kane sails up smith’s sound in the “advance” (1853).—winters in rensselaer bay.—sledge journey along the coast of greenland.—the three-brother turrets.—tennyson’s monument.—the great humboldt glacier.—dr. hayes crosses kennedy channel.—morton’s discovery of washington land.—mount parry.—kane resolves upon a second wintering in rensselaer bay.—departure and return of part of the crew.—sufferings of the winter.—the ship abandoned.—boat journey to upernavik.—kane’s death in the havana (1857).—dr. hayes’s voyage in 1860.—he winters at port foulke.—crosses kennedy channel.—reaches cape union, the most northern known land upon the globe.—koldewey.—plans for future voyages to the north pole.
in point of dramatic interest, few of the arctic expeditions can rival the second and last voyage of dr. kane, which, to avoid interrupting the narrative of the discovery of franklin’s fate by dr. rae and sir james m’clintock, i have refrained from mentioning in chronological order.
weak in body, but great in mind, this remarkable man, who had accompanied the first grinnell expedition in the capacity of surgeon, sailed from boston in 1853, as commander of the “advance,” with a crew of 17 officers and men, to which two greenlanders were subsequently added. his plan was to pass up baffin’s bay to its most northern attainable point, and thence pressing on towards the pole as far as boats or sledges could reach, to examine the coast-lines for vestiges of franklin.
battling with storms and icebergs, he passed, on august 7, 1853, the rocky portals of smith’s sound, cape isabella and cape alexander, which had been discovered the year before by inglefield; left cape hatherton—the extreme point attained by that navigator—behind, and after many narrow escapes from shipwreck, secured the “advance” in rensselaer bay, from which she avas destined never to emerge. his diary gives us a vivid account of the first winter he spent in this haven, in lat. 78° 38´, almost as far to the north as the most northern extremity of spitzbergen, and in a far more rigorous climate.
“sept. 10, +14° f.—the birds have left. the sea-swallows, which abounded when we first reached here, and even the young burgomasters that lingered after them, have all taken their departure for the south. the long “night in which no man can work” is close at hand; in another month we shall lose the sun. astronomically, he should disappear on october 24, if our horizon were free; but it is obstructed by a mountain ridge; and, making all allowance for refraction, we can not count on seeing him after the 10th.
“sept. 11.—the long staring day, which has clung to us for more than two months, to the exclusion of the stars, has begun to intermit its brightness. even aldebaran, the red eye of the bull, flared out into familiar recollection as early as ten o’clock; and the heavens, though still somewhat reddened by the gaudy tints of midnight, gave us capella and arcturus, and even that lesser366 light of home memories, the polar star. stretching my neck to look uncomfortably at the indication of our extreme northernness, it was hard to realize that he was not directly overhead; and it made me sigh as i measured the few degrees of distance that separated our zenith from the pole over which he hung.
“oct. 28.—the moon has reached her greatest northern declination of about 25° 35´. she is a glorious object; sweeping around the heavens, at the lowest part of her curve, she is still 14° above the horizon. for eight days she has been making her circuit with nearly unvarying brightness. it is one of those sparkling nights that bring back the memory of sleigh-bells and songs, and glad communings of hearts in lands that are far away.
“nov. 7.—the darkness is coming on with insidious steadiness, and its advances can only be perceived by comparing one day with its fellow of some time back. we still read the thermometer at noonday without a light, and the black masses of the hills are plain for about five hours, with their glaring patches of snow; but all the rest is darkness. the stars of the sixth magnitude shine out at noonday. except upon the island of spitzbergen, which has the advantages of an insular climate, and tempered by ocean currents, no christians have wintered in so high a latitude as this.19 they are russian sailors who made the encounter there—men inured to hardships and cold. our darkness has ninety days to run before we shall get back again even to the contested twilight of to-day. altogether our winter will have been sunless for one hundred and forty days.
“nov. 9.—wishing to get the altitude of the cliffs on the south-west cape of our bay before the darkness set in thoroughly, i started in time to reach them with my newfoundlanders at noonday, the thermometer indicating 23° below zero. fireside astronomers can hardly realize the difficulties in the way of observations at such low temperatures. the breath, and even the warmth of the face and body, cloud the sextant-arc and glasses with a fine hoar-frost. it is, moreover, an unusual feat to measure a base-line in the snow at 55° below freezing.
