Up to the middle of the nineteenth century America had not played a very important part in the history of Arctic exploration. In 1853, however, an expedition set out under the command of Dr Elisha Kent Kane—the young doctor who accompanied Lieutenant De Haven in the Advance and Rescue—which won immortality for itself by penetrating Smith Sound to a point never reached by any previous explorer. Although Kane had special instructions from the Secretary of the United States Navy to “conduct an expedition to the Arctic seas in search of Sir John Franklin,” it is really hardly possible to regard his enterprise as a serious part of the Franklin search, for it concerned itself with a region in which there was no possibility of finding any traces of the missing explorers.

The ship chosen for the expedition was our old friend the Advance, and the expenses were shared by Mr Grinnell, Mr Peabody, and a number of American scientific institutions. The crew consisted of seventeen officers and men, among them being Brooks and Morton, both of whom had served under De Haven, and Isaac Israel Hayes, a young surgeon, who was destined to conduct an expedition on his own account later on. The equipment of the ship seems to have been carried out with but little regard to the laws of hygiene, as recognised by Arctic explorers. “We took with us,” says Kane, “some 2000 lbs. of pemmican, a parcel of Borden’s meat biscuit, some packages of exsiccated potato, some pickled cabbage, and a liberal quantity of American dried fruits and vegetables. Besides these we had the salt beef and pork of the navy ration, hard biscuit and flour.... I hoped to obtain some fresh provisions in addition before reaching the upper coast of Greenland.” Such a dietary as this made it almost inevitable that scurvy would break out, and, as will be seen later on, the crew suffered terribly from the ravages of this fearful disease.

It was on May 30, 1853, that the Advance set sail from New York, never to return. Her passage north through Baffin Bay was by no means free from difficulties, but by August 6 she was in sight of Cape Alexander and Cape Isabella, the tremendous cliffs which guard the entrance to Smith Sound. On the following morning, as he was nearing Littleton Island, which lies well within the mouth of the sound, Kane was disappointed to see the ominous ice-blink ahead of him, which, taken in conjunction with the fact that the wind was freshening from the northward, augured ill for the future. However, he decided to press on as best he could, only pausing to place a boat and a store of provisions en cache on the island, a step on which he had good cause to congratulate himself later on.

On the next day he first closed with the ice, and began his attempt to bore his way through. A fog, however, compelled him to beat a retreat into a land-locked cove, which he named “Refuge Harbour,” where he had to remain for several days. On the 13th, taking advantage of a change in the weather, he attempted to push on once more, but he was constantly hampered by gales; these, by the 20th, had increased to a hurricane, which very nearly made an end of the whole party.

By the 22nd the storm had abated, and Kane was able to proceed on his way. His rate of progress, however, was exceedingly slow, for he was obliged to send men on to the pack with a tracking rope to drag the ship along as best they could. On the following day he found that he had reached lat. 78° 41′ N., a point 13′ higher than that reached by Inglefield, and farther north than any explorer, with the exception of Parry, had ever penetrated. He now began to realise that there was very little prospect of his being able to proceed further that year, and he had to confess that he did not like the idea of being obliged to spend a winter in so northerly a latitude, as he was so surrounded with ice that his chances of escape next year were uncertain. He accordingly called a meeting of his officers and crew, and took their opinion upon the situation. Why he took this course is not particularly clear, for the opinions expressed at that meeting did not influence him in the least. Only one member of the expedition was in favour of remaining where they were, while all the rest desired to return south without any delay whatever; yet Kane promptly decided in favour of the former course, and set about finding winter quarters for the Advance. These he eventually discovered in Rensselaer Harbour, lat. 78° 37′ N., long. 71° W.

The cold that winter was intense, and the ship’s thermometers ranged from 60° to 75° below zero. Nor did spring bring much improvement in the conditions, and Kane found himself obliged to carry out the work of preparation for his sledge journeys in very trying circumstances. The matter, however, was not of a nature that would brook delay, so ten men under Mr Brooks, the first officer, were sent off to place a store of provisions en cache at a point about ten days’ journey from the brig.

