On Midsummer Day Greely started with a four-wheel wagon to explore Grinnell Land. The wagon, in the men's vernacular, was a man-killer, and was abandoned after they had dragged it a hundred miles. On this journey much exploring work was done in the unknown country, the most interesting find being that of the Eskimo house at Lake Hazen. In this, according to Greely's description, there were two fireplaces, one in the east and the other in the south, both of which had been built outward so as to take up no part of the space of the room, which was over seventeen feet long and nine feet wide. The sides of the entire dwelling were low walls of sodded earth, lined inside with flat thin slates, the tops of which were about two feet above the level of the interior floor, and the bench was covered with flat slabs of slate. Near by was a smaller house of the same character, and around were a large number of relics, including walrus-ivory toggles for dog-traces, sledge-bars and runners, an arrow head, skinning knife, and articles of worked bone. Next year further explorations of the back country were undertaken, so that some six thousand miles of the interior were viewed, disclosing many fertile valleys with their herds of musk ox. Meanwhile the _Neptune_, with supplies for Fort Conger, had in August, 1882, been vainly endeavouring to get north, and, a few miles from Cape Hawks, had turned back with the pack piling the ice as high as her rail. Six attempts she made before she gave up and retreated, after making several deposits of stores at Cape Sabine and elsewhere. In July, 1883, the _Proteus_, making a similar attempt to reach Greely, was crushed in the ice off Cape Albert, her side opening with a crash while the men were working in the hold, the ice forcing its way into the coal-bunkers and then pouring in so that as soon as the pressure slackened she went down, escape to the south being effected in the boats. Next year, matters having become serious, a naval expedition consisting of the _Thetis_, the _Bear_, and Nares's old ship the _Alert_, presented by the British Government, was placed in the capable hands of Commander Winfield Schley, who had with him George Melville of _Jeannette_ fame as engineer of the _Thetis_, and matters were conducted in quite a different way under much more favourable circumstances. Schley intended to find Greely, at all costs, and he did so. First he found a cairn at Brevoort Island, in which were the papers deposited by Greely relating how he had had to come south owing to shortness of supplies, and how his party were then—21st of October, 1883—encamped on the west side of a small neck of land distant about equally from Cape Sabine and Cocked Hat Island.