonishing. Not a drop of water finds its way through their seams, and the skin itself is perfectly waterproof. The boat is about 9 inches deep, and the top is covered like the bottom. There is no opening into it except a round hole in the centre, which admits the hunter as far as his hips. This hole is surrounded with a wooden rim, over which the Kayaker laces the lower edge of his water-tight jacket, and thus fastens himself in and keeps the water out. He propels himself with a single oar about 6 feet long, which terminates in a blade or paddle at either end. This instrument of locomotion is grasped in the centre, and is dipped in the water alternately to right and left. The boat is graceful as a duck and light as a feather. It has no ballast and no keel, and it rides almost on the surface of the water. It is therefore necessarily top-heavy. Long practice is required to manage it, and no tight-rope dancer ever needed more steady nerve and skill of balance than this same savage Kayaker. Yet, in this frail craft, he does not hesitate to ride seas which would swamp an ordinary boat, or to break through surf which may sweep completely over him. But he is used to hard battles, and, in spite of every fortune, he keeps himself upright.”
Hayes expected to obtain a supply of dogs at Proven, but he found that a disease which had prevailed among the teams during the previous year had diminished the stock to less than half of what was required by the people themselves, and he had to be satisfied with a few dogs of inferior quality. The Danish officials, however, rendered Hayes all the assistance in their power, and gave him hope of being more successful at Upernavik, for which settlement he left on 12th August.
During the night, before reaching Upernavik, the carpenter of the expedition, Gibson Caruthers, died suddenly. Besides Mr. Sonntag and Dr. Hayes, he was the only member of the party who had been in the Arctic seas, having served in the First Grinnell Expedition in search of Franklin. He was buried at Upernavik.
Having obtained about two dozen dogs, and a supply of reindeer, seal, and dog-skins, Upernavik was left after four days’ delay. Three Esquimaux, an interpreter, and two Danish sailors were engaged at Upernavik. At Tessuissak, a place about 60 miles from Upernavik, a team of dogs, the property of the interpreter, was obtained.
When Melville Bay was reached, Hayes was delighted to find open water with only an iceberg here and there. This was crossed in the short space of fifty-five hours. Near the northern part of the bay a loose pack about 15 miles wide was encountered, but under a full pressure of canvas, little difficulty was experienced in “boring” it.
Standing close in under Cape York, Hayes kept a careful look-out for natives. He wished if possible to ascertain whether Hans of the Kane expedition was there. In this he was successful. Hayes writes:—
“Six years’ experience among the wild men of this barren coast had brought him to their level of filthy ugliness. His companions were his wife, who carried her first-born in a hood upon her back; her brother, a bright-eyed boy of twelve years, and ‘an ancient dame with voluble and flippant tongue,’ her mother. They were all dressed in skins, and, being the first Esquimaux we had seen whose habits remained wholly uninfluenced by contact with civilisation, they were, naturally, objects of much interest to us all.
“Hans led us up the hillside, over rough rocks and through deep snow-drifts, to his tent. It was pitched about 200 feet above the level of the sea, in a most inconvenient position for a hunter; but it was his ‘look-out.’ Wearily he had watched, year after year, for the hoped-for vessel; but summer after summer passed and the vessel came not, and he still sighed for his southern home and the friends of his youth.
“His tent was a sorry habitation. It was made after the Esquimaux-fashion, of seal-skins, and was barely large enough to hold the little family who were grouped about us.
“I asked Hans if he would go with us.
“ ‘Yes!’
“Would he take his wife and baby?
“ ‘Yes!’
“Would he go without them?
“ ‘Yes!’
“Having no leisure to examine critically into the state of his mind, and having an impression that the permanent separation of husband and wife is regarded as a painful event, I gave the Esquimaux mother the benefit of this conventional suspicion, and brought them both aboard, with their baby and their tent and all their household goods. The old woman and bright-eyed boy cried to be taken along; but I had no further room, and we had to leave them to the care of the remainder of the tribe, who, about twenty in number, had discovered the vessel, and came shouting gleefully over the hill. After distributing to them some useful presents, we pushed off for the schooner.
“Hans was the only unconcerned person in the party. I subsequently thought that he would have been quite as well pleased had I left his wife and child to the protection of their savage kin; and had I known him as well then as, with good reason, I knew him afterwards, I would not have gone out of my way to disturb his barbarous existence.”
