nd the even harder experiences of the
Arctic spring-tide, when excessive cold and increasing lassitude
made steady inroads on their impaired constitutions. Kane tells us
they were continually harassed by uncertainties as to their ultimate
fate. Yesterday the unbroken floe, stretching as far as the eye
could reach, seemed so firm and stable as to insure months of quiet,
uninterrupted life. Today, the groaning, uneasy pack, yielding to an
unseen power, split and cracked in all directions, throwing up huge
masses of solid ice, that threatened to destroy instantly the ship,
and occasionally opened in wide cracks through which rushed the open
sea. Indeed, the conditions were so critical and the ice-movements
so rapid, that the entire party, within the brief space of
twenty-four hours, had four times made ready to abandon their
vessels.

In March the cold became intense, and for a week it averaged
fifty-three degrees below the freezing-point. Scurvy assailed all
but five of the crew, and De Haven was so ill that all his duties
devolved on Griffin, who heroically bore up under disease and the
mental and moral responsibilities that the situation forced on him.
In all his efforts Griffin had no more effective coadjutor than the
fleet-surgeon, Kane. Whether acting as a medical officer, treating
skilfully the diseased crew; as a hunter, supplementing their scanty
stock of anti-scorbutic food with the fresh meat of the seal; or as
a man, devising means of amusement and stimulating them to mental
and physical exertions, Kane incessantly displayed such qualities of
cheerfulness, activity, and ingenuity as tended to dispel the pall
of despair that sometimes enveloped the whole expedition.

When release from the ice permitted the voyage to be renewed, De
Haven decided to refit in the Greenland ports and again return to
Lancaster Sound; fortunately, as the squadron was not fitted for a
second year's work, the ice in Melville Bay was such as to prevent
immediate passage, and so they turned southward, reaching the United
States on September 30, 1851.

Such desperate experiences as those involved in the midwinter drift
of the Advance, would have deterred most men for a time from a
second voyage, but with Kane the stimulus to future work apparently
increased with every league that he sailed southward. The ship was
hardly in port before he initiated a plan for another expedition in
the spring of 1852. This failing he wrote Lady Franklin