CHAPTER XVII. 



KANE, THE MODEL OF PEARY. 



"An Arctic day and an Arctic night," says Dr. Kane in one part of his 

 book, "age a man more rapidly and harshly than a year anywhere else in all 

 this weary world." Dr. Kane was not yet forty years of age when he went 

 to the north. When he returned he was a physical wreck, with barely 

 strength to pen the volume that still lives in the libraries of explorers. 



The expedition under the command of Dr. Kane sailed from New York 

 on the 30th day of May, 1853. It consisted of eighteen chosen men, besides 

 the commander, embarked in a small brig of one hundred and forty-four tons 

 burden, named the Advance. Dr. Kane's predetermined course was to enter 

 the strait discovered the previous year by Captain Inglefield, at the top of 

 Baffin's Bay, and to push as far northward through it as practicable. jHe 

 was to cross Melville Bay in the wake of the vast icebergs with which the, sea 

 is there strewn. These huge frozen masses are often driven one way by a 

 deep current, while the floes are drifted in another by winds and surface- 

 streams, disruptions being thus necessarily caused in the vast ice-fields. The 

 doctor's tactics were to dodge about in the rear of these floating ice-moun- 

 tains, holding upon them whenever adverse winds were troublesome, and 

 pressing forward whenever an opportunity occurred. 



Dr. Kane's plan was based upon the probably extension of the land- 

 masses of Greenland to the far north — a fact at that time not verified by 

 travel, but sustained by the analogies of physical geography. 



With this plan in mind. Dr. Kane pushed the ship Advance to Melville 

 Bay, where the first great difficulties were encountered. By arduous work, 

 however, they reached Littleton Island, and deposited some stores. A long 

 battle with ice and storm followed, lasting through the month of August, 

 and the ship finally reached Cape George Russell, where the ship was pre- 

 pared for a long imprisonment. 



Many interesting things were met with during the winter that followed. 



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