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stand;" his first rifle went off in the act of miss their victim, and the poor fugitive recocking, and the second, aimed in haste at a turns, the future benefactor and friend of long but practicable distance, missed the fugi- his shipmates! Is not this the true type of tive. "He made good his escape before what the Christian tolerates as defensive we could lay hold of another weapon." war-a type instructive in its individuality, and more instructive still in its results. A monarch, like an expedition chief, takes offence at an act of real or supposed aggression. He assumes that the safety of his throne demands retaliation. His armies march into the field, and his ships quit their moorings. His subjects become pirates; and passion and self-interest, under the guise of patriotism, rush with their fiery cross into peaceful and happy communities, and hurry into eternity millions of souls unshriven, and unfit to die.

This attempt to take the life of William Godfrey, which no law, human or divine, can justify, was, fortunately for Dr. Kane, overruled. When, in a former Arctic expedition, its leader shot a ferocious Indian of his party, the world viewed it as an act of stern necessity and personal safety; but Godfrey was neither a madman nor an enemy. He approached the brig to intimate his resolution to live with the Esquimaux; and as if to claim a friendly acquiescence, he brought with him a load of food, without which his shipmates might have Is it not strange that the problem of setperished. Were we disposed to argue this tling without blood the quarrels of nations, question at the bar of our readers, we would is to be the last which human genius can say that the previous permission, which was solve? That proud reason, which has conoffered and accepted, to withdraw with half quered space, and explored the depths of the crew, had dissolved the original obli- earth and heaven,-has it declared the progation; but no argument is required. Dr. blem to be indeterminate? The time is but Kane tells us, "that the daily work went on brief since slavery and the duel were probetter in Godfrey's absence, and that the nounced necessary and incurable. England ship seemed better when purged by his has trampled both under foot; and were desertion; but thinking the example disas- Governments to offer a premium for the trous, he resolved, cost what it might, to abolition of war, and Bishops, with spihave him back." A month had nearly ritual gifts, to preach its necessity, and holy elapsed, when a report arose that Godfrey priests to urge it in their daily homilies, was at Etah with the Esquimaux; and the mo- they would pluck from the penal settlements ment Dr. Kane heard it, he resolved "that of another world the million brands who he should return to the ship." He accord- are the counsellors of war, and the tens of ingly set off to Etah, caught him by a thousands who are its victims. stratagem, and brought him "a prisoner to The last weeks of April 1854 were spent the brig." A prisoner, indeed! Dr. Kane in hunting-parties in search of food, and in had been without food in his man-hunt of visits to the Esquimaux, whose manners eighty miles; and when the filth of the and customs Dr. Kane had excellent opporwalrus steaks, offered him by an Esqui- tunities of studying. Etah, their settlement, maux, "rendered it impossible for him to consists of two huts and four families, markeat them," William Godfrey, who must then ed by two black spots upon a snow-drift have been at large, administered to his inclined about 45° to the horizon. wants by "bringing to him a handful of habits are so filthy, that Dr. Kane cannot frozen liver-nuts." This strong and transfer to his pages the details which he healthy man," too, neither hand-cuffed, nor observed. Previous to the arrival of the foot-cuffed, ran peaceably by his captor's chariot, and during the future toils and trials of the expedition, we find him placed in situations of trust, and performing all the duties of his place.

Their

Lutheran and Moravian missionaries, murder, incest, infanticide, and the burial of the living, were not counted as crimes; but the labours of these good men have been so far successful, that almost all the Esquimaux We have presented this singular story are professed Christians, and the influence of fully to our readers. It is pregnant with sacred truth has been exhibited in a higher instruction; and if it is not fitted to "adorn morality. Hospitality is universal, and the our tale," we may use it to "point a moral," humble meal of the hunter is ever at the sertouching a theme of duty which, however vice of his guest. At a distance from missiondeeply engraven on the tables of Christ- ary stations, the dark art is still practised ianity, has not yet been apprehended by the by the Angekoks, the dispensers of good, Christian community. The chief of an ex- and the Issiutok, or evil men, who deal in pedition, apprehensive of inconvenience to injurious spells and enchantments; and the his party from the desertion of an individual, traditionary superstitions of former times demands the forfeit of his life. His rifles are still maintained. Justice is administered

by the Angekoks, who summon the public the brig on the 20th May, with thirty-six to a court called an Imnapok, and when days' provisions, for the sixteen men who both parties have been heard, the question composed it. The sick were obliged to rest is decided.

