In direct opposition to the guiding idea of the scheme, Greely's work was complicated by having tacked on to it Howgate's proposal of another dash for the Pole, his instructions requiring him to send out "sledging parties in the interests of exploration and discovery." Further, his expedition was fitted out in a way that almost invited disaster. Let one instance suffice. "In speaking of this instrument," he explains, "it is necessary to say that a dip-circle was especially made for the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, but it was by error shipped to the United States Coast Survey. On calling for it, when the duplicate instrument ordered could not be had in time, the late Mr. Carlisle Patterson, then Superintendent, promptly promised that it should be sent on to me at New York. On the day of my sailing, a dip-circle, carefully boxed, was received; but on opening it at St. John, an old, rusty, unreliable instrument was found in the place of the new circle. This resulted in unsatisfactory and incomplete observations at Conger, for the old circle having upright standards instead of transverse ones, as in the new, but one end of the needle could be read. It must always be a matter of regret that this unwarrantable and unauthorised substitution by some person was made, which materially impaired, if not effectually destroyed, the value of our two-years' dip-observations." This sort of thing reduced International Polar Research to a farce, and the same spirit appeared in other departments, more seriously than all in the relief proceedings, which were conducted in a way that could only lead to starvation. In August, 1881, the _Proteus_, with the expedition on board, made her way up Smith Sound and Kennedy Channel without serious hindrance until she entered the south-eastern part of Lady Franklin Bay, where the close, heavy pack brought her to a stop within eight miles of her destination. She had come seven hundred miles from Upernivik in less than a week, and, faced by ice twenty to fifty feet thick, she had to wait another seven days before she got into Discovery Harbour. Here the party landed and a house was built, and dissension arose which ended in one of the company returning in the ship and another endeavouring to do so and being too late, so that he had to remain as a sort of tolerated volunteer. Two others were sent away as being physically unfit; but, making up for these, were two Eskimos engaged at Upernivik. Preliminary sledging began at once, and in the spring the two great efforts were made. The doctor's, towards the Pole, left on the 19th of March and got adrift on a floe from which the party escaped with the loss of their tent, provisions, and some of their instruments. According to Greely's report: "The farthest latitude attained by this party is given by Dr. Pavy as 82° 56´, it being estimated, as no observations for time, magnetic declination, or latitude were made at any period during his absence."