THE LAST EXPEDITION OF CHARLES FRANCIS HALL. 781 



on ; the ship broke loose, and drifted a mile or two away, and then sunk in shallow 

 water. An ice-floe, with a couple of icebergs, also drifted down, and grounded on 

 the wreck. The bergs were still there, and for years to come these icy mountains will 

 form a monument grander than man has ever built, to mark the resting-place of the 

 Polaris. 



Every thing on shore confirmed the story of these Esquimaux. There stood a 

 comfortable wooden house, built of planks and roofed with sails, with bunks, mattresses, 

 and appliances for cooking, and a carpenter's bench with fresh shavings near it. All 

 around the hut were scattered provisions, stores, broken instruments, and fragments 

 of books and papers, all in a useless condition. The whole place looked like a house 

 from which the tenant had just removed, pitching out in confusion everything not 

 worth carrying away. There was not the slightest indication that there had been any 

 violence, or any extraordinary suffering. The position of this camp is in latitude 78° 

 23' North, a little beyond the place which had been Hayes' winter quarters in 1860- 

 1861. 



The Tigress having learned here all that could be gathered from the Esquimaux, 

 and picked up the few things worth carrying off, then steamed down Baffins' Bay, 

 looking in at Tessuisak and Uperuavik, and reaching Disco on the 2oth of August. 

 Every thing showed that the missing men could be nowhere on the Greenland coast, 

 and that they must either have been lost in the ice, or, as there was good reason to 

 hope, had been picked up by some whaler. The work of search was accomplished, 

 and the Tigress returned to New York. 



We now follow the fate of the men who had been left on board the Polaris on the 

 15th of October, 1872. Their story in most respects confirms, and in some respects 

 supplements that told by the nineteen from whom they had been separated. 



The Polaris had for a long time been leaking so badly that it had been resolved to 

 abandon her, it being thought certain that she could float but a little longer. All 

 hands were engaged, some on the vessel, some on the ice, in getting out every thing 

 which could be of use for a sojourn, the length of which no man could know, in the 

 unhospitable North. At this moment the hawsers which held the vessel to an ice-floe 

 parted, and she drifted helplessly away. It is hard to say which were in the more 

 hopeless condition, those on the quivering ice or those on the leaky Polaris. In all 

 human probability, the fate of all was sealed. It was apparently only a question of 

 time. Those on the vessel would most likely live the longer, for they had apparently 

 more means of preserving life for a season. 



As it was clear that the Polaris could never reach any port, the most that could be 

 done, was to endeavor to keep her afloat long enough to reach some place where she 

 could be beached, and her provisions and stores could be saved. Her engines seem to 

 have been frozen up so as to be useless ; but luckily a crack opened in the solid ice, 

 and the wind was blowing sharply from a direction to take the vessel through the 

 narrow passage. Probably the distance from shore was less than half a dozen miles, 

 but it took twelve hours to bore through the slush. 



The Polaris fairly beached, the next thing was to provide a shelter on shore, and to 

 secure the stores for the long Arctic winter, which was now setting in. The vessel 

 was soon reduced to little more than a hulk. The timbers between deck were torn 



