Three weeks later, on April 26th, Kane set out on what, to use his own words, "was to be the crowning expedition of the campaign, to attain the Ultima Thule of the Greenland shore." Impressed with the impracticability of a direct journey across the main ice-pack, he decided to follow the shore-line, five men dragging a sledge, while Kane and Godfrey travelled by dog-team. He had been led by his resolute spirit to overestimate the physical strength of his men and himself, and the party broke down before it had even approached the Humboldt Glacier. Their enthusiastic leader was stricken with fainting spells and rigidity of limbs, but Kane would not admit his illness to be more than temporary, and bidding the men strap him on the sledge, proceeded onward. His diminished physical powers now became evident through the freezing of his rigid and swollen limbs. Delirious and fainting at the end of the march, he was carried in an almost insensible condition to his tent, when his men wisely took the matter in their own hands and started back for the brig. Nine days later, through forced marches and heroic efforts of his sledge-mates, themselves partially disabled, Kane was carried on board the Advance fluctuating between life and death. Hardly conscious, his mind clouded, and his swollen features barely recognizable, his general condition was such that the surgeon regarded his ultimate recovery as nearly hopeless. While Kane's recuperative powers were simply marvellous, yet he did not recover sufficiently to make another journey that spring. In this extremity he turned to his surgeon, Israel I. Hayes, who volunteered to explore the unknown shores of Grinnell Land, which lay in sight to the west of Smith Sound. With the seaman Godfrey as a companion and a dog-team as the means of transportation, Hayes struggled through the almost impassable floes and bergs of the main strait and finally attained Cape Hayes, on the western coast, in about 79° 45' N. latitude. The return journey to the Advance was possible only by abandoning everything that in the slightest degree impeded the progress of the exhausted men and famishing dogs.