to open a passage to the northward. of the feats of a good team is to leap wide gnarled mural escarpment, against which the cracks and chasms in the ice, and on several floes broke with tremendous force, but its occasions dogs and sledge have been preci- upper surface remained comparatively level, pitated into the water, or have tumbled into and fitted in many parts to be a highway to the bottom of a crevice sixteen feet deep. the north. Outside of this belt the drifting When the chasm is about four feet wide and ice or pack was utterly impenetrable; bergs so alarms the dogs that they refuse to take recently discharged were driving backwards the leap, the party bridge it over by chop- and forwards with the tides, compressing the ping down the nearest large hummock of ice ice of the floes and raising them into hills with their axes, and rolling the heaviest sixty or seventy feet high. In carrying out pieces they can move into the fissure. When his plan of penetrating ice of this description, these are well wedged in, and the interspaces Dr. Kane encountered the usual dangers. filled up with smaller pieces of ice, a rough After being thrown upon the rocks by a gale, sort of bridge is formed, over which the dogs the brig took shelter at an iceberg. The are coaxed to pass. A fissure of this kind, wind, however, died away, and the ice closed with water at the bottom, takes about an so steadily around them, that they lost all hour and a half to fill up and cross. When hope of escaping from their position, unless the ice is weak and rotten, the dogs instinc- Providence sent a smart shattering breeze tively begin to tremble, and if they have got unawares upon tender ice, they will turn, and by a safer circuit reach the shore. Sometimes they are brought to go on by changing the locality a little, calling them coaxingly by their name, and inducing them to advance, crawling on their bellies. On reaching the land ice from the floe, they some. times encounter a wall eight or nine feet high. They are then obliged to unload, toss up the packages of provisions, and climb up with the aid of the sledge converted into a ladder. The dogs are then pulled up by the lines line. Their ten-inch Manilla cable, however, fastened to their bodies, and the sledge drawn up upon the ice. On one occasion, in a gale, the dogs were literally blown from their harness; the travellers fell on their faces to avoid being swept away, and then availed themselves of a lull to rally round them the affrighted animals. On good ice the sledges often travel six, eight, and even twelve miles an hour. A strong breeze from the south, freshening into a gale, sprung up on the 17th, and on the 20th rose to a perfect hurricane, the ice driving more wildly than Dr. Kane had ever seen it. The sharp twanging snap of a cord roused him from his bed. His six-inch hawser had parted, and the brig was swinging by the two others, the gale roaring like a lion to the southward. A second report followed in half a minute, and by the shrillness of the ring he knew it was the whale still held on,-" its deep Æolian chant swell. ing through all the rattle of the running gear, and moaning of the shrouds. It was the death song! The strands gave way with the noise of a shotted gun, and in the smoke that followed their recoil, they were dragged out by the wild ice at its mercy." After steadying and getting a good bed in the From Refuge Harbour, where we left the rushing drift, the brig was allowed to scud expedition in fifty-five fathoms of water, they under a reefed topsail. When close upon were induced to start on the 13th August, lest the piling masses, their heaviest anchor was the rapidly advancing cold should prevent dropped, in the desperate hope of winding them from penetrating farther. Confiding the ship, but it was impossible to withstand in the strength of their vessel they resolved the ice torrent that pursued them. They to follow the coast line, enter the partial had only time to fasten a spar as a buoy to openings close upon the land, and warp along the chain, and let her slip," and thus went them from one lump of grounded ice to an- their best bower!" Dr. Kane had seen such other. The coast itself consisting of meta-ice but once before, and never in such rapid morphic rock, rose into precipitous cliffs of motion. One upheaved mass rose above basaltic greenstone, from eight to twelve their gunwale, smashing the bulwarks, and hundred feet high. A permanent belt of ice from three to forty yards in width, and with a mean summer thickness of eighteen feet, ran along the base of three mural cliffs, and clung to them with such extreme tenacity as to resist all the thawing influences of summer. The seaward face of this prominent belt, unlike similar formations on the south, was worn by the tidal currents into a * The mean rise and fall of the tide was twelve feet, and its velocity 24 knots an hour. depositing a half-ton lump of ice upon the though the channel narrowed to the breadth days, Dr. Kane resolved upon an expeof the vessel, they passed clear, and found dition to discover a proper wintering spot