TOWARDS THE NORTH POLE. 59 



centuries, the most northerly point attained by this route. Robert 

 Bylot, master, and William Baffin, pilot, set out from Gravesend in 

 1616, with 15 men on board the Discovery, 55 tons. Proceeding 

 along the west coast of Greenland, they reached Cape Hope Sanderson 

 on May 30. As they continued north, Women's Island was found and 

 named in 7245'. In 7345' the expedition was detained for a short 

 time among natives of Horn Sound, but the ice broke up, and on July 

 1 an open sea lay before the travellers in 75 40' N. Pushing across 

 this, the expedition reached the entrance to what was named Sir Thomas 

 Smith's Sound, and an extreme northing of 7745' was recorded. 



When one takes into account all the attendant circumstances, this 

 was really a most remarkable voyage, but, notwithstanding the success 

 which attended it, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay were so neglected by 

 explorers for the next two hundred years that when interest in this 

 section of the north polar field revived, early in the nineteenth century, 

 the narrative of Baffin's discoveries was quite discredited. The accuracy 

 of his observations was soon confirmed, but not until 1852 unless it 

 may have been some whaler did any one push our knowledge of the 

 Arctic regions in this direction a stage nearer the Pole. In that year 

 Captain E. A. Inglefield, in the Isabel, coupled with a summer search 

 for Franklin an attempt to ascertain whether Smith Sound was con- 

 nected with the Polar Sea. On August 26, the expedition reached 

 Cape Alexander, the most northerly point seen by Baffin, and Inglefield 

 saw the open sea "stretching through seven points of the compass." 

 He started to steam northwards, but twelve hours later, when only 

 forty miles beyond Baffin's furthest, was turned back by the ice. His 

 extreme northing was 7821'. In the following year the Americans 

 took the field. Elisha Kent Kane, in a vessel fitted out by Grinnell 

 and Peabody, straightway broke the new record and reached and win- 

 tered in Eensselaer Harbor, 78 37' N. In the summer of 1854 the sur- 

 geon of the expedition, Isaac I. Hayes, crossed Kane Sea to Grinnell 

 Land, which he traced to Cape Frazer, 7943' 1ST. In the meanwhile, 

 on the Greenland side of Kane Sea, two other members of the expedition, 

 William Morton and Hans Hendrik, reached and scaled the south side 

 of Cape Constitution, in 8035' N., overlooking Kennedy Channel. 

 These results were the more praiseworthy in that the expedition suf- 

 fered terribly from scurvey and in other ways, and barely succeeded 

 in reaching the relief expedition that rescued them in 1855. C. F. 

 Hall was the next traveller to push back the line dividing the known 

 from the unknown. Though neither a sailor nor a scientist by pro- 

 fession, he possessed all the qualities of courage and perseverence and 

 endurance which go to the making of a great explorer, and, favored 

 by an exceptionally open season, he succeeded, in 1870, in pushing 

 right through Smith Sound, Kennedy Channel, and Eobeson Channel 