Cape Alexander, at the entrance to Smith Sound, was reached without any special difficulty. Standing over towards Cape Isabella on the opposite side of the sound, there seemed a good prospect of being able to reach it, but soon a heavy pack was met with, and a furious gale coming on compelled Hayes to run back to the coast for shelter. On the 31st August, during this gale, the schooner dragged its anchors. What followed is thus described by Hayes: “McCormick managed to save the bower, but the kedge was lost. It caught a rock at a critical moment, and, the hawser parting, we were driven upon the bergs, which, as before stated, had grounded astern of us. The collision was a perfect crash. The stern boat flew into splinters, the bulwarks over the starboard-quarter were stove in, and, the schooner’s head swinging round with great violence, the jib-boom was carried away, and the bowsprit and foretopmast were both sprung. In this crippled condition we at length escaped most miraculously, and under bare poles scudded before the wind. A vast number of icebergs and the ‘pack’ coming in view, we were forced to make sail. The mainsail went to pieces as soon as it was set, and we were once more in great jeopardy; but fortunately the storm abated, and we have since been threshing to windward, and are once more within Smith Sound.”
Hayes again attempted to reach Cape Isabella, but the pack was again met. He then attempted to pass up the Greenland coast so as to try to cross farther north. However, another gale set in, and he was forced to take shelter behind Cape Alexander. When the gale subsided he again entered the sound, but was soon beset in the ice, and the schooner was seriously damaged. Even after this, another attempt was made to pass up the coast, but it ended in failure, and Hayes was forced to put into Hartstene Bay for the winter. The harbour was named Port Foulke, in honour of William Parker Foulke, of Philadelphia, who was one of the earliest, and continued to be throughout one of the most constant advocates of the expedition. Port Foulke is situated about 8 nautical miles in a north-easterly direction from Cape Alexander. An abundance of game was found in the neighbourhood, and consisted of deer, hares, foxes, and birds.
During October, Hayes made a journey inland, ascending a glacier, named by Kane after his brother John, with five men, and taking with him a sledge loaded with eight days’ provisions, a small canvas tent, two buffalo-skins for bedding, and a cooking-lamp. The party reached a point 70 miles from the coast, at an elevation of 5000 feet. Hayes describes it as a vast frozen Sahara, immeasurable to the human eye. He goes on to compare the river systems of the Temperate and Equatorial Zones with the glacier systems of the Arctic and Antarctic, and draws a delightful picture of the great law of Circulation and Change:—
“The dewdrop, distilled upon the tropic palm-leaf, falling to the earth, has reappeared in the gurgling spring of the primeval forest, has flown with the rivulet to the river, and with the river to the ocean; has then vanished into the air, and, wafted northward by the unseen wind, has fallen as a downy snowflake upon the lofty mountain, where, penetrated by a solar ray, it has become again a little globule of water, and the chilly wind, following the sun, has converted this globule into a crystal; and the crystal takes up its wandering course again, seeking the ocean.
“But where its movement was once rapid, it is now slow; where it then flowed with the river miles in an hour, it will now flow with the glacier not more in centuries; and where it once entered calmly into the sea, it will now join the world of waters in the midst of a violent convulsion.
“We have thus seen that the iceberg is the discharge of the Arctic river, that the Arctic river is the glacier, and that the glacier is the accumulation of the frozen vapours of the air. We have watched this river, moving on its slow and steady course from the distant hills, until at length it has reached the sea; and we have seen the sea tear from the slothful stream a monstrous fragment, and take back to itself its own again. Freed from the shackles which it has borne in silence through unnumbered centuries, this new-born child of the ocean rushes with a wild bound into the arms of the parent water, where it is caressed by the surf and nursed into life again; and the crystal drops receive their long-lost freedom, and fly away on the laughing waves to catch once more the sunbeam, and to run again their course through the long cycle of the ages.
