508 DR. KANE'S EXPEDITION. 



where they procured sorrel and cochlearia. Foxes were 

 also very numerous. By the time they got back to the 

 brig, the commander says he arid his little party had 

 got quite fat and strong upon the auks, eiders, and 

 scurvy-grass. 



On board of the Advance, however, which had now 

 been imprisoned by closely-cementing ice for eleven 

 months, as the season travelled on and the young ice 

 grew thicker, faces began, also, to grow longer every 

 day. It was the only face with which they could look 

 upon another winter. " It is horrible," writes Dr. Kane, 

 " yes, that is the word, - -to look forward to another 

 year of disease and darkness, to be met without fresh 

 food and without fuel." 



Under these circumstances, Dr. Kane called the offi- 

 cers and crew together, and left to every man his own 

 choice to remain by the ship or to attempt an escape to 

 the Danish settlements to the southward. Eight out of 

 the seventeen survivors resolved to stand by the brig 

 and their commander. The remainder started off, on the 

 28th, " with the elastic step of men confident in their 

 purpose ; ' but one returned a few days afterwards, and 

 all ultimately either found their way back, or were 

 brought back by the humane Esquimaux, after hard 

 trials, and almost unparalleled sufferings. 



Those that remained with the ship set to work at once 

 gathering moss for eking out the winter fuel, and willow- 

 stems and sorrel as antiscorbutics. The " mossing/ 7 

 although it had a pleasant sound, was in reality a fright 

 fully wintry operation. The mixed turf, of willows, 

 heaths, grasses, and moss, was frozen solid. It had to 

 be quarried with crowbars, and carried to the ship like 

 so much stone. With this they banked up the ship's 

 Bides, and below they enclosed a space some eighteen 

 feet square, and packed it with the same material fro:a 



