422 Tlie Voyage to the North Pole again Contemplated. [Juiy, iseo. 



now buy it back if the whalers did not come to take him home. He 



writes, however, fairly in all cases for or against himself — ^for or against 



the character of his information from the natives. 



With the unwilling consciousness that he could accomplish 



nothing of further research in the Frozen Regions, he had now to 



think of a Return to the United States ; purposing there to collate 



and publish the results of his protracted Arctic experience ; then to 



make his long-meditated voyage to the Pole; and, if possible, afterward 



revisit King William's Land. In regard this last, he writes : 



Day after day I have been reading and re-reading the books I have with me 

 on Ai'ctic voyages. How my soul longs for the time to come when I can be on my 

 ^orth Pole Expedition ! I cannot, if I would, restrain my zeal for making Arctic 

 discoveries. My purpose is to make as quick a voyage as possible to the States, 

 and then, at once, make preparations for my Polar Expedition. I hope to start 

 next spring with a vessel for Jones' Sound, and thence toward the North Pole as 

 far as navigation will permit. The following spring, by sledge journey, I will 

 make for the goal of my ambition, the Xorth Pole. I do hope to be able to 

 resume snow-hut and tent encampment very near the Pole by the latter part of 



1870, and much nearer, indeed at the very Pole, in the spring following, to wit, in 



1871. There is no use in man's saying, it cannot be done — that the North Pole 

 is beyond our reach. By judicious plans, and by having a carefully selected com- 

 pany, I trust with a Heaven-protecting care to reach it in less time, and with far 

 less mental anxieties, than I have experienced to get to King William's Land. I 

 have always held to the opinion that whoever would lead the way there should 

 first have years of experience among the wild natives of the North : and this is 

 one of my reasons for submitting to searching so long for the lost ones of Frank- 

 lin's Expedition. 



The expression of such purposes, including that of a subsequent 

 return to King William's Land, is certainly remarkable, as coming 

 from one whose sledge journeys only, during the five years which now 

 closed upon him, exceeded the aggregate of four thousand miles. A 

 willlingness "to resume snow hut and tent" would seem explicable 



