Such results as were obtained by the northern party have been greatly lost sight of in the painful interest connected with the cause of the scurvy, a subject which it would be altogether improper to enter upon here. But the effort to penetrate across the polar pack has proved other facts besides the necessity for a change in sledge diet. The attempt was never a hopeful one, but if it had not been made, no one would have been satisfied that it was impossible. If the men had been able to march as far every day after the scurvy appeared as they did before it—in other words, if the scurvy had not broken out—they would have reached only twenty-seven miles further north. The Pole lay 435 miles from their most advanced depôt. Their total distance marched was 521 geographical miles, so that under impossibly favourable circumstances—if they had been able to travel in a perfectly straight line, pulling a single sledge, and with ice as smooth as a lake, they would have succeeded in reaching the Pole and half-way back again, a conclusion which would be neither satisfactory nor instructive. If a comparatively unbroken ice-cap exists, and if its surface affords better travelling than its broken margin, it is possible that some future expedition may yet find it lying nearer Cape Joseph Henry, and travel over it to 84° or 85°, but certainly not to the Pole. The broken condition of the floes is inexplicable; perhaps a small island or bank exists to the northward. Those who choose to think so have two facts to hang their faith on: a hare track was found thirty miles from the land, and the depth of the Polar Sea at the furthest camp was only seventy fathoms.