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Les csrtes, pisnches, tableaux, etc., peuvent Atre filmAs A dss taux de reduction diff Arents. Lorsque le document est trop grend pour Atre reproduit en un seul clichA, 11 est filmA A partir de Tangle supArieur gauche, de gauche A droite, et de haut en bas, an prenent le nombre d'Images nAcesssire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mAthode. y errata td to nt ie pelure, pon A U 32X 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 8 6 THE U. S. GTUNNELi, \. "DITION T X X n&h R ^ ■\ S ^ V JU j» AN KLIN, sunni ^nrrfitiBf. / jr. Sl BLIHiIA fSl»f ¥„^;. i;.E^ ::< M t: « '^, _^^*mwr- ?- :• ^ *# It- i44a. I! I % THE U. S. GRIMELL EXPEDITIOI IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. % l^nsnnal i^crrntinf. BY ELISHA KENT KANE, M.D., U.S.N. NEW YORK: HARPER & DROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 389 A,i331 PEARL STREET, r U A N K r, I N SQUARE. 1853. I Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one tliousand right hundred and flfly-lhree, by Harper & Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern Di.«tri<'l of New York. TO HENRY GRINNELL, THE AtiTIlOH, AND ADVOCATE, AND I'ATRUN OK THE UNITED STATES RXPEOITION IN SEAIlrir OF SIR .lOHN FRANKLIN, d^ii 'Mmm is 3nsrrihil. C 'C NOTE. It may apologize, perhaps, for some imperfections in this book, to mention, that the greater portion of it has gone through the press without the author's re- visal. While he was engaged in preparing it, the lib- erality of Mr. Grinnell, of New York, and Mr. Peabody, of London, enabled him to set on foot a second Polar Expedition, which sailed under his command on the 3 1st of May last. It was his purpose to remodel some of the chapters, and to add one or two on collateral topics, if his time had not been engrossed by the prep. arations for his departure. July, 1853. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I Introdittory -Thr Arrtif Sra — Sir Jdim Franklin -Lady Franklin's """^ A|)peal -Organization (if tin; American Grinnell Expedition i:i CHAPTER H Proparations for Deparlurt — The Advance and Rescue —Eqnipments- Ofliccrs and ('rew 17 CHAPTER HI. Departure from New Vork— Creature Comforts —First Iceberg— Off St. Jolin's «,| CHAPTER IV. Davis's Straits -Counter-drin— Beginning of Arctic Day —Fogs —The Siikkertoiipen ^9 CHAPTER V Whale-fish Islands -Disco. —The Emma Eugenia —Kayacks— The Landing -Esquimaux Huts ;».-, CHAPTER VI Uoat Party to Lievely.— Royal Inspectorrtte- Purchase of Furs —Floral and geological Character. — Field Ice 1 1 CHAPTER VH. Tiie Middle Ice —The Nortii Water. —Omenak's Fiord.— Interior Water f 'oiiiiection between Coasts of Greenland 4s CHAPTER VIII. Formation of Icebergs —Debacle from Glacier.— Mr. Grundfitz -Color and Structure of Berg Ice 54 " CHAPTER IX. Svartehuk — Refraction ri CHAPTER X. Jiimping-off Place — Honesty of Kayackers. — Fast in "the Pac!:." -Its Elements and Form GS I ■ K! Vlll CONTENTS. CHAP PER XI. Page Navigation of the Pack.— Conning Ship.— Heave:— 'Warp!— Track!— Haul' 76 CHAPTER XH. Devil's Thumb. — Seals. — Birds. — Boring the Pack.— A Bear Hunt. — Fast I — Planting Ice-anchors 83 CHAPTER XIII. The Ice. — Snow-covered. — Water-sodden. — Honey-combed. — Tough. — Red Ice. — Currents. — Under Currents. — Effects of !I4 CHAPTER XIV. Melville Bay. — Glaciers. — Race with an Iceberg. — Berg splitting 98 CHAPTER XV. Opposite Duneira Bay. — Glaciers. — Height of Bergs. — Deceptions of Fog. — Formation and Forms of Bergs. — Birds 105 CHAPTER XVI. Bear Hunt. — Warm Fog. — Hummocking. — A Pinch. — Crustacea and Birds 116 CHAPTER XVII. Refraction. — The Arclir Cuisine. — Glaciers. — .\dvantagos of Steamers — Esquimaux. — Frozen Families near Cape York 124 CHAPTER XVIII. The Crimson Cliffs of Beverly. — Bessie's Cove. — Glacier Formatir . — Red Snow. — Atmospheric Transfers 132 CHAPTER XIX. .\rctic Highlands. — Florula. — Moss Beds. — .\»iks' Nests. — Trapping / ,is. — A Black Fox. — " Good-by to Baffin." — Continuous baylight 139 CHAPTER XX. Entering Lancaster Round. — Penny's Squadron. — Sir John Ross ;. ' «he Felix. — The Prince A'bert.— Cape Riley. — Traces of Sir John Franklin : his Encampment 149 CHAPTER XXI. Visit to the Encampment. — Beechy Island. — Discovery of the Graves. — Description oi them. — Conclusions : and Conjecture as to Franklin's Course 159 CHAPTER XXII. United Searching Squadrons. — Visits. — Ice drifting. — My first Dear. — Bar- low's Inlet. — Cornwallis Island — Hummocks and Break-up. — Cold in- creasing. — Rendezvous of Union Bay 168 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER XXIII. rage Wellington Channel. — A Gale. — Exciting Navigation. — Orders for Return. — The Rescue nipped. — Illusion. — Ice thickening. — Caught in the Ice. —A Balloon 1 79 CHAPTER XXIV. Wellington Channel. — Drift Northward. — Discoveries. — Grinnoll Land. . . 189 CHAPTER XXV. Grinnell Land. — Discussion of Priority of Discovery 198 CHAPTER XXVI. In the Ice of WeUington Channel. — An Ice Battle. — Condensing Moisture. — Hummocks. — Seal Hunting. — Preparing to Winter in the Ice. — Par- tial Break-up 208 CHAPTER XXVII. Wellington Channel. — Seals. — Pariielia. — Ice clianges. — Drift South. — Approach of Winter. — ' Our Fox'..., 217 CHAPTER XXVm. Drifting ahout Outlet of Channel. — Effort to communicate with British Vessels. — Spontaneous Combustion. — Shore inaccessible. — An Ice Tramp. — Wintery Signs. — Winter Arrangements. — Leopold's Island. — The Daylight 225 CHAPTER XXIX. Continued Drift. — Lancaster Sound. — Topography of Ice Fields. — A Break- up. — Sir John Franklin. — Aurora. — \ Crisis. — The Rescue deserted. — Anecdote of an Officer. — Drill on the Ice. — Mr. Griffin. — .Vpproaching Croker's Bay 239 CHAPTER XXX. The Cold. — Frozen Stores. — Ices. — A Walk. — Freezing to Death. — Cos- tume 257 CHAPTER XXXI. Continued Drift.— Off Croker's Bay.— Pale Faces.— The Solstice.— Utter Darkness. — Christmas, Theatre, and Gifts. — Scurvy. — Traces and Prog- ress of returning Light 265 CHAPTER XXXII. Continued Drift. — New Year. — Walks renewed. — Eighth of January- Near (]ape Oshom. — Approaching Baffin's Bay. — Commotion of the Ice. — Critical Situation of the Vessels 275 i J X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXIII. Page '.'(intinucd Drift. — Preparation for Contingcncios. — Results of Intonse Pressure. — Inside of Uaffin's Bay. — Effects of Darkness. — leo Masses. — Declining Health of ("rews. — Morale of Officers aiut Men. — Aijproaeh of Day. — Sunrise, Noon, and Sunset in one. — El rcgrcsado del Sd. — Theatre 28:) CHAPTER XXXIV. Continued Drift. — Extreme Cold. — Exjdosions. — Meteors — Refraction. — The Area of Drift. — Routine Life. — Perspiration at — 42". — \Vashinj;ton's 13irtli-day — Cold Amusements. — The Scurvy. — An Insect^ — Our two Cooks. — Our lowest Temperature. — Hygienic Resources 297 CHAPTER XXXV. Meteors. — Scintillation of Planets. — Auroras. — Day Auroras 312 CHAPTER XXXVI. The Rescue in her Ice Dock. — Treatment of Scurvy. — Imagination. — Progress of Disease. — Meteors, Spicula;, Parhelion. — Imperfect Observa- tions.— Rate of Drift —Water.— Frost Smoke 321 CHAPTER XXXVII. Snow Drifts —The open Water. — Ice Voices. — Seal Stalking. — Ice Com- motions. — Narwhals at Play — State of the Ice Pack. — An Excursion — The Narwhals again — Changed Phase of the Ice 33 1 CHAPTER XXXVIII. April — Thawing. — Measures of Heat. — Thermometrical Fallacies. — Clear Water. — Endosmosis. — Salting tlie Ice. — Put out Cabin Lamps. — Sur- gical Skill of a Bear : his Escape : his Instincts 345 CHAPTER XXXIX. House-cleaning. — The Half-deck. — Progress of the Season. — Somateria. —Narwhals releasing themselves. — Noises of Narwhal and white ^V^lalt. — May-day. — Sleeplessness. — Snow-blindness 354 CHAPTER XL. Trymg to cut out. — Scurvy. — Costume, Skill in Tailoring. — Birds — Land, Cape Searle. — (Uuulition of the Advance. — Ineflectual Attempt to launch lier — ' Y" Arctic Voyager?"' _." the olden Time 362 CHAPTER XLI. (Jape Walsingham. — Mount Raleigh. — Rate of Drift increasing. — Refrac- tion, an Es(|uimaux ! — Bear killed by the Rescues. — A Tide. — The Seals : their Habits. — Infdtration of Salt Water through the Ice. — Sum- mary of May 371 I I. CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER XLII. Pagi! The Ice. — Its Geological Analogies — Its Progress of Formation, its Changes, Decay, Destruction. — Apparent Causes 381 CHAPTER XLIII. June — The Break-up. — The Rescue Free — The Advance and her Camel. —Rolling Ice. — Tlie Calves. — State of the Ice after the Break-up 39() CHAP PER XLIV. Our Floe — Efforts for Release — Remembrancers on the Ice — Partial Disengagement. — Release. — Liquid ^^'ater.— .Magnificent Floe 404 CHAPTER XLV. Fantastic Forms of Ice — Explanation — Archipelago of Bergs.— For Wel- lington Channel again! — The Sukkertoppen — (Condition of the Settle- ment. — Recruiting. — Godhavcn. — Architectural Bergs^ — In tlie Ice again. — Seal Hunts. — Habits of the Seal. — A Lee Ice Shore. — Incrusted Bergy. — Esquimaux. — Unas and Company. — Arrival at Proven 410 CHAPTER XLVI. Proven. — The Hosky House of Ciistiansen : its Furniture — Employ- ments and Habits of Inmates. — Fourth of July. — Visits from the Jane O'Boness and Pacific 423 CHAPTER XLVII. Uppernavik. — The Governor's Family — Petersen. — Bright Atmosphere and clear Water.— Baffm's Islands. — Gathering Duck Eggfi. — The Ei- der : their Nests, Habits, and EnemicK. — The M'Lellan. — The Whaling Fleet. — The Prince Albert, M. Bellot, and Mr. Kennedy. — Picturesque Bergs. — Echoes. — Adventure in the Skreed — Esquimaux Dogs. — Starv- ing Colony. — Training and Employment of Dogs 431 CHAPTER XLVIII. The Arctic Glaciers. — Mcrs de Glace : their Height, Color, Configuration, Structure, Movement. — Curvature of Ice. — Primary Forms of Bergs. — Cluinges and secondary Forms, — Studded and imbedded Bergs — Crys- talludromcs. — Disintegrated Bergs. — Effects on Soundings 44(> CHAPTER XLIX. March and Collision of the Bergs. —Almost a Nip. — The Season going — " Good-liy to the Albert." — (^risis approaching — Bergs moving — Drilling Ice Beach. — Procession — Berg Fractures. — The Opening. — The Escape 460 CHAPTER L. Uppernavik — Governor's Mansion. — The Feast of Radishes. — Tlic Ka- yack, its Form and Construction.— Esquimaux Implements of the Hunt. — Uses of the Kayack — Feats of the Kayackers. — Hazards — Involunta- ry Expatriation. — Conclusion 47'J Appendix 489 i : PERSONAL NARRATIVE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The region which is known on our maps as the Arctic Ocean is inclosed between the northern shores of Asia, Europe, and America. It has an area of about four and a half millions of square miles : its tributary waters exceed those of the Western Atlan- tic from Hudson's Bay to the Caribbean ; and it girds the Pole with an ice-locked coast of nearly three thou- sand marine leagues : it is a mysterious sea, that has bafHed for centuries the research of navigators. One of the more recent attempts to penetrate its recesses will form the subject of this volume. About the year 1816, the notion of a northwestern passage, which had fallen for a time into the same category with the El Dorado and the Cathay of a less practical era, began to find favor with the Brit- ish government. The spirit of private enterprise took the same direction. Year after year expedition followed expedition, under commanders of tried gal- lantry and intelligence. But they all came back without traversing the forbidden channel ; bearing contributions, indeed, to our knowledge of its charac ter and aspects, but accumulating proofs also of the hazards of exploring even its barrier. 