KANE AND HAYES. 



365 



CHAPTER XXXIY. 



KANE AND HAYES. 



Kane sails up Smith's Sound in the " Advance " (1853). — Winters in Rensselaer Bay.— Sledge Journey 

 along the Coast of Greenland. — The Three-brother Turrets. — Tennyson's Monument. — The Great 

 Humboldt Glacier. — Dr. Hayes crosses Kennedy Channel. — Morton's Discovery of Washington 

 Land, — Mount Parr}'. — Kane resolves upon a second Wintering in Rensselaer Bay. — Departure and 

 Return of Part of the Crew. — Sufferings of the Winter. — The Ship abandoned. — Boat Journey to 

 Upernavik. — Kane's Death in the Havana (1857). — Dr. Hayes's Voyage in 1860. — He winters at 

 Port Foulke. — Crosses Kennedy Channel. — Reaches Cape Union, the most northern known Land 

 upon the Globe. — Koldewey. — Plans for future Voyages to the North Pole. 



point of dramatic interest, few of the Arctic expeditions can rival the sec- 

 ond and last voyage of Dr. Kane, which, to avoid interrupting the narrative 

 of the discovery of Franklin's fate by Dr. Rae and Sir James M'Clintock, I 

 have refrained from mentioning in chronological order. 



Weak in body, but great in mind, this remarkable man, who had accompa- 

 nied the first Grinnell expedition in the capacity of surgeon, sailed from Boston 

 in 1853, as commander of the "Advance," with a crew of 17 officers and men, 

 to which two Greenlanders were subsequently added. His plan was to pass up 

 Baffin's Bay to its most northern attainable point, and thence pressing on 

 towards the pole as far as boats or sledges could reach, to examine the coast- 

 lines for vestiges of Franklin. 



Battling with storms and icebergs, he passed, on August 7, 1853, the rocky 

 portals of Smith's Sound, Cape Isabella and Cape Alexander, which had been 

 discovered the year before by Inglefield ; left Cape Hatherton — the extreme 

 point attained by that navigator — behind, and after many narrow escapes from 

 shipwreck, secured the " Advance " in Rensselaer Bay, from which she was des- 

 tined never to emerge. His diary gives us a vivid account of the first winter 

 he spent in this haven, in lat. 78° 38', almost as far to the north as the most 

 northern extremity of Spitzbergen, and in a far more rigorous climate. 



"Sept. 10, 4-14° F. — The birds have left. The sea-swallows, which abound- 

 ed when we first reached here, and even the young burgomasters that lingered 

 after them, have all taken their departure for the south. The long " night in 

 which no man can work " is close at hand ; in another month we shall lose the 

 sun. Astronomically, he should disappear on October 24, if our horizon were 

 free ; but it is obstructed by a mountain ridge ; and, making all allowance for 

 refraction, we can not count on seeing him after the 10th. 



"Sept. 11. — The long staring day, which has clung to us for more than two 

 months, to the exclusion of the stars, has begun to intermit its brightness. 

 Even Aldebaran, the red eye of the bull, flared out into familiar recollection 

 as early as ten o'clock ; and the heavens, though still somewhat reddened by the 

 gaudy tints of midnight, gave us Capella and Arcturus, and even that lesser 



