TOWARDS THE NORTH POLE. 171 



the prisoners (April 30, 1872) and rescued them. The 

 Polaris herself was so injured by the ice that her crew had 

 to leave her, wintering on Lyttelton Island. They left this 

 spot in the early summer of 1872, in two boats, and were 

 eventually picked up by a Scotch whaler. 



Captain Nares's expedition followed Hall's route. I 

 do not propose to enter here into any of the details of the 

 voyage, with which my readers are no doubt familiar. 

 The general history of the expedition must be sketched, 

 however, in order to bring it duly into its place here. 

 The Alert and Discovery sailed under Captains Nares and 

 Stephenson, in May, 1875. Their struggle with the ice 

 did not fairly commence until they were nearing the 79th 

 parallel, where Baffin's Bay merges into Smith's Sound. 

 Thence, through Smith's Sound, Kennedy Channel, and 

 Robeson Channel, they had a constant and sometimes 

 almost desperate struggle with the ice, until they had 

 reached the north end of Robeson Channel. Here the 

 Discovery took up her winter quarters, in north latitude 

 81 44', a few miles north of Captain Hall's wintering-place, 

 but on the opposite (or westerly) side of Robeson Channel 

 The Alert still struggled northwards, rounding the north- 

 east point of Grant Land, and there finding, not, as was 

 expected, a continuous coast-line on the west, but a vast 

 ice-bound sea. No harbour could be found, and the ship 

 was secured on the inside of a barrier of grounded ice, 

 in latitude 82 31', in the most northerly wintering-place 

 ever yet occupied by man. The ice met with on this sea 

 is described as "of most unusual age and thickness, re- 

 sembling in a marked degree, both in appearance and 

 formation, low floating icebergs rather than ordinary salt- 

 water ice. Whereas ordinary ice is from 2 feet to 10 feet 

 in thickness, that in this Polar sea has gradually increased 

 in age and thickness until it measures from 80 feet to 120 

 feet, floating with its surface at the lower part 15 feet above 

 the water-line. In some places the ice reaches a thickness 

 of from 150 to 200 feet, and the general impression among 



