The loss of a portion of his foot, extreme sufferings from exposure, and his great privations in the Kane expedition failed to abate Hayes’s enthusiasm in Arctic exploration. Immediately on his return to the United States, in October, 1855, he advocated a second expedition, with the object of completing the survey of the north coast of Greenland and Grinnell Land, and to make explorations toward the North Pole. His strenuous efforts to excite public interest failed at first; but Hayes devoted himself to lecturing on Arctic subjects, and finally enlisted in his support most of the scientific societies of the country. The advocacy of Professors Bache and Henry, and the support of Grinnell, gave an impulse which finally resulted in the organization of an expedition, under Hayes’s command, and on July 6, 1860, he left Boston on the sailing schooner United States, with a crew of fourteen.
It is not needful to dwell on his outward voyage farther than to say that, in addition to the complement of dogs and stock of furs usually obtained in Greenland, Hayes there recruited dog-drivers, interpreters, and hunters. At Cape York he also added Hans Hendrik, Kane’s dog-driver, who, smitten with the dusky charms of the daughter of Shang-hu, had chosen to remain with the Etah Esquimaux rather than return to Danish Greenland with the Kane retreating party in 1855. Now, five years later, he showed an equal willingness to quit his adopted tribe for expeditionary purposes.
| Hayes’s Winter-Quarters. |
Profiting by the experience of his predecessor, Hayes was unwilling to push a sailing vessel northward into Kane’s Basin, beyond the seventy-eighth parallel, and wisely decided to establish his winter-quarters in Foulke Fiord, near Littleton Island, twenty miles to the south, and about forty miles west, of Kane’s quarters. Game proved abundant both at sea and on land, pleasant relations were established with their neighbors, the Etah Esquimaux, an observatory built, and scientific observations inaugurated. Indeed everything looked most promising for the future.
An autumnal journey of special interest was Hayes’s visit to “My Brother John Glacier,” near Port Foulke, which, up to that time, was the most northerly and one of the most successful attempts to penetrate the glacier-covering of Greenland, known commonly as the “Inland Ice.” With seven men he penetrated some forty miles or more on the ice, when the temperature, sinking to thirty-four degrees below zero, with wind, compelled their immediate return. The ice changed gradually, as they went inland, from rough to smooth, and the angle of rise decreased from six to two degrees at their highest, over five thousand feet. A snow-storm broke on them, and, as Hayes describes, “fitful clouds swept over the face of the full-orbed moon, which, descending toward the horizon, glimmered through the drifting snow that hurled out of the illimitable distance, and scudded over the icy plains—to the eye, in undulating lines of downy softness; to the flesh, in showers of piercing darts.”
Suddenly misfortunes came on them. Peter, an Esquimau dog-driver, brought from Upernivik, deserted. Hans Hendrik, in his interesting “Memoirs,” says: “In the beginning of the winter Peter turned a Kivigtok, that is, fled from human society to live alone up the country. We were unable to make out what might have induced him to do so. Searching for him, at last I found his footprints going to the hills.” The poor native was never seen alive, but it eventually transpired that he sought shelter in a remote and rarely visited Esquimau hut, where he died of starvation, his body being found in a very emaciated condition by an Etah native the following spring.
Next the dogs began to die of distemper, which led up to the death of Sontag, the astronomer. By the 21st of December only nine remained of thirty fine dogs, and in this contingency it was decided to open up communication with the Esquimaux of Whale Sound, some one hundred and fifty miles to the south, for the purchase of dogs. For this journey Sontag volunteered, and with him went Hans as dog-driver. Hayes waited week after week, but no news came from either Sontag or Hans. Then feelings of uneasiness gave place to alarm and fear; for a journey of Dodge, first mate, proved that the travellers had gone outside Cape Alexander, where the floe had broken, so that possibly they had been lost on drifting ice. Hayes was projecting a personal search on January 29th, when two Esquimaux visited the ship and reported that Sontag was dead. They proved to be advance-couriers of Hans, who arrived a few days later, with only five of his nine dogs remaining.
In his “Memoirs” Hans relates as follows: “It still blew a gale and the snow drifting dreadfully, for which reason we resolved to return.... The ice began breaking up, so we were forced to go ashore and continue our drive over the ice-foot. At one place the land became impassable, and we were obliged to return to the ice again. On descending here my companion (Sontag) fell through the ice, which was nothing but a thick sheet of snow and water. I stooped, but was unable to seize him, it being very low tide. As a last resort I remembered a strap hanging on the sledge-poles; this I threw to him, and when he had tied it around his body I pulled, but found it very difficult. At length I succeeded in drawing him up, but he was at the point of freezing to death, and now in the storm and drifting snow he took off his clothes and slipped into the sleeping-bag, whereupon I placed him on the sledge and repaired to our last resting-place. Our road being very rough, I cried for despair from want of help; but I reached the snow-hut.” He recites that Sontag remained unconscious to his death, and that the breaking up of the ice around Cape Alexander, confirmed by Dodge’s journey, prevented his return to the ship at that time. There was much talk about Sontag’s death, but Hans’s account is doubtless correct.
Sontag was the only trained scientific observer in the party; and in addition, from his skill, experience, and enthusiasm in Arctic work, was almost indispensable to Hayes. His death was a great blow to the party, socially as well as professionally.
In early spring Hayes succeeded in obtaining the co-operation of the Etah Esquimaux in sledging, 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 mastheads; no vestige of the vessel remained except a bit of plank, and its fate was a matter of conjecture, though little doubt exists that she was ultimately crushed by the disruption of the pack during some violent gale. It was during this journey that Hayes experienced an intense degree of cold. Stating that the thermometer which hung inside the hut against the snow-wall indicated thirty-one degrees below zero, Hayes says: “We crawled out in the open air to try the sunshine. ’I will give you the best buffalo skin in the ship, Jansen, if the air outside is not warmer than in that den which you have left so full of holes.’ And it really seemed so. Human eye never lit upon a more pure and glowing morning. The sunlight was sparkling all over the landscape and the great world of whiteness; and the frozen plain, the hummocks, the icebergs, and the tall mountains made a picture inviting to the eye. Not a breath of air was stirring. Jansen gave in without a murmur. I brought out the thermometer and set it up in the shadow of an iceberg near by. I really expected to see it rise; but no, down sank the little red column of alcohol, down, down almost to the bulb, until it touched sixty-eight and a half degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, equal to one hundred and a half degrees below the freezing-point of water. It struck me as a singular circumstance that this great depression of temperature was not perceptible to the senses, which utterly failed to give us even so much as a hint that here in this blazing sunlight we were experiencing about the coldest temperature ever recorded.”