14 INTRODUCTORY. V I I It was in 1844 that Sir John Franklin was ap- pointed to the charge of his latest Polar expedition. His first visit to the Arctic regions had heen in 1818, as a captain in Commodore Buchan's squadron ; and after this had returned unsuccessful, he had headed that most fearful of all the overland journeys of our period, tlie descent to the mouth of the Coppermine River. Still later, in 1825, he had gone hack to the same field of toil, and had delineated, in conjunction with Sir John Richardson, the more western portions of Arctic America. No officer could have heen found in the marine of any country who combined more admirable qualifica- tions for the duties of an explorer. To the resolute enterprise and powers of endurance, which his former expeditions had tested so severely, Sir John Franklin united many delightful traits of character. With an enthusiasm almost boyish, he had a spirit of large but fearless forecast, and a sensitive kindness of heart that commiserated every one but himself. He is re- membered to this day among the Indians of North America, as " the great chief who would not kill a mosquito." His vessels, the Erebus and Terror, were soon fit- ted for sea; and on the 25th of May, 1845, he weigh- ed anchor, with a picked crew, and as noble a band of officers as ever volunteered for a service of peril. They were met by a whaler on the 26th of July fol- lowing, in the upper waters of Baffin's Bay, Tnoored to an iceberg, and waiting for an opening in " the pack." They have not been seen since. When the year 1848 had arrived without any tid- ings of this gallant party. Great Britain dispatched three separate expeditions to reclaim them. These INTRODUCTORY. Id were well devised ; but peculiar drawbacks seemed to attend their efforts, and before the beginning of 1850 they had all abandoned the search, almost with- out attaining the first threshold of inquiry. Their failure aroused every where the generous sympathies of men. Science felt for its votaries, hu- manity mourned its fellows, and an impulse, holier and more energetic than either, invoked a crusade of rescue. That admirable woman, the wife of Sir John Franklin, not content with stimulating the re- newed efforts of her own countrymen, claimed the co-operation of the world. In letters to the President of the United States, full of the eloquence of feeling, she called on us, as a " kindred people, to join heart and hand in the enterprise of snatching the lost navi- gators from a dreary grave." The delays incident to much of our national legis- lation menaced the defeat of her appeal. The bill making appropriations for the outfit of an expedition lingered on its passage, and the season for commenc- ing operations had nearly gone by. At this juncture, a noble-spirited merchant of New York, of whom as an American and a man I can hardly trust myself to speak, fitted out two of his own vessels, and proffered them gratuitously to the government. Thus prompt- ed by the munificent liberality of Mr. Grinnell, Con- gress hastened to take the expedition under its charge, and authorized the president to detail from the navy such necessary officers and seamen as might be will- ing to engage in it. Though I accompanied this expedition as its sen- ior medical officer, I had no claim to be considered as its historian. Such a province belonged strictly to our commander; but he having declined making any 16 INTRODUCTORY. other than an official report, I have heen invited to prepare a history of the cruise, under the form of a personal nanative. I had promised my brother at parting, that I would keep a journal, to furnish topics, perhaps, for a fireside conversation ; and I have ♦•hosen to draw most of my materials from this record. I might have done more wisely, if I had been content to substitute sometimes the educated opinions of oth- ers for those which impressed me at the moment. My apology must be, that I do not profess to be ac- curate, but truthful. ♦ « I CHART Kxliihiliiiu liio I't'i't'iil n«>s * ARCTIC REGIONS nWi4'ftt',t hv I'inix. A.Srhoti , /:.stf..r. .S.ifhi.sl SuirnJhuii th, >ni,l ntiitnhilx ,ltin>xih-tl with /.nut. Mtiinr. I ' .V //»• In K..I.IIK \\\\'V.\.V\St)..i,>mnnin,trrt>rr. .V. tirii 100 91 ^T HOGARTH « iturr/ S S -4 Xo*** A R R ^ 'r^p^: SOMERSET 'I'll fiiir/ui//f y,v. CHART i'4 llu' ri'roiil «lisr«iv«»n«'s in I lie RCTIC REGIONS f.,r..S.i'im.\l .V///T/; I ■.//•/ w/ ///< liitf.sl Em/h'xh /nihliinlioiix. '^nl with Unit. Moiiiy, I ' V Ihilimfrtift/iir lUiirtiu , M}.,i nnnnintiltT nl' I'.S. lirinntf/ Krfttilitinn . ■"7> 9'. HOGAHTH L-aoi MMIL10N I * • V u „; C H A N N ( ■» ^'^G ,"*\ ^1 X B A R R * u, ,o-'»'' ■--'^'■^ /" .„,n, S T R *^ ( NORTH SOMERSET orTft •••■'' "^^ \ o c K B O B W \- ^ t* O i'l ea La. i L.- " 10 " 10 "10 "w * itb 00 fo ■ oo " -- ' SCALt OF STATUTE. MILES to leo 1*0 160 xitt" ' 100 Ti> t'llir Ihlifr />'y. 9 t %^: \ '"•^"ti >^l CHAPTER II. *.!» -,1 72 On the 12th of May, while bathing in the tepid waters of the Gulf of Mexico, I received one of those courteous little epistles from Washington which the electric telegraph has made so familiar to naval offi- cers. It detached me from the coast survey, and or- dered me to " proceed forthwith to New York, for duty upon the Arctic Expedition." Seven and a half days later, I had accomplished my overland journey of thirteen hundred miles, and in forty hours more our squadron was beyond the limits of the United States : the Department had calculated my traveling time to a nicety. During the fraction of a day that was left me at ^f ew York, I strove assiduously to secure a few imple- ments for scientific observation, as well as to get to- gether the elements of an Arctic wardrobe. I had, of course, the zealous aid of Mr. Grinnell in these hurried B 1 '•• i \ 18 VESSELS AT ANCHOR arrangements ; but I could not help being struck with the universal sympathy displayed toward our expedi- tion. From the ladies who busied themselves in seal- ing up air-tight packages of fruit-cakes, to the mana- gers of the Astor House, who insisted that their hotel should be the free head-quarters of our party, it was one continued round of proffered services. I should have a long list of citizens to thank if I were allowed to name them on these pages. It was not, perhaps, to be expected that an expedi- tion equipped so hastily as ours, and with one engross- ing object, should have facilities for observing very accurately, or go out of its way to find matters for cu- rious research. But even the routine of a national ship might, I was confident, allow us to gather some- thing for the stock of general knowledge. With the assistance of Professor Loomis, I collected as I could some simple instruments for thermal and magnetic reg- istration, which would have been of use if they had found their way on board. A very few books for the dark hours of winter, and a stock of coarse woolen clothing, re-enforced by a magnificent robe of wolf- skins, that had wandered down to me from the snow- drifts of Utah, constituted my entire outfit ; and with these I made my report to Commodore Salter at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Almost within the shadow of the line-of-battle ship North Carolina, their hulls completely hidden beneath a projecting wharf, were two little hermaphrodite brigs. Their spars had no man-of-war trigness ; their decks were choked with half-stowed cargo ; and for size, I felt as if I could straddle from the main hatch to the bulwarks. At this first sight of the Grinnell Expedition, I con- .1 IN NEW YORK HARBOR. 19 ^ fess that the fastidious experience of naval life on board frigates and corvettes made me look down on these humble vessels. They seemed to me more like a couple of coasting schooners than a national squad- ron bound for a perilous and distant sea. Many a time afterward I recalled the short-sighted ignorance of these first impressions, when some rude encounter with the ice made comfort and dignity very secondary thoughts. The "Advance," my immediate home, had been orig- inally intended for the transport of machinery. Her timbers were heavily moulded, and her fastenings of the most careful sort. She was fifty-three tons larger than her consort, the " Rescue ;" yet both together barely equaled two hundred and thirty-five tons. To navigate an ice-bound sea, speed, though import- ant, is much less so than strength. Extreme power of resistance to pressure must be combined with facil- ity of handling, adequate stowage, and a solidity of frame that may encounter sudden concussions fearless- ly ; and it seemed to both Mr. Grinnell and Lieutenant De Haven that these qualities might be best embodi- ed in such small vessels as the Advance and Rescue. It was, indeed, something like a return to the dimen- sions of our predecessors of the olden time ; for the three vessels of Frobisher summed up only seventy- five tons, and Baffin's largest was ten tons less in bur- den than the Rescue. As the vessels of our expedition were more thoroughly adapted, perhaps, for this dan- gerous service than any that had been fitted out be- fore for the Arctic Seas, I will describe them in de- tail. Commencing with the outside : the hull was liter- ally double, a brig within a brig. An outer sheathing . ', f 20 VESSELS AT ANCHOR of two and a half inch oak was covered with a sec- ond of the same material ; and strips of heavy sheet- iron extended from the bows to the beam, as a shield against the cutting action of the new ice. The decks were double, made water-tight by a packing of tarred felt between them. The entire interior was lined, ceiled, with cork; which, independently of its low conducting power, was a valuable protection against the condensing moisture, one of the greatest evils of the polar climate. The strengthening of her skeleton, her wooden frame-work, was admirable. Forward, from kelson to deck, was a mass of solid timber, clamped and dove-tailed with nautical wisdom, for seven feet from the cutwater ; so that we could spare a foot or two of our bows without springing a leak. To prevent the ice from forcing in her sides, she was built with an extra set of beams running athwart her length at in- tervals of four feet, and so arranged as to ship and un- ship at pleasure. From the Samson-posts, strong ra- diating timbers, called shores, diverged in every di- rection ; and oaken knees, hanging and oblique, were added wherever space permitted. Looking forward to the hampering ice fields, our rudder was so constructed that it could be taken on board and replaced again in less than four minutes. Our winch, capstan, and patent windlass were of the best and newest construction. A little hurricane-house amidships contained the one galley that cooked for all hands, and a large fun- nel of galvanized iron was connected with the chim- ney, in such a way that the heat circulating round it might supply us with melted snow. An armorer's forge, a full set of ice anchors, a couple of well-built \ IN NEW YORK HARBOR. 21 whale-boats, and three anthracite stoves, made part of the outfit. In a word, every thing ahout the two vessels bore the marks of intelligent foresight and unsparing ex- penditure. With the governmental arrangements we were not so fortunate. It seems to be inseparable from national as well as corporate administration, that it is less ef- fective than the action of individuals. Neither our own navy nor that of Great Britain attains results so cheaply, promptly, or well, as the commercial marine ; and it is a fact, only expressed from a sad conviction of its truth, that, in spite of the disciplined intelligence of many of our officers, the naval service of the public is regarded among our merchant brethren, and by the community they belong to, as non-progressive and old- fashioned in all that admits of comparison between the two. They excel us in equipment, and speed, and substantial economy. I can not, then, say much in praise of either the dis- patch or excellence of our strictly naval equipment. There were other things, besides the diminutive size of our brigs, to remind one of the days of the ancient mariners. Some that were matters of serious vexation at the moment may be forgotten now, or remembered with a smile. Our heterogeneous collection of obso- lete old carbines, with the impracticable ball-cartridges that accompanied them, gave us many a laugh before we got home. Thanks to the incessant labors of our commander, and the exhaustless liberality of Mr. Grin- nell, most of our deficiencies were made up, and we effected our departure in time for the navigation of Baffin's Bay. Our crews consisted of man-of-war's-men of various VESSELS AT ANCHOR ^ climes and habitudes, with constitutions most of them impaired by disease, or temporarily broken by the ex- cesses of shore life. But this original defect of mate- rial was in a great degree counteracted by the strict and judicious discipline of our executive officers. The crews proved in the end willing and reliable ; and, in the midst of trials which would have tested men of more pretension, were never found to waver. I re- cord, in the commencement of this narrative, how much respect and kindly feeling I, as one of their lit- tle body, entertain for their essential contribution to the ends of the expedition. Of my brother officers I can not say a word. I am so intimately bound to them by the kindly and un- broken associations of friend and mess-mate, that I shrink from any other mention ot them than such as my narrative requires. All told, our little corps of officers numbered four for each ship, including that non-effective limb, the doctor. Our two crews, with the aid of a cook and steward, counted twelve and thirteen ; giving a total of but thirty-three, whose dis- tribution and positions will be seen in the accompa- nying list. ADVANCE. Office s. Lieutenant Commanding — Edwin J. De Haven, commanding the expedition. Passed Midshipman — William H. Miirdaugh, acting master and first officer. Midshipman — William I. Lovell, second officer. E. K. Kane, M.D., passed assistant surgeon. Crew. Willi im Morton, Henry De Roque, John Blinn, Gibson Caruthers, Thomas Dunning, William West, Charles Berry, Louis Costa, William Holmes, Edward Wilson, William Benson, Edward C. Delano, James Smith. IN NEW YOkK HARBOR. 