Towards the end of April Kane set out on that sledge journey along the east shore of Smith Sound which has raised him to the front rank of Arctic explorers. His expedition was conducted in the face of two great difficulties—sickness and lack of provisions. As early as May 30 the scurvy which had attacked the crew during the winter reappeared, and many members of the party fell victims to it, Kane himself suffering so severely that his limbs became quite rigid, and he had to be lashed to the sledge. The shortage of provisions was not due to any lack of care in the preparations for the expedition, but to the depredations of the bears, which had found the contents of the caches so much to their liking that they had completely demolished them.
“The pemmican,” says Kane, “was covered with blocks of stone, which it had required the labour of three men to adjust; but the extraordinary strength of the bear had enabled him to force aside the heaviest rocks, and his pawing had broken the iron casks which held our pemmican literally into chips. Our alcohol cask, which had cost me a separate and special journey in the late fall to deposit, was so completely destroyed that we could not find a stave of it.”
In spite of these difficulties, however, Kane succeeded in reaching the Great Glacier of Humboldt, that tremendous sea of ice, one of the largest of its kind, which stretches from 79° 12′ to 80° 12′. By the end of the first week in May the condition of the party had become so bad that it was useless for them to attempt to proceed any further. Kane was delirious, his companions were almost past walking, and it was only through the most heroic perseverance that they succeeded in reaching the ship at all.
For a few days after their return the doctor had his hands full, but under his skilful treatment the patients recovered rapidly, and the work of exploration was immediately resumed. The first to leave the ship was Dr Hayes, who was sent off with a sledge and a team of dogs to explore the country north and east of Inglefield’s Cape Sabine. The dogs gave him some little trouble, as their harness was constantly breaking, and the only material at hand for repairing it consisted of his own sealskin breeches, large portions of which he was obliged to sacrifice for the good of the cause. However, he prosecuted his explorations as far as Dobbin Bay before turning back to the ship.
Though he had gained a great deal of valuable knowledge concerning the coast-line on either side of Smith Sound, Kane was still uncertain whether he was in a channel leading into a polar sea or in a cul-de-sac. From his observations of the tides and the drift of the ice he was inclined to take the former view, and, in the hope of setting all doubts upon the subject at rest, he decided to send out another party, with dogs, which was to be subsisted as far as the Great Glacier by provisions carried by a foot party in advance. Unfortunately scurvy is not a disease which is thrown off easily, and, when the time for making up these parties arrived, only five men were found to be in reasonably good health. He did the best that he possibly could in the circumstances. He told off Morton, M’Gary, and three men to take provisions to the Great Glacier, where they were to be joined by Hans Christian, the hunter of the party, with dogs. Morton and Hans were then to cross the strait and advance along the distant coast as far as they could.
The two explorers attacked their part of the task with immense ardour, and eventually succeeded in penetrating as far as Cape Constitution. They returned to the ship with marvellous tales of open seas and waves dashing against the cliffs, which rejoiced Kane’s heart exceedingly, for they not only supported his theories, but they also gave colour to the popular fallacy that an ice-free ocean existed in the direction of the Pole. Unfortunately, however, it subsequently transpired that Morton and Hans were quite mistaken. There is, of course, no reason to suppose that their stories were mere flights of imagination, composed for the express benefit of their commander. Other explorers have made similar illusory discoveries, and have chronicled them in perfectly good faith. No doubt Morton and Hans honestly believed that they saw an open polar sea off Cape Constitution; the fact remains, however, that they saw nothing of the kind.
By the beginning of June 1854, Kane had begun to realise that he was in a very uncomfortable situation. All his men were diseased, and several of them were completely disabled; fuel and food were becoming very short; and, to crown all, there seemed no prospect of extricating his ship that year. He soon came to the conclusion that the only thing for him to do was to attempt to reach Beechey Island, and there to ask for assistance from Sir Edward Belcher. Accordingly, he patched up his whale-boat to the best of his ability, and, taking with him the only five members of his crew who were in reasonably good health, he started off on his hazardous voyage. He was not, however, destined to get very far, for he found the mouth of Smith Sound so cumbered with ice that he had no choice but to give orders for a retreat on the ship, which he reached on August 6.
A careful inspection of his stores now forced him to the conclusion that he must cut down the allowance of fuel. Here is the passage in his journal in which he records the step. “Reduced our allowance of wood to six pounds a meal. This, among eighteen mouths, is one-third of a pound of fuel each. It allows us coffee twice a day and soup once. Our fare, besides this, is cold pork boiled in quantity and eaten as required. This sort of thing works badly, but I must reserve coal for other emergencies. I see darkness ahead. I inspected the ice again to-day. Bad! bad!—I must look another winter in the face. I do not shrink from the thought; but, while we have a chance ahead, it is my first duty to have all things in readiness to meet it. It is horrible—yes, that is the word—to look forward to another year of disease and darkness to be met without fresh food and without fuel. I should meet it with more tempered sadness if I had no comrades to think for and protect.”
There was now only one expedient to be tried, and that was a land journey in search of succour from the Eskimos. Accordingly Hayes, Petersen and seven men set out from the ship on August 28, leaving the rest of their companions to shift for themselves as best they could. Had it not been for an alliance which they made with a tribe of Eskimos, whose settlement lay some seventy-five miles from the ship, they would probably have perished miserably of cold and starvation. By the terms of this alliance the natives undertook to refrain from stealing from the ship, and to supply the sailors with fresh meat and dogs, while Kane in return promised them the assistance of his men on their hunting expeditions, and undertook to provide them with needles, knives, and other trifles dear to the heart of the native. The sledge journey from the ship to the settlement and back was, however, so long and arduous that Kane only undertook it when it was absolutely necessary.
On December 7 a number of Eskimos put in an appearance bringing with them two members of the exploring party. From them Kane learnt that they had failed hopelessly in their mission, and that their comrades were housed at a settlement 200 miles away. He accordingly sent back the Eskimo escort with such supplies as he could spare to bring back the remainder of his friends. So rapidly did the natives travel that five days later they were back again with Hayes and his party, all of whom were in a state of collapse. Indeed, had it not been for the great kindness with which they had been treated by the Etah Eskimos they must inevitably have perished.