CHAPTER XXV.

KANE’S MEMORABLE EXPEDITION.

Dr. Kane’s Expedition—His short but eventful Career—Departure of the _Advance_—Dangers of the Voyage—Grinding Ice—Among the Bergs—A Close Shave—Nippings—The Brig towed from the Ice-beach—Smith’s Sound—Rensselaer Harbour—Winter Quarters—Return of an Exploring Party—Fearful Sufferings—To the Rescue—Saved—Curious Effects of Intense Cold.

Although the expedition about to be described left the United States in 1852—several years before M’Clintock’s memorable voyage—and although it was organised especially for the Franklin search, its consideration has been deferred till now, in order not to interfere with the narrative of the discoveries relative to the lost expedition. Dr. Kane was not, indeed, to share with Rae and M’Clintock the honour of determining the fate of Franklin and his brave companions, but he was, and long must be, destined to hold a foremost place among the great Arctic explorers of all ages, while his work is one of the classics of Arctic literature.(41)

Dr. Kane was in the field of action he eventually chose one of the most ardent and enthusiastic workers; indeed, the untiring energy and perseverance with which he laboured in the face of all difficulties entitle him to be considered a model explorer. His short life had been full of adventure. Born on February 3rd, 1820, he became at a very early age an assistant-surgeon in the United States navy, and visited most parts of the world, including China, India, Ceylon, and the coasts of Africa. At a station of the latter he was stricken down with “coast fever,” and never entirely recovered from the effects. He was engaged in the Mexican war with the United States, and succeeded in passing through the enemy’s lines with an oral despatch to the American head-quarters, when several others had failed. On the voyage from New Orleans to Mexico he was shipwrecked, and was afterwards laid low with typhus fever in the latter country. His first visit to the Arctic was, as already mentioned, in company with Lieutenant De Haven. He died at Havana, shortly after his return from the expedition we are about to record. His slight frame had been too severely tested; the flesh was weaker than the spirit; and at the early age of thirty-seven he passed away, leaving behind a reputation scarcely second to that of any Arctic explorer. Ambitious always, he was nevertheless one of the most thoughtful and humane of commanders. When his men were almost starving, he travelled, sometimes alone, long distances on the ice and snow for succour and relief; when nearly every member of his party was stricken down with scurvy, he nursed, cooked, and cared for them, oft-times when enfeebled, downhearted, and scarcely able to stand himself. His naval education had made him appreciate the value of discipline, but where humanity was concerned self-abnegation was his leading characteristic. Kane could most assuredly be termed a _practical_ Christian. All honour to his memory!

Dr. Kane received special orders in December, 1852, from the then Secretary of the United States navy, “to conduct an expedition to the Arctic seas in search of Sir John Franklin.” The noble-hearted American merchant, Mr. Grinnell of New York, who had organised De Haven’s expedition, placed a brig, the _Advance_, at his disposal. Mr. Peabody, the American benefactor of the London poor, contributed handsomely to the outfit, which was aided by several scientific institutions. The United States Government detailed ten officers and men from the navy, which with seven others made up the full complement of the expedition. Leaving New York on May 30th, 1853, South Greenland was reached on July 1st. Several Danish settlements were visited on the way north, where they received much hospitality, and obtained skins, fur clothing, and native dogs.

As we have already seen, Baffin was the discoverer of Smith’s Sound. From the year 1616, the date of his visit, until Kane explored it, no European or American had sailed over its waters. The voyage of the _Advance_ thither was one of peril and difficulty. Storm succeeded storm; the little brig was constantly beset and nearly crushed in the ice, and sometimes heeled over to such an extent that it seemed a miracle when she righted. Dr. Kane’s description of some of the dangers through which they passed is very graphic.

“At seven in the morning we were close on to the piling masses. We dropped our heaviest anchor with the desperate hope of winding the brig; but there was no withstanding the ice-torrent that followed us. We had only time to fasten a spar as a buoy to the chain, and let her slip. So went our best bower.

“Down we went upon the gale again, helplessly scraping along a lee of ice seldom less than thirty feet thick; one floe, measured by a line as we tried to fasten to it, more than forty. I had seen such ice only once before, and never in such rapid motion. One upturned mass rose above our gunwale, smashing in our bulwarks, and depositing half a ton of ice in a lump upon our decks. Our staunch little brig bore herself through all this wild adventure as if she had a charmed life.

“But a new enemy came in sight ahead. Directly in our way, just beyond the line of floe-ice against which we were alternately sliding and thumping, was a group of bergs. We had no power to avoid them; the only question was, whether we were to be dashed in pieces against them, or whether they might not offer us some providential nook of refuge against the storm. But as we neared them we perceived that they were at some distance from the floe-edge, and separated from it by an interval of open water. Our hopes rose as the gale drove us towards this passage and into it; and we were ready to exult when, from some unexplained cause—probably an eddy of the wind against the lofty ice-walls—we lost our headway. Almost at the same moment we saw that the bergs were not at rest, that with a momentum of their own they were bearing down upon the other ice, and that it must be our fate to be crushed between the two.

