Year: 1876

Speaking of the return of the English Arctic expedition, pr. Hayes, an old explorer, says: I have. no disposition to blow my own trumpet, but if, with their great advantages, this English ex- petition could not have accomplished something more than they did, it were better had they not made so much fuss about it. The Alert and Discovery are two fine ships; both are screw steamers. Never was there an expedition fitted out by any government so bountifully. Nothing was wanting. They had every scientific appliance, and the expedition cost not less than $750, GOO. ag It was to go to the north pole, ani make disooF- cries there, and the British flag was 10 be planted on the northern axis of the earth, and of course the world was to be astonished at British energy and British pluck. What is the, resultl Y One year of trial, ice eighty feet thick and no chance of getting to the north pole. In plain terms, l don't believe word of it, and I don't believe that the expedi- tion had any right to return when it did. Why, I did nearly all they did with my little bit of 8 schooner United States-which was not much more than half the size of the Dauntless. I had no steam, and could not work to wind ward among the ice fields of Smiths sound, and, becoming entangled, I was forced to go into winter quarters, in @ crippled condition, in latitude seventy eight deg. seventeen min, at the mouth of that sound. There I remained ten months before the ice broke up and liberated me. With steam I could have gone further, but had no other alter native than to await the spring, and travel over the frozen sea with dog sledges. I marked, as nearly as could be determined, latitude eighty-two deg. say 480 miles from the pole. *g I am firm believer in an open Polar sea. It it not sea available for the purposes of commerce., but 1t is certain ly sea or ocean, as you may please to call it. Whatever interest attaches to 1t is of purely scientific character. To pursue science requires patience, and to 20 with great government expedition, especially to make scientific discoveries, with the distinct understanding that there is no other motive, seems to me to require something more than sim ple cit can't be done." So far as get ting to the north pole is concerned, l am sure 1t can be done, and in failing to do it after only one years trial I think this English expedition has shown lament able lack of English pluck. They say they had dreadful time of it; some people were frozen and three or four of them died. That was their own fault. Travelling in the Arctic regions is not more terrible or moro dangerous than travelling anywhere else. It is matter of care and judgment. Accidents may happen, but it is the duty of a com mander to see that they don't happen. 1 believe have made as long sledge journey as any one on record. I expe- rienced temperature during that jour ney of seventy deg. below zero, and yet there was never in all the sixty days oc- cupied by the journey so much as frost bite to any of the party, and yet this was in the exact region where the Eng fish expedition has been, finding, as tn y say, eighty feet of ice The Po- laris was in the same quarter ands got nearly as far north. -.