286 DR. KANE'S FAMOUS ARCTIC VOYAGE 



out for seventy-two hours, and halted in all eight hours. The mean 

 temperature of the whole time, including the noontide hours of 

 three days, was about 41 degrees, or 70 degrees below freezing- 

 point. Except at their two halts they had no means of quenching 

 their thirst, and they could at no time intermit vigorous exercise 

 without freezing. 



Dr. Kane's purpose, as we are aware, was not that of seeking 

 to reach the pole or to make a great northward record, but to search 

 for the Sir John Franklin party or relics of its passage. As many 

 expeditions had entered the channels opening west from Baffin Bay, 

 he had gone farther north, hoping to find other channels leading 

 east or west from the upper extremity of Smith Sound. He believed 

 that, at least, some of the hardier members of the Franklin party 

 might be alive, dwelling perhaps with the far northern Eskimos, or 

 living on the proceeds of their own skill in hunting. 



In pursuance of this purpose, at the end of April, 1854, Kane 

 and seven of his men ten of the party being left on the brig 

 started north on an exploring excursion, proposing to follow up the 

 ice-belt to the Humboldt Glacier, there to replenish their food supply 

 from the cache of pemmican they had made in their trip of the 

 previous October, and then attempt to cross the ice of the sound to 

 the opposite shore. This was to be the crowning effort of the expe- 

 dition, to measure the frozen waste which lay between Greenland 

 and the unknown land to the west, and make a search for an opening 

 into the mysterious regions which lay in the higher north. This 

 purpose, while not completely carried out, led to geographical results 

 of much interest. Smith Sound here opens into a wide landlocked 

 sea, since known as Kane Basin, on which fronts the enormous 

 Humboldt Glacier, the greatest probably in existence. Its curved 

 face, from Cape Agassiz to Cape Forbes, measures fully sixty miles 

 in length, and presents a grand wall or front of glistening ice, 

 kindled here and tliere into dazzling glory by the sun. Its form is 

 that of a wedge, the apex lying inland, at perhaps "not more than a 