“And this iceberg has more significance than the great flood which the glacier’s southern sister, the broad Amazon, pours into the ocean from the slopes of the Andes and the mountains of Brazil. Solemn, stately, and erect, in tempest and in calm, it rides the deep. The restless waves resound through its broken archways and thunder against its adamantean walls. Clouds, impenetrable as those which shielded the graceful form of Arethusa, clothe it in the morning; under the bright blaze of the noonday sun it is armoured in glittering silver; it robes itself in the gorgeous colours of evening; and in the silent night the heavenly orbs are mirrored in its glassy surface. Drifting snows whirl over it in the winter, and the sea-gulls swarm round it in the summer. The last rays of departing day linger upon its lofty spires; and when the long darkness is past it catches the first gleam of the returning light, and its gilded dome heralds the coming morn. The elements combine to render tribute to its matchless beauty. Its loud voice is wafted to the shore, and the earth rolls it from crag to crag among the echoing hills. The sun steals through the veil of radiant fountains which flutter over it in the summer winds, and the rainbow on its pallid cheek betrays the warm kiss. The air crowns it with wreaths of soft vapour, and the waters around it take the hues of the emerald and the sapphire. In fulfilment of its destiny it moves steadily onward in its blue pathway through the varying seasons and under the changeful skies. Slowly, as in ages long gone by it arose from the broad waters, so does it sink back into them. It is indeed a noble symbol of the Law,—a monument of Time’s slow changes, more ancient than the Egyptian Pyramids or the obelisk of Heliopolis. Its crystals were dewdrops and snowflakes long before the human race was born in Eden.”
By the 28th October, 74 reindeer, 21 foxes, 12 hares, 1 seal, 14 eider ducks, 8 dovekies, 6 auks, and 1 ptarmigan had been shot and brought on board. In addition to these, some 20 to 30 reindeer had been cached in various places. Hayes naturally came to the conclusion that men might live indefinitely at Port Foulke without being troubled with scurvy.
On the 19th November, one of the Esquimaux, Peter, disappeared. For some time Hayes had observed a rivalry between Hans and Peter, and he took the side of the latter. Hans was jealous of every act of favour towards Peter, and Hayes was inclined to believe that Hans had been the means of frightening Peter and of making him run off. No news was received as to his whereabouts until months afterwards, when some Esquimaux found his dead body in a hut a long distance from the ship.
Early in December a serious disease attacked the dogs, similar to what Kane had to deal with. Hayes had at this time thirty-six, and the first attacked by the disease was shot. However, seven died within four days, and during the first two weeks of December eighteen died. At the end of the following week only nine dogs were left. This was a serious blow to Hayes, as he relied chiefly on the dogs for transport across the ice. It was now necessary to devise means for remedying the loss, or to arrange new plans in conformity with the changed circumstances. The first expedient which suggested itself was to open communication with the Esquimaux of Whale Sound, from whom some animals might be obtained. From Hans it was learned that there was a family living on Northumberland Island, several families on the south side of Whale Sound, and possibly one or more on the north side. Northumberland Island was about 100 miles distant, and the south side of the Sound about 150. It was decided that if a sufficient number of dogs remained alive when the moon came in December, Sonntag should make the journey at that period, taking a single sledge, and Hans for a driver. They set out on the 21st December, and nothing was heard of them until the 29th January, when two Esquimaux arrived with the news that Sonntag had died. Hans appeared two days afterwards, and told his story:—
“The travellers rounded Cape Alexander without difficulty, finding the ice solid; and they did not halt until they had reached Sutherland Island, where they built a snow-hut and rested for a few hours. Continuing thence down the coast, they sought the Esquimaux at Sorfalik without success. The native hut at that place being in ruins, they made for their shelter another house of snow; and after being well rested, they set out directly for Northumberland Island, having concluded that it was useless to seek longer for natives on the north side of the sound. They had proceeded on their course about 4 or 5 miles, as nearly as I can judge from Hans’s description, when Sonntag, growing a little chilled, sprang off the sledge and ran ahead of the dogs to warm himself with the exercise. The tangling of a trace obliging Hans to halt the team for a few minutes, he fell some distance behind, and was hurrying on to catch up, when he suddenly observed Sonntag sinking. He had come upon the thin ice, covering a recently open tide-crack, and, probably not observing his footing, he slipped upon it unawares. Hans hastened to his rescue, aided him out of the water, and then turned back for the shelter which they had recently abandoned. A light wind was blowing at the time from the north-east, and this, according to Hans, caused Sonntag to seek the hut without stopping to change his wet clothing. At first he ran beside the sledge, and thus guarded against danger; but after a while he rode, and when they halted at Sorfalik, Hans discovered that his companion was stiff and speechless. Assisting him into the hut with all possible dispatch, Hans states that he removed the wet and frozen clothing, and placed Sonntag in the sleeping-bag. He next gave him some brandy which he found in a flask on the sledge; and, having tightly closed the hut, he lighted the alcohol-lamp, for the double purpose of elevating the temperature and making some coffee; but all his efforts were unavailing, and, after remaining for nearly a day unconscious, Sonntag died. He did not speak after reaching the hut, and left no message of any kind.”