“nov. 21.—we have schemes innumerable to cheat the monotonous solitude of our winter—a fancy ball; a newspaper,’the ice blink;’ a fox-chase round the decks.
“dec. 15.—we have lost the last vestige of our midday twilight. we can not see print, and hardly paper; the fingers can not be counted a foot from the eyes. noonday and midnight are alike; and, except a vague glimmer in the sky that seems to define the hill outlines to the south, we have nothing to tell us that this arctic world of ours has a sun. in the darkness, and consequent inaction, it is almost in vain that we seek to create topics of thought, and, by a forced excitement, to ward off the encroachments of disease.
“jan. 21.—first traces of returning light, the southern horizon having for a short time a distinct orange tinge.
“feb. 21.—we have had the sun for some days silvering the ice between the headlands of the bay, and to-day, towards noon, i started out to be the367 first of my party to welcome him back. it was the longest walk and toughest climb that i have had since our imprisonment, and scurvy and general debility have made me ‘short o’ wind.’ but i managed to attain my object. i saw him once more, and upon a projecting crag nestled in the sunshine. it was like bathing in perfumed water.”
thus this terrible winter night drew to its end, and the time came for undertaking the sledge journeys, on which the success of the expedition mainly depended. unfortunately, of the nine magnificent newfoundlanders and the thirty-five esquimaux dogs originally possessed by kane, only six had survived an epizootic malady which raged among them during the winter: their number was, however, increased by some new purchases from the esquimaux who visited the ship at the beginning of april.
thus scantily provided with the means of transport, kane, though in a very weak condition, set out on april 25, 1854, to force his way to the north. he found the greenland coast beyond rensselaer bay extremely picturesque, the cliffs rising boldly from the shore-line to a height of sometimes more than a thousand feet, and exhibiting every freak and caprice of architectural ruin. in one spot the sloping rubbish at the foot of the coast-wall led up, like an artificial causeway, to a gorge that was streaming at noonday with the southern sun, while everywhere else the rock stood out in the blackest shadow. just at the edge of this bright opening rose the dreamy semblance of a castle, flanked with triple towers, completely isolated and defined. these were called the “three-brother turrets.”
“farther on, to the north of latitude 79°, a single cliff of greenstone rears itself from a crumbled base of sandstone, like the boldly-chiselled rampart of an ancient city. at its northern extremity, at the brink of a deep ravine which has worn its way among the ruins, there stands a solitary column or minaret tower, as sharply finished as if it had been cast for the place vendôme. yet the length of the shaft alone is 480 feet, and it rises on a pedestal, itself 280 feet high. i remember well the emotions of my party, as it first broke upon our view. cold and sick as i was, i brought back a sketch of it which may have interest for the reader, though it scarcely suggests the imposing dignity of this magnificent landmark. those who are happily familiar with the writings of tennyson, and have communed with his spirit in the solitudes of a wilderness, will apprehend the impulse that inscribed the scene with his name.”
but no rock formation, however striking or impressive, equalled in grandeur the magnificent glacier to which kane has given the name of humboldt. its solid glassy wall, diminishing to a well-pointed wedge in the perspective, rises 300 feet above the water-level, with an unknown, unfathomable depth below it and its curved face sixty miles in length—from cape agassiz to cape forbes—vanishes into unknown space at not more than a single day’s railroad travel from the pole.
in spite of the snow, which had so accumulated in drifts that the travellers were forced to unload their sledges and carry forward the cargo on their backs, beating a path for the dogs to follow in, kane came in sight of the great glacier368 on may 4; but this progress was dearly earned, as it cost him the last remnant of his strength.
“i was seized with a sudden pain,” says the intrepid explorer, “and fainted. my limbs became rigid, and certain obscure tetanoid symptoms of our winter enemy, the scurvy, disclosed themselves. i was strapped upon the sledge, and the march continued as usual, but my powers diminished so rapidly that i could not resist the otherwise comfortable temperature of 5° below zero. my left foot becoming frozen caused a vexatious delay, and the same night it became evident that the immovability of my limbs was due to dropsical effusion. on the 5th, becoming delirious and fainting every time that i was taken from the tent to the sledge, i succumbed entirely. my comrades would kindly persuade me that, even had i continued sound, we could not have proceeded on our journey. the snows were very heavy, and increasing as we went; some of the drifts perfectly impassable, and the level floes often four feet deep in yielding snow.
