110 ELISHA KENT KANE. 



genial reception. Their protracted voyage, with its 

 infinite anxieties and toils, their perilous adventures 

 amid cheerless continents of ice, their narrow escapes 

 from rolling mountains and colossal icebergs, their 

 sufferings from cold, hunger, and disease, their 

 gloomy apprehensions of descending at last to an 

 unknown grave amid the solitudes of the Arctic 

 realms, and their sad doubts whether they should 

 ever again behold the welcome and familiar scenes 

 of home and friends to which they had so long been 

 exiles, all these now terminated in eventual tri- 

 umph and escape. Dr. Kane's labors had not indeed 

 resulted in the discovery of any new traces or re- 

 mains of Sir John Franklin; but they were the 

 means of securing important additions to geogra- 

 phical knowledge and valuable acquisitions in botany, 

 meteorology, and other departments of science. His 

 laborious researches have probably left little to be 

 hereafter attained by any successor in Arctic explo- 

 ration. He and his party arrived in the port of New 

 York, with the squadron of Captain Hartstene, on 

 the llth of October, 1855, having been absent 

 during the period of two years and nine months in 

 the pursuit of his dangerous and honorable enter- 

 prise.* 



* See " History of the Second Grinnell Expedition," attributed to 

 Professor Sontag, passim. 



