After encountering difficulties of every kind, and after sending back nearly all of the party and several sledges, with the life boat, whichcould be carried no further, Hayes and three of his men succeeded (May 11) in reaching Grinnell land at a point called Cape Hawks. They immediately turned to the north, and for several days skirted the coast, travelling on smoother ice and with less danger than before. But Hayes's companions were greatly exhausted, and he was finally compelled to leave two of them. On May 18,1861, Dr. Hayes and his remaining companion, Knorr, who had been travelling among soft ice for several days, reached a point (lat. 81° 35', lon. 70° 30') beyond which further progress was impossible on account of rotten ice and cracks. This was the most northerly land ever reached; and, climbing a headland, Hayes found himself standing upon what he believed to be the shores of the polar sea, which, though then encumbered with soft ice and floes, would, he felt confident, be entirely open in the summer months. To the north he saw a lofty headland, "the most northern known land upon the globe." Having no boat, Hayes was obliged to turn back; rejoining all his companions, he reached the schooner about the 1st of June, after a wearisome journey.

Without making further important explorations, for which, the schooner had been unfitted by injuries from the ice and storms, the expedition returned successfully to Boston in October, 1861. The civil war had broken out, and this led Dr. Hayes to at once abandon the project he had formed of returning immediately with a steamer to the arctic seas. In his story of the voyage ("The Open Polar Sea," New York, 1867), he declared that he had by no means given up the ultimate accomplishment of his plan. - In 1860 Capt, Charles F. Hall, who had for more than ten years been deeply interested in arctic discovery, left New London, Conn., in a whale ship, which, in pursuance of his plan, landed him on the W. coast of Davis strait, whence he intended, with boat and sledge, to make further search for evidences of the fate of Sir John Franklin and his men. He lost his boat, and was obliged to confine his explorations within comparatively narrow limits. He made, however, an important discovery - some traces of the expedition under Frobisher, 300 years before. On Sept. 30 Hall returned. In 1864 he again sailed for the arctic countries, landing, with only two Esquimaux as companions, on the coast of Hudson bay.

He penetrated to the north as far as Fury and Hecla strait, journeyed into King William land, and met with much success. Besides bringing home many actual relics of Franklin's party, he succeeded in obtaining such exact information from the Esquimaux at various points as led him to suppose that Franklin had actually ac-. complished the discovery of the northwest passage before his vessels, then in winter quarters (at O'Reilly island, Capt. Hall believes), were abandoned by their crews. Hall seems to have finally established, by the universal testimony of the tribes he visited, the truth of the Esquimaux story that Franklin's men died of starvation in King William land. He did not, however, succeed in finding any records of the expedition. After spending five successive years among the Esquimaux, passing much of the time near Repulse bay, and after acquiring a thorough knowledge of their language and customs, Capt. Hall returned in September, 1869, to the United States, where he applied himself to the organization of a new expedition. - A German arctic expedition, organized by Dr. Petermann of Gotha, and placed under the command of Capt. Koldewey, left Bremen in the spring of 1868, in the Greenland, a vessel of 80 tons burden.

Leaving Bergen, Norway, in May, Koldewey succeeded in reaching a point in lat. 81° 5' N., lon. 16° W. He returned in October to Bremen. In 1868 the Swedish government also sent out an expedition, which sailed to the north of Spitzbergen, but without any noteworthy discoveries. - In 1869 Dr. Hayes visited Upernavik to make preparations for the expedition he had not ceased to plan; he then hoped to undertake it during the year 1870. In a small steamer, the Panther, Dr. Hayes and his party made a short voyage about the arctic seas, but did not prosecute any extensive explorations. - On June 15, 1869, another German expedition left Bremen; the vessels were the Germania, under Capt. Hege-mann, and the Hansa, under Capt. Koldewey. Through a mistake in the reading of signals, the two vessels parted in July, the Germania following the E. coast of Greenland, and wintering in Sabine bay; while the Hansa was wrecked in October among the ice along the shore. Her crew took refuge on a field of moving ice, which, as it floated southward, gradually diminished, until, after it had become a mere raft, they were obliged to take to their three boats, by means of which they finally reached Friedrichsthal, near Cape Farewell. They reached home in the summer of 1870. Meanwhile the Germama had endeavored, but without success, to reach high latitudes by following the E. coast of Greenland; and in the autumn she also returned to Bremen. Though the voyage contributed much to scientific knowledge, no new discoveries of importance were made by either of the crews.

Several other expeditions were sent out from the continent of Europe in 1869, but they accomplished little beyond scientific research, conducted in regions already known. - Still less was done in 1870. Capt. Sherard Osborn, of the British navy, had for several years urged a new expedition by way of Smith sound in search of the open polar sea, but his views were not sustained by the board of admiralty, and he failed to secure aid from the government. A French scheme for arctic exploration was abandoned on account of the war with Germany. - In 1871 several arctic voyages were begun. In the summer James Lament, an Englishman, sailed to the eastward of Greenland, but made no new discoveries. In June the Austrian lieutenants Payer and Weyprecht, in a small Norwegian sailing vessel, sailed from Tromso, Norway, into the Arctic sea to the north of Nova Zembla, where they succeeded in discovering an open ocean in which navigation was only impeded by very light and scattered ice. In October they returned to Tromso, having penetrated to lat. 78° 41' N. Dr. Petcr-mann, the German geographer, looks upon the discoveries made by this unpretending expedition as most important, as he believes that Payer and Weyprecht actually penetrated into the open polar sea, and found the entrance of the best, if not the only water passage to the neighborhood of the pole.