26 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [Aug. 



over the ice toward Littleton Island. Doctor Kane 

 and his men, after two years of hardships, had decided 

 to abandon the good ship Advance in Rensselaer Harbor 

 and sail south in their little boats toward the South 

 Greenland settlements. The Eskimos of Etah fed them 

 day after day on the bodies of the little auks. The 

 boats went south and disappeared around Cape 

 Alexander. 



Two months later the steamship Arctic, under the com- 

 mand of Lieut. H. J. Hartstene, steamed slowly along the 

 shore in search of Doctor Kane and his men. Upon 

 being informed by the Etah Eskimos that the white 

 men had gone south, the steamship turned and dis- 

 appeared in the distance. In 1860 the little schooner 

 United States, under the command of Dr. Isaac I. Hayes, 

 appeared. Buffeted by wind and ice, she crept into the 

 niche below Etah Harbor, almost a complete wreck. 

 Here she remained during the winter, while the men in 

 the early spring plodded northward, dragging their boats 

 on their sledges, hoping to launch them in an open polar 

 sea. In 1861 she, too, sailed away toward the south. 



Ten years later the U.S.S. Polaris, under the command 

 of Charles Francis Hall, steamed proudly past Etah, 

 through Smith Sound, Kane Basin, Kennedy Channel, 

 and Robeson Channel to the record-breaking latitude of 

 82° IV. One year later she drifted helplessly southward, 

 locked in the ice. In danger of being crushed, the men 

 threw boxes of food over the rail onto the ice-floe. The 

 crack between the ship and the floe widened. Nineteen 

 men, women, and children, adrift on the pan, started 

 on their long trip of 1,300 miles through the darkness of 

 the winter night, to be picked up off Grady Harbor, 

 Labrador, on April 30, 1873. The remainder of the crew 



