CHAPTER XX 



Hayes, Hall and other Hardy Adventurers 



IN 1860 began another of the American expeditions to the Pole, 

 under the command of Dr. Isaac I. Hayes, who had accom- 

 panied the Kane expedition as surgeon, had discovered Grin- 

 nell Land in 1855, and had traversed the icy seas to a latitude 

 beyond 80 degrees. On the 6th of July, 1860, he set sail on an 

 expedition under his own command, in which he hoped to pass the 

 ice belt in Smith Sound and reach the open polar sea he firmly 

 believing, from past experiences, that the sea about the North Pole 

 was not frozen. He was accompanied by Messrs. Sonntag and 

 RadclifFe as astronomer and assistant astronomer, and by a crew of 

 twelve officers and men. 



On the 3Oth of July they crossed the Arctic Circle, and on the 

 second day of August, as they lay becalmed off the Greenland coast, 

 they beheld a scene which Dr. Hayes describes for us in the follow- 

 ing glowing language. 



"It seemed as if we had been drawn by some unseen hand 

 into a land of enchantment. Here was the Valhalla of the sturdy 

 Vikings, here the city of the sungod Freya ; Alfheim, with its elfin 

 curves, and Glitner, more brilliant than the sun, the home of the 

 happy; and there, piercing the clouds, was Himnborg, the celestial 

 mount." 



His eloquent diary gives further details of the scene before 



his enraptured eyes. His description is well worth reproducing, as 



a pen-picture of the beauty often to be seen in the northern seas: 



"The air was almost as warm as that of a southern summer 



eve; and yet before them were the icebergs and the bleak moun- 



( 29 8) 



