"Close the lips for the first minute or two and admit the air suspiciously through nostril and mustache. Presently you breathe in a dry, pungent but gracious and agreeable atmosphere. The beard, eyebrows, eyelashes, and the downy pubescence of the ears acquire a delicate white and perfectly enveloped cover of venerable hoar-frost. The mustache and under lip form pendulous beads of dangling ice. Put out your tongue and it instantly freezes to this icy crusting, and a rapid effort and some hand aid will be required to liberate it. The less you talk the better. Your chin has a trick of freezing to your upper jaw by the luting aid of your beard; even my eyes have often been so glued as to show that even a wink may be unsafe." The unfortunate physical condition of the party made Kane's duties most onerous and wearing. In mid-winter he says: "Scurvy advanced steadily. This fearful disease, so often warded off when in a direct attack, now exhibited itself in a cachexy, a depraved condition of system sad to encounter. Pains diffuse and non-locatable were combined with an apathy and lassitude which resisted all attempts at healthy excitement. These, of course, were not confined to the crew alone: out of twenty-four men but five were without ulcerated gums and blotched limbs. All the officers were assailed." The expedition safe in port, the recollection of the horrors and privations of his mid-winter drift through the polar pack did not deter Kane from again braving the danger of Arctic exploration, and he was soon busily engaged in stimulating public opinion to the support of another expedition. To this end he especially addressed the American Geographic Society, of which Henry Grinnell was president, presenting a well-intended but fallacious and illogical plan for continuing the search for Franklin. Kane was personally aware, from the experiences of his previous voyage with DeHaven, that Franklin had wintered at Beechy Island, in 74° 43´ N., 91° 33´ W., and that his positive orders from the admiralty required him to push southward from the vicinity of Cape Walker to Behring Strait. A search for him by the way of Smith Sound, four degrees of latitude to the _northward_ and seventeen degrees of longitude to the _eastward_ of his last known position, rested on the violent assumption that Franklin had not only directly disobeyed his positive orders to go _west_ and _southwest_, but had done so after one-third of the distance from Greenland to Behring Strait had been accomplished.