themselves under the lee of a berg, in a com- from which they could start on their future paratively open lead, thus mercifully deliv- travel, and enter at once on the search which ered from a wretched death. From this they had undertaken. The command of the shelter a floe drove them, and when carried" Advance" was therefore given to Mr. by the gale to the end of the lead, they were Ohlsen, with orders to haul her into a safe again entangled in the ice. After breaking berth; and on the 29th of August Dr. Kane their jib-boom, and losing their barricade started with a detachment of seven of his stanchions, they suffered a series of nippings best hands, taking along with him a whale of the most dangerous kind. In one of these boat and a sledge, with the necessary outfit the brig was driven up the inclined face of of clothing and provisions. After being out an iceberg, "as if some great steam screw about twenty-four hours they were beset by power had been forcing her into a dry dock." pack-ice in front and on one side of them, Dr. Kane expected to see her carried boduy while on the other the impracticable ice-belt, up its face, and tumbled over on her side. a wall of ten feet, rose above their heads. The suspense of the crew was oppressive. Their boat being now useless, they were She rose slowly, as if with convulsive efforts, obliged to leave it, and push forward in their along the sloping wall. Shock after shock sledge along this singular and untrodden from the accumulating blocks of ice jarred path. This shelf of ice, clinging to the base her to her very centre. She mounted steadily of the rocks that overlooked the sea, was it on her precarious cradle, and but for the self overhung with cliffs of magnesian limegroaning of her timbers, and the heavy sough stone, above a thousand feet high; huge of the floes, the dropping of a pin might angular blocks of stone, tons in weight, were have been heard. By one of those "mys- scattered over its surface; long tongues of terious relaxations," which Dr. Kane calls worn-down rock now and then stretched the pulses of the ice, the brig settled down across their path, and deep, steep-sided again into her old position, and quietly took watercourses, across which they were obliged her place among the broken rubbish. Dur- to wade and carry their sledge, greatly eming this fearful trial of thirty-six hours, the barrassed them. Their night halts were parting of the hawsers, the loss of their upon knolls of snow under the rocks, and on anchors, the crushing of their stoven bulwarks, and the deposit of ice upon their decks, would have tried the nerves of the most experienced icemen. Many narrow escapes were made by the men. One avoided being crushed by leaping upon a floating fragment, and four were carried down by the drift, and were recovered only when the gale was over. From the 22d of August till the 26th, the ship advanced slowly; but the indications of winter, and the little progress which they were making, induced an excellent member of the party to suggest the idea of returning southward, and abandoning the attempt to winter. In a formal council assembled by Dr. Kane this idea was adopted by all but Mr. Brooks, the first officer of the ship. Dr. Kane, however, decided otherwise, and his comrades in the most gratifying manner yielded to his decision. one occasion the tide overflowed their tent, and forced them to save their buffalo sleeping gear by holding it up till the water subsided. The walls of limestone at length terminated, and they reached a low fiord, across which a glacier blocked up their way. A succession of terraces of limestone-shingle, rising symmetrically, lost themselves in the distance in long parallel lines, and in "a pasty silt," where these terraced faces abutted upon the sea, Dr. Kane found seven skeletons, and numerous skulls of the musk ox, which abound in the table land and ravines of that coast. Our travellers experienced much difficulty in crossing the glacier which stopped them. Its deep sides terminated in the sea; but by using cords, and lying at full length upon the ice, they got safely over it. A passage of three miles brought them again to the seaboard, with its frowning cliffs and rockThe warping had no sooner begun than covered icebelt. On the 5th September the ship grounded under the walls of the their progress was arrested by a large bayice-foot, and heeled over so abruptly that forming a grand sheet of perfectly open they were all tumbled out of their berths; water, the embouchure of a noble and tuthe stove of the cabin, charged with burning multuous river, rolling with the violence of a anthracite, was thrown down; the deck snow torrent over a broken bed of rocks. This blazed smartly for a while, but by the help river, the largest yet known in North Greenof a pilot-cloth coat, the flames were choked land, is about three-quarters of a mile wide till water was procured to extinguish them. at its mouth, and admitting the tide for After being grounded five times in three about three miles. It issues from a glacier in numerous streams which unite into a ford. It was found essential to the actual single current about forty miles from its comfort of future parties, to reduce their mouth.