Hayes was not altogether satisfied with the explanation given by Hans. He wrote; “Although I have no good reason for doubting the truth of his narrative, yet I cannot quite reconcile my mind to the fact that Sonntag, with so much experience to govern him, should have undertaken to travel 5 miles in wet clothing, especially as he was accompanied by a native hunter who was familiar with all of the expedients for safety upon the ice-fields, and to whom falling in the water is no unusual circumstance. The sledge and the canvas apron which enclosed the cargo furnished the means for constructing a temporary shelter from the wind, and the sleeping-bag would have insured against freezing while Hans got ready the dry clothing, of which Sonntag carried a complete change. Nor can I understand how he should have lived so long and have given Hans no message for me, nor have spoken a word after coming out of the water, further than to have ordered his driver to hasten back to the snow-hut. However, it is idle to speculate about the matter; and since Hans’s interests were concerned in proving faithful to the officer who, of all those in the ship, cared most for him, it would be unreasonable as well as unjust to suspect him of desertion.”
Towards spring, Hayes had the body of Sonntag brought to Port Foulke and buried. “And here,” writes Hayes, “in the drear solitude of the Arctic desert, our comrade sleeps the sleep that knows no waking in this troubled world,—where no loving hands can ever come to strew his grave with flowers, nor eyes grow dim with sorrowing; but the gentle stars, which in life he loved so well, will keep over him eternal vigil, and the winds will wail over him, and Nature, his mistress, will drop upon his tomb her frozen tears for evermore.”
When Hans returned from his visit to the Esquimaux, he brought with him his wife’s father and mother. Hayes gives the following description of them:—
“The personal appearance of this interesting couple was not peculiarly attractive. Their faces were broad, jaws heavy, cheek-bones projecting like other carnivorous animals, foreheads narrow, eyes small and very black, noses flat, lips long and thin, and when opened, there were disclosed two narrow, white, well-preserved rows of polished ivory,—well worn, however, with long use and hard service, for the teeth of the Esquimaux serve a great variety of purposes, such as softening skins, pulling and tightening cords, besides masticating food, which I may here mention is wholly animal. Their hair was jet black, though not abundant, and the man had the largest growth of beard which I have seen upon an Esquimaux face, but it was confined to the upper lip and the tip of the chin. The face of the Esquimaux is indeed quite Mongolian in its type, and is usually beardless. In stature they are short, though well built, and bear, in every movement, evidence of strength and endurance.
“The dress of the male and female differed but little one from the other. It consisted of nine pieces—a pair of boots, stockings, mittens, pantaloons, an under-dress, and a coat. The man wore boots of bear-skin, reaching to the top of the calf, where they met the pantaloons, which were composed of the same materials. The boots of the woman reached nearly to the middle of the thigh, and were made of tanned seal-skins. Her pantaloons, like her husband’s, were of bear-skin. The stockings were of dog-skin, and the mittens of seal-skin. The under-dress was made of bird-skins, feathers turned inwards; and the coat, which did not open in front, but was drawn on over the head like a shirt, was of blue fox-skins. This coat terminates in a hood which envelops the head as completely as an Albanian capote or a monk’s cowl. This hood gives the chief distinction to the dresses of the sexes. In the costume of the man it is round, closely fitting the scalp, while in the woman it is pointed at the top to receive the hair which is gathered up on the crown of the head, and tied into a hard, horn-like tuft with a piece of raw seal-hide,—a style of coiffure which, whatever may be its other advantages, cannot be regarded as peculiarly picturesque.
“Their ages could not be determined; for, since the Esquimaux cannot enumerate beyond their ten fingers, it is quite impossible for them to refer to a past event by any process of notation. Having no written language whatever, not even the picture-writing and hieroglyphics of the rudest Indian tribes of North America, the race possesses no records, and such traditions as may come down from generation to generation are not fixed by any means which will furnish even an approximate estimate of their periods of growth, prosperity, and decay, or even of their own ages.”
Towards the end of February three other Esquimaux appeared from the south, and from them Hayes obtained some dogs.
About the middle of March, Hayes made a preliminary journey in order to explore the track for his extended journey to the north, and cached some provisions at Cairn Point. He visited Rensselaer Harbour, where the Advance had been left, but no vestige of the ship remained, except a small bit of a deck-plank which Hayes picked up near the site of the old observatory.
