HANS' FORLORN-HOPE EXCURSION. 



601 



A second winter now stared the explorers in the face. "It 

 is horrible," says Kane, " to look forward to another year of 

 disease and darkness, without fresh food or fuel." Still, pre- 

 parations were made for the direful extremity. Willow-stems 

 and sorrel were collected as antiscorbutics. Lumps of turf, 

 frozen solid, were quarried with crowbars, and with them the 

 ship's sides were embanked. During the early months a com- 

 munication was kept up with the nearest Esquimaux station, 

 seventy-five miles distant, and thus scanty supplies of fox, 

 walrus, seal, and bear meat were occasionally obtained. These 

 failed, however, during the months of total darkness. Early in 

 February, Kane wrote in his journal : — " We are contending at 

 odds with angry forces close around us, without one agent or 

 influence within eighteen hundred miles whose sympathy is on 

 our side." On the 4th of March, the last fragment of fresh 

 meat was served, and the whole crew would have perished 

 miserably of starvation, had it not been for the successful issue 

 of a forlorn-hope excursion to the Etah Esquimaux station 

 undertaken by Hans and two dogs. Dr. Kane ate rats, and 

 thereby escaped the scurvy. The bunks were warmed by oil- 

 lamps, after the Esquimaux fashion : the beds and the men's 

 faces became in consequence black and greasy with soot. The 

 sufferings endured by the party were perhaps the most dreadful 

 to which Arctic adventurers have ever been subjected. 



The abandonment of the brig had been resolved upon before 

 the setting in of winter, and the misery of the hours of darkness 

 had been in some measure alleviated by the progress of the 

 preparations for that event, — in making clothing, canvas moc- 

 casins, seal-hide boots, and in cutting water-tight shoes from 

 the gutta-percha speaking-tube. Provision-bags were made of 

 sail-cloth rendered impervious by coats of tar. Into these the 

 bread was pressed by beating it to powder with a capstan-bar. 

 Pork-fat and tallow were melted down and poured into other 

 bags to freeze. The three boats — none of them sea-worthy — • 