“the scurvy had already broken out among the men, with symptoms like my own, and morton, our strongest man, was beginning to give way. it is the reverse of comfort to me that they shared my weakness. all that i should remember with pleasurable feeling is that to my brave companions, themselves scarcely able to travel, i owe my preservation.
“they carried me back by forced marches. i was taken into the brig on the 14th, where for a week i lay fluctuating between life and death. dr. hayes regards my attack as one of scurvy, complicated by typhoid fever.”
fortunately summer was now fast approaching, with his cheering sunbeams and his genial warmth. the seals began to appear on the coast in large numbers, and there was now no want of fresh meat, the chief panacea against the scurvy. the snow-buntings returned to the ice-crusted rocks, and the gulls and eider-ducks came winging their way to their northern breeding-places.
vegetation likewise sprang into life with marvellous rapidity, and the green sloping banks not only refreshed the eye, but yielded juicy, anti-scorbutic herbs.
kane’s health slowly but steadily improved. he was, however, obliged to give up all further sledge excursions for the season, and to leave the execution of his plans to his more able-bodied companions.
thus dr. hayes, crossing the sound in a north-easterly direction, reached the opposite coast of grinnell land, which he surveyed as far as cape frazer in lat. 70° 45´.
this journey was rendered uncommonly slow and tedious by the excessively broken and rugged character of the ice. deep cavities filled with snow intervened between lines of hummocks frequently exceeding twenty or thirty feet in height. over these the sledge had to be lifted by main strength, and it required the most painful efforts of the whole party to liberate it from the snow between them. dr. hayes returned on june 1, and a few days later morton left the brig, to survey the greenland coast beyond the great glacier. the difficulties were great, for, besides the usual impediments of hummocks, the lateness of the season had in many places rendered the ice extremely unsafe, or even entirely destroyed the ice-ledge along the shore. thus for the last days of369 his onward journey he was obliged to toil over the rocks and along the beach of a sea which, like the familiar waters of the south, dashed in waves at his feet. morton and his companion hans, the esquimaux, reached on june 26, 1854, cape constitution, a bold headland, where the surf rolled furiously against high overhanging cliffs, which it was found impossible to pass. climbing from rock to rock, in hopes of doubling the promontory, morton stood at this termination of his journey, and from a height of 300 feet looked out upon a great waste of waters, stretching to the unknown north. numerous birds—sea-swallows, kittiwakes, brent-geese—mixed their discordant notes with the novel music of dashing waves; and among the flowering plants growing on the rocks was found a crucifer (hesperis pygmæa), the dried pods of which, still containing seed, had survived the wear and tear of winter. from cape constitution the coast of washington land trended to the east, but far to the north-west, beyond the open waters of the channel, a peak, terminating a range of mountains similar in their features to those of spitzbergen, was seen towering to a height of from 2500 to 3000 feet. this peak, the most remote northern land at that time known upon our globe, received the name of mount parry.
meanwhile the short summer was wearing on, and, as far as the eye could reach, the ice remained inflexibly solid. it was evident that many days must still elapse before the vessel could possibly be liberated—but then most likely winter would almost have returned—a dismal prospect for men who knew by experience the long fearful night of the 79° of latitude, and who, broken in health and with very insufficient supplies of provisions and fuel, were but ill armed for a second encounter. no wonder that many of kane’s companions thought it better to abandon the vessel than to tarry any longer in those frozen solitudes.
but though it was horrible to look another winter in the face, the resolution of kane could not be shaken. on august 24, when the last hope of seeing the vessel once more afloat had vanished, he called the officers and crew together, and explained to them frankly the considerations which determined him to remain. to abandon the vessel earlier would have been unseemly, and to reach upernavik so late in the season was next to impossible. to such of them, however, as were desirous of making the attempt, he freely gave his permission so to do, assuring them of a brother’s welcome should they be driven back. he then directed the roll to be called, and each man to answer for himself. in result, eight out of the seventeen survivors of the party resolved to stand by the brig. the others left on the 28th, with every appliance which the narrow circumstances of the brig could furnish to speed and guard them. when they disappeared among the hummocks, the stern realities of their condition pressed themselves with double force on those whom they left behind.
the reduced numbers of the party, the helplessness of many, the waning efficiency of all, the impending winter, with its cold, dark nights, the penury of their resources, the dreary sense of increased isolation—all combined to depress them. but their energetic leader, leaving them no time for these gloomy thoughts, set them actively to work to make the best possible preparations they could for the long cold night to come.