The long sledge-journey began on the 3rd of April 1861. A quantity of provisions had previously been taken to Cairn Point, which Hayes had decided to make the starting-place for crossing the Sound. On one sledge was mounted a 20-foot metallic lifeboat with which Hayes hoped to navigate the Polar Sea. When Cairn Point was reached, Hayes decided to leave the boat there, as he saw that it was impossible to take the boat and cargo across the Sound in one journey. A storm delayed the party several days at Cairn Point, and soon after encountering the ice-hummocks, Hayes wrote:—
“I need hardly say that I soon gave up all thought of trying to get the boat across the Sound. A hundred men could not have accomplished the task. My only purpose now was to get to the coast of Grinnell Land with as large a stock of provisions as possible, and to retain the men as long as they could be of use; but it soon became a question whether the men themselves could carry over their own provisions independent of the surplus which I should require in order that the severe labour should result to advantage. In spite, however, of everything, the men kept steadfastly to their duty, through sunshine and through storm, through cold, and danger, and fatigue.”
Hayes tried to make for Cape Sabine, but found the hummocks quite impassable, and he had to bear more to the northward. On the 25th of April he reported: “My party are in a very sorry condition. One of the men has sprained his back from lifting; another has a sprained ankle; another has gastritis; another a frosted toe; and all are thoroughly overwhelmed with fatigue.”
On the 27th April he determined to send back the men, with the exception of Knorr, Jensen, and McDonald. Only about half of the Sound had been crossed, but Hayes decided to struggle on. Jensen became partially snow-blind, and on the 3rd of May, when stumbling along, his leg received a severe wrench in a crack in the ice. The land, at Cape Hawks, was not reached until the 11th of May. Thirty-one days had been occupied in crossing the Sound. Hayes writes:—
“The journey across the Sound from Cairn Point was unexampled in Arctic travelling. The distance from land to land, as the crow flies, did not exceed 80 miles; and yet, as hitherto observed, the journey consumed thirty-one days—but little more than 2 miles daily. The track, however, which we were forced to choose, was often at least three times that of a straight line; and since almost every mile of that tortuous route was travelled over three and five times, in bringing up the separate portions of our cargo, our actual distance did not probably average less than 16 miles daily, or about 500 miles in all, between Cairn Point and Cape Hawks. The last 40 miles, made with dog-sledges alone, occupied fourteen days—a circumstance which will of itself exhibit the difficult nature of the undertaking, especially when it is borne in mind that 40 miles to an ordinary team of dogs, over usually fair ice, is a trifling matter for five hours, and would not fatigue the team half so much as a single hour’s pulling of the same load over such hummocks as confronted us throughout this entire journey.
“In order to obtain the best results which the Esquimaux dog is capable of yielding, it is essential that he shall be able to trot away with his load. To walk at a dead drag is as distressing to his spirits and energies as the hauling of a dray would be to a blooded horse; and he will much more readily run away with a 100 pounds over good ice than to pull one-fourth of that weight over a track which admits only of a slow pace.”
The failure to get the boat, or even a foot-party, over the Sound disarranged Hayes’ original plans. Of the 800 lb. of dog-food which he had when he sent back the men, only about 300 lb. remained. Small dépôts had, however, been made for the return journey. The most that Hayes now hoped to do was to explore the route to the shores of the Polar Sea, as a basis for further exploration to follow the event of his reaching the west side of Smith Sound with his vessel late in the summer.
The first day’s march from Cape Hawks carried the party across the wide bay to Cape Napoleon, and they were pleased to find that the whole load could be carried at one time, although the travelling was far from good. Deep snow was met, and in wading through it Jensen’s leg gave way, and he had to be carried on the sledge. From Cape Napoleon to Cape Frazer the travelling was good, and camp was made near the farthest point reached by Hayes in 1854. The little flag-staff, which Hayes had planted, was discovered, still standing erect among the rocks; but not a vestige of the flag remained. The winds had whipped it entirely away.
On the 16th of May, Jensen’s injured leg was so painful that Hayes decided to leave him behind in charge of McDonald.
