VOYAGE OF THE "UNITED STATES." 255 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

 HAYES' EXPEDITION SWEDISH EXPEDITIONS. 



Yoj-age of the United States High Latitude attained In Winter Quarters Hardships of the Voyage -The dreary Arctic 

 Landscape Open Water once more 1,300 Miles of Ice traversed Swedish Expeditions Perilous Position of the Sofia. 



IT will be remembered that Dr. Hayes was associated with Dr. Kane at the period when 

 Morton discovered that open water which seemed to many scientific men of the day positive 

 proof of the existence of an " open polar sea/' Dr. Hayes was an evident believer in the 

 theory, and his enthusiastic advocacy of it induced many in the United States to come forward 

 and lend material aid towards the solution of the problem. A private subscription, to which 

 that worthy New Yorker Mr. Grinnell, who had already done so much to further Arctic 

 exploration, contributed largely, enabled Dr. Hayes to purchase and fit a schooner the United 

 States for the arduous work in which she was to be engaged. The vessel was of no great 

 size, merely some 130 tons burden, but was considerably strengthened and suitably provided 

 for her coming struggle with the ice. The expedition, which numbered only fourteen persons 

 all told, left Boston on July 6th, 1860. 



Hayes' idea at starting was to proceed via Smith Sound and Kennedy Channel as far 

 north as might be ; then to winter on the Greenland coast, and attempt to reach with sledges 

 the northern water. Dangers, the description of which would be but a recapitulation of 

 previous accounts recorded in these pages, were passed successfully, and eventually he laid up 

 the vessel in Port Foulke, where the winter was passed in comparative ease. In the months 

 of April and May, 1861, he made an important exploration, at the end of which he had the 

 pleasure of reaching a point north of that attained by Morton. The journey was one of the 

 very greatest peril. Gales, fogs, and drifting snows; hummocks and broken ice; opening 

 seams and pools of water such were a few of the dangers and difficulties encountered. Some 

 of the men succumbed utterly, and had to be sent back to the schooner : it occupied the doctor 

 and his companions a clear month to cross Smith Sound. In Kennedy Channel the ice was 

 becoming rotten and full of water-holes, and through the soft and now melting snow they 

 travelled with the greatest difficulty. The dreariness and desolation of an Arctic landscape are 

 well described by Hayes. " As the eye wandered from peak to peak of the mountains as they 

 rose one above the other, and rested upon the dark and frost-degraded cliffs, and followed 

 along the ice-foot and overlooked the sea, and saw in every object the silent forces of Nature 

 moving on through the gloom of winter and the sparkle of summer now, as they had 

 moved for countless ages, unobserved but by the eye of God alone I felt how puny indeed are 

 all men's works and efforts ; and when I sought for some token of living thing, some track of 

 wild beast a fox, or bear, or reindeer, which had elsewhere always crossed me in my 

 journeyings and saw nothing but two feeble men and struggling dogs, it seemed indeed as 

 if the Almighty had frowned upon the hills and seas." Still they pushed on, till the old ice 

 came suddenly to an end, and the unerring instinct of the dogs warned them of approaching 

 danger. They were observed for some time to be moving with unusual caution, and at last 

 they scattered right and left, and refused to proceed. Hayes walked on ahead, and soon came 

 to tho conclusion that they must retrace their steps, for his staff gave way on the ice. After 



