Four Hundred and Fifty Miles from the Pole. 211

a water-sky, which hung upon the northern and eastern horizon, it was lost in the open sea.

"Standing against the dark sky at the north, there was seen in dim outline the white sloping summit of a noble headland, the most northern known land upon the globe. I judged it to be in latitude 82° 30′, or four hundred and fifty miles from the North Pole. Nearer, another bold cape stood forth, and nearer still the headland, for which I had been steering my course the day before, rose majestically from the sea, as if pushing up into the very skies a lofty mountain peak, upon which the winter had dropped its diadem of snows. There was no land visible except the coast upon which I stood.

"The sea beneath me was a mottled sheet of white and dark patches, these latter being either soft decaying ice, or places where the ice had wholly disappeared. These spots were heightened in intensity of shade and multiplied in size as they receded, until the belt of the water-sky blended them all together into one uniform colour of dark blue. The old and solid floes (some a quarter of a mile, and others miles across) and the massive ridges and wastes of hummocked ice which lay piled between them and around their margins, were the only parts of the sea which retained the whiteness and solidity of winter.

"All the evidences show that I stood upon the shores of the Polar Basin, and that the broad ocean lay at my feet; that the land upon which I stood, culminating in the distant cape before me, was but a point of land projecting far into it, like the Ceverro Vostochnoi Noss of the opposite coast of Siberia, and that the little margin of ice which lined the shore was being steadily worn away, and within a month the whole sea would be as free from ice as I had seen the north water of Baffin Bay, interrupted only by a moving pack, drifting to and fro, at the will of the winds and currents.".

Further progress north was impossible, and after depositing a record and placing some flags upon the rocks, Hayes returned to Port Foulke. More than thirteen hundred miles of ice had been traversed since he left the schooner in April, having completed an exploration of Whales Sound. The anchors were raised, and they "glided down the waveless waters, all sparkling with icebergs," watching the scene of their adventures slowly sinking away behind them under the crimson trail of the midnight sun. This repose of the elements was of short duration. A fearful storm arose, the wind, however, being from a favourable point, and their passage through Melville Bay to Upernavik was very quickly made. They shortly afterwards arrived at Halifax, at a period when the great

American strife was at its climax. Hayes immediately wrote a letter to the President, asking for employment in the public service, a proof that he was made of stern material.

CHAPTER XXII.

M'Clure and the North-West Passage-The Fate of Bellot-Expeditions to the East Coast of Greenland-Impenetrable Ice-Voyages of the Erik.

HILE the discovery of the North-West Passage is, by the most eminent writers, attributed to Sir John Franklin's party,

Captain Sir Robert M'Clure did also, while on his searching expedition, undoubtedly solve the problem. No braver or more resolute explorer has ever dared the perils of the Arctic. His vessel, the Investigator, was three winters in the ice in Melville's Sound and off Banks' Land, and had to be abandoned in the end. In the spring of 1853 it had been determined to send the weaker part of the crew to Hudson's Bay stations on the Mackenzie, and to attempt with the stronger men the journey to Lancaster Sound over the ice, when Lieutenant (now Admiral) Pim, from Captain Kellett's ship, the Resolute, which had entered the Arctic from the Atlantic side, appeared, and brought intelligence of relief being at hand. The united