Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/411



June 4th.

I have worked up some of my sights, and rudely sketched in the coast-line of my track-chart. It makes a respectable show for our summer's sledging. Since the middle of March, I have covered the entire ground gone over by Dr. Kane's various parties, except the coast of Washington Land, and have extended the former surveys considerably to the north and west. But the important additions which I have been enabled to make to the geographical knowledge of the region I regard as of secondary interest to the circumstance that my journey has shown the practicability of this route into the Polar Basin.

My return southward from the shores of the Polar Sea is not recorded in my field-diary. There is no record after we had turned our faces homeward. That water-soaked and generally dilapidated-looking book, which now lies open on the table before me, breaks off thus:—

"Halted in the lee of a huge ice-cliff, seeking shelter from a fierce storm that set upon us soon after we started south. We have made about ten miles, and have from forty to fifty yet to make before we reach Jensen. We have given the dogs the last of our food. It is snowing and blowing dreadfully."

The storm continued with unabated violence through the next day; and as the wind shrieked along the tall cliffs, carrying with it the drifting snow, I thought that I had scarcely ever seen or heard any thing more dismal. Unable to bear the chilliness of our imperfect shelter, (we had no means of making a snow-hut,) we pushed on, wading through deep drifts in addition to climbing the rocks and masses of ice, which, in going north, had