23 RESCUE. Officers. Ber^amin VreeUnd, M.D., asistan, surgeon Cr«M). L.SXlh'^Be^SntSL C "bI^'d "^f r ' "'"^" ""-• '^■"- S.e»art, Alexander Daly! H J WUe Ixo^aUa ■"""' ■'°'"'°°' "^ CHAPTER III. About one o'clock on the 2 2d of May, the asthmatic old steam-tug that was to be our escort to the sea moved slowly off. Our adieux from the Navy Yard were silent enough. We cost our country no compli- mentary gunpowder; and it was not until we got abreast of the city that the crowded wharves and shipping showed how much that bigger community sympathized with our undertaking. Cheers and hur- ras followed us till we had passed the Battery, and the ferry-boats and steamers came out of their track to salute us in the bay. The sky was overcast before we lost sight of the spire of old Trinity ; and by evening it had clouded over so rapidly, that it was evident we had to look for a dirty night outside. Off Sandy Hook .' h :; wind fresh- ened, and the sea grew so rough, that we were forced to part abruptly from the friends who had kept is THE GOOD-BY. Sff I company. We were eating and drinking in our little cabin, when the summons came for them to hurry up instantly and leap aboard the boat. The same heavy squall which made us cast loose so suddenly the cable of the steamer gathered upon us the night and the storm together ; and in a few minutes our transition was complete, from harbor life and home associations to the discomforts and hardships of our career. The difference struck me, and not quite pleasantly, as I climbed over straw and rubbish into the little pe- culium which was to be my resting-place for so long a time. The cabin, which made the homestead of four human beings, was somewhat less in dimensions than a penitentiary cell. There was just room enough for two berths of six feet each on a side ; and the area between, which is known to naval men as " the coun- try," seemed completely filled up with the hinged ta- ble, the four camp-stools, and the lockers. A hanging lamp, that creaked uneasily on its " gimbals," illus- trated through the mist some long rows of crockery shelves and the dripping step-ladder that led directly from the wet deck above. Every thing spoke of cheer- less discomfort and narrow restraint. By the next day the storm had abated. We were out of sight of land, but had not yet parted with the last of our well-wishers. A beautiful pilot-boat, the Washington, with Mr. Grinnell and his sons on board, continued to bear us company. But on the 25th we saw the white flag hoisted as the signal of farewell. We closed up our letters and took them aboard, drank healths, shook hands — and the wind being fair, were out of sight of the schooner before evening. I now began, with an instinct of future exigencies, to fortify my retreat. The only spot I could call my ^^AfciJHbi^jjMHI p. j g,.--^- 26 CREATURE COMFORTS. own was the berth I have spoken of before. It was a sort of bunk — a right-angled excavation, of six feet by two feet eight in horizontal dimensions, let into the side of the vessel, with a height of something less than a yard. My first care was to keep water out, my second to make it warm. A bundle of tacks, and a few yards of India-rubber cloth, soon made me an im- penetrable casing over the entire wood- work. Upon this were laid my Mormon wolf-skin and a somewhat ostentatious Astracan fur cloak, a relic of former travel. Two little wooden shelves held my scanty library ; a third supported a reading lamp, or, upon occasion, a Berzelius' argand, to be lighted when the dampness made an increase of heat necessary. My watch ticked from its particular nail, and a more noiseless monitor, my thermometer, occupied another. My ink-bottle was suspended, pendulum fashion, from a hook, and to one long string was fastened, like the ladle of a street- pump, my entire toilet, a tooth-brush, a comb, and a hair-brush. Now, when all these distributions had been happily accomplished, and I crawled in from the wet, and cold, and disorder of without, through a slit in the India- rubber cloth, to the very centre of my complicated re- sources, it would be hard for any one to realize the quantity of comfort which I felt I had manufactured. My lamp burned brightly ; little or no water distilled from the roof; my furs warmed me into satisfaction; and I realized that I was sweating myself out of my preliminary cold, and could temper down at pleasure the abruptness of my acclimation. From this time I began my journal. At first its entries were little else than a selfish record of personal discomforts. It was less than a fortnight since I was OFF NEWFOUNDLAND. 27 ie re ;s l1 is under the sky of Florida, looking out on the live oak with its bearded moss, and breathing the magnolia. Comfortable as my bunk was, compared with the deck, I was conscious that, on the whole, I had not bettered my quarters. But with the 7th of June came fine, bright, bracing weather. We were off" Newfoundland, getting along well over a smooth sea. We had been looking at the low hills near Cape Race, when, about noon, a great mass of whiteness was seen floating in the sunshine. It was our first iceberg. It was in shape an oblong cube, and about twice as large as Girard College. Its color v.'cis an unmixed, but not dazzling white : indeed, it seemed entirely coated with snow of such unsullied, unreflecting purity, that, as we passed within a hund- red yards of it, not a glitter reached us. It reminded me of a great marble monolith, only awaiting the chisel to stand out in peristyle and pediment a floating Par- thenon. There was something very imposing in the impassive tranquillity with which it received the lash- ings of the sea. The next day we were off" St. John's, surrounded by bergs, which nearly blockaded the harbor. A boat's crew of six brawny Saxon men rowed out nine miles to meet us, and offer their services as pilots. They were disappointed when we told them we were " bound for Greenland ;" but their hearty countenances bright- ened into a glow when we added, " in search of Sir John Franklin." We ran into an iceberg the night after, and carried away our jib-boom and martingale: it was our first adventure with these mountains of the sea. We thumped against it for a few seconds, but slid off" smoothly enough into open water afterward. Two •9 OFF NEWFOUNDLAND. days later, we met a scAoo/ of fin-backed whales, great, crude, wallowing sea-hogs, snorting out fountains of white spray, and tumbling, porpoise fashion, one over another about the vessel. My journal compares them to a huge old-fashioned India-rubber shoe. 1 \ < freat, IS of over them 4 i } i i;;i ART AY \ ' ^l rit;i**t Sue* i-x . 1lN HANK. 1 ,--- r -^:/.; ; J: 3 1 ■ T £ \.i t*{ --,■«- THE SUKKEBTOPPEN. CHAPTER IV. We were now drawing near to Davis's Straits, and the names which recorded our progress upon the charts were lull of Arctic associations. The Meta Incognita of Frobisher and the Cape of God's Mercy greeted us from the American coast : Cape Farewell was on our starboard quarter, and the " Land of Desolation" nearly abeam. A piece of drift-wood, a wanderer from the region of trees, passed us on its northward journey. The course of this drift-wood illustrates remarkably the benefi- cent adaptation of ocean currents to the wants of man. It is found abundantly on the lower coasts of Greenland, and, passing round them from the At- lantic, floats along the eastern shore of Baffin's Bay to the north, in opposition to the general tendency of its waters. The great counter-current, which in the North At- lantic borders the Gulf Stream, flowing from the north- \ w 30 DAVIS S STRAITS. east to the southwest, is deflected at Cape Farewell, and carried abruptly along the west coast of Greenland toward the north. Such is the observation of all the Danish settlers, strikingly confirmed by the accumula- tions of ice on the southeastern shores of the Penin- sula. This ice is evidently from the Spitzbergen Seas ; and at seasons of the year when the upper waters of Greenland are comparatively unobstructed, it com- pletely fills up the fiords of the southeastern coast. Thus the settlements of Baal's River and Julianshaab are for months of the summei in a state of blockade, owing to the inroads of the ice-fields from the south ; while at Holsteinberg and to the north the land is per- fectly accessible. The drift-wood is at first entangled with these frozen masses ; but there is every reason to believe it contin- ues its way onward long after the ice has left it. At Egedesminde, for instance, it is almost a staple com- modity ; though in the Bay of Disco, where the current is controlled by local causes, it is found only in some places. Our expedition met it as high as Storoe Isl- and, in latitude 71°. When it is remembered that this wood, coming from the Atlantic quarter, is the offcast of the great Siberian and American rivers, and that the distant bay to which it travels has its great discharge of water from the north, we can appreciate the importance of the reflex current in supplying these destitute shores with fuel and timber. Our enemies, the icebergs — for we had not yet learned to regard them as friends — made their appear- ance again on the 16th. One of them was an irreg- ular quadrangle, at least a quarter of a mile long in its presenting face. Its summit reminded me of the THE ARCTIC DAY. 31 crevasses seen in the Alpine glaciers. It was com- pletely cut up with jagged ridges and intervening hollows, through some of which the water of the sur- face drainage fell in little cascades. The night had now left us : we were in the contin- uous sunlight of the Arctic summer. I copy the en- tries from my journal of the 17th. "We are just 'turning in,' that is, seeking our den for sleep. It has heen a long day, but to me a God- send, so clear and fogless. My time-piece points to half past nine, and yet the sunshine is streaming down the little hatchway. "Our Arctic day has commenced. Last night we read the thermometer without a lantern, and the binnacle was not lighted up. To-day the sun sets after ten,' to rise again before two ; and during the bright twilight interval he will dip but a few degrees below the horizon. We have followed him for some time past in one scarcely varying track of brightness. The words night and day begin to puzzle me, as I rec- ognize the arbitrary character of the hour cycles that have borne these names. Indeed, I miss that soothing tranquillizer, the dear old darkness, and can hardly, as I give way to sleep, bid the mental good-night which travelers like to send from their darkened pillows to friends at home. " Only one iceberg was seen to-day. The sun was behind it, his low rays lighting up the sea with crim- son, and defining the black shadow of the berg like a silhouette. While we were watching it, one of those changes of equilibrium, so frequent in partially sub- merged ice, caused it first to tremble, and then to roll in long oscillating curves. At the same moment, myr- iads of birds, which had roosted unseen in its inhos- I I! n ZONES OF MIST. pitable clefts, rose into the line of sunshine, and flew in circles round their unstable resting-place." Our little vessel pursued her way without drawback, heading, as nearly as the wind permitted, for our ap- pointed rendezvous with tb^ Rescue. The zones of discolored sea, which we met upon entering Baffin's Bay, still continued, thoagli less frequent than further to the south. Their color varied from a chocolate to a muddy green, and it seemed as if their general di- rection was governed by some uniform cause not di- rectly connected with superficial currents. Of eight belts which I noted, five had a marked trend from the northeast to the southwest. It struck me as remark- able, too, that the movements of the acalephai beneath the surface were seldom in the axis of the stream. They crossed it obliquely. May it not be that such belts of discoloration as are visible at the surface are merely protruding ridges of great, submerged areas ? My meteorological abstract shows for this period a comfortless alternation of fogs, scanty sunshine, and drizzling rain. These fogs extended generally over a considerable surface, and, though not accompanied by such changes of wind or temperature as to attract no- tice, had no doubt some relation to the fishing shoals over which we were passing. Sometimes, however, we entered continuous streams of mist, not extending higher than our cross trees, and emerged from them again so suddenly as to make me ascribe them to local refrigeration induced by the neighborhood of ice. The effect of these fogs upon the diffusion of light was far from pleasant. Our now nominal twi light reminded me of a bright glare, subdued by a ground glass screen: our eyes suffered more than during the unobstructed sunshine. THE SUKKERTOPPEN. 