Part 15 (1/2)
Sontag was the only trained scientific observer in the party; and in addition, from his skill, experience, and enthusiasm in Arctic work, was alreat blow to the party, socially as well as professionally
In early spring Hayes succeeded in obtaining the co-operation of the Etah Esqui, and in a preliminary journey visited his old winter-quarters, where he had served with Kane six years before Where they had abandoned the Advance, surrounded by the solid pack, he found ice nearly as high as were her e of the vessel remained except a bit of plank, and its fate was a h little doubt exists that she was ulti so this journey that Hayes experienced an intense degree of cold Stating that the therainst the snoall indicated thirty-one degrees below zero, Hayes says: ”We crawled out in the open air to try the sunshi+ne 'I will give you the best buffalo skin in the shi+p, Jansen, if the air outside is not warmer than in that den which you have left so full of holes' And it really seeall over the landscape and the great world of whiteness; and the frozen plain, the hus, and the tallto the eye Not a breath of air was stirring
Jansen gave in without a ht out the ther near by I really expected to see it rise; but no, down sank the little red column of alcohol, down, down alrees below zero, Fahrenheit, equal to one hundred and a half degrees below the freezing-point of water It struck reat depression of temperature was not perceptible to the senses, which utterly failed to give us even so ht ere experiencing about the coldest temperature ever recorded”
[Illustration: Adrift on a Berg]
After this preliminary journey Hayes laid down supplies at the nearest point on the Greenland shore south of, and facing, Cape Hawks This place, called Cairn Point, was to be the base of his su was ready for the ht of April 3, 1861 Twelve men, the entire available force, were put into the field: Jansen with an eight-dog sledge, Knorr with a six-dog sledge, and a ten-e on which was mounted a twenty-foot ate the Polar Sea The journey lay directly to the north over the frozen surface of Kane Sea, where the difficulties of travel through the broken hureat, and the unfitness of some of the men for Arctic travel so speedily developed, that Hayes was forced to abandon his efforts to get the boat across the frozen sea, which, he says, ”could not have been done by one hundred men” On April 24th Hayes records that he had been twenty-two days from the schooner, and was now distant only thirtyacross the rough ice of Kane Sea, the party was practically broken down, being, as Hayes chronicles, ”barely capable of attending to their own i themselves to complete a journey to which they can see no termination, and in the very outset of which they feel that their lives are being sacrificed”
In this critical condition Hayes changed his plans, and sent back the entire party to the brig, except Knorr, Jansen, and McDonald, whom he selected as best fitted to make the northern journey, which he had decided tonorthith renewed confidence and vigor, though yet struggling with various le of broken hummocks, Hayes reached Cape Hawks on May 11th The condition of the ice ed fro a distance of eighty miles, a little more than two miles a day Three days' farther staff erected by him in 1853 yet stood erect At the end of the nextto the i the ice-foot, Hayes ascended the hillside, whence, he says, ”No land was visible to the eastward As it would not have been difficult through such an atmosphere to see a distance of fifty or sixty miles, it would appear therefore that Kennedy Channel is someider than heretofore supposed”
On May 15th Jansen was disabled for travelling by a sprained back and injured leg, and the nextwas scarcely able to e of McDonald and proceed with Knorr, his purpose being ”to make the best push I could and travel as far as hest attainable latitude and secure such a point of observation as would enablethe sea before ress the first day that he only made nine ain caht them to the southern cape of a bay which he deter four miles the rotten ice and frequent water-channels proved that the bay was impassable, and therefore they went into camp The next day Hayes clih, whence, he says, ”the sea beneath me was a mottled sheet of white and dark patches multiplied in size as they receded until the belt of the water-sky blended theether All the new evidence showed that I stood upon the shores of the polar basin, and that the broad ocean lay atsummit of a noble head-land, the ed it to be in latitude 82 30' N, or four hundred and fifty miles from the North Pole There was no land visible except the coast on which I stood”
Hayes, before returning to his shi+p, deposited in a cairn a record, dated May 19, 1861, setting forth his trip, stating that his observations placed hiitude; that his further progress was stopped by rotten ice and cracks; that he believed the polar basin was navigable during the ust, and Septeh Smith's Sound when the ice broke that summer
The extent and scope of Hayes's discoveries, as set forth in his account of the expedition in ”The Open Polar Sea,” gave rise to persistent and adverse criticisment and also as to the accuracy of his observations Three expeditions, by their later surveys, have dened by Hayes to his ”farthest” on the east coast of Grinnell Land is impossible There is unitude Cape Joseph Goode, it is to be rened by Hayes, while Cape Lieber is no less than six and a half degrees to the eastward; reversely, Lieber corresponds nearly to Hayes's latitude, while Cape Joseph Goode is a degree and a half to the south