* After fording this river up to the "sledging outfit" till they reached the Esmiddle, and advancing seven miles, they quimaux simplicity of raw meat and a fur reached, in lat. 78° 52', a large cape, now bag! known as Cape Jefferson. Beyond this, six- Among the disasters of an Arctic winter, teen miles, they came to the headland Cape our travellers could hardly have anticipated Thackeray; and eight miles more brought a calamity which, at this time, befell three of them to Cape Hawks, from which Dr. Kane their party. Having been greatly annoyed mounted a headland eleven hundred feet with rats, and failed in smoking them out by high, and saw beyond the great glacier of a compound of brimstone, arsenic, and burnt Humboldt, and the land now called Wash- leather, they proceeded to destroy them ington, as far as 80°, with a solid sea of ice with carbonic acid gas. Charcoal was therebetween. Having found no place for a win- fore burnt, the hatches shut down, and every ter harbour more appropriate than that in fissure closed. Ignorant of what was doing, which the "Advance" lay, the party re- or reckless of the consequences, Schubert, turned, and placed their little brig in Rens- the French cook, went below to season a selaer harbour, "which they were fated soup. Morton saw him staggering under never to leave together." the influence of the gas, and seizing him with Near this harbour, now to be their winter great difficulty as he fell, he was himself unhome, there was a group of rocky islets, able to escape. They were both hauled up fringed with hummocks, on one of which, in the end, the cook wholly insensible, and about a hundred yards from the ship, called Morton with his strength almost gone. Dr. Fern Rock, they established their observa- Kane had given orders to inspect the fires tory. They had here facilities for procuring for generating the gas, but the accident to water and daily exercise, and were sufficient- the cook had put the watch off his guard, ly within the influence of the tides to give and made him forget to open the hatches. them a hope of liberation in the spring. As Upon lowering a lantern, Dr. Kane observed no previous expedition had wintered in so that the light was instantly extinguished, high a latitude, the probable excess of cold, and he felt the smell of burning wood. and the longer prevalence of darkness, ren- Upon descending he found all right about the dered it necessary to have a warm and well- fires; but upon returning, near the door of ventilated house. The deck was therefore the bulkhead, the gas began to affect him. fitted up with boards, and caulked with His lantern went out as if quenched with oakum. The cooking, ice-melting, and washing arrangements were carefully attended to; and their domestic system was organized with special reference to cleanliness, recreation, and particularly fixed routine. On Sunday they had their morning and evening prayers, and, except on trying occasions, it was observed as a day of rest. water, and as he ran past the bulk-head door, he saw the deck near it a mass of glowing fire, about three feet in diameter. He became insensible at the foot of the ladder, and would have sunk had not Mr. Brooks seen him and hauled him out. Having quickly recovered, he entrusted the fearful secret to the few men around him, shut the doors of In order to facilitate their progress north the galley to confine the rest of the crew, ward in winter and spring, it was necessary and in less than ten minutes succeeded in to deposit along the coast of Greenland depots extinguishing the fire by buckets of water of provisions, principally pemmican, before handed by Brooks to Dr. Kane and Ohlsen, the darkness set in about the middle of who rushed into the burning deck. The October. A party of seven men left the noxious gas at first greatly oppressed them, brig on the 20th September; each had a but the steam from the first bucketful of buffalo robe to lie upon, a bag of Mackinaw blanket to crawl into at night, and an Indiarubber cloth to defend him from the snow beneath. A sledge, thirteen feet long, carried the provisions, a light India-rubber boat, and a canvas tent. This "travelling gear" was more liberal than they could afterwards af water that was dashed on the burning coal, gave them instant relief. The fire had arisen from a barrel of charcoal, but how it had been ignited they never discovered. The exclusion of atmospheric air, and the dense carbonic acid gas round the fire, saved the ship. Anxious about the depot party, who had *To this river Dr. Kane gave the name of Mary been absent twenty days, and whose stock Minturn, the sister of Mrs. Henry Grinnell, a species of provisions must have been low, Dr. of nomenclature which merits reprobation. What Kane, accompanied by Mr. Blake, set out on would we think of an astronomer who should give to a new planet the name of his nurse or his grand- the 10th October with a sledge and four Newfoundlands, laden with supplies. Re mother! peated