33 On the 20th an unknown schooner came within the same dome of mist with ourselves. We had not seen a sail since leaving Newfoundland, and the sight pleased us. We showed our colors, but the little craft declined a reciprocation. On the same day, jutting up above the misty hori- zon, we sighted the mountainous coast of Greenland. It was a bold antiphrasis that gave such a vernal title to this birth-place of icebergs. Old Crantz, the quaint- est, and, in many things, the most exact of the mis- sionary authorities, says that it got the name from the Norsemen, because it was greener than Iceland — a poor compliment, certainly, to the land of the Geysers ! We first made the coast near Sukkertoppen, a re- markable peak, called so, perhaps, because its form is not unlike that of a sugar-loaf, perhaps because its top is whitened with the snow. Mountains that mark their unbroken profile on the distant sky are very apt to suggest these fanciful remembrances to the naviga- tor ; and it is probably this which makes their names so frequently characteristic. This peak is a noted landmark, and gives its name to the entire district it overlooks. Our own observa- tions confirm those of Graah and Ross, which place it in latitude 65° 22' north, longitude 53° 05' west. It may be seen under ordinary circumstances many miles out to sea. We were favored in our view of the Sukkertoppen. We had approached it through an atmosphere of fog ; and when the morning of the 23d gave us a clear sky, we found ourselves close upon the beach, so close that we could see the white surf mingling with the snow streaks. A more rugged and inhospitable region never met my eye. Its unyielding expression differed from C ^g^^ 34 THE SUKKERTOPPEN. any that belongs to the recognized desert, the Sahara, or the South American Arridas ; for in these tropical wastes there is rarely wanting some group of Euphor- bia or stunted Gum Arabic trees, to qualify by their contrast the general barrenness. It was startling to see, beneath a smiling sun and upon the level of the all-fertilizing sea, an entire country without an ap- parent trace of vegetable life. The hills had the peculiar configuration that be- longs to the metamorphic rocks. Their summits were gnarled and torn ; and in the immediate foreground, some gneissoid spurs of lesser elevation were so round- ed as to resemble gigantic bowlders. The axis of the chain seemed to incline rudely from the N.N.W. to the S.S.E. Its sides were nearly destitute of those minor valleys that characterize the more recent deposits. Yet, even at fifteen miles distance, I could remark the clean abrupt edge of the fractures, which creased their otherwise symmetrical outline. Over these hills the snow lay in patches, occupy- ing principally the protected and dependent grooves. But, with the exception of a few escarped faces, too pre- cipitous to retain it, the various inclinations of the sur- face appeared to be covered equally, without regard to their exposure toward different points of the compass. Far off to the south and east, the glacier showed its characteristic pinnacle. i'' ENTKRINO DISCO. CHAPTER V. On the 24th, the sun did not pass below the horizon. We had already begun to realize that power of adap- tation to a new state of things, which seems to be a distinguishing characteristic of man. We marked our day by its routine. Though the temptation to avoid a regular bed-hour was sometimes irresistible, yet sev- en bells always found us washing by turns at our one tin wash-basin : at eight bells we breakfasted ; at eight again we called to grog; two hours afterward we met at dinner ; and at six o'clock in the afternoon we came with laudable regularity to our salt junk and coffee. Our daily reckoning kept us advised of the recur- ring noonday, the meridian starting-point of sea-life ; and our indefatigable master had his unvarying hour for winding up and comparing the chronometers. It is hard not to mark the regulated steps of time, where such a man-of-war routine prevails ; and I can scarce- ly understand the necessity for the twenty-four hours' IJ1 I .i 36 DISCO. Ill registering dial-plate, which Parry and others carried with them, to avert the disastrous consequences of a twelve hours' skip in their polar reckonings. We had now heen a month and a day out from New York. Our immediate destination was the Crown Prince Islands, more generally known hy the misno- mer of the Whale Fish. This little group is situated in the Bay of Disco, thirty miles south of the island of that name JIt is the largest of three similar groups, and seems to he part of a ledge extending from the southern cape of Disco to the Bunke Islands. Sir Edward Parry surveyed the entrance to them in 1821, and determined their position very carefully ; since which time, from the facilities which they offer for rating chronometers, they have hecome an established resort for whalers and expedition ships. Knowing nothing of their character or resources, we had looked forward to them wiih that sort of expectation which sea-tossed men attach to port. We were not sorry then, when, on the 24th of June, in the midst of the usual combination of cold rain and fogs, we sighted some lov/ hilly rocks, about which the sea-swallow and kittiwake were whirling in endless rounds. As we entered the narrow passage which formed our anchorage, we looked in vain for indications of life. Water- worn gneiss, intersected by huge injec- tions of feldspar, made up the entire prospect. To the eye every thing was inorganic ruggedness. In one or two places, water distilled in drops over the rocks, and found its way to the sea ; but there was no veg- etation to define its course, not even the green con- ferva, that obscure vitality which follows water at home. It was only after landing that I became aware that these apparently destitute islands contributed '^k. A KAYACK. 37 n one rocks, veg- con- er at ware Ibuted their part to the varied and peculiar flora of the Arc- tic regions. The entrance to the anchorage from the southwest is between two islands, and the harbor, which is com- pletely sheltered from ice, is formed, as will be seen from the sketch, by the conjunction of a third. On turning the corner, we suddenly came upon a wood- en store-house for oil and skins ; and opposite to it, a clumsy-looking collier, moored stem and stern by hawsers leading to rocks on either side of the channel. Soon after, we were boarded by Lieutenant Power, of the British navy, and from him we learned that the clumsy craft was the Emma Eugenia, a provision transport chartered by the Admiralty, and that in less than a week she would take our letters to England. We learned, too, that the British relief squadron under Commodore Austin had sailed the day before for the regions of search. They had left England on the 6th of May, or seventeen days before our own de- parture from New York. "While we were standing upon deck, waiting for the boat to be manned which was to take us to the shore, something like a large Newfoundland dog was seen moving rapidly through the water. As it ap- proached, we could see a horn-like prolongation bulg- ing from its chest, and every now and then a queer movement, as of two flapping wings, which, acting alternately on either side, seemed to urge it through the water. Almost immediately it was alongside of us, and then we realized what was the much talked- of kayack of the Greenlanders. It was a canoe-shaped frame- work, carefully and en- tirely covered with tensely-stretched seal-skins, beau- tiful in model, and graceful as the nautilus, to which ) , ife 38 KAYACKS. it has been compared. With the exception of an ellip- tical hole, nearly in its centre, to receive its occupant, it was both air and water tight. Into this hole was wedged its human freight, a black-locked Esquimaux, enveloped in an undressed seal-skin, drawn tightly around the head and wrists, and fastened, where it met the kayack, about an elevated rim made for the purpose, over which it slipped like a bladder over the lip of a jar. The length of the kayack was about eighteen feet, tapering fore and aft to an absolute point. The beam was but twenty-one inches. When laden, as we saw it, the top or deck was at its centre but two inches by measurement above the water-line. The waves often broke completely over it. A double-bladed oar, grasped in the middle, was the sole propeller. It was wonderful to see how rapidly the will of the kayacker communicated itself to his little bark. One impulse seemed to control both. Indeed, even for a careful observer, it was hard to say where the boat ended or the man commenced ; the rider seemed one with his frail craft, an amphibious realization of the centaur, or a practical improvement upon the merman. These boats, not only as specimens of beautiful na- val architecture, but from their controlling influence upon the fortunes of their owners, became to me sub- jects of careful study. I will revert to them at an- other time. As we rowed to the shore, crowds of them followed us, hanging like Mother Carey's chickens in our wake, and just outside the sweep of our oars. We landed at a small cove formed by two protrud- ing masses of coarsely granular feldspar. Some forty odd souls, the men, women, and children of the entire settlement, received us. The men were in the front :? !':! l — i W l WJUW HII THE LANDING. 