Early in April, 1861, Dr. Hayes left the ship “to plunge into the wilderness.” Having previously ascertained that an advance along the Greenland shore was utterly impossible, he resolved to cross the sound, and to try his fortunes along the coast of Grinnell Land.
“By winding to the right and left,” he writes, “and by occasionally retracing our steps, we managed to get over the first few miles without much embarrassment, but further on the track was rough, past description. I can compare it to nothing but a promiscuous accumulation of rocks piled up over a vast plain in great heaps and endless ridges. The interstices between these closely accumulated ice-masses are filled up to some extent with drifted snow.”
It is not surprising that after such difficult travel, at the end of twenty-five days they had not yet reached halfway across the sound.
“My party are in a very sorry condition,” writes Dr. Hayes. “One of the men has sprained his back from lifting; another has sprained his ankle; another has gastritis; another a frosted toe; and all are thoroughly overwhelmed with fatigue. The men do not stand it as well as the dogs.”
And the next day, April 26, he writes:—
“I feel to-night that I am getting rapidly to the end of my rope. Each day strengthens the conviction, not only that we can never reach Grinnell Land, with provisions for a journey up the coast to the Polar Sea, but that it cannot be done at all. I have talked to the officers, and they are all of this opinion. They say the thing is hopeless. Dodge put it thus: ‘You might as well try to cross the city of New York over the house-tops.’”
Though disheartened, their bold leader was not discouraged, and, sending the main party back to the schooner, he continued to plunge into the hummocks. After fourteen days of almost superhuman exertion, he reached the coast, May 11, when he writes:—
“In camp at last, close under the land; and as happy as men can be who have achieved success and await supper. As we rounded to in a convenient place for our camp, McDonald looked up at the tall Cape, which rose above our heads; and, as he turned away to get our furnace to prepare a much-needed meal, he was heard to grumble in a serio-comic tone: ‘Well, I wonder if that is land, or only “Cape Fly-away” after all?’”
But though land was reached, the trials of the journey along the coast were none the less harassing. With untiring energy, Dr. Hayes pushed on until the 18th of May, when further progress became impossible, owing to a deep bay, mottled with a white sheet and dark patches, these latter being either soft decaying ice or places where the ice had wholly disappeared.