486 



DR. KANE'S EXPEDITION. 



these symptoms. The loss of his dogs seriously affected 

 Dr. Kane's plans ; new arrangements had to be formed, 

 which, owing to the smalluess of the party, deprived 



DOG-SLEDGE. 



of the dogs, were necessarily restricted. The addition 

 of four dogs, contributed by Esquimaux, permitted 

 the operations to be considerably extended. Out of 

 nearly three thousand miles traversed, no less than 

 eleven hundred were made with the dog-sledge ; and 

 during the following year Dr. Kane himself travelled 

 fourteen hundred miles with a single team. 



The month of March brought back perpetual day. The 

 sunshine had reached the ship on the last day of Febru- 

 ary ; they needed it to cheer them. The scurvy spots 

 that mottled the faces of almost all gave sore proof of 

 the trials they had undergone. The crew were now 

 (March, 1854) almost unfitted by debility for arduous 

 work, and only six dogs remained of nine splendid New- 

 foundlanders and thirty-five Esquimaux dogs. " An Arc- 

 tic night and an Arctic day," Dr. Kane emphatically re- 

 marks, " age a man more rapidly and harshly than a year 

 anywhere else in all this weary world.' 3 Sometimes, in 

 their excursions over the ice, the men had to drag the 

 sledge, and flounder through snow-drifts in which they 

 gank at every step nearly over their legs. 