39 il na- lence sub- It an- them ins in r * krud- 1 forty mtire front rank ; the women, with their infants on their backs, came next ; and behind them, in yelling phalanx, the children. Still further back were crowds of dogs, seated on their haunches, and howling in unison with their masters. The one feeling which, I venture to say, pervaded us all, to the momentary exclusion of every thing else, was disgust. Offal was strewn around without regard to position ; scabs of drying seal-meat were spread over the rocks ; oil and blubber smeared every thing, from the dogs' coats to their masters' ; animal refuse tainted all we saw ; and we afterward found, while botaniz- ing among the snow valleys, bones of the seal, wal- rus, and whale, buried in the mosses. But if filth characterized the open air, what was it in the habitations ! One poor family had escaped to their summer tent, pitched upon an adjacent rock that overlooked the sea. Within a little area of six feet by eight, I counted a father, mother, grandfather, and four children, a tea-kettle, a r'lde box, two rifles, and a litter of puppies. This island is used by the Danes as a sort of fishing station, where one European, generally a carpenter or cooper, presides over a few families of Esquimaux, who live by the chase of the seal. This functionary had a hut built of timber, which we visited. Except the oil-house, which we had observed before, it was the only wooden edifice. The natives, if the amalgamation of Dane and Es- quimaux can be called such, spend their summer in the reindeer tent, their winters in the semi-subterra- nean hut. These last have not been materially im- proved since the days of Egede and Fabricius. A square inclosure of stone or turf is raftered over with III III ■ ."I li ill lii 'i I ill 40 THE DWELLNGS. drift-wood or whalebones, and then roofed in with earth, skins, mosses, and broken-up kayack frames. One small aperture of eighteen inches square, cover- ed with the scraped intestines of the seal, forms the window ; and a long, tunnel-like entry, opening to the south, and not exceeding three feet in height, leads to a skin-covered door. Inside, perched upon an ele- vated dais or stall, with an earthen lamp to establish the "focus," several families reside together. I have seen as many as four in an apartment of sixteen feet square. Some of these huts were garnished with little tin- seled pictures, and looked as if their inmates were not insensible to the decorative vanities of other lands. Others were a very caricature of discomfort — mouldy, dank, and fetid ; their rude ceilings distilling filthy water, and sometimes covered with introverted grasses {poa Danica), which had originally formed part of the outer thatching, but now intruded upon the greater warmth of the interior. I had but a few hours to examine this group. It evidently belongs to that class of rocky islets known to the Danes as "skerries," skiers, which are the not unfrequent appendages of a primary coast ridge. "Well-defined gneiss, with intersecting veins of coarse red feldspar, was the basis material, the quartzine ele- ment greatly predominating. From several rude sec- tions, I made the dip of the strata to the northeast to be at an angle of 25" or 30°. . with rames. cover- QS the to the , leads \.n ele- ablish [ have in feet le tin- re not lands, ouldy, filthy frasses of the rreater p. It :nown le not ridge, coarse le ele- ie sec- )SLSt to ,til CHART OF THE WHALE-FISH ISLANDS. in Hii . .tti i^r^» P^-i" - inspector's house, uevely. CHAPTER VI. Our commander intended to remain at the Crown Prince Islands no longer than was absolutely neces- sary for our consort, the Rescue, to rejoin us; but, upon reviewing our hurried preparation for the hard- ships of the winter, he determined, with characteristic forethought, to send a boat party to the settlement of Lievely, on the neighboring island of Disco, for the double purpose of collecting information and purchas- ing a stock of furs. The execution of this duty he de- volved upon me. We started on the 27th, Mr. Lovell, myself, an Es- quimaux pilot, and a crew of five men. As we rowed along the narrow channels before we emerged from this rocky group, I observed for the first time that extreme transparency of the water which has so often been alluded to by authors as characteristic of the Po- 44 LIEVELY. 4 1 1 K < lar Seas. At the depth of ten fathoms every feature of the bottom was distinctly visible. Even for one who has seen the crimson dulses and coral groves of the equatorial zones, this arctic growth had its rival beauties. Enormous bottle-green fronds were waving their ungainly lengths above a labyrinth- ine jungle of snake-like stems ; and far down, where the claws of the fucus had grappled the round gneis- ses, great glaring lime patches shone like upset white- wash upon a home grassplot. It was a rough sail outside. The bergs were nu- merous ; and the heavy sea way and eddying current, sweeping like a mill-race along the southern face of the island, made us barely able to double the entrance to the little harbor. We did double it, however, and by a sudden transition found ourselves in a quiet land- locked basin, shadowed by wall-like hills. Snow, as usual, covered the lower slopes ; but, cheer- ful in spite of its cold envelope, rose a group of rude houses, mottling the sky with the comfortable smoke of their huge chimneys. Among the most conspicu- ous of these was one antique and gable fronted, with timbers so heavy and besmeared with tar, that it seemed as if built from the stranded wreck of a vessel. Little man-of-war port-holes, recessed into its wooden sides, and a jflag-staff, as tall as the mast of a jolly- boat, gave it dignity. This was the house of the " Royal Inspector of the Northern portions of Davis's Straits;" whose occupant — well and kindly remem- bered by all of us — no less than the royal inspector himself, stood awaiting our landing. There are but two inspectorates for the Danish coast of Greenland : one termed the Southern, whose cen- tre is Holsteinberg; the other the Northern, whose MR. OLRIK. 45 Javiss imem- )ector I coast ceii- rhose seat is Lievely. The representatives of these are ed- ucated men, hard-working and responsible, ruling dic- tatorially the entire affairs of that somewhat singu- lar monopoly, the Royal Greenland Company. The official labor of these exiled servants is very heavy. They boat or sledge it from post to post ; and not only settle all the squabbles, white, half-breed, and Esqui- maux, but audit all the accounts, and keep up between the little settlements writing enough to rule a realm. Except that every where forlorn peripatetic, the doc- tor, no one has a more toilsome office. The incumbent, Mr. Olrik, was an accomplished and hospitable gentleman, well read in the natural sci- ences, and an acute observer. In a few minutes we were seated by a ponderous stove, and in a few more discussing a hot Eider duck and a bottle of La- tour. Upon commencing my negotiations as to furs, the object of my journey, I learned that the reindeer do not abound on the island of Disco as in the days of Crantz and Egede ; though to the south, about Bunke Land, and the fiords around Holsteinberg, and to the north of the Waigat, they are still very numerous. Nevertheless, by drumming up the resources of the settlement, we obtained a supply of second-hand late summer skins ; and with these, aided by the seal, soon fitted out a wardrobe. The most popular article of attire was the karah, a "jumper" or close jacket, slipping on like a shirt, and hooded like the cowl of a Franciscan monk ; but the seal-skin boot, a water-tight buskin, ingeniously crimped, so as to do away with a seam, was in great request. Thanks to Mr. Olrik, who actually robbed himself to supply our wants, we were eminently sue- I i m tl; 1 'II! 46 DISCO. cessful. We felt that we could now look forward to the winter with comparative trust. ESQUIMAUX HUT. Of Disco, save its Esquimaux huts, its oil-house, its smith-shop, its little school, and its gubernatorial mansion, I can say but little. Its statistics, vital, po- litical, or economic, would have little interest for the readers of this narrative. But my limited florula, gath- ered as I made a few hasty walks under the guidance of our hospitable and intelligent friend, the governor, may be worth a notice. In a ravine, back of the settlement, the washings of the melted snows had accumulated, in little es- calades or terraces, a scanty mould, rich with Arctic growths. The mosses, which met the lichens at a sort of neutral ground between rock and soil, were particu- larly rich. So sodden were they with the percolating waters, that you sank up to your ankles. Nestling curiously under their protecting tufts rose a complete parterre of tinted flowers, consisting of Gentians, Ra- nunculus, Ledum, Draba, Potentilla, Saxifrages, Pop- py, and Sedums. The Arctic turf is unequaled : nothing in the trop- J I i *! 1 DISCO. 47 ;rard to l-house, latorial ital, po- for the a, gath- idance vernor, Lshings Itle es- Aictic ^ort of irticu- plating ?stling iplete \s, Ra- Pop. trop. ics approaches it for specific variety, and in density it far exceeds its Alpine congener. Two birches (Betula alba and B. nana), three willows (Salix lanata, S.glau- ca, and S. herbacea), that noble heath, the Andromeda {A. tetragona), the whortle-berry {Vaccimum vitis-idea and V. uliginosum), the crow-berry {Empetrum ni- grum), and a Potentilla, were, in one instance, all wreathed together in a matted sod, from whose intri- cate net- work, rising within an area of a single foot, I counted no less than six species of flowering plants. The appearance of such turf, where the tree growths of more favored regions have become pronate and vine- like, and crowding individuals of non-opposing fami- lies of flowering plants fill up the intervals with a car- pet pattern of rich colors, might puzzle a painter. It reminded me of Humboldt's covering with his cloak the vegetation of four continents. This little port of Lievely or Godhavn is on a gneis- soid spur, offsetting from the larger mass of Disco. I subjoin the few observations which I was able to make on the physical characters of this island. Disco is the largest circumnavio-able island on the coast of Greenland. Its long di noter is from the northwest to southeast, and its eastern edge is in a continuous line with the coast to the north and south. It is rendered insular by a large strait, called the Waigat, which inosculates with the bay. Its general geognostical structure is determined by a great green-stone dike which crosses its entire length, and is continued conformably across the Waigat. As nearly as I could arrive at it, the general trend of this injection was to the E.N.E., which, when afterward compared with the northern Labrador and Greenland coast, seemed to indicate a correspondence with the . 'Ill, , 'lie , i ■v. , 'it. I ! II' 48 DISCO. line of uplift of the Lake Superior traps. To the southeast, it cuts a ledge of syenitic gneiss, leaving a knobbed peninsula, abounding in low islands and har- bors, on one of which is the little settlement of Lievely. I had not many hours to devote to this rude recon- noissance, much of which was aided by bird's-eye views from the adjacent peaks. Commencing at the southeastern end of the island, and walking to the N.N.W., I met abundant schistose material, inclining to the northeast at an angle of 25°. Against this the dike cut cleanly, with little adjacent alteration, ris- ing up from its long, conoidal slopes of detritus into escarped terraces nearly 1400 feet high. These were like the Hindoo Ghauts, as I had seen them about Kandalah ; they had the same monumental structure, the ssbm.e plateau-fonaed summit, the same sublime ra- vines. How strangely this crust we wander over as- serts its identity through all the disguises of climate ! Some five miles further to the east, the injection had caused more disturbance. My walk upon this line was soon varied with chloritic and slaty indica- tions ; and, where these met the traps, they were in- terfused with sandstones, and abounding with coarse- ly vesicular amygdaloids. In this transitional belt I picked up some fine zeolites. I noticed, too, nodular epidotes in profusion. So much for Disco. Paul Zachareus, long-haired, swarthy, Christian Paul, said that the wind was fair : Lovell, like a good sailor, exercised his authority over the doctor : the furs were packed, my sketches and wet hortus siccus properly combined, and we started again for our little brig. We left the Whale-fish Islands on the 29th, in com- pany with the Rescue. On the 30th we doubled the .•iltA 1141 DISCO. 49 'o the iring a id har- evely. recon- I's-eye at the to the jlining tiis the m, ris- is into e were about ucture, ime ra- iver as- limate ! action m this indica- ere in- coarse- beltl odular Laired, IS fair : [y over js and parted southwest cape of Disco, and stood to the northward, through a crowd of noble icebergs. On the first of July, early in the morning, we encountered our first field-ice. From this date really commenced the char- acteristic voyaging of a Polar cruise. D LIEVELY. corn- led the •i nil! 