Scoresby in 1806 had made thus far the most northerly voyage in a ship on Hudson’s route, but in 1868 a Swedish expedition attained higher latitudes than had ever or have ever been reached by a ship in that direction. The steamship _Sofia_, strongly built of Swedish iron, and originally intended for winter voyages in the Baltic, was selected for the voyage. Owing to a number of unfortunate delays, it was not until September, 1868, that the _Sofia_ reached the most northerly part of her journey, attaining a point nearly fifteen miles further north than Hudson had reached. To the north broken ice was still found, but it was so closely packed that not even a boat could pass through. Two months earlier in the season the voyagers might have waited for a change of wind and the breaking up of the ice; but in the middle of September this would have been very dangerous. The temperature was already sixteen degrees below the freezing-point, and there was every prospect that in a few weeks, or even days, the seas over which they had reached their present position would be icebound. They turned back from that advanced position; but, with courage worthy of the old Vikings, they made another attack a fortnight later. They were foiled again, as was to be expected, for by this time the sun was already on the wintry side of the equator. They had, indeed, a narrow escape from destruction. “An ice-block with which they came into collision opened a large leak in the ship’s side, and when, after great exertions, they reached the land, the water already stood two feet over the cabin floor.”[21] On the western side of the North Atlantic Channel—so to term the part lying between Greenland and Spitzbergen—the nearest approach towards the Pole was made by the Dutch in 1670, nearly all the more recent attempts to reach high northern latitudes in this direction having hitherto ended in failure more or less complete.