at Anoatok, where they improved greatly in After making preparations for their es- health, while Dr. Kane brought them supcape, converting the wood of the brig into plies more than once from the brig. They sledges, and getting their boats ready, Dr. were gradually brought down to the boats, Kane conceived the idea of examining the as some of them got well enough to be useshores beyond Kennedy Channel, accom- ful. Although Dr. Kane had carried his panied by a party of Esquimaux. He had collections of natural history to Anoatok, only four dogs, whereas the Esquimaux had yet he was obliged to abandon them, as well thirty, sixteen of which were picketed on as his library, and many valuable instruthe ice near the brig. He accordingly set ments, being able to preserve only the docuout on the 24th, with Kalutunah, Shanghu, ments of the expedition. and Tatterat, with their three sledges, In the first eight days, they had travelled accompanied by Hans and his Marston rifle. only fifteen miles from the ship; and even After making some progress, they were when their difficulties had diminished, their stopped by a number of bears, which dogs real progress never exceeded seven and a and drivers irresistibly pursued; but they half miles a day, though to accomplish this reached the neighbourhood of the great they had travelled a distance of twelve or glacier of Humboldt, which Dr. Kane ex- fifteen miles. In their progress southward, amined from a high berg. He observed, they neared Littleton Island, where they lost and has given a drawing of, its escaladed acting-carpenter Ohlsen, whom they buried structure. The height of the ice-wall which on the island opposite a cape which bears abutted against the sea, was about 300 feet, his name. From this stage of their journey and its frozen masses were similar in struc- till they reached open water, near Cape ture to the Alpine and Norwegian ice Alexander, they enjoyed the friendly assistgrowths, indicating the motion and descent ance of the Etah Esquimaux, who brought of a viscous mass, as maintained by Pro- them daily supplies of birds, assisted them fessor Forbes. To the Cape which flanks it in carrying their provisions and stores, and on the south he gave the name of Agassiz, in the kindest manner, and with the most and to the Cape at its northern extremity perfect honesty, ministered to all their nethat of Forbes. On the return of the party cessities. The expedition parted with their from what was more a series of bear-hunts friends on the 18th June, after having transthan a journey of discovery, they landed at ported their boats over eighty-one miles of the lofty headland of Cape Kent, and visited unbroken ice, and walked 316 miles in thirtyin Dallas Bay a group of five Esquimaux one days. The men, women, and children huts, standing high upon a set of shingle- of Etah, had also travelled over the ice to terraces. Bone-knives were found in the graves which were farther up the fiord, and also bones of the seal, walrus, and whale. Although the time had arrived when the expedition ought to leave the brig and trust their fortune to the floes, yet Dr. Kane determined to make another attempt to visit the farther shores of the channel. Morton and he accordingly set out with the light In their progress southward, they relied sledge, and two borrowed dogs to their principally on their guns for food, sometimes to their team. The course that they pre- suffering from the want of game, and somepared to take was by the middle ice, through times copiously supplied with it. At Dalwhich they struggled manfully to force their rymple Island, they found abundance of eggs way. The only result, however, of the trip, of the eider duck; and when their stock of was a series of observations, which served provisions was nearly exhausted, at Cape to verify and complete the charts. After Dudley Digges, they found the cliffs teeming days and nights of adventurous exposure with animal life. They therefore dried upon and recurring disasters, they returned to the the rocks as much (about 200 lbs.) of the brig, Morton broken down, and Dr. Kane fowl which they found there, as served them just adequate to the duty of superintending during their transit of Melville Bay, till they his final departure. reached Cape York on the 21st July. The After laborious and very complete prepa- coast which they had just passed seemed to rations for their escape, the details of which Dr. Kane to have been a favourite residence occupy a whole chapter, the party quitted of the natives-a sort of Esquimaux Eden.

bid them good-bye, and the parting on both sides was not without emotion. After a day's sail in open water, to a point ten miles northwest of Hakluyt Island, they continued their journey by alternate movements over ice and water, a process so arduous, that from the 20th of June to the 6th of July they had advanced only 100 miles.