370 he had carefully studied the esquimaux, and determined that their form of habitations and their mode of diet, without their unthrift and filth, were the safest and best that could be adopted. the deck was well padded with moss and turf, so as to form a nearly cold-proof covering, and, down below, a space some eighteen feet square—the apartment of all uses—was inclosed and packed from floor to ceiling with inner walls of the same non-conducting material. the floor itself, after having been carefully caulked, was covered with manilla oakum a couple of inches deep and a canvas carpet. the entrance was from the hold, by a low moss-lined tunnel, with as many doors and curtains to close it up as ingenuity could devise. large banks of snow were also thrown up along the brig’s sides to keep off the cold wind.
all these labors in the open air wonderfully improved the health of the exiles, and their strength increased from day to day. a friendly intercourse was opened with the esquimaux of the winter settlements of etah and anoatok, distant some thirty and seventy miles from the ship, who, for presents of needles, pins, and knives, engaged to furnish walrus and fresh seal meat, and to show the white men where to find the game. common hunting-parties were organized, visits of courtesy and necessity paid, and even some personal attachments established deserving of the name. as long as the americans remained prisoners of the ice, they were indebted to their savage friends for invaluable counsel in relation to their hunting expeditions, and in the joint hunt they shared alike.
the esquimaux gave them supplies of meat at critical periods, and they were able to do as much for them. in one word, without the natives, kane and his companions would most likely have succumbed to the winter, and the esquimaux on their part learned to look on the strangers as benefactors, and mourned their departure bitterly.
on december 12 the party which had abandoned the ship returned, having been unable to penetrate to the south, and was received, as had been promised, with a brotherly welcome. they had suffered bitterly from the cold, want of food, and the fatigues of their march among the hummocks.
“the thermometer,” says kane, “was at -50°; they were covered with rime and snow, and were fainting with hunger. it was necessary to use caution in taking them below; for, after an exposure of such fearful intensity and duration as they had gone through, the warmth of the cabin would have prostrated them completely. they had journeyed three hundred and fifty miles; and their last run from the bay near etah, some seventy miles in a right line, was through the hummocks at this appalling temperature. one by one they all came in and were housed. poor fellows! as they threw open their esquimaux garments by the stove, how they relished the scanty luxuries which we had to offer them! the coffee, and the meat-biscuit soup, and the molasses, and the wheat bread, even the salt pork, which our scurvy forbade the rest of us to touch—how they relished it all! for more than two months they had lived on frozen seal and walrus meat.”
thus kane, by his determination not to abandon the ship, proved the saviour of all his comrades; for what would have become of them had he been less firm371 in his resolution, or if his courage had failed him during the trials of that dreadful winter?
“february closes,” says the heroic explorer; “thank god for the lapse of its twenty-eight days! should the thirty-one of the coming march not drag us farther downward, we may hope for a successful close to this dreary drama. by april 10 we should have seals; and when they come, if we remain to welcome them, we can call ourselves saved. but a fair review of our prospects tells me that i must look the lion in the face. 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. of the six workers of our party, as i counted them a month ago, two are unable to do out-door work, and the remaining four divide the duty 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 six fathoms of eight-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, scullionize, and attend the sick. added to this, for five nights running i have kept watch from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., catching such naps as i could in the day without changing my clothes, but carefully waking every hour to note thermometers.”
with march came an increase of sufferings. every man on board was tainted with scurvy, and there were seldom more than three who could assist in caring for the rest. the greater number were in their bunks, absolutely unable to stir. had kane’s health given way, the whole party, deprived of its leading spirit, must inevitably have perished.
to abandon the ship was now an absolute necessity, for a third winter in rensselaer bay would have been certain death to all; but before the boats could be transported to the open water, many preparations had to be made, and most of the party were still too weak to move. the interval was employed by kane in an excursion with his faithful esquimaux to the great glacier.