fissures in the broken-up ice inter- to the old and firm ice which clung to the rupted their progress. The dogs began to bases of the nearest icebergs. On an island, flag. Three times the hinder ones tumbled bearing the name of M'Gary, the second into fissures; and the two travellers, who officer of the expedition, the party buried had trotted along the sledge for sixteen 670 lbs. of pemmican, and 140 lbs. of Bormiles, were as tired as the dogs. They den's meat biscuits, indicating the site by a therefore made for the old ice to seaward; cairn, thirty paces off. but just as they were nearing it, the dogs In a winter of 140 sunless days, and threatfailed in leaping a chasm, and sledge, dogs, ening to be one of unusual severity, it be and men, tumbled into the water. The came necessary to devise schemes for betraces were cut, the dogs hauled out, and guiling its "monotonous solitude." A fancy the sledge, floated by the air confined in the ball, and an Arctic newspaper, called "The India rubber coverings of the cooking ap- Iceblink," with the motto, IN TENEBRIS SERparatus, was after many fruitless struggles VARE FIDEM, and a vignette, representing a carried forward by the dogs. After a jour-ship in full sail between two black and sunney of five days, in which they averaged less shores, were among their measures of twenty miles a day, and slept in the same occupation and amusement. The articles in tent with their dogs to keep them warm,- the "Iceblink" were composed by authors they saw afar off a dark object in the snow, which turned out to be their friends. Though they were upon the whole in good condition, every one of them had been injured by the cold; but though noses, fingers, and toes had suffered, the hot soup, coffee and beef, which their friends had brought, speedily restored them. We of every "nautical grade," and some of the best from the forecastle.* A more healthful sport, in the form of a fox-chase, was invented by Dr. Kane. He offered a Guernsey shirt to the man who should make the longest run as "fox," performing a given circuit between galley and capstan, all hands pursuing him, and a halt being called to blow During this depot journey, the party dis- every four minutes. Each of the crew percovered the remains of five Esquimaux huts, formed the part of "fox;" but William of a larger and better kind than they had Godfrey, who maintained the chase for fourpreviously seen; and they encountered the teen minutes, carried off the prize. usual difficulties of crossing fissures, wad- have mentioned this little incident as one in ing through broken ice, and surmounting the career of Godfrey, whom our readers bergs, and the usual hardships of cold, hun- will meet again in a very different character. ger, thirst, and want of sleep. At one time The last vestige of mid-day twilight had their sledge went down through the weak disappeared on the 15th December. They ice, at another, they were obliged to divide could hardly see print, or even paper, and the load, and transport half of it at a time. the fingers could not be counted a foot from Now, it had to be dug out of the drifted the eye. Noonday and midnight were alike, snow; and then, with their stockings frozen and a vague glimmer along the outline of to the soles of their feet, and their legs the southern hills was the only indication cramped, and their fingers pinched with cold, that the universe had a sun. The influence they could hardly draw it over the increas- of this long and intense darkness was depressing obstructions of the way. On the evening to the crew; and even the dogs, though ing of the 5th October they had encamped born within the Arctic circle, were unable under the lee of some large icebergs, and within hearing of the grand artillery of the great glacier of Humboldt, which they had approached ten days before. The floe on which they had pitched their tent consisted of recent ice, and the party, who were too tired to seek a safer resting-place, had hardly gone to sleep, when, with a crack like that of a gigantic whip, the ice opened directly beneath them. Thus roused, in intense darkness and biting cold, they gathered together their tent and sleeping-furs, lashed them upon the sledge, and rushed from the rocking platform which bore them, amid the repeated intonations of the bursting ice. Selecting a flat piece of ice, they placed to withstand it. When Dr. Kane stumbled upon them in the dark they would put their cold noses upon his hand, and "commence the most exuberant antics of satisfaction." They howled at any accidental light, as if it reminded them of the moon; and since neither instinct nor sensation could give them any knowledge of the passing hour, or any explanation of the long-lost light, Dr. Kane believed that the strange disease, to which we have already referred, was a mental af fection originating in darkness, and therefore benevolently resolved to let them see thre lanterns more frequently. * Dr. Kane tells us that he has transferred a few their sledge upon it, and, with the help of of them to his Appendix, but none of them have tent-poles and