66

When Dr. Kane's friends had despaired of his return, the American Government equipped an expedition for rescuing, or affording relief to him, and with instructions to

Wherever they encamped, they found ruins | had been sent out to their rescue. "Preovergrown with lichens. In one of these, sently," says Dr. Kane, we were alongside. in lat. 76° 20', which must have been an ex- An officer, Captain Harstene, hailed a little tensive village, cairns for holding their meat man in a ragged flannel shirt,— Is that Dr. were arranged in long lines, six or eight to a Kane?' and with the 'Yes!' that followed, group, and the huts, constructed with large the rigging was manned by our countrymen, rocks, faced each other as if disposed in a street. and cheers welcomed us back to the social As far north as Upernavik, Dr. Kane had world of love which they represented." observed proofs of the depression of the Greenland coast, and he considered it as going on here. Some of the huts were washed by the sea, or torn away by the ice that had descended with the tides. The turf, too, he remarks, a representative of very ancient growth, was cut off even with the water's edge, giving sections two feet thick, and indicating unmistakeably the depression of this coast. He had observed its converse elevation to the north of Wolstenholme Sound; and he supposes that the axis of oscillation must be somewhere near the latitude of 77°.

rican Government the ship "Resolute," which they had purchased with this view from Captain Budding

ton.

This ship which formed one of Sir Edward Belcher's Arctic squadron, was despatched in May 1853, in search of Sir John Franklin. Frozen among the icebergs in north lat. 77°, she was abandoned in May 1854 by her officers and crew, who were oblig ed to leave all their effects on board. After a rest of sixteen months in the ice, a thaw detached the portion of it in which she was imbedded, and at the mercy of the winds and waves she drifted 1200 miles from her winter home. Captain Buddington, the commander of an American whaler, found her in north lat. 66° 30', and west long. 64°, took possession of her, and remained on board till the ice began to soften, when he shaped his course to New London, Connecticut, where he arrived in December 1855. The ship was removed to New York, and for the purpose of presenting her to the Queen of purchased for 400,000 dollars by the Government, England.

After traversing Melville Bay, along the margin of the land ice, and following the open drift as the quickest though most hazardous course, they reached the north coast of Greenland, near Horse's Head, on the 3d of August, and following from thence the inside passage, they arrived at Upernavik on the 6th, eighty-three days after leaving the "Advance." The European news, of more than two years' growth, at once gratified and startled them. The details of the expedition When Captain Buddington entered the ship, there in search of Sir John Franklin, the fate of was not a living creature on board. "The ropes Dr. Kane's gallant friend and comrade, M. were as hard and inflexible as chains. The rigging was stiff, and crackled at the touch. The tanks in Bellot, and the traces of the dead nearly a the hold had burst. The iron-work was rusted. The thousand miles south of where they were paint was discoloured with bilge-water, and the topsearching for them, had a peculiar interest. mast and top-gallant mast were shattered, but the The intelligence of a steamer and a barque bull was uninjured, and the ship was sound in every having passed up Baffin's Bay, a fortnight the hold, but she had not sprung a leak. The cordbefore, to search for themselves, was more age was coiled in neat little circles on the deck, after affecting still; and when Dr. Kane heard of the English fashion; and the sails were so stiffly the Crimean War, "he thought it a sort of frozen as to resemble sheets of tin. Several thousand blunder that France and England were pounds of gunpowder, somewhat deteriorated in qualeagued with the Mussulman against the lity, were found on board. Some of the scientific

Greek Church."

The Danish authorities at Upernavik received the expedition with their usual kind. ness. A loft was fitted up for their reception, and though personally inconvenient to themselves, owing to their own supplies coming to them annually, the Danes shared their stores with them in the most liberal manner. On the 6th they left Upernavik, on board the Danish brig "Marianne," Captain Ammandsen, who promised to land them at the Shetland Isles on his way to Copenhagen, but having occasion to touch for a few days at Disco, they were met by the vessels under Captain Harstene,* that

vital part. There were three or four feet of water in

instruments were rusted, but others were in good condition.

