The efforts to break through the belt, with the expectation of finding clear water about the Pole, have been very numerous, and they have been made through every opening from the southern waters to the Polar Sea. To follow the history of those various attempts would not fall within my present purpose. It is but a long record of defeat, so far as concerned the single object of getting to the Pole. Cook, and all who have come after him, have failed to find the ice sufficiently open to admit of navigation northward from Behring Strait, as Hudson and his followers have through the Spitzbergen Sea; and all the efforts through Baffin Bay have been equally futile. The most persevering attempts to break through the ice-belt have been made to the west of Spitzbergen, and in this quarter ships have approached nearer to the Pole than in any other. The highest well-authenticated position achieved by any navigator was that of Scorsby, who reached latitude 81° 30′, although it is claimed that Hudson had gone still further; and if the stories which Daines Barrington picked up from the fishermen of Amsterdam and Hull are to be relied on, then the old Dutch and English voyagers have gone even beyond this, seeking new fishing-grounds and finding everywhere an open sea. There is, however, as before observed, no well-authenticated record of any ship having attained a higher latitude than that of Scorsby. [Sidenote: WRANGEL'S OPEN SEA.] Failing to get through the ice, explorers have next tried to cross it with sledges. In this the Russians have done most. Many enterprising officers of the Russian service, using the dog-sledges of the native tribes inhabiting the Siberian coast, have, in the early spring, boldly struck out upon the Polar Sea. Most conspicuous among them was Admiral Wrangel, then a young lieutenant of the Russian Navy, whose explorations, continued through several years, showed that, at all seasons of the year, the same condition of the sea existed to the northward. The travelers were invariably arrested by open water; and the existence of a _Polynia_ or open sea above the New Siberian Islands, became a fact as well established as that the rivers flow downward to the sea. Sir Edward Parry tried the same method above Spitzbergen, using, however, men instead of dogs for draft, and carrying boats for safety in the event of the ice breaking up. Parry traveled northward until the ice, becoming loosened by the advancing season, carried him south faster than he was traveling north; and after a while it broke up under him, and set him adrift in the open sea. [Sidenote: KANE'S OPEN SEA.]