The Expedition under command of First Lt. A. W. Greeley, USA, expected to be picked up by a relief ship after 1 year, or 2 years at most. Its supply could be stretched to cover the maximum period. But the winters were so unduly harsh that the rescue mission could not break through the ice to keep the rendezvous. During the first year, two members of the party had set a new Far North mark. The party as a whole--3 officers, 19 enlisted men, 1 civilian surgeon and the 2 natives--had survived a winter closer to the Pole than civilized men had ever lived before. So doing, they had remained in reasonably good personal adjustment to each other, despite the Arctic monotony. The discipline of the camp had been strict. Rules of subordination, sanitation, work-sharing and religious observance had been maintained, without major friction occurring in the life of the group. Lectures were given regularly, and schools were organized. Though it is recorded that the men became melancholy, sleepless, and irritable because of the long Arctic night, temper was still in so good a state that an honor system within the camp meted out extra duty to any man using an oath. The comradely feeling remained alive within the party throughout the first winter, though morale had its first blow when Greeley issued an unwise order forbidding enlisted men to go more than 500 yards from the base without permission. The strain was beginning to tell, but there was no fatal rift in the working harmony of the group while supply and hope remained reasonably full. But June of the second year came and passed, and no relief ship arrived. In August, Greeley decided on a retreat, intending to fall back on bases which were supposed to hold food stores. Thereafter disaster was piled upon disaster, most of it having to do with the lack of food, and the varying animal and spiritual reactions of men to a situation of utmost desperation. When the Greeley Expedition was at last rescued at Cape Sabine on June 22, 1884, by the third expedition--the _Revenue Cutter Bear_ and the _Thetis_ under Commander Winfield S. Schley, USN--only seven men remained alive. Even in these, the spark of life was so feeble that their tent was down over them and they had resigned themselves to death. Two died soon after the rescue, leaving five. Most of the other 20 had perished of slow starvation, but not all. Some had been shot. Others had met death with utmost bravery trying to save their failing comrades. All that happened to Greeley's party during the months of its terrible ordeal is known because of a diary which records the main things--the fight of discipline against the primal instincts in men, the reversion of the so-called civilized man to his real type when he knows that death is at his elbow, the strength of unity which comes of comradeship, and also the weakness in some individuals which makes it impossible for them to measure up to honor's requirements.