The cold that winter was intense, and the ship’s thermometers ranged from 60° to 75° below zero. Nor did spring bring much improvement in the conditions, and Kane found himself obliged to carry out the work of preparation for his sledge journeys in very trying circumstances. The matter, however, was not of a nature that would brook delay, so ten men under Mr Brooks, the first officer, were sent off to place a store of provisions _en cache_ at a point about ten days’ journey from the brig. The whole of the party came within an ace of perishing on the ice, and had it not been for the efforts of Olsen, the sailing master, Sontag, the astronomer, and Petersen, the interpreter, who staggered back to the ship in search of relief, they must have been frozen to death. As it was, two men died of cold and exposure. Towards the end of April Kane set out on that sledge journey along the east shore of Smith Sound which has raised him to the front rank of Arctic explorers. His expedition was conducted in the face of two great difficulties—sickness and lack of provisions. As early as May 30 the scurvy which had attacked the crew during the winter reappeared, and many members of the party fell victims to it, Kane himself suffering so severely that his limbs became quite rigid, and he had to be lashed to the sledge. The shortage of provisions was not due to any lack of care in the preparations for the expedition, but to the depredations of the bears, which had found the contents of the _caches_ so much to their liking that they had completely demolished them. “The pemmican,” says Kane, “was covered with blocks of stone, which it had required the labour of three men to adjust; but the extraordinary strength of the bear had enabled him to force aside the heaviest rocks, and his pawing had broken the iron casks which held our pemmican literally into chips. Our alcohol cask, which had cost me a separate and special journey in the late fall to deposit, was so completely destroyed that we could not find a stave of it.” In spite of these difficulties, however, Kane succeeded in reaching the Great Glacier of Humboldt, that tremendous sea of ice, one of the largest of its kind, which stretches from 79° 12′ to 80° 12′. By the end of the first week in May the condition of the party had become so bad that it was useless for them to attempt to proceed any further. Kane was delirious, his companions were almost past walking, and it was only through the most heroic perseverance that they succeeded in reaching the ship at all.