388 I. I. Hayes on the Passage to the North Pole. 
much more open during some seasons than others, and it is not 
an unimportant fact in this connection that the whale fishers 
who have visited those seas during the present century have be- 
lieved that a passage may be found to the Pole during some sea- 
sons; but they have invariably met the ice barrier off Hakluyt 
Headland; and if the reports of their predecessors be true, we 
must believe, from the fact that little mention is made of this ice 
ortionately weighty and uselessly bulky, and he started too 
fate in the season. He did not leave the Seven Islands of 
Spitzbergen until the 22d day of June, the middle of the sum- 
mer solstitial period; besides, he travelled over a boundless 
and when the body of the ice commenced to drift southward 
with the current, he was carried with it to his starting point. — 
This was his greatest drawback, and to secure success eee 
similar attempt a route should be selected free from this omet 
objection. Such we have in Smith’s Strait and Kennedy Chan 
nel—the seat of Dr. Kane’s operations. This route affords every 
facility for boat and sledge travel. A harbor could be s 
have every reason to believe from personal observation rel 
Surveys, as high up in the channel at least as the 79th an : 
if the western shore be selected, and if the season shoul pee 
4S Open as that of 1853 the leads would admit the Lene aa 
vessel to the little bay in the coast between Capes Leidy 
tazier, latitude 79° 45’—distant from the Pole only 615 ge 
a ge miles. This locality was visited by me in company 
with Wm. Godfrey in the spring of 1854, and if reached wot 
afford a secure harbor. The report of this journey, pubis 
in the appendix to Dr. Kane's “Arctic Explorations,” will giv 