at length on may 20, 1855, the entire ship’s company bade farewell to the “advance,” and set out slowly on their homeward journey. it was in the soft, subdued light of a sunday evening, june 17, that after hauling their boats with much hard labor through the hummocks, they stood beside the open sea-way. but fifty-six days had still to pass before they could reach the port of upernavik. neither storms nor drift-ice rendered this long boat-journey dangerous, but they had to contend with famine, when they at length reached the open bay, and found themselves in the full line of the great ice-drift to the atlantic, in boats so unseaworthy as to require constant bailing to keep them afloat. their strength had decreased to an alarming degree; they breathed heavily; their feet were so swollen that they were obliged to cut open their canvas boots; they were utterly unable to sleep, and the rowing and bailing became hourly more difficult.
it was at this crisis of their fortunes that they saw a large seal floating—as372 is the custom of these animals—on a small patch of ice, and seemingly asleep. “trembling with anxiety,” says kane, “we prepared to crawl down upon him. petersen, with a 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. 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. m’gary hung upon his oar, and the boat slowly, but noiselessly surging ahead, seemed to me within certain range. looking at petersen, i saw that the poor fellow was paralyzed 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 their 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 realized 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.”
within a day or two another seal was shot, and from that time forward they had a full supply of food.
when kane, after an absence of thirty months, returned on october 11, 1855, to new york, he was enthusiastically received. well-deserved honors of all sorts awaited him on both sides of the atlantic; but his health, originally weak, was completely broken by the trials of his journey, and on february 16, 1857, he died at the havana, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. in him the united states lost one of her noblest sons, a true hero, whose name will ever shine among the most famous navigators of all times and of all nations.
in 1860, dr. hayes, who had accompanied kane on his journey, once more sailed from america for the purpose of completing the survey of kennedy’s channel, and, if possible, of pushing on to the pole itself. after several narrow escapes from ice-fields and icebergs, his schooner, the “united states,” was at length compelled to take up her winter-quarters at port foulke, on the greenland coast, about twenty miles in latitude to the south of rensselaer harbor. thanks to an abundant supply of fresh meat (for the neighborhood abounded with reindeer), and also no doubt to the inexhaustible fund of good-humor which prevailed in the ship’s company, they passed the winter without suffering from the scurvy; but most of the dogs on which dr. hayes relied for his sledge expeditions in the ensuing spring were destroyed by the same epidemic which had been so fatal to the teams of dr. kane. fortunately some fresh dogs could be purchased and borrowed of the friendly esquimaux, and thus,373 early in april, 1861, dr. hayes left the schooner, to plunge into the icy wilderness. having previously ascertained that an advance along the greenland shore was utterly impossible, he resolved to cross the sound, and to try his fortunes along the coast of grinnell land. of the difficulties which he had to encounter his own words will give the best idea.
“by winding to the right and left, and by occasionally retracing our steps when we had selected an impracticable route, we managed to get over the first few miles without much embarrassment, but farther on the tract was rough past description. i can compare it to nothing but a promiscuous accumulation of rocks closely packed together and piled up over a vast plain in great heaps and endless ridges, leaving scarcely a foot of level surface. the interstices between these closely accumulated ice-masses are filled up, to some extent, with drifted snow. the reader will readily imagine the rest. he will see the sledges winding through the tangled wilderness of broken ice-tables, the men and dogs pulling and pushing up their respective loads. he will see them clambering over the very summit of lofty ridges, through which there is no opening, and again descending on the other side, the sledge often plunging over a precipice, sometimes capsizing and frequently breaking. again he will see the party baffled in their attempt to cross or find a pass, breaking a track with shovel and handspike, or again, unable even with these appliances to accomplish their end, they retreat to seek a better track; and they may be lucky enough to find a sort of gap or gateway, upon the winding and uneven surface of which they will make a mile or so with comparative ease. the snow-drifts are sometimes a help, and sometimes a hinderance. their surface is uniformly hard, but not always firm to the foot. the crust frequently gives way, and in a most tiresome and provoking manner. it will not quite bear the weight, and the foot sinks at the very moment when the other is lifted. but, worse than this, the chasms between the hummocks are frequently bridged over with snow in such a manner as to leave a considerable space at the bottom quite unfilled; and at the very moment when all looks promising, down sinks one man to his middle, another to the neck, another is buried out of sight; the sledge gives way, and to extricate the whole from this unhappy predicament is probably the labor of hours. it would be difficult to imagine any kind of labor more disheartening, or which would sooner sap the energies of both men and animals. the strength gave way gradually; and when, as often happened after a long and hard day’s work, we could look back from our eminence and almost fire a rifle-ball into our last snow-hut, it was truly discouraging.”