'M E 'I < . nil omenak's fiord. CHAPTER VII. It will be readily seen, that of the voyages to Lan- caster Sound, or indeed any of the northwestern seas of Baffin's Bay, the transit of the middle ice is the essential feature. Its several "crossings" have been divided into the South, the Middle, and the Northern passages. By the first of these, vessels reach the American side south of 68°. Any passage between this parallel and 74" is called a "Middle" passage; while the " Northern," which, early in the season, is the almost universal track, skirts the coast of Green- land, and, passing the accumulated shore ices of Mel- ville Bay, bears to the westward through a compara- tively iceless area, known as the North Water. The Southern passage is not unfrequently resorted to for the fisheries of the American coast. It is the al- ternative of the whalers late in the season, when they have failed to reach their western cruising grounds by the North Water. Instances of the Middle passage are rare. Old le- gends, preserved at Uppernavik, speak vaguely of a period when a direct communication existed between THE MIDDLE ICE. Oi ;o Lan- rn seas 1 is the re been ^rthern ch the Btween issage ; ison, is Grreen- )f Mel- npara- )ld le. of a tween that settlement and Pond's Bay ; but Parry was the first modern navigator to attempt it successfully. In his voyage of 1819, he entered the Middle Ice on the 21st of July, and emerged from it on the 28th. He I 'ied the experiment again in the July of 1824; but, -^ 'cer many weeks' delay, was forced to turn his head to the northward, and did not reach the open water of the west till the 9th of September. Other instances have since occurred of like success ; but among the whalers, who possess an admirable tact in ice navigation, it is looked upon with distrust. Later in the season, when the disintegration of the middle barrier has advanced, and the predominant winds have opened it into transverse " leads," the pas- sage, though far from easy or certain, is more practica- ble. It is by the "North Water," however, that vessels have generally approached the highway of Arctic search ; and, in order to reach this, a mysterious re- gion of terrors must be traversed — Melville Bay — notorious in the annals of the whalers for its many disasters. After the voyage of Sir John Ross in 1818, the fish- ing fleet, which had even then nearly driven the whale beyond the coasts of Greenland, began to follow him to the more western waters of the bay. Vessels reach- ing the other side were at that time almost sure of a cargo ; and it was not uncommon to see more than thirty sail, of many nations, English, French, and Bal- tic, awaiting at one time a favoring opportunity for this dreaded transit. It was called running the gauntlet, and the opening scene of the exploits was generally known as the "Devil's Nip." It was for this region, then, we were making when "ir !l: iilll: lilli: J' liii. I n 02 THE MIDDLE ICE. we first fell in with the ice. It was off'Haroe Island, and consisted probably of a tongue or process from the main pack I have just described. Such interrup- tions are not uncommon earlier in the season, and the whalers sometimes avoid them by passing to the in- ner or inshore side of the island. We learned after- ward to regard such ice as hardly worthy of note ; but as this was the first time we had met it, I have thought it best to quote literally from my journal. "Juli/ 1. This morning was called on deck at 4 A.M. by our commander. " About two hundred yards to the windward, form- ing a lee-shore, was a vast plane of undulating ice, in nowise differing from that which we see in the Dela- ware when mid-winter is contending with the ice- boats. There was the same crackling, and grinding, and splashing, but the indefinite extent — an ocean in- stead of a river — multiplied it to a din unspeakable ; and with it came a strange undertone accompaniment, a not discordant drone. This was the floe ice ; per- haps a tongue from the * Great Pack,' through which we are now every day expecting to force our way. A great number of bergs, of shapes the most simple and most complicated, of colors blue, white, and earth- stained, were tangled in this floating field. Such, however, was the inertia of the huge masses, that the sheet ice piled itself up about them as on fixed rocks. " The sea immediately around, saving the ground- swell, was smooth as a mill-pond ; but it was studded over with dark, protruding little globules, about the size of hens' eggs, producing an effect like the dimples of so many overgrown rain-drops fallen on the water. These, as I afterward found, were rounded fragments of transparent and fresh- water ice, the debris and de- :V'ti' THE MIDDLE ICE. 53 island, 3 from terrup- nd the the in- l after- e; but lought 4 A.M. , form- ice, in 3 Dela- he ic3- inding, sean in- bkable ; liment, ! ; per- which ay. A )le and earth- Such, lat the rocks, round- udded it the ^mples water, ments Ind de- tritus of the bergs. We sailed along this field about ten miles. "At 9 P.M. the fogs settled around us, and we en- tered again upon an area full of floating masses of berg. As it was impossible to avoid them, they gave us some heavy thumps. Taking our main-mast for a guide, we estimated the height of the larger bergs at about two hundred feet. "At 11 we cleared the floes, and, favored with a free wind, found ourselves nearly opposite Omenak's Fiord, a noted seat of iceberg growth and distribution." There is a something in the atmosphere of these latitudes that makes the estimate of distance falla- cious. How far we were from land I could not tell ; but we saw distinctly the configuration of the hills and the deep recesses of the fiord. The sun, although nearing midnight, was five degrees above the horizon, and threw its rich coloring over the snow. Many large bergs were moving in procession from the fiord, those in the foreground in full sunshine, those in the distance obscured by the shadow of their parent hills. Omenak's Fiord, known as Jacob's Bight, is one of the largest of those strange clefts, which, penetra- ting the mountain range at right angles to its long axis, form so majestic a feature of Greenland scenery. Its inland termination has never been reached ; and it is supposed by Scoresby to be continuous with the large sounds, which on a corresponding parallel (70° 40') enter from the eastern coast.* This idea of an inosculation, or even more direct connection between the waters of Baflin's Bay and the * Although Graah expresses a doubt whether this sound, which, it seems, was discovered by Boon as far back as 1761, is any thing more than a large bay, I incline strongly to the view, just expressed, of that excellent observer, Scoresby. ir.ii' 54 OMENAK S FIORD. Atlantic, is entertained by many of the more intelli- gent Danish and Esquimaux residents. It is certain that on the Atlantic coast a deep sea current drives the icebergs seaward; and strong tidal currents on the Greenland side are spoken of by the Danes. The Esquimaux, too, whose information, however, must be received with caution, assert the existence of a well- marked indraft. All this points vaguely to an interior water connection between the two coasts. Both Ovinde Oerme and Omenak's Fiord, the two largest indentations of the bay, form at their mouths a complicated archipelago ; a fact that lends, at least, a certain support to Sir Charles Geiseke's opinion, that the so-called peninsula of Greenland is a congeries of islands, cemented by interior ice. I will mention at another portion of my narrative the exceptions which I take to a full acceptation of this view. But a stronger indication of the direct connection between this strait and the Atlantic may be derived from the geognostic- al characters of the two coasts. The southern side of the large opening before us rose in a green-stone escalade, a series of true trachyt- ic terraces, losing themselves in the distance ; while on the northern side the formation was evidently pri- mary and schistose. This corresponds with the ar- rangement described by Scoresby on the Atlantic coast. I had observed the gi-een-stone extending in un- broken continuity from the southern cape of Disco (C. Kearsak) across the Waigat; and though my sources of information were limited, I had little doubt but that it passed along the promontory of Rittenbank to the so-called main, abutting throughout upon waters of the sound. A similar range is described by Scores- OMENAK S FIORD. 66 by, nearly opposite on the Atlantic side, as two thou- sand six hundred feet high, "forming ledges not unlike steps, on a gigantic scale," evidently a continuation of the same dioritic series ; while the syenites and strat- ified gneisses to the north have their corresponding rel- ative positions on hoth coasts. It is up this fiord, prohably in the chasms of the trap, that those enormous glaciers accumulate which have made Jacob's Bight, perhaps, the most remarka- ble locality in the genesis of icebergs on the face of the globe. It is not uncommon to have the shore here completely blocked in by these gigantic monsters : I myself counted in one evening, the 3d of July, no less than two hundred and forty of primary magnitude, from the decks of our vessel. The inquiries I wees enabled to make may perhaps throw some light on the causes of this excessive accumulation. t*a I 'Bill'! i' '■; I' III'; r) M I iii CHAPTER VIII. The glaciers which abut upon this sound are prob- ably offsets from an interior mer de glace. The val- leys or canals which conduct these offsets were de- scribed to me as singularly rectilinear and uniform in diameter, a fact which derives ready confirmation from the known configuration of a dioritic country. Now the protrusion of these abutting faces into the waters of the sound has been a subject of observation among both Danes and Esquimaux. Places about Jacob's Harbor, remembered as the former seats of habitation, are now overrun by glaciers ; and Mr. Olrik told me of a naked escarpment of ice, twelve hundred feet high, which he had seen protruding nearly half a mile into the sea. Crantz and Graah describe similar protrusions to the south. In the conditions which I have just de- scribed, of a rectilinear duct of unvarying diameter. FORMATION OF ICEBERGS. 57 )rm m from Now '^aters long Lcob's ition, leof into b to de- iter, and a parent source of great elevation and extent, we have an explanation of the excessive advance of these glaciers. But the existence of an interior reservoir or fountain head, as the source from which this protrud- ing supply is furnished, has an interesting bearing upon Forbes' beautifully simple views of a viscous movement. That such a movement takes place in the Green- land glaciers, I have, as I hope to show hereafter, ample reasons for believing ; and, although the abso- lute rate of this advance has never been a subject of educated observation, it would not surprise me if the gelid flow of these glacial rivers exceeded during the summer season that of the Alps. The materials thus afforded in redundant profusion are rapidly converted into icebergs. The water at the bases of these clifls is very deep — I have in my note- book well-established instances of three hundred fath- oms ; and the pyramidal structure of the trap is such as to favor a precipitous coast line. The glacier, thus exposed to a saline water base of a temperature above the freezing point, and to an undermining wave ac- tion, aided by tides and winds, is of course speedily detached by its own gravitation. I am enabled to give a perfectly reliable account of this rarely witnessed sight, the creation of an iceberg by debacle or ava- lanche. Up this fiord, at an island known in the Esquimaux tongue as Ekarasak, there lived a deputy assistant of the Royal Greenland Company, a worthy man by the name of Grundeitz. It seems that the deep water of Omenak's Fiord is resorted to for halibut fishing, an operation which is carried on at the base of the cliffs with very long lines of whalebone. While Mr. Grun- ll » ^:t i^i ... ! i 1 11 hi. . !^' It iij- 1' 1. „i. , i;: i' '! ' ■ li ' 1, '*i f i:.i' :ti" :l i; :;i:!l ill' 58 FORMATION OF ICEBERGS. '"■■* deitz, in a jolly-boat belonging to the company, was fishing up the fiord, his attention was called to a large number of bearded seals, who were sporting about be- neath one of the glaciers that protruded into the bay. While approaching for the purpose of a shot, he heard a strange sound, repeated at intervals like the ticking of a clock, and apparently proceeding from the body of the ice. At the same time the seal, which the mo- ment before had been perfectly unconcerned, disap- peared entirely, and his Esquimaux attendants, prob- ably admonished by previous experience, insisted upon removing the boat to a greater distance. It was well they did so ; for, while gazing at the white face of the glacier at a distance of about a mile, a loud ex- plosive detonation, like the crack of a whip vastly ex- aggerated, reached their ears, and at the same instant, with reverberations like near thunder, a great mass fell into the sea, obscuring every thing in a cloud of foam and mist. The undulations which radiated from this great centre of displacement were fearful. Fortunately for Mr. Grundeitz, floating bodies do not change their position very readily under the action of propagated waves, 8,nd the boat, in consequence, remained outside the grinding fragments ; but the commotion was in- tense, and the rapid succession of huge swells such as to make the preservation of the little party almost mi- raculous. The detached mass slowly adjusted itself after some minutes, but it was nearly an hour before it attained its equilibrium. It then floated on the sea, an ice- berg.