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 t............