A dismal story comes this week from a dismal region,
from "the realms of the Boreal Pole," whither the Americans sent two years ago the ship Polaris, built and baptised for a service which still fascinates the souls of modern sailors as the search for the Sang Real did those of medieval knights. She tried to make her way to the North Pole by Smith's Sound, and got as far as latitude 82.16, some thirty miles short of Parry's farthest point. Thence her captain (named Hall) made a sledge journey northwards, and returned (November, 1871,) convinced that he could find his way to an open sea when warm weather came. He died suddenly, soon after his return, and under circumstances which, an American telegram says, suggest the suspicion that he was poisoned, in order to prevent him from prosecuting a quest which his crew had come to regard as desperate. In June, nevertheless, a further attempt to get north- ward was made, but was utterly unsuccessful ; and in August the chief officer, Mr. Buddington, determined to abandon the enter- prise altogether. On the way out of Smith's Sound, the crew got drifted away from the ship on an ice-floe, and after dreadful sufferings, (what can be more dreadful than a nine-months' voyage on an ice-floe, with only an occasional bear or seal to eat?) were at last picked up off the Labrador coast. The addition of cold poison is not needful to make such a cup of horrors overflow.
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