The whole of the party came within an ace of perishing on the ice, and had it not been for the efforts of Olsen, the sailing master, Sontag, the astronomer, and Petersen, the interpreter, who staggered back to the ship in search of relief, they must have been frozen to death. As it was, two men died of cold and exposure.

Towards the end of April Kane set out on that sledge journey along the east shore of Smith Sound which has raised him to the front rank of Arctic explorers. His expedition was conducted in the face of two great difficulties—sickness and lack of provisions. As early as May 30 the scurvy which had attacked the crew during the winter reappeared, and many members of the party fell victims to it, Kane himself suffering so severely that his limbs became quite rigid, and he had to be lashed to the sledge. The shortage of provisions was not due to any lack of care in the preparations for the expedition, but to the depredations of the bears, which had found the contents of the caches so much to their liking that they had completely demolished them.

“The pemmican,” says Kane, “was covered with blocks of stone, which it had required the labour of three men to adjust; but the extraordinary strength of the bear had enabled him to force aside the heaviest rocks, and his pawing had broken the iron casks which held our pemmican literally into chips. Our alcohol cask, which had cost me a separate and special journey in the late fall to deposit, was so completely destroyed that we could not find a stave of it.”

In spite of these difficulties, however, Kane succeeded in reaching the Great Glacier of Humboldt, that tremendous sea of ice, one of the largest of its kind, which stretches from 79° 12′ to 80° 12′. By the end of the first week in May the condition of the party had become so bad that it was useless for them to attempt to proceed any further. Kane was delirious, his companions were almost past walking, and it was only through the most heroic perseverance that they succeeded in reaching the ship at all.

For a few days after their return the doctor had his hands full, but under his skilful treatment the patients recovered rapidly, and the work of exploration was immediately resumed. The first to leave the ship was Dr Hayes, who was sent off with a sledge and a team of dogs to explore the country north and east of Inglefield’s Cape Sabine. The dogs gave him some little trouble, as their harness was constantly breaking, and the only material at hand for repairing it consisted of his own sealskin breeches, large portions of which he was obliged to sacrifice for the good of the cause. However, he prosecuted his explorations as far as Dobbin Bay before turning back to the ship.

Though he had gained a great deal of valuable knowledge concerning the coast-line on either side of Smith Sound, Kane was still uncertain whether he was in a channel leading into a polar sea or in a cul-de-sac. From his observations of the tides and the drift of the ice he was inclined to take the former view, and, in the hope of setting all doubts upon the subject at rest, he decided to send out another party, with dogs, which was to be subsisted as far as the Great Glacier by provisions carried by a foot party in advance. Unfortunately scurvy is not a disease which is thrown off easily, and, when the time for making up these parties arrived, only five men were found to be in reasonably good health. He did the best that he possibly could in the circumstances. He told off Morton, M’Gary, and three men to take provisions to the Great Glacier, where they were to be joined by Hans Christian, the hunter of the party, with dogs. Morton and Hans were then to cross the strait and advance along the distant coast as far as they could.

The two explorers attacked their part of the task with immense ardour, and eventually succeeded in penetrating as far as Cape Constitution. They returned to the ship with marvellous tales of open seas and waves dashing against the cliffs, which rejoiced Kane’s heart exceedingly, for they not only supported his theories, but they also gave colour to the popular fallacy that an ice-free ocean existed in the direction of the Pole. Unfortunately, however, it subsequently transpired that Morton and Hans were quite mistaken. There is, of course, no reason to suppose that their stories were mere flights of imagination, composed for the express benefit of their commander. Other explorers have made similar illusory discoveries, and have chronicled them in perfectly good faith. No doubt Morton and Hans honestly believed that they saw an open polar sea off Cape Constitution; the fact remains, however, that they saw nothing of the kind.