* • This title is applied by many authors to ice masses either on shore or at sea. I restrict it to detached ice, in contradistinction to the glacier or ice in situ. i i ll:l i l» i ICEBERGS. 59 great tely for their kgated )utside ras in- ich as fst mi- some lained ice- le or at linaitu. The mass thus detached appeared, from the descrip- tion of my informant, to be a nearly complete parallel- opipedon. It measured, by rude estimate, three hund- red yards on its exposed face, by about one hundred and fifty in breadth ; its height above the sea " greater than that of our main-mast." The leading circumstances of this narrative were confirmed in our own after experience in Melville Bay. Disruptions are witnessed not unfrequently in icebergs after they are afloat, and sometimes on a majestic scale. Instances of the debacle are more rare. Juli/ 2. The next day we passed this fiord and stood on our course beyond an imposing headland, known on the charts as Cape Cranstown, through a sea unobstructed by floe ice, but abounding in bergs. In the afternoon the wind subsided into a mere cat's-paw, and we were enabled to visit several of the icebergs. I am amused with the embarrassments which my journal exhibits in the effort to describe them. Certain it is that no objects ever impressed me more. There was something about them so slum- berous and so pure, so massive yet so evanescent, so majestic in their cheerless beauty, without, after all, any of the salient points which give character to de- scription, that they almost seemed to me the mate- rial for a dream, rather than things to be definitely painted in words. m 'I''! I 'I i)i>{ i^i;!?i ii> ill k ' liii •y; iiii| 'i||l|ri'. '"'M^ HI ' 1 ;'•! ■I : 11 60 ICEBERGS. The first that we approached was entirely inaccess- ible. Our commander, in whose estimates of distance and magnitude I have great confidence, made it nearly a mile in circumference. With the exception of one rugged corner, it was in shape a truncated wedge, and its surface a nearly horizontal plateau. The next pre- sented a well-marked characteristic, which, as I ob- served it afterward in other examples, enabled me to follow the history of the berg throughout all its changes of equilibrium : it was a rectilinear groove at the water- line, hollowed out by the action of the waves. These " grooves" were seen in all the bergs which had remained long in one position. They were some- times crested with fantastic serratures, and their tun- nel-like roofs were often pendant with icicles. On a grounded berg the tides may be accurately guaged by these lines, and, in the berg before me, a number of them, converging to a point not unlike the rays of a fan, pointed clearly to those changes of equilibrium which had depressed one end and elevated the other. A third was a monster ice mountain, at least two hundred feet high, irregularly polyhedral in shape, and its surface diversified with hill and dale. Upon this one we landed. I had never appreciated before the glorious variety of iceberg scenery. The sea at the base of this berg was dashing into hollow caves ICEBERGS. 61 of pure and intense ultramarine ; and to leeward the quiet water lit the eye down to a long, spindle-shaped root of milky whiteness, which seemed to dye the sea as it descended, until the blue and white were mixed in a pale turkois. Above, and high enough to give an expression akin to sublimity, were bristling crags. This was the first berg that I had visited. I was struck with its peculiar opacity, the result of its gran- ulated structure. I had incidentally met with the remark of Professor Forbes, that "the floating icebergs of the Polar Seas are for the most part of the nature of neve ;" and, while I was at a distance, had looked upon the substance of the mass before me as identical with the " firn," or consolidated snow of the Alpine gla- ciers. I now found cause, for the first time, to change this opinion. The ice of this berg, although opaque and vesicular, was true glacier ice, having the fracture, lustre, and other external characters of a nearly homo- geneous growth. The same authority, in speaking of these bergs, declares that " the occurrence of true ice is comparatively rare, and is justly dreaded by ships." From this impression, which was undoubtedly derived from the appearance of a berg at a distance, I am also compelled to dissent. The iceberg is true ice, and is always dreaded by ships. Indeed, though modified by climate, and especially by the alternation of day and night, the Polar glacier must be regarded as strictly atmospheric in its increments, and not essentially dif- fering from the glacier of the Alps. The general color of a berg I have before compared to frosted silver. But when its fractures are very ex- tensive, the exposed faces have a very brilliant lustre. Nothing can be more exquisite than a fresh, cleanly- 'I')'' ' &^ .'m , if I: ■■''' :'1i ''11 ■"■' 1 i'l' ■! '■«■ ?i!! 62 ICEBERGS. fractured berg surface. It reminded me of the recent cleavage of sulphate of strontian — a resemblance more striking from the slightly lazulitic tinge of each. '"iiii'' "'M' .: I 1 I !:* I H \\ CHAPTER IX. I We pursued our way, flapping lazily along side of the "pack," and sometimes forcing an opening through its projecting tongues. On the morning of the 3d, while beating between the ice and the shore, we stood close in to a lofty headland, known as Svartehuk, or Black Head. This dark promontory deserves its name. It is of the usual metamorphic structure, ow- ing its color to the hornblende it contains. The re- treating character of the coast to the north and south of it, makes it a noted landmark among the whalers. At the distance of three miles, I sketched an escarped ^^^^^^H^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H^^'ri -■'_ ~^5^^B^^^^^ section of it, discolored by iron-clay conglomerates, and exhibiting a gnarled and irregular structure. Si m m *''»' 111 I'' ■li-iiii, lil I^Hi »i'il :!l':J 1K:: !ii !' i, ill'' 4 i Til' 64 REFRACTION. Our American birth-day, the 4th of July, could not pass us without at least a festive effort ; so we tap- ped a bottle of Heidsiek in the cabin, and all hands spliced the main-brace. But the day was neverthe- less a busy one. What little wind we had was near- ly dead ahead, though we managed to work along the open water, making "the pack" and the shore by al- ternate "tacks." At 8 A.M. it fell calm, leaving us entangled among fragments of heavy floe. We got the brig's head to the eastward with difficulty, and, in the midst of a dense fog, fired our blunderbuss and hove to for the "Rescue," no objects being visible more than a half ship's length from the decks. The fog left us about mid-day, and the atmosphere was so clear in the afternoon, that the land, although thirty miles off, was seen distinctly. The water and the sky, in somewhat anomalous contrast with this ex- tremely pellucid state of air, had a pearly or ash-colored tinting, and the floe ice, of which large quantities were around us, varied like the shadows of a daguerreotype. Toward 11 P.M. the temperature of the water fell to 30°, while that of the air rose to 36° and 37°. Look- ing toward the shore, I observed a sort of shimmering, as of the heated air above a stove, and, at the same time, the base of the hills assumed a columnar char- acter, as marked as in the basalts of Staffa. Soon aft- erward, the entire land came up to us through a high- ly refractive medium, and the vertical arrangement which had displayed itself before in columns was broken into waving curves, the parallelism of their lines remaining unchanged. As the sun reached his greatest meridional depression, this was accompanied by an extreme distortion. The homogeneous charac- ter of the atmosphere was singularly disturbed. It REFRACTIOK. 65 was like gazing at a panorama through badly blown and uneven glass. The little islands about the shore were elevated into Champagne bottles and mushrooms, and some head- lands, which I had sketched before the distortion, now sent out lateral prolongations which almost bridged the contiguous hills. Although I have since seen many beautiful displays of this phenomenon, I have never known it more strik- ingly varied within such limited compass. My slcetch shows in the upper line the true profile of the coast ; the two lower lines give a very imperfect idea of its .successive phases as refracted. It was, indeed, im- possible to embody them in a drawing. A thousand forms, inverted, looming, and distorted most extrava- gantly, were shifting about within an arc of ten de- grees of coast. At the same time, we had out among the icebergs, toward the southwest, the repetition on an enlarged scale of the complicated modifications of refraction seen off Ramsgate, and described by Pro- E III! I li ii>: "ii!*,i| ill;""' .III 1 '■" im "ll'IIIJ :H 66 REFRACTION. fessor Vince. I allude to those in which the object has a three-fold representation. The single repeti- tion was visible all around us ; the secondary or in- verted image sometimes above and sometimes below the primary. But it was not uncommon to see, also, the uplifted iceberg, with its accompanying or false horizon, joined at its summit by its inverted image, and then, above a second horizon, a thi^d berg in its natural position. Professor Agassiz has described a similar class of repeated images upon Lake Superior, limited, however, to two — one inverted, and above that the same erect. He suggests that it may be simply the reflection of the landscape inverted upon the sur- face of the lake, and reproduced with the actual land- scape. The calm, reflecting surface of the ice lakes of Baffin's Bay would favor such an explanation. The extension to a third and fourth image is very interest- ing. I am afraid to attempt delineating it. July 5. Although the next day was nearly calm, the water was so smooth, from the protection of the " floes," that, with hardly any perceptible motion, we managed to fan along at a rate of two knots an hour, our sails flapping all the time lazily against the masts* The sailing of these ice-environed waters is incompa- rable in its way. The sra swell, arrested by success- ive break- waters, does uot reach them. We sailed as though upon a placia lake, towed by invisible hands, and were only made conscious of motion by the chan- ges of the icy pack whose margin we were skirting. Toward the close of the day, refraction came back to us. I see by my journal that I spent four hours upon deck, taking sextant observations with Mr. Lov- ell. No fata morgana nor tropical mirage ever sur- passed the extraordinary scene of this night. V,.i-j'«!iH/j, REFRACTION. e? calm, the we hour, lasts* mpa- cess- ed as mds, han- ng. Iback lours ILov- sur- Voyagers speak of the eflfects of Arctic refraction in language as exact and mathematical as their own cor- rection tables. It almost seems as if their minute ob- servations of dip-sectors and repeating-circles had left them no scope for picturesque sublimity. This may excuse a literal transcript from my diary, which runs perhaps into the other extreme. ^^ Friday, 11 P.M. A strip of horizon, commencing about 8° to the east of the sun, and between it and the land, resembled an extended plain, covered with the debris of ruined cities. No effort of imagination was necessary for me to travel from the true watery horizon to the false one of refraction above it, and there to see huge structures lining an aerial ocean- margin. Some of rusty, Egyptian, rubbish-clogged propyla, and hypaethral courts — some tapering and columnar, like Palmyra and Baalbec — some with architrave and portico, like Telmessus or Athens, or else vague and grotto-like, such as dreamy memories recalled of Ellora and Carli. " I can hardly realize it as I write ; but it was no trick of fancy. The things were there half an hour ago. I saw them, capricious, versatile, full of forms, but bright and definite as the phases of sober life. And as my eyes ran round upon the marvelous a,nd varying scene, every one of these well-remembered cities rose before me, built up by some suggestive feat- ure of the ice. " An iceberg is one of God's own buildings, preaching its lessons of humility to the miniature structures of man. Its material, one colossal Pentelicus ; its mass, the representative of power in repose ; its distribution, simulating every architectural type. It makes one smile at those classical remnants which our own pe- .:■.,-•«' 68 REFRACTION. '■*!i*|i!