Grave and undisputable errors in other latitudes, all being too far to the north, indicate that the mistake in this instance is also of latitude In justice to Hayes it should be said that the latitude of his ”farthest” depended solely on a single observation with a small field sextant of the meridian altitude of the sun While this is the coly objectionable in Arctic land determinations It depends not only on the honesty of the observer, but on the condition of the sextant and also on the manner in which it is handled; either of these three qualities being faulty the observation is incorrect The tendency of the sextant to ”slip,” as it is turned over for reading, and the almost invariably benumbed condition of the hands of the traveller, indicate the extreain, with haste demanded so often by adverse circumstances, the index of a very sree It is unquestioned that one or the other of these accidents happened to Hayes, for the independent investigations of Bessels, Schott, and others lead to the inevitable conclusion, which any scientist may verify by examination of Hayes's widely separated data, that his ”farthest” is placed too far north The consensus of opinion in the Lady Franklin expedition pointed to Cape Joseph Goode, 80 14' N, as Hayes's ”farthest,” as it agreed better with Hayes's description than any other point; it may be added that from this cape Hayes could not see the Greenland coast above Cape Constitution, which he leaves blank on his chart, and again, here the unusually heavy spring tides, of nearly twenty-five-foot range, break up the southern half of the floes of Kennedy Channel, thus fore water-spaces--the Open Polar Sea of Hayes and Morton
Even if Hayes's sight of the Open Polar Sea proved visionary, and certain unskilled observations failed of verification, yet his adventurous voyage was not barren of geographical results He was the first civilizedthe coasts of which, between the seventy-seventh and seventy-eighth parallels, he made important discoveries; while farther to the northward, Hayes Sound, Bache Island, and other unknown lands and waters were added to ourout his schooner on July 10, 1861, an unprecedentedly early date for an Arctic shi+p, he quickly decided that he could hope for no further northing in a sailing vessel However, he crossed the strait to the unvisited shores of Ellesmere Land, where he made such an examination of the coast as was practicable, and then turned his face homeward
Hayes was fully alive to the absolute necessity of steam-power for coed hi vessel or not at all He plainly foresaw thethe first expedition that should carry steam-power into Smith Sound, and full of dreams of future Arctic work he impatiently returned to the United States It was not to be Civil war raged, and the country called its loyal sons to arms Hayes was not the man to falter at such a juncture He at once tendered his schooner to the government for such use as was possible, and volunteered for the here his activity as the head of a great war hospital taxed to the ut been occupied in arduous efforts to solve the riddle of the ice-free sea
Hayes visited Greenland a third time, in 1869, with the Arctic artist, William Bradford, in the steam-sealer Panther Arctic scenery was their quest, and so they visited the fiord of Serreater part of Greenland, pushes down into the sea as an enorlacier, with a front two and a half , of which he says: ”It would be impossible for mere words alone to convey an adequate idea of the action of this new-born child of the Arctic frosts Think of a solid block of ice, a third of a mile deep, and more than half a mile in lateral diameter, hurled like ato and fro by the ie of power not to be seen by the action of any other forces upon the earth The disturbance of the water was inconceivably fine
Waves of enorainst the glacier, covering it with spray; and billows caressice which was everywhere in a state of the wildest agitation for the space of several miles”
The famous mine of cryolite, the only valuable mineral deposit in Greenland; the Hope Sanderson of John Davis's great voyage of 1587, with its lofty crest and innumerable flocks of wildfowl; Tessuissak, the most northerly settlement of Greenland; Duck Islands, the haunts of the eider, and the chosen rendezvous of ice-stayed whalers; Devil's Thureat, wonderful pillar, to the base of which Hayes struggled up thirteen hundred feet above the ice-covered sea, and Sabine Island, all saw the Panther, in its pleasure-seeking journey If no geographical results sprang froe, it had a literary outcome in Hayes's book, ”The Land of Desolation,” and in a series of detached sketches, which in beauty and interest are unsurpassed as regards life in Danish Greenland
Hayes died in New York City, December 17, 1881 To the last he maintained a lively interest in Arctic exploration, and ever and again he favored polar research, alith an alternative scheme of his old harbor, Foulke fiord, as the base of operations He resented the appellation ”Great Frozen Sea” as properly characterizing the Arctic Ocean to the north of Greenland, and to the last held fast to the ideal of his youth, the belief of his manhood, ”The Open Polar Sea”
XI
CHARLES FRANCIS HALL,
AND THE NORTH POLE
A expeditions that have crossed the Arctic Circle with the sole view of reaching the North Pole, one only has sailed entirely under the auspices of the United States This expedition was commanded neither by an officer of one of the twin military services nor by a sailor of the merchant marine, but its control was intrusted to a born Arctic explorer, Charles Francis Hall Born in 1821, in Rochester, N H, Hall early quitted his native hills for the freer fields of the West, as the Ohio Valley was then called, and later settled in Cincinnati There was ever a spirit of change in him, and as years rolled on he passed froh all these changes of trades he held fast to one fancy, which in ti element of his eventful career: in early youth, fascinated with books of travel relating to exploration in the icy zones, he eagerly improved every opportunity to increase his Arctic library, which steadily grew despite his very limited resources
His interest in the fate of Franklin was so intense that he folloith impatience the slow and uncertain efforts for the relief of the lost explorer Not content with mere sympathy he also planned an American search, to be conducted in Her Majesty's shi+p Resolute
Learning in 1859 that this Arctic shi+p was laid up and dis that it be loaned for such purpose The return of McClintock with definite news of the death of Franklin, and the retreat and loss of his expeditionary force, put an end to the petition Hall, however, despite the ad report of McClintock, persisted in the belief that some members of Franklin's creere yet alive, and he deter William Land, the scene of the final disaster He issued circulars asking public aid, diligently sought out whalers and explorers who could give him their personal experiences, and finally detero and live with the Esqui to their modes of travel and existence, work out his Arctic problem on new lines
[Illustration: Charles Francis Hall]