32 THE VOYAGE OF THE JEANNETTE. 



Juniata back. Captain Markham, who was on the last 

 Enghsh expedition under Sir George Nares, considered 

 this boat journey as one of the most hazardous and 

 venturesome undertakings he had ever known. Men 

 to save their own lives will take such risks, but they 

 rarely court them to save others. Melville Bay is re- 

 nowned for its dangers, and whole fleets of whalers 

 have been crushed in the ice which crowds it. 



The following letter, which Lieutenant De Long 

 wrote to his wife after the expedition, gives in more 

 familiar form some of the impressions which his expe- 

 rience left upon him. 



U. S. S. Juniata, Godhavn, Disco Island, 

 Greenland, August 19, 1873. 



I presume there will be no question as to our having tried 

 our best to find the Polaris, and as to our having tried every 

 means to accomplish it, but it was a physical impossibility to 

 drive our boat through ice four feet in thickness, and so we 

 were compelled to turn back. I made a long report of the 

 expedition covering twenty-three pages of official paper, and 

 of course I cannot give you such a complete description of it 

 in one letter. However, there were some things which I did 

 not include in my report, and these things I can write you, 

 and you can know they were reserved for your reading first. 



In the first place, I am thankful to God for having spared 

 me to come back to you again, for I assure you I felt prettj'^ 

 well convinced on two occasions that 'I was going to leave the 

 bones of our party in the ice. It was, to say the least of it, 

 a perilous journey, and our experiences of the ten days are 

 things which I shall remember for the rest of my Hfe. There 

 rested on my shoulders the fearful responsibility of saying 

 how far we should go, and how far the lives of our little party 

 were to be jeopardized ; and surrounded as we were by dan- 

 gerous circumstances, I had an amount of care on my mind 

 that I do not desire to have again for such a length of time 

 even as ten days. Our boat, to begin with, was a small one, 



