Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1876 — The Arctic Expedition. [ARTICLE]

The Arctic Expedition.

A London dispatch of Oct. 30 gives the following account of the voyage of the steamers Alert and Discovery in the Arctic regions: A narrative of the Arctic expedition is published. It relates that after first encountering ice the expedition was detained some days at Port Payer. It started thence on Aug. 8, but before reaching the shore of Grinnell Land the vessels were caught in an ice-pack. After this their progress northward was an incessant struggle through chance openings made in the ice by wind and current, the channel through which the ships moved constantly closing behind them. The Discovery wintered in a well sheltered harbor on the west side of Hall’s Basin, a few miles north of Polaris Bay. The Alert pushed forward and rounded the northeast point of Grant’s Land, but instead of finding, as expected, a continuous coast a hundred miles toward the north, she found herself on the border of an extensive sea, with impenetrable ice on every side and no harbor. The ship wintered behind a barrier of grounded ice. The floating masses of thick polar ice had in meeting pressed up quantities of intermediate ice into blocks frequently a mile in diameter and varying in height from ten to fifty feet. Obstacles of this kind destroyed all hope of reaching the pole by sledges before the attempt was made. The sledge party was obliged to make a road with pickaxes nearly half the distance it traveled. As'it was always necessary to drag the sledge loads by installments, the party really traversed 276 miles, although it only progressed seventy-three. All the cairns erected by the Polaris expedition were visited. At the boat depot in Newman’s Bay a chronometer was found in perfect order. Wheat left by the Polaris was successfully grown aboard the ship. When at Polaris Bay the Discovery hoisted the American nag, and fired a salute as a brazen tablet with the following inscription was fixed on the grave of Capt. Hall: “ Sacred to the memory of Capt. Hall, of the Polaris, who sacrificed his life in the advancement of science. This tablet is erected by the British Pblar expedition, who, following his footsteps, have profited by his experience." Two sailors of the Greenland sledge party were buried near Capt. Half's grave. The sufferings of the sledge parties from scurvy were frightful. The expedition under Markham and Parr, which endeavored to reach the pole, consisted of seventeen persons. Nine became utterly helpless and had to be carried on sledges. Three could barely walk, and were unable to render assistance. Two hundred tons of ice are manufactured daily in New Orleans by the aqua ammonia process.