Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/65

Rh centuries, the most northerly point attained by this route. Robert Bylot, master, and William Baffin, pilot, set out from Gravesend in 1616, with 15 men on board the Discovery, 55 tons. Proceeding along the west coast of Greenland, they reached Cape Hope Sanderson on May 30. As they continued north, Women's Island was found and named in 72°45’. In 7345' the expedition was detained for a short time among natives of Horn Sound, but the ice broke up, and on July 1 an open sea lay before the travellers in 75°40’ N. Pushing across this, the expedition reached the entrance to what was named Sir Thomas Smith's Sound, and an extreme northing of 77°45’ was recorded.

When one takes into account all the attendant circumstances, this was really a most remarkable voyage, but, notwithstanding the success which attended it, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay were so neglected by explorers for the next two hundred years that when interest in this section of the north polar field revived, early in the nineteenth century, the narrative of Baffin's discoveries was quite discredited. The accuracy of his observations was soon confirmed, but not until 1852—unless it may have been some whaler—did any one push our knowledge of the Arctic regions in this direction a stage nearer the Pole. In that year Captain E. A. Inglefield, in the Isabel, coupled with a summer search for Franklin an attempt to ascertain whether Smith Sound was connected with the Polar Sea. On August 26, the expedition reached Cape Alexander, the most northerly point seen by Baffin, and Inglefield saw the open sea "stretching through seven points of the compass." He started to steam northwards, but twelve hours later, when only forty miles beyond Baffin's furthest, was turned back by the ice. His extreme northing was 78°21’. In the following year the Americans took the field. Elisha Kent Kane, in a vessel fitted out by Grinnell and Peabody, straightway broke the new record and reached and wintered in Rensselaer Harbor, 78°37’ N. In the summer of 1854 the surgeon of the expedition, Isaac I. Hayes, crossed Kane Sea to Grinnell Land, which he traced to Cape Frazer, 79°43’ N. In the meanwhile, on the Greenland side of Kane Sea, two other members of the expedition, William Morton and Hans Hendrik, reached and scaled the south side of Cape Constitution, in 80°35’ N., overlooking Kennedy Channel. These results were the more praiseworthy in that the expedition suffered terribly from scurvey and in other ways, and barely succeeded in reaching the relief expedition that rescued them in 1855. C. F. Hall was the next travellertraveler [sic] to push back the line dividing the known from the unknown. Though neither a sailor nor a scientist by profession, he possessed all the qualities of courage and perseverenceperseverance [sic] and endurance which go to the making of a great explorer, and, favored by an exceptionally open season, he succeeded, in 1870, in pushing right through Smith Sound, Kennedy Channel, and Robeson Channel