“Just then a broad sconce-piece, or low water-washed berg, came driving up from the southward. The thought flashed upon me of one of our escapes in Melville Bay; and as the sconce moved rapidly alongside us, M’Garry managed to plant an anchor on its slope and hold on to it by a whale line. It was an anxious moment. Our noble tow-horse, whiter than the pale horse that seemed to be pursuing us, hauled us bravely on, the spray dashing over his windward flanks, and his forehead ploughing up the lesser ice as if in scorn. The bergs encroached upon us as we advanced; our channel narrowed to a width of perhaps forty feet; we braced the yards to clear the impending ice-walls.... We passed clear, but it was a close shave—so close that our port quarter-boat would have been crushed if we had not taken it in from the davits—and found ourselves under the lee of a berg, in a comparative open lead. Never did heart-tried men acknowledge with more gratitude their merciful deliverance from a wretched death.” And so the narrative continues—a long series of hairbreadth escapes from the nippings and crushing of the ice. Kane says at this juncture:—

“During the whole of the scenes I have been trying to describe I could not help being struck by the composed and manly demeanour of my comrades. The turmoil of ice under a heavy sea often conveys the impression of danger when the reality is absent; but in this fearful passage the parting of our hawsers, the loss of our anchors, the abrupt crushing of our stoven bulwarks, and the actual deposit of ice upon our decks, would have tried the nerves of the most experienced ice-man. All—officers and men—worked alike. Upon each occasion of collision with the ice which formed our lee coast, efforts were made to carry out lines, and some narrow escapes were incurred by the zeal of the parties leading them into positions of danger. Mr. Bonsall avoided being crushed by leaping to a floating fragment; and no less than four of our men at one time were carried down by the drift, and could only be recovered by a relief party after the gale had subsided.

“As our brig, borne on by the ice, commenced her ascent of the berg, the suspense was oppressive. The immense blocks piled against her, range upon range, pressing themselves under her keel and throwing her over upon her side, till, urged by the successive accumulations, she rose slowly, and as if with convulsive efforts, along the sloping wall. Still there was no relaxation of the impelling force. Shock after shock, jarring her to her very centre, she continued to mount steadily on her precarious cradle. But for the groaning of her timbers and the heavy sough of the floes we might have heard a pin drop; and then as she settled down into her old position, quietly taking her place among the broken rubbish, there was a deep breathing silence, as though all were waiting for some signal before the clamour of congratulation and comment should burst forth.” After the storm had abated, the crew went on the ice-beach and towed the vessel a considerable distance, being harnessed up, as Kane says, “like mules on a canal.” Shortly afterwards a council was called to consider the feasibility of proceeding northward or returning southward to find a wintering place, and the latter idea was the more favourably received. After some further discussion it was resolved to cross the bay in which they now were to its northern headland, and thence despatch sledging parties in quest of a suitable spot to “dock” the brig. On the way across the vessel grounded and heeled over, throwing men out of their berths and setting the cabin-deck on fire by upsetting the stove. She was surrounded with ice, which piled up in immense heaps. These alarming experiences were repeated on several occasions. Dr. Kane meantime took a whale-boat, well sheathed with tin, ahead of the brig, and after about twenty-four hours came to a solid ice-shelf or table, clinging round the base of the cliffs. They hauled up the boat and then prepared for a sledge journey. The rough and difficult nature of their icy route may be inferred from the fact that it took them five days to make a _direct_ distance of forty miles, while they had travelled twice that distance in reality. They then arrived at a bay into which a large river fell. This Kane considers the largest stream of North Greenland; its width at the mouth was three-fourths of a mile. Its course was afterwards pursued to an interior glacier, from the base of which it was found to issue in numerous streams. By the banks of this river they encamped, lulled by the unusual music of running waters. “Here,” says Kane, “protected from the frost by the infiltration of the melted snows, and fostered by the reverberation of solar heat from the rocks, we met a flower growth, which, though drearily Arctic in its type, was rich in variety and colouring. Amid festuca and other tufted grasses twinkled the purple lychnis, and the white star of the chickweed; and, not without its pleasing associations, I recognised a solitary hesperis—the Arctic representative of the wallflowers of home.” After a careful examination of the bays and anchorages, Rensselaer Harbour, the spot where he had left the _Advance_, was chosen for their winter quarters, and a storehouse and observatory were erected ashore.

The return of an exploring party, which had suffered severely, is well described by Kane. “We were at work cheerfully, sewing away at the skins of some mocassins by the blaze of our lamps, when, towards midnight, we heard the noise of steps above, and the next minute Sontag, Ohlsen, and Petersen, came down into the cabin. Their manner startled me even more than their unexpected appearance on board. They were swollen and haggard, and hardly able to speak.