"In order to restore the ship to the Queen in as complete a state as that in which she was abandoned, served, the books in the captain's library, the piceverything found on board has been carefully pretures in his cabin, and musical instruments belonging to other officers. British flags were substituted for those which had rotted. The ship has been repainted from stem to stern; her sails and much of her rigging are entirely new; and her muskets, swords, telescopes, and nautical instruments, have been put in perfect order.

"When the Queen visited the ship on the 16th December, she saw the captain's cabin in the very state in which it was left, the logs of the different officers in their respective recesses in the bookshelves, and the very tea-kettle standing cold and silent on a fireless stove."

We trust our countrymen will appreciate the good feeling and the good taste of the American Govern*Captain Harstene has just left England, after ment, in presenting this interesting gift to her Madelivering to the Queen, as a present from the Ame-jesty.

As the expedition was not fitted out with any special organization for the purposes of scientific research, we are not entitled to expect any results of remarkable novelty or interest. The discovery of the great Humboldt glacier, extending in a meridional direction over nearly a whole degree of latitude,

give every assistance in their power to Sir patient endurance of unexampled hardshipsJohn Franklin, should they fall in with his of cold, and hunger, and disease, and fatigue, party. The barque "Release," with a crew have not been surpassed in the annals of twenty-five in number, and commanded by Arctic discovery. Lieutenant Harstene, and the steam-brig "Arctic," with a crew of twenty-two men, commanded by Lieutenant Simons, and having on board as assistant surgeon, a brother of Dr. Kane's, left New York early in June, and after a boisterous passage, and collisions with icebergs, they reached Disco Island, on the 5th of July, and Upernavik on the 16th. At the extension of the East coast of Baffin's Cape Alexander, and Sutherland Island, they Bay to within 8° 38', and of the West coast searched in vain for traces of their friends, to within 7° 30' of the Pole, cannot fail to be but at Pelham Point Dr. J. Kane and a party regarded as important additions to the Geofound beneath a few stones a vial, with the graphy of the Arctic Regions. With regard, letter K. on the cork, and a rifle ball with however, to the survey of the West coast, "Dr. Kane 1853," scratched upon it. At we have not been able to discover in Dr. Cape Hatherton, and Littleton Island, their Kane's work how it was made. Dr. Hayes search was unsuccessful; but after taking examined it only from Cape Sabine to Cape refuge at a projecting point fifteen miles John Fraser, in latitude 79° 43', and we prenorth-west of Cape Alexander, they were startled by human voices, and were afterwards conducted by two Esquimaux to their settlement in a finely sheltered bay, where thirty of them were encamped in seven canvas tents. They found here abundance of The meteorological observations possess articles that belonged to Dr. Kane, and considerable interest. They were made in learned that he and Petersen, and seventeen Rensselaer Harbour in north latitude 78° others, with two boats and a sledge, had been 37', and longitude 70° 40' west of Greenwich, there a week after leaving their vessel in the in the last seven months of 1853, the whole ice, and had gone southward to Upernavik. of 1854, and the first four months of 1855. Notwithstanding the distinctness of this in- The maximum temperature was 53° .9, and formation, Captain Harstene stood over to occurred on the 4th of July 1854. The mithe entrance of Lancaster Sound, and attempt-nimum temperature was 68° .0, and occurred ed to reach Beechy Island, but having been on the 5th of February 1854. On the 7th beset in the field-ice, and having made nearly of January 1855, it was 69°.2. The mean the whole circuit of the northern part of Baffin's Bay, he proceeded to Upernavik, and encountered, as we have already seen, Dr. Kane and his party at Disco Island. After coaling, watering, and preparing to accommodate their increased numbers, they set sail on the 18th September, and reached New York on the 11th October 1855.

