248 SMITH SOUND 



who, with Hans Hendrik, four years afterwards, was to 

 follow up Hall's track to the north. 



The results of this expedition were of considerable 

 importance. In five days Captain Hall had run five 

 hundred miles through what on most occasions has been 

 found to be an ice-choked sea. He completed the 

 exploration of Kennedy Channel, discovered Hall 

 Basin and Robeson Channel, and was the first to reach 

 the Polar ocean by this route. Greenland and Grinnell 

 Land he extended northward for nearly a hundred and 

 forty miles ; and, north of Petermann Fiord, where he 

 showed that the inland ice terminated, he had found a 

 large area free from ice, with its wild flowers and 

 herbage and musk oxen. 



Hall's remarkable success in taking a ship to so high 

 a latitude led to the Government expedition of 1875, 

 the first British attempt to reach the Pole since Parry's 

 failure in 1827. Three ships were employed : the Alert, 

 a seventeen-gun sloop ; the Discovery, once the Blood- 

 hound, a Dundee whaler ; and the Valorous. The 

 Alert and Discovery were specially prepared for the 

 voyage at Portsmouth by Sir Leopold M'Clintock who 

 was then Admiral Superintendent of the dockyard ; 

 the Valorous, an old paddle sloop, required little altera- 

 tion, as her duty was merely to carry the stores that 

 could not safely be taken by the exploring vessels in 

 crossing the Atlantic and hand them over at Disco. 



The leader, Captain George Strong Nares, when one 

 of the Franklin search officers under Kellett at Melville 

 Island, had distinguished himself by a sledge journey 

 in which he had travelled nine hundred and eighty 

 miles in sixty -nine days and reached 119^ west 



