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 Sermitsialik, where the inland ice, which covers the greater part of Greenland, pushes down into the sea as an enormous glacier, with a front two and a half miles wide.
Here Hayes witnessed the birth of an iceberg, 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 a mere toy away into the water, and set to rolling to and fro by the impetus of the act. Picture this and you will have an image 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 enormous magnitude were rolled up with great violence against the glacier, covering it with spray; and billows came tearing down the fiord, their progress marked by the crackling and crumbling ice 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 Thumb, the great, 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 from this voyage, 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, always with 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.
Among the many exploring 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 from blacksmith to journalist, from stationer to engraver. Through all these changes of trades he held fast to one fancy, which in time became the dominating 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 followed with 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 ship Resolute. Learning in 1859 that this Arctic ship was laid up and dismantled he originated a petition asking 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 admirable and convincing report of McClintock, persisted in the belief that some members of Franklin’s crew were yet alive, and he determined to solve the problem by visiting King 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 determined that he must go and live with the Esquimaux, and, conforming to their modes of travel and existence, work out his Arctic problem on new lines.