“Their story was a fearful one. They had left their companions in the ice, risking their own lives to bring us the news. Brooks, Baker, Wilson, and Pierre, were all lying frozen and disabled. Where? They could not tell. Somewhere in among the hummocks to the north and east. It was drifting heavily round them when they parted. Irish Tom had stayed by to feed and care for the others, but the chances were sorely against them. It was in vain to question them further. They had evidently travelled a great distance, for they were sinking with fatigue and hunger, and could hardly be rallied enough to tell us the direction in which they had come.”

Kane’s promptness saved the party. A sledge was hastily loaded, Ohlsen deposited upon it, wrapped in furs, and an immediate departure made. The thermometer stood at 76° below freezing. For sixteen hours they struggled on, till at length they came to a place where Ohlsen had to acknowledge he was quite “at sea,” and could not recognise the landmarks. Kane continues:—“Pushing ahead of the party, and clambering over some rugged ice-piles, I came to a long level floe, which I thought might probably have attracted the eyes of weary men in circumstances like our own. It was a light conjecture, but it was enough to turn the scale, for there was no other to balance it. I gave orders to abandon the sledge, and disperse in search of footmarks. We raised our tent, placed our pemmican in cache, except a small allowance for each man to carry on his person, and poor Ohlsen, now just able to keep his legs, was liberated from his bag. The thermometer had fallen by this time to minus 49° 3’ and the wind was setting in sharp from the north-west. It was out of the question to halt; it required brisk exercise to keep us from freezing. The men ‘extended’ in skirmishing order, but kept nervously closing up; several were seized with trembling fits, and Dr. Kane fainted twice from the effect of the intense cold. At length a sledge track was discovered, which followed, brought them in sight of a small American flag fluttering from a hummock, and lower down a little masonic banner, hanging from a tent-pole hardly above the drift. It was the camp of our disabled comrades; we reached it after an unbroken march of twenty-one hours.

“The little tent was nearly covered.... As I crawled in, and coming upon the darkness, heard before me the burst of welcome gladness that came from the four poor fellows stretched on their backs, and then for the first time the cheer outside, my weakness and my gratitude together almost overcame me. They had expected me; they were sure I would come!” The tent only being capable of holding eight, while there were fifteen souls in all, they had to take “watch and watch” by turns. When sufficiently rested and refreshed, the sick men were sewn up in reindeer skins and placed on the sledge. Although they left all superfluous articles behind, the load was eleven hundred pounds. “We made by vigorous pulls and lifts nearly a mile an hour.... Almost without premonition, we all became aware of an alarming failure of our energies. I was of course familiar with the benumbed and almost lethargic sensation of extreme cold.... But I had treated the _sleepy comfort_ of freezing as something like the embellishment of romance. I had evidence now to the contrary.

“Bonsall and Morton, two of our stoutest men, came to me, begging permission to sleep. ‘They were not cold, the wind did not enter them now; a little sleep was all they wanted.’ Presently Hans was found nearly stiff under a drift, and Thomas, bolt upright, had his eyes closed, and could hardly articulate. At last John Blake threw himself into the snow, and refused to rise. They did not complain of feeling cold, but it was in vain that I wrestled, boxed, ran, argued, jeered, or reprimanded—an immediate halt could not be avoided.” The tent was pitched with much difficulty, and then Kane with one man pushed on to a tent and cache left the previous day, his object being to prepare some hot food before the rest arrived. He continues:—“I cannot tell how long it took us to make the nine miles, for we were in a strange kind of stupor, and had little apprehension of time. It was probably about four hours. We kept ourselves awake by imposing on each other a continued articulation of words; they must have been incoherent enough! I recall these hours as amongst the most wretched I have ever gone through. We were neither of us in our right senses, and retained a very confused recollection of what preceded our arrival at the tent. We both of us, however, remember a bear who walked leisurely before us, and tore up as he went a jumper that Mr. M’Garry had improvidently thrown off the day before. He tore it into shreds and rolled it into a ball, but never offered to interfere with our progress. I remember this, and with it a confused sentiment that our tent and buffalo robe might probably share the same fate.” This was a really wonderful example of the almost _intoxicating_ and bewildering effect of intense cold, frequently noted by arctic explorers. They were dazed, and walked as in a dream. But they arrived safely at the tent, and by the time the others came up had a good steaming pemmican soup ready. When they again started, Kane tried the effect of brief _three-minute_ naps in the snow, the men taking it in turns to wake each other, and he considered the result satisfactory. After many a halt they reached the brig. Two of the men had to undergo amputation of parts of the foot, and two died, in spite of unremitting care. The searching party had been out seventy-two hours, during which they had only rested eight.