By the beginning of June 1854, Kane had begun to realise that he was in a very uncomfortable situation. All his men were diseased, and several of them were completely disabled; fuel and food were becoming very short; and, to crown all, there seemed no prospect of extricating his ship that year. He soon came to the conclusion that the only thing for him to do was to attempt to reach Beechey Island, and there to ask for assistance from Sir Edward Belcher. Accordingly, he patched up his whale-boat to the best of his ability, and, taking with him the only five members of his crew who were in reasonably good health, he started off on his hazardous voyage. He was not, however, destined to get very far, for he found the mouth of Smith Sound so cumbered with ice that he had no choice but to give orders for a retreat on the ship, which he reached on August 6.

A careful inspection of his stores now forced him to the conclusion that he must cut down the allowance of fuel. Here is the passage in his journal in which he records the step. “Reduced our allowance of wood to six pounds a meal. This, among eighteen mouths, is one-third of a pound of fuel each. It allows us coffee twice a day and soup once. Our fare, besides this, is cold pork boiled in quantity and eaten as required. This sort of thing works badly, but I must reserve coal for other emergencies. I see darkness ahead. I inspected the ice again to-day. Bad! bad!—I must look another winter in the face. I do not shrink from the thought; but, while we have a chance ahead, it is my first duty to have all things in readiness to meet it. It is horrible—yes, that is the word—to look forward to another year of disease and darkness to be met without fresh food and without fuel. I should meet it with more tempered sadness if I had no comrades to think for and protect.”

There was now only one expedient to be tried, and that was a land journey in search of succour from the Eskimos. Accordingly Hayes, Petersen and seven men set out from the ship on August 28, leaving the rest of their companions to shift for themselves as best they could. Had it not been for an alliance which they made with a tribe of Eskimos, whose settlement lay some seventy-five miles from the ship, they would probably have perished miserably of cold and starvation. By the terms of this alliance the natives undertook to refrain from stealing from the ship, and to supply the sailors with fresh meat and dogs, while Kane in return promised them the assistance of his men on their hunting expeditions, and undertook to provide them with needles, knives, and other trifles dear to the heart of the native. The sledge journey from the ship to the settlement and back was, however, so long and arduous that Kane only undertook it when it was absolutely necessary.

On December 7 a number of Eskimos put in an appearance bringing with them two members of the exploring party. From them Kane learnt that they had failed hopelessly in their mission, and that their comrades were housed at a settlement 200 miles away. He accordingly sent back the Eskimo escort with such supplies as he could spare to bring back the remainder of his friends. So rapidly did the natives travel that five days later they were back again with Hayes and his party, all of whom were in a state of collapse. Indeed, had it not been for the great kindness with which they had been treated by the Etah Eskimos they must inevitably have perished.

A more unutterably miserable winter was probably never passed by any band of Arctic explorers. As the anti-scorbutics, the food and the fuel failed, the condition of the men grew worse and worse, and Kane made up his mind that as soon as spring came round he would spare no efforts to make his way to civilised regions. The only person on board who seems to have been reasonably happy was the hunter, Hans Christian. While all his comrades were wondering how in the world they were to support life, he had fallen head over ears in love with a fair Eskimo damsel of Etah, to whom he intended to get married as soon as he could make his way to the nearest settlement.

With the details of the return journey we need not concern ourselves. It began in May, and after almost superhuman exertions, the party succeeded in reaching Upernivik on August 3. Thence they were taken back to the United States in the squadron which, under the command of Lieutenant Harstene, had been sent out to their rescue.

In the following year Hayes, Kane’s surgeon, set out in the schooner United States on an expedition, the object of which was to verify Morton’s story of the open polar sea, in which the worthy doctor had the firmest belief. The winter was marked by a tragedy, for Sontag, the astronomer and probably the most valuable member of the party, was frozen to death on a sledging expedition. Had he been spared he might have saved Hayes from perpetrating the extraordinary series of blunders which were the most startling feature of his spring journey up the coast of Grinnell Land. Not only did he make a number of unreliable observations, with the result that his chart had to be entirely altered by subsequent explorers, but he also imagined that he saw a magnificent polar sea, which proved ultimately to be nothing but the southern half of Kennedy Channel. This part of the channel freezes late and opens early, owing to the exceptionally high tides, and is rarely entirely closed.