THE RETURN. 365 



June 1th. 



I have worked up some of my sights, and rudely 

 sketched in the coast-line of my track-chart. It 

 makes a respectable show for our summer's sledging. 

 Since the middle of March, I have covered the en- 

 tire ground gone over by Dr. Kane's various parties, 

 except the coast of Washington Land, and have ex- 

 tended the former surveys considerably to the north 

 and west. But the important additions which I have 

 been enabled to make to the geographical knowledge 

 of the region I regard as of secondary interest to the 

 circumstance that my journey has shown the practica- 

 bility of this route into the Polar Basin. 



My return southward from the shores of the Polar 

 Sea is not recorded in my field-diary. There is no 

 record after we had turned our faces homeward. 

 That water-soaked and generally dilapidated-looking 

 book, which now lies open on the table before me, 

 breaks off thus : — 



" Halted in the lee of a huge ice-cliff, seeking shel- 

 ter from a fierce storm that set upon us soon after 

 we started south. We have made about ten miles, 

 and have from forty to fifty yet to. make before we 

 reach Jensen. We have given the dogs the last of 

 our food. It is snowing and blowing dreadfully." 



The storm continued with unabated violence 

 through the next day; and as the wind shrieked 

 along the tall cliffs, carrying with it the drifting 

 snow, I thought that I had scarcely ever seen or 

 heard any thing more dismal. Unable to bear the 

 chilliness of our imperfect shelter, (we had no means 

 of making a snow-hut,) we pushed on, wading 

 through deep drifts in addition to climbing the 

 rocks and masses of ice, which, in going north, had 



