DR. KANE'S EXPEDITION. 485 



70 12' 6", and long. 65 25'. Darkness arrested these 

 proceedings on November 20th, and the sun continued 

 one hundred and twenty days below the horizon. 



One of the first incidents that occurred was setting 

 the ship on fire in an attempt to exterminate the rats 

 with carbonic-acid gas. It ended in nearly asphyxiating 

 the commander and two or three others. The next inci- 

 dent was one of the dogs going rabid - - a phenomenon 

 usually supposed to be associated with the heats of 

 summer. Great inconvenience was experienced in the 

 eledge-excursions, and in making "caches' of provi- 

 sions in this region, from the frequent ice-cracks, or cre- 

 vasses, as the Swiss would call them, and into which 

 dogs, sledges, and travellers, were sometimes tumbled, at 

 the imminent risk of being carried below the ice by the 

 current not to mention the danger to health of an im- 

 mersion with the thermometer many degrees below zero. 



The point at which the party were wintering, it is to 

 be observed, was in a higher latitude than the wintenng 1 - 

 Btations in the Arctic archipelago ; and, except on Spitz- 

 bergen, no Christians are known to have passed a win- 

 ter so near to the pole. The darkness was so intense 

 that it necessarily entailed inaction ; and it was in vain 

 that they sought to create topics of thought, and, by a 

 forced excitement, to ward off the encroachments of dis- 

 ease. The thermometer fell to ninety-nine degrees below 

 freezing point. Human beings could only breathe in 

 such a temperature guardedly, and with compressed lips. 



The influence of such severe cold and long intense 

 darkness was most depressing. Most of the dogs died 

 of affections of the brain, which began, as in the in- 

 ntance of some of the men of the Investigator, with fits, 

 followed by lunacy, and sometimes by lock-jaw. Their 

 disease, Dr. Kane remarks, was as clearly mental as in 

 the case of any human being. Fifty-seven died with 



