THE LAST EXPEDITION OF CHARLES FRANCIS HALL. 761 



aceoiiipanyiDg us out of the harbor and seaward. He leaves us when the pilot does. 

 He has rendered to this expedition much service, and long will I remember him for his 

 great kindness, I am sure you and my country will fully appreciate the hospitality 

 and co-operation of the Danish officials in Greenland as relating to our North Polar 

 Expedition. — Now, at a quarter past 2, the Polaris bids adieu to the civilized world. 

 Governor Elberg leaves us, promising to take these despatches back to Upernavik, 

 and to send them to our minister at Copenhagen by the next ship, which opportunity 

 may not be till next year. God be with us." 



The annual Danish vessel had left Greenland ; and, as Hall had anticipated, nearly 

 a year passed before there was any opportunity of sending this dispatch. When 

 these hopeful words were read in the United States, whence they had come by way 

 of Copenhagen, their writer had been dead nine months ; and, as the event proves, 

 with him had perished all the high hopes which had been cherished of the success of 

 his expedition. 



From that 24th of August, 1871, to the 30th of April, 1873, not a word of 

 tidings of the expedition passed through the icy barriers of the Arctic circle. On 

 this last day the staunch little steamer Tigress, built for the sealing trade in the 

 Greenland Seas, and owned in Newfoundland, while steaming down the coast of 

 Labrador, in about latitude 53° North, in a dense fog, came upon a patch of ice 

 some twenty feet square — about as large as the floor of a small room. Upon this 

 were human beings, who were taken on board and found to be a part of the crew of 

 the Polaris. They proved to be Tyson, the assistant navigator, Meyer the meteorol- 

 ogist, Jackson the cook, Herron the steward, five seamen, with the Esquimaux 

 Ebierbing and Tookoolito, and their child, Hans Christian, his wife and four children, 

 the youngest only eight months old, six months and more of whose brief life bad 

 been passed upon the ice : in all nineteen souls. 



These were brought to St. John's, Newfoundland, and in a few days the tidings of 

 their rescue reached the United States. The Herald newspaper had at St. John's, 

 as almost everywhere else, a capable correspondent. He interviewed the persons, 

 and on the 21st of May a long and full report of what they could tell appeared in 

 the Herald. Meanwhile the government had dispatched a steamer from New York to 

 bring the party to Washington, where they arrived early in June. They were all 

 carefully examined by a commission consisting of the Secretary of the Navy, assisted 

 by Commodore Reynolds, the senior officer of the Navy Department, himself an 

 experienced explorer ; Professor Spencer F. Piaird, Assistant Secretary of the Smith- 

 sonian Institute, among the foremost scientists of the age, a warm personal friend of 

 Hail, and an ardent promoter of the expedition ; and Captain Howgate of the Signal 

 Service. Their narrative to the Herald correspondent, and their testimony before 

 this commission, agree in every essential respect, and embody all that we can at 

 present hope to know of this expedition : all that we can ever hope to know, unless 

 the Polaris herself and the remainder of her crew shall hereafter be found. 



On the 24th of August, as has been seen, the Polaris got safely out of the danger- 

 ous harbor of Tessuisak, shot across the head of the stormy Melville Bay ; passed 

 Northumberland Island, and through Smith's Sound ; and meeting little obstruction 

 from ice, entered what Kane and Morton and Hayes believed the open Polar Sea. 

 which however proved to be a mere expansion of the Sound, and to which the name 



