ing in their
crowded and fetid _igloos_, devouring the blubber and uncooked fish that
form their staple articles of diet, wearing their garb of furs, learning
to navigate the treacherous kayak in tossing seas, to direct the yelping,
quarreling team of dogs over fields of ice as rugged as the edge of some
monstrous saw, studying the geography so far as known of the Arctic
regions, perfecting himself in all the arts by which man has contested the
supremacy of that land with the ice-king. In 1870, with the assistance of
the American Geographical Society, Hall induced the United States
Government to fit him out an expedition to seek the North Pole--the first
exploring party ever sent out with that definite purpose. The steamer
"Polaris," a converted navy tug, which General Greely says was wholly
unfit for Arctic service, was given him, and a scientific staff supplied
by the Government, for though Hall had by painstaking endeavor qualified
himself to lead an expedition, he had not enjoyed a scientific education.
Neither was he a sailor like DeLong, nor a man trained to the command of
men like Greely. Enthusiasm and natural fitness with him took the place
of systematic training. But with him, as with so many others in this
world, the attainment of the threshold of his ambition proved to be but
opening the door to death. By a sledge journey from his ship he reached
Cape Brevoort, above latitude 82, at that time the farthest north yet
attained, but the exertion proved too much for him, and he had scarcely
regained his ship when he died. His name will live, however, in the annals
of the Arctic, for his contributions to geographical knowledge were many
and precious.

[Illustration: THE SHIP WAS CAUGHT IN THE ICE PACK]

The men who survived him determined to continue his work, and the next
summer two fought their way northward a few miles beyond the point
attained by Hall. But after this achievement the ship was caught in the
ice-pack, and for two months drifted about, helpless in that unrelenting
grasp. Out of this imprisonment the explorers escaped through a disaster,
which for a time put all their lives in the gravest jeopardy, and the
details of which seem almost incredible. In October, when the long
twilight which precedes the polar night, had already set in, there came a
fierce gale, accompanied by a tossing, roaring sea. The pack, racked by
the surges, which now raised it with a mighty force, and then rolling on,
left it t