From Cape Frazer northward the description given by Hayes of his route is extremely meagre and vague. He states that when Jensen was left behind he was about 60 miles to the northward and westward of Cape Constitution, reached by Morton. About two days after leaving Jensen, Hayes reached the southern cape of a bay which was so deep that, as in other cases of like obstruction, he determined to cross over it rather than to follow the shore-line. He writes: “We had gone only a few miles when we found our progress suddenly arrested. Our course was made directly for a conspicuous headland bounding the bay to the northward, over a strip of old ice lining the shore. This headland seemed to be about 20 miles from us, or near latitude 82°, and I was very desirous of reaching it; but, unhappily, the old ice came suddenly to an end, and after scrambling over the fringe of hummocks which margined it, we found ourselves upon ice of the late winter. The unerring instinct of the dogs warned us of approaching danger. They were observed for some time to be moving with unusual caution, and finally they scattered to right and left, and refused to proceed farther. This behaviour of the dogs was too familiar to me to leave any doubt as to its meaning; and moving forward in advance, I quickly perceived that the ice was rotten and unsafe. Thinking that this might be merely a local circumstance, resulting from some peculiarity of the current, we doubled back upon the old floe and made another trial farther to the eastward. Walking now in advance of the dogs, they were inspired with greater courage. I had not proceeded far when I found the ice again giving way under the staff with which I sounded its strength, and again we turned back and sought a more eastern passage.
“Two hours consumed in efforts of this kind, during which we had worked about 4 miles out to sea, convinced me that the ice outside the bay was wholly impassable.”
An attempt to cross farther up the bay also proved a failure, and by walking a few miles along the shore Hayes believed he saw the head of the bay about 20 miles distant. Next day he climbed to the top of a cliff supposed to be about 800 feet above the level of the sea.
“The view which I had from this elevation furnished a solution of the cause of my progress being arrested on the previous day.
“The ice was everywhere in the same condition as in the mouth of the bay, across which I had endeavoured to pass. A broad crack, starting from the middle of the bay, stretched over the sea, and uniting with other cracks as it meandered to the eastward, it expanded as the delta of some mighty river discharging into the ocean, and under a water-sky, which hung upon the northern and eastern horizon, it was lost in the open sea.
“Standing against the dark sky at the north, there was seen in dim outline the white sloping summit of a noble headland—the most northern known land upon the globe. I judged it to be in latitude 82° 30′, or 450 miles from the North Pole. Nearer, another bold cape stood forth; and nearer still the headland, for which I had been steering my course the day before, rose majestically from the sea, as if pushing up into the very skies a lofty mountain peak, upon which the winter had dropped its diadem of snows. There was no land visible except the coast upon which I stood.”
The large bay which Hayes here refers to was named Lady Franklin Bay. The place from which his observations were made, Hayes gives as in latitude 81° 35′, longitude 70° 30′ W. Finding his way to the north impassable, he decided to return. Hayes at this point came to the conclusion that he was near the shores of the Polar Basin, and that Kennedy Channel expanded into it. After building a cairn and leaving a record in a small glass vial, he started on his return journey.
A storm came on soon after Hayes and his companion set out. They at first tried to shelter in the lee of a huge ice-cliff, but as they had now given the dogs the last of their food, they decided to face the snowstorm and make for the camp where Jensen had been left. This was reached in twenty-two hours under great difficulties. Hayes and Knorr had fasted thirty-four hours, and were completely exhausted. On the return journey to the ship they had to depend entirely on the small caches which had been left on the outward journey. Fortunately, all of these, with one exception, were undisturbed. By the time they reached Cape Hawks and were about to cross the Sound, Jensen’s leg had so far improved that he was able to walk. Near the Greenland coast the ice was beginning to give way, and it was with difficulty that they reached land. Part of the journey to the ship had then to be made on foot across the mountains.
During the absence of Hayes, McCormick the sailing-master had examined the ship, and found that the damage sustained in the ice was serious. He repaired it as well as he could, but it was not now in a condition to stand any further collision with the ice. This was a great disappointment to Hayes, as he intended, as soon as the ice broke up, to make another attempt with the ship to cross the Sound, and pass up the west coast.
On the 3rd of July, Hayes describes a walrus-hunt:—
“I have had a walrus-hunt and a most exciting day’s sport. Much ice has broken adrift and come down the Sound during the past few days; and, when the sun is out bright and hot, the walrus come up out of the water to sleep and bask in the warmth on the pack. Being upon the hilltop this morning to select a place for building a cairn, my ear caught the hoarse bellowing of numerous walrus; and, upon looking over the sea, I observed that the tide was carrying the pack across the outer limit of the bay, and that it was alive with the beasts, which were filling the air with such uncouth noises. Their number appeared to be even beyond conjecture, for they extended as far as the eye could reach, almost every piece of ice being covered. There must have been, indeed, many hundreds, or even thousands.