|l "'■if I :i!" 1^8 nfni riod reproduces in its Madeleines, Walhallas, and Gi- rard colleges, like university poems in the dead lan- guages. Still, we can compare them with the iceberg ; for the same standard measures both, as it does Chim- borazo and the Hill of Howth. But this thing of re- fraction is supernatural throughout. The wildest frolic of an opium-eater's revery is nothing to the phantas- magoria of the sky to-night. Karnaks of ice, turned upside down, were resting upon rainbow-colored ped- estals : great needles, obelisks of pure whiteness, shot up above their false horizons, and, after an hour-glass- like contraction at their point of union with their du- plicated images, lost themselves in the blue of the upper sky. "While I was looking — the sextant useless in my hand, for I could not think of angles — a blurred and wavy change came over the fantastic picture. Pris- matic tintings, too vague to admit of dioptric analysis, began to margin my architectural marbles, and the scene faded like one of Fresnel's dissolving views. Suddenly, by a flash, they reappeared in full beauty ; and, just as I was beginning to note in my memo- randum-book the changes which this brief interval had produced, they went out entirely, and left a nearly clear horizon." Abrupt and versatile as were these changes in the refracting medium, those in the temperature about us were no less so. The relation between them was ap- parent, even within the limited range to which we could extend our observations. At 3 A.M., while the phenomena I have described were in full brilliancy, my thermometers on deck and in the main-top stood respectively at 36° and 39°, while the surface water indicated 32°. Ten minutes afterward, there were "- ' ^■^'y».,^ ' ... - w-i'-Vf^,.* the It us ap- we the icy, tood iter rere TEMPERATURES. 69 no evidences of refraction visible, except some slight loomings of the more distant bergs. The same ther- mometers now gave, both below and aloft, 36°, and the water had risen to 38°. The surface of the sea at this time was cafs-pawed as far as could be seen. A barely perceptible breeze, which set in suddenly from the northeast, had undoubtedly contributed to restore the homogeneity of the atmosphere. My sketches of the coast, which had now been vis- ible for nearly three days without interruption, show what strange diversities of outline may be induced by refraction. The illusions are so perfect that it is hard- ly possible to arrive at the normal aspect of the shore. Such changes, especially of altitude, must be a source of serious embarrassment in the recognition of land- marks. the ity; jmo- rly !* IK lil'^' !l ■-■1i Si ^%%r?:- OOMIAK AND KAYACK. CHAPTER X. ■"'fll' Juhj 6. The 6th found us in latitude 72° 54', beat- ing to windward, as usual, between "the pack" and the land. This land was of some interest to us, for we were now in the neighborhood of the Danish set- tlement of Uppernavik. With the exception of one subordinate station, eight- een miles further to the north, this is the last of the Danish settlements. It is the jumping-off place of Arc- tic navigators — our last point of communication with the outside world. Here the British explorers put the date to their official reports, and send home their last letters of good-by. We sent ours without the delay of seeking the little port ; for a couple of kayacks boarded us twenty miles out to sea, and for a few bis- cuits gladly took charge of our dispatches. The hon- esty of these poor Esquimaux is proverbial. Letters committed to their care are delivered with unerring safety to the superintendent of the port or station. We were boarded, too, by an oomiak, or woman's boat, returning from a successful seal hunt. From the crew, consisting of three women and four men, ^ixMrnmiJ^iim THE MIDDLE PACK. 71 we purchased a goodly stock of eider eggs and three young seals. July 7. We had now passed the seventy- third de- gree of latitude without heing materially retarded hy ice. The weather was one unbroken sunshine, and worthier of the Bay of Naples than Baffin's. The coast on our right hand consisted of low islands, so grouped as to resemble continuous land. They were a part of the archipelago at the mouth of the large fiord of Ovinde Oerme, and varied in size from mere knobs to lofty headlands not less than fifteen hundred feet high. To our left was a coast of a different char- acter — the ice. This we had now skirted since the 3d. We knew it, therefore, to be a part of that great barrier, the "middle pack," around whose dangerous circuit we had to pass before reaching the western waters. By standing in and out, we made the dis- tance of the pack from shore to be about thirty miles. The space between was clear, and it was along this, as upon a great river, we had thus far pushed our way uninterrupted. July 7. On the morning of the 7th, a large vacant sheet of water showed itself to the westward, pene- trating the ice as far as the eye could reach ; and from the top-mast-head we could see the southern margin of this ice losing itself in a clear, watery horizon. It was a strong temptation. Our commander determined to try for a passage through. As this day exercised a somewhat controlling influ- ence upon our future progress, I will give its occur- rences as they stand in my journal. " It commenced," says the log-book, with " the pack ahead, a four-knot breeze from the E.N.E., and our course to the southwest." By ten we fastened in the m wk'-\ fSlk il ^ 'S I ■ n Wbk (•.. Ij fn ^^H w \M Wki BBB; ! ^'H ^Q[' m Eysff i I. w I'll I'' , 12 FAST. 'I'i.', ■.■5 hMi: .::;' "(1 m .,1 ,... 1^, ■II ■I ice ; but, by cutting and boring, succeeded in penetrat- ing it, and sailed on through loose streams until noon. " We now entered fairly the so-thought open water, keeping the shore on our starboard beam, and steering for the northeast and north, at a rate of six knots, through an apparently unobstructed sea. But the sanguine anticipations of our commander were soon to be moderated. By four in the afternoon, after plac- ing at least fifty miles between us and the coast, the leads began to close around us. Fearing a separation from the Rescue, we took her in tow and continued our efforts ; but from 5 P.M. until the termination of the day, our progress was absolutely nothing. The morning of the 8th opened upon us fast in summer ice. "July 8. Fast ! Around us a circle of snow-covered ice, streaked with puddles of dark water, and varied (alas for the variety !) by the very distant looming of some icebergs. In the centre of thif^ dreariness are the two vessels — 'Advance' and 'Rescue.' "Our commander, loth to relinquish his hopes, de- termined to ' bore.' This operation, which consists in forcing a passage through the ice, continued through- out the night — 'all hands' jumping upon the floes, and working away with crow-bar, boat-hook, ice-an- chor, and warping-lines. The result of all this labor was, that the two vessels made about three quarters of a mile into deeper entanglement; and now, at 11 P.M., we are fast in the apparent centre of a solid sea. "All the men are asleep except Dunning, our watch- man ; and but for his tramp on the deck overhead, and the scraping of my pen over the paper, the silence is complete. My mess-mates, thoroughly tired out, are breathing heavily from their bunks. "Juli/ 9. Although we commenced bright and early FAST. 73 to warp our way through the impacted ice, we found, after much labor, that the entire day's reward was about three miles. We are now again fast, complete- ly 'beset,' and only waiting to rest the crew before we renew our efforts." What these efforts were it may be as well to ex- plain, for the benefit of fireside navigators, and perhaps some others. Those who go down to the sea in ships know that it is easy enough to drive along in a clear sea on a free wind, or to haul into dock, or to warp up a quiet river, butting aside the lazy vessels as they swing at anchor. How do we sail, and haul, and warp in these Arctic Seas ! It is a long story, and, to understand it, we must begin at the beginning. ^ It '?n i*li^ "ttf "UMMOCKS. I have already described that enormous winter growth which, under the name of the " great pack," blocks up the entire waters of this region from the un- known North to the marginal influences of the Gulf Stream. What is this " middle" pack, into whose eastern margin we had now thrust ourselves ? The short but ardent summer of the Arctic zone, with its continuous sun, aided by a rapid drift toward the Atlantic Ocean, and by compensating currents ■tn -,. m< mm ■' : ■■"ii' i 1' ,. i '^ ■111 i 1 i I ii -III' ■■' 1.^'. ■"i 1 IT 74 THE MIDDLE ICE. from the warm regions of the equator, soon reduces the winter pack into straggling fields of diminished thickness and integrity. These, uniting again by their cohesive tendencies, form an irregularly lenticu- lar raft, which occupies the central portions of the bay, and is called the " middle" ice, to distinguish it from the great pack of winter. This, then, is the summer remnant of the winter growth — a patch- work composed of all sorts of ice, di- versified in pattern, age, and condition, and varying in size from small fragments, called " skreed," to " floes" or fields, so limited that the eye defines theii extent. The floes may be said to form the basis of the pack. Their thickness ranges from a few inches to many feet, and their diameter is often many miles. I can not attempt to describe the uniform dreariness of their water-sodden marshes and long snow-covered platforms, without a point to mark " the level waste, the rounding gray." This sameness, however, is not always so absolute ; for, at the margins of the floes, where their ragged edges have come into grinding contact, the ice is piled up into ridges, that streak the surface like the mounds of a recently-ditched meadow. These are the " hummocks." The near effect of the ice and water, where they come together is not without beauty of its own. The water is itself of an inky darkness, a quality seemingly independent of mere contrast. It is rarely even ruf- fled by the wind ; and its placid surface reflects the marginal ice, with its submerged tongues, in mirror- like accuracy. This ice is the great bugbear of Baflin's Bay navi- gation : yet I can not help thinking that somewhat too much stress is laid by the English navigators upon THE MIDDLE ICE. 75 its character of a central barrier. Not only its condi- tion, but its general extent, varies with the season. It is well known to the most observant of the whalers that the winds of the early spring, or " breaking-up" period, almost enable them to determine its position in advance. A preponderance of northwest winds will drive it from the American coast ; or the northeasters of the spring and summer will often distribute it into long straggling bands, that intrude upon certain por- tions of the upper coast, as at Haroe, Svartehuk, and the Duck Islands. The axis of Baffin's Bay, according to our own ob- servations, which add nearly thirty miles to the width of Davis' Straits at Cape Walsingham, is from the north by east. The great bodies of ice, which enter this bay from Lancaster Sound and the northern es- tuaries of Jones and Smith, are undoubtedly impressed by the earth's rotation as they proceed to the south, thus causing an accumulation on the coasts of North Amer- ica, which augments with the increasing radius of rota- tion, while thf Greenland side is left completely open. As we advance to the north, this passage becomes more circumscribed and uncertain, so that the ice is gen- erally encountered by the whalers before they reach the 70th parallel. When, however, they pass to the north of latitude 73° 50' they enter upon a region of nearly perpetual ice. Here the middle pack intrudes upon the shores, and fills that large horse-shoe indentation which is known as Melville Bay. This term is vