Fortunately for them, the floe drifted down into the track of the whalers, and on the last day of April they were picked up by the _Tigress_, of Conception Bay, Newfoundland, which conveyed them safely to St John’s. Of the remainder of the voyage of the _Polaris_ herself there is very little to be said. With fourteen men on board, she was driven north to Life Boat Cove, where she was safely anchored. Her crew promptly unloaded her and built a house on shore, where they spent the winter in tolerably comfortable circumstances, being supplied by the Eskimos with all the fresh meat that they required. In the spring they made a couple of boats out of the ship’s timbers, in which they set sail for the south on June 3. They were ultimately picked up by the whaler _Ravenscraig_ of Dundee. As has already been indicated, the results of this expedition might have been far greater than was actually the case. The _Polaris_, it is true, penetrated further north than ever ship had penetrated before. Dr Bessels made many valuable researches into animal and vegetable life in those regions, and it was conclusively shown that Kane’s open Polar Sea and the coast-line laid down by Hayes were quite fictitious. But more might easily have been achieved had the expedition been better conducted. CHAPTER XXI THE “GERMANIA” AND THE “HANSA” As has been seen in the last chapter, Hall was first inspired to enter upon the field of Arctic exploration by the loss of the Franklin expedition, and we have, in consequence, abandoned the true chronological order of events and dealt with his expedition out of its place. We must now hark back to the year 1868, when Dr Petermann, the famous German geographer, fitted out a small ship called the _Germania_ for a voyage of discovery along the east coast of Greenland, thus earning for himself the distinction of being the first of his race to send out an expedition to the Polar regions. Dr Petermann himself took no active part in the work, but entrusted the command to Captain Karl Koldewey, an expert in maritime matters, who had studied navigation at the Polytechnic school in Hanover, and physics and astronomy at the University of Göttingen. His first trip in the _Germania_, in which he was accompanied by a small crew of only eleven men, was not attended by any very remarkable results. Pack-ice frustrated his attempt to coast northward along the shores of Greenland, and compelled him to set his course eastward to the Spitzbergen seas, where he succeeded in reaching the latitude of 81° 5′. He then turned back down the Hinlopen Strait, and made his way to Bergen, where he arrived on the last day of September.