In taking a general view of this Expedition and its results, we cannot but admire the activity, energy, and skill displayed by Dr. Kane in the trying circumstances under which he was so frequently placed. With the single exception which we have found it our duty to notice, his attention and kindness to his people and to the Esquimaux, and his cheerful discharge of the most menial duties, when they could not be performed by others, deserve the highest praise. As the leader of an expedition of discovery, his merits were equally conspicuous. His devotion to the cause in which he was embarked, his promptitude of action in availing himself of every opportunity of advancing northward, and his

sume that the long line of the West coast to the north of this, as far as Mount Edward Parry, has been seen only from the east side of the sound, and determined by triangulation or intersecting bearings.

temperature of the year 1856 was-5°.01. By taking the mean of the temperatures of the last seven months of 1853 and those of 1854, and the mean of the first four months of 1855, and the same months in 1854, the following table of mean monthly temperatures was obtained :

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Temperature of the Air.
-290.42
-27 .40
-36 .03

-11.30

+12 .89

May,

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Mr. Schott of the United States Coast weakness of the ice. It became so rotten at Survey has contributed a map of the iso- its surface, and the snow so wet and pulpy, thermal lines for each month of the year from that his dogs, seized with terror, refused to Dr. Kane's observations, and those made at advance. Upon landing on a new coast, and other places, based on Dove's isothermal continuing his journey, he found himself on charts. He ought to have given what would the shores of a channel so open that a fleet have been more instructive, the annual curves. of frigates might have navigated it. As he Although Rensselaer Harbor, where the travelled southward it expanded into an observations were made, is nearly four de- " iceless area," the extent of which he estigrees farther north than Melville Island, yet mated at upwards of 4000 square miles. its distance from the cold meridian ought to Animal life burst upon them as they went. have given it a greater mean temperature. Flocks of the Brent goose, the eider, the The concavity of the isothermal curves of king-duck, and the swallow, indicated a new more southern localities in the same meridian climate, and as he advanced the Arctic petrel justify us in expecting such a result, and we made its appearance. At Cape Constitution, have no doubt that some sufficient cause, the termination of his journey, he could not arising either from the spirit-of-wine thermo- see" a speck of ice," and from an altitude of meters, or the method of observing them, 480 feet, which commanded a horizon of may yet be found to account for the high nearly 40 miles, his ears were gladdened temperature of Rensselaer Harbour. This with the novel music of resounding waves, suspicion is confirmed by the anomalous low and of a surf dashing over the rocks at his temperature of the month of March 1854, feet and staying his further progress. "This namely 38°, which in the preceding table mysterious fluidity," as Dr. Kane observes, is reduced to-38°.03, in consequence of "in the midst (or rather at the end) of vast using for the mean temperature-38:97 of plains of solid ice, was well calculated to the same month for 1855. In almost every arouse emotions of the highest order, and latitude, and in that of Prince Patrick and there was not a man among us who did not Melville Islands, March is the first month of long for the means of embarking upon its spring, and warmer than February, whereas bright and lonely waters." in Dr. Kane's table it is the last and the coldest month of winter, a fact which we can hardly admit, in opposition to the general character of the isothermal curves.

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The discovery of the traces of Sir John Franklin and his party by Dr. Rae have led to a general belief that the whole of them have perished. Such a conclusion is certainly not justified by the facts in our possession, and we are disposed to adopt the more sanguine views of Dr. Kane. "Of the one hundred and thirty-six picked men," he remarks, "of Sir John Franklin in 1846, northern Orkneymen, Greenland whalers, so many young and hardy constitutions, with so much intelligent experience to guide them, I cannot realize that some may not yet be alive, that some small squad or squads, aided or not aided by the Esquimaux of the expedition, may not have found a hunting. ground, and laid up from summer to summer enough of fuel and food and seal-skins to brave three or even four more winters in succession. My mind never realizes the complete catastrophe-the destruction of all Franklin's crew. I picture them to myself broken into detachments, and my mind fixes itself on one little group of some thirty who have found the open spot of some tidal eddy, and, under the teaching of an Esquimaux, or perhaps one of their own Greenland whalers, have set bravely to work, and trapped the fox, speared the bear, and killed the seal, and walrus, and whale."

But even if these views are extravagant, it is the duty of a great commercial nation

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