368 THE POLAR WOP.LD. 



cier on May 4 ; but this progress was dearly earned, as it cost liim the last 

 remnant of his strengtli. 



" I was seized with a sudden j^ain," says the intrepid explorer, " and fainted, 

 Mv limbs became rigid, and certain obscure tetanoid symptoms of our winter 

 enemy, the scurvy, disclosed themselves. I was strapped upon the sledge, and 

 the march continued as usual, but my powers diminished so rapidly that I could 

 not resist the otherwise comfortable temperature of 5° below zero. My left 

 foot becoramg frozen caused a vexatious delay, and the same night it became 

 evident that the immovability of my limbs was due to dropsical effusion. On 

 the 5th, becoming delirious and fainting every time that I was taken from the 

 tent to the sledge, I succumbed entirely. My comrades would kindly persuade 

 me that, even had I continued sound, we could not have proceeded on our jour- 

 ney. The snows were very heavy, and increasing as we went ; some of the 

 drifts perfectly impassable, and the level floes often four feet deep in yielding 

 snow. 



" The scurvy had already broken out among the men, with symptoms like 

 my own, and Morton, our strongest man, was beginning to give way. It is the 

 reverse of comfort to me that they shared my weakness. All that I should re- 

 member with pleasurable feeling is that to my brave companions, themselves 

 scarcely able to travel, I owe my preservation. 



" They carried me back by forced marches, I was taken into the brig on 

 the 14th, where for a week I lay fluctuating between life and death. Dr. Hayes 

 regards my attack as one of scurvy, complicated by typhoid fever." 



Fortunately summer was now fast approaching, with his cheering sunbeams 

 and his genial warmth. The seals began to appear on the coast in large num- 

 bers, and there was now no want of fresh meat, the chief panacea against the 

 scurvy. The snow-buntings returned to the ice-crusted rocks, and the gulls and 

 eider-ducks came winging their way to their northern breeding-places. 



Vegetation likewise sprang into life with marvellous rapidity, and the green 

 sloping banks not only refreshed the eye, but yielded juicy, anti-scorbutic herbs. 



Kane's health slowly but steadily improved. He was, however, obliged to 

 give up all further sledge excursions for the season, and to leave the execution 

 of his plans to his more able-bodied companions. 



Tims Dr. Hayes, crossing the sound in a north-easterly direction, reached 

 the opposite coast of Grinnell Land, which he surveyed as far as Cape Frazer 

 in lat, 79° 45'. 



This journey was rendered uncommonly slow and tedious by the excessively 

 broken and rugged character of the ice. Deep cavities filled with snow inter- 

 vened between lines of hummocks frequently exceeding twenty or thirty feet in 

 height. Over these the sledge had to be lifted by main strength, and it re- 

 quired the most painful efforts of the whole party to liberate it from the snow 

 between them. Dr. Hayes returned on June 1, and a few days later Morton 

 left tlie brig, to survey the Greenland coast beyond the Great Glacier. The 

 difficulties were great, for, besides the usual impediments of hummocks, the 

 lateness of the season had in many places rendered the ice extremely unsafe, or 

 even entirely destroyed the ice-ledge along the shore. Thus for the last days of 