cooking-utensils, they paddled been given. set off on the 19th March to deposit a relief cargo of provisions at the distance of ten days' journey from the brig. They had been out ten days, and the cold had been so severe. (avcraging-27°), that their return was expected with some anxiety. On the 31st, towards midnight, the noise of steps was heard, and instantly Sontag, Ohlsen, and Petersen entered the cabin, swollen, haggard, and hardly able to speak. They had In the observatory-which was an icehouse of the coldest description-neither fires, nor buffalo robes, nor investing sailcloth could raise its temperature to the freezing-point, and there was no snow to surround it as a non-conductor. About the middle of January the cold became very intense. On the 17th it was-49°, and on the 20th from64° to-67°, at the observatory. On the 5th February the thermometers stood at from-60° to 75°, and on the taffrail of left four of their companions on the ice, the ship-a "reliable instrument," indicat- lying frozen and disabled, in order to bring ed-65°. The reduced mean of their best back the news. A heavy gale from the standard spirit thermometers was-67°, or north had broken upon the party, and the 99o below the freezing-point of water. At snow was drifting heavily around them. such low temperatures chloric ether became Tom Hickey, an Irishman, generously resolid, and chloroform was covered with a mained to feed and attend them. In this granular pellicle. Spirit of naphtha froze emergency Dr. Kane saw that every moat-54°, oil of sassafras at-49°, and oil of ment was precious, and, with his usual enwintergreen at-64°. The exposed or par- ergy, set off with a relief party of nine, tially-elad parts of the body were invested taking with him the almost dying Ohlsen, with a wreath of vapor exhaled from the as the only person who could guide them to skin. The inspired air was pungent, though the locality of the sufferers. He was sewed breathed with compressed lips; but the up in a fur bag, his legs wrapped in dog painful sensation mentioned by Siberian skins, and strapped on a small sledge, which travellers was not experienced. Among the they dragged after them. As soon as they other productions of the intense cold, was began to move, Ohlsen, who had been fifty the new condition of the "icefoot" or ice- hours without rest, fell asleep, and awoke belt, which Dr. Kane describes as "the most with unequivocal symptoms of mental alienwonderful and unique characteristic of their ation. He had lost the bearing of the icehigh northern position." When he formerly bergs, and there was no longer any hope of saw it, it was an investing zone of ice cop-local landmarks. The sledge was therefore ing the margin of the floe; but the diurnal abandoned, and the parties dispersed in accumulations by tides thirteen feet high, search of footprints. The fear of separation, and by severe frosts, had turned it into a however, brought them back into groups, bristling wall, nearly twenty-one feet high. and whether from shattered nerves, or the Thus rising and falling daily, its fragments action of the cold, the men were singularly have been tossed in every possible direction, affected. Two of the strongest were seized "rearing up, in fantastic equilibrium, surging with trembling fits and short breath, and in long inclined planes, dipping into dark Dr. Kane himself fainted twice on the snow. valleys, and piling into contorted hills, often Having been nearly eighteen hours without high above the icefoot." When the day- food or water, the appearance of a sledge light enabled them to see the result of these track raised their hopes. Footprints at changes, they found the icebelt sixty-five last appeared, and brought them in view of feet in mean width, twenty-four feet in solid a small American flag fluttering on a humthickness; the second, or appended ice, mock: it marked the camp of their disabled thirty-eight feet, and the third, thirty-four companions. Dr. Kane crawled into the feet wide-all these three ridges consisting tent almost covered with snow, and "comof immense ice-tables, "serried like the ing upon the darkness heard the burst of granite blocks of a rampart, and investing the rocks with a triple circumvallation." welcome gladness from the four poor fel- On the 21st of February the sun had returned. Dr. Kane started off to be first to enjoy the sight. On the summit of a pro- The thermometer stood at 75° below the jecting crag "he nestled" in his beams, as freezing point. They were now fifteen souls, if "bathing in perfumed water." On the and with a tent which could hold only eight, last day of February the sun gilded their one half kept themselves from freezing by deck, and the month of March brought them walking outside, while the other half slept back perpetual day. The great object of within. After each had got two hours' the expedition now occupied Dr. Kane's at- sleep, they prepared for a journey of fifty tention, and preparations were made for hours. The sick were carefully sewed up their horthern journey. An advance party in rein-deer skins, and placed in a half |