no wonder that after thus toiling on for twenty-five days they had not yet reached half-way across the sound, and that they were all broken down. but their bold leader was fully determined not to abandon his enterprise while still the faintest hope of success remained, and, sending the main party back to the schooner, he continued to plunge into the hummocks with three picked companions—jensen, m’donald, knorr—and fourteen dogs. after fourteen days of almost superhuman exertion the sound was at length crossed, and now began a scarcely less harassing journey along the coast. on the fifth day jensen, the strongest man of the party, completely broke down, and leaving him to the374 charge of m’donald, dr. hayes now pushed on with knorr alone, until, on may 18, he reached the border of a deep bay, where farther progress to the north was stopped by rotten ice and cracks. right before him, on the opposite side of the frith, rose mount parry, the lofty peak first seen by morton in 1854 from the shores of washington land; and farther on, a noble headland, cape union—the most northern known land upon the globe—stood in faint outline against the dark sky of the open sea. thus dr. hayes divides the honor of extreme northern travel with parry.
on july 12 the “united states” was released from her icy trammels, and dr. hayes once more attempted to reach the opposite coast and continue his discoveries in grinnell land, but the schooner was in too crippled a state to force her way through the pack-ice which lay in her course, and compelled her commander to return to boston.
thus ended this remarkable voyage; but having done so much, dr. hayes is eager, and resolved, to do still more. fully convinced by his own experience that men may subsist in smith’s sound independent of support from home, he proposes to establish a self-sustaining colony at port foulke, which may be made the basis of an extended exploration. without any second party in the field to co-operate with him, and under the most adverse circumstances, he, by dint of indomitable perseverance, pushed his discoveries a hundred miles farther to the north and west than his predecessors; and it is surely not over-sanguine to expect that a party better provided with the means of travel may be able to traverse the 480 miles at least which intervene between mount parry and the pole. the open sea which both morton and himself found beyond kennedy channel gives fair promise of success to a strong vessel that may reach it after having forced the ice-blocked passage of smith’s sound, or, should this be impracticable, to a boat transported across the sound and then launched upon its waters.
captain sherard osborne, who is likewise a warm partisan of this route, has been endeavoring to interest government in its favor; but in the opinion of other scientific authorities an easier passage seems open to the navigator who may attempt to reach the pole by way of spitzbergen. to the east of this archipelago the gulf stream rolls its volume of comparatively warm water far on to the north-east, and possibly sweeps round the pole itself. it was to the north of spitzbergen that parry reached the latitude of 82° 45´; and in 1837 the “truelove,” of hull,20 sailed through a perfectly open sea in 82° 30´ n., 15° e., and, had she continued her course, might possibly have reached the pole as easily as the high latitude which she had already attained.
the distinguished geographer, dr. augustus petermann, who warmly advocates the route between spitzbergen and greenland, has, by dint of perseverance, succeeded in collecting among his countrymen the necessary funds for a reconnoitring voyage in this direction. thanks to his exertions, may 24, 1868, witnessed the departure of a small ship of eighty tons, the “germania,” captain koldewey, from the port of bergen, for shannon island (75° 14´ n. lat.), the highest point on the east coast of greenland attained by sabine in 1823. here the attempt to explore the unknown arctic seas beyond was to begin; but,375 meeting with enormous masses of drift-ice on her repeated endeavors to penetrate to the north-east, the “germania” has been obliged to return, after reaching the high latitude of 81° 5´, and accurately surveying a small part of the greenland coast hitherto but imperfectly explored. an expedition on a more extensive scale is to renew the attempt in 1869.
a third route to the pole is no less strenuously recommended by m. gustave lambert, a french hydrographer, who, having sailed through bering’s strait in a whaler in 1865, is persuaded that this is the right way to reach the problematical open north sea, which, once attained, promises a free passage to the navigator. liberal subscriptions have been raised in paris for the accomplishment of his plan, and an expedition under his command will most probably set out in 1869.
thus, after so many illustrious navigators have vainly endeavored to reach the pole, sanguine projectors are still as eager as ever to attain the goal; nor is it probable that man will ever rest in his efforts until every attainable region of the arctic ocean shall have been fully explored.
