In early spring Hayes succeeded in obtaining the co-operation of the Etah Esquimaux in sledging, and in a preliminary journey visited his old winter-quarters, where he had served with Kane six years before. Where they had abandoned the Advance, surrounded by the solid pack, he found ice nearly as high as were her mastheads; no vestige of the vessel remained except a bit of plank, and its fate was a matter of conjecture, though little doubt exists that she was ultimately crushed by the disruption of the pack during some violent gale. It was during this journey that Hayes experienced an intense degree of cold. Stating that the thermometer which hung inside the hut against the snow-wall indicated thirty-one degrees below zero, Hayes says: "We crawled out in the open air to try the sunshine. 'I will give you the best buffalo skin in the ship, Jansen, if the air outside is not warmer than in that den which you have left so full of holes.' And it really seemed so. Human eye never lit upon a more pure and glowing morning. The sunlight was sparkling all over the landscape and the great world of whiteness; and the frozen plain, the hummocks, the icebergs, and the tall mountains made a picture inviting to the eye. Not a breath of air was stirring. Jansen gave in without a murmur. I brought out the thermometer and set it up in the shadow of an iceberg near by. I really expected to see it rise; but no, down sank the little red column of alcohol, down, down almost to the bulb, until it touched sixty-eight and a half degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, equal to one hundred and a half degrees below the freezing-point of water. It struck me as a singular circumstance that this great depression of temperature was not perceptible to the senses, which utterly failed to give us even so much as a hint that here in this blazing sunlight we were experiencing about the coldest temperature ever recorded." [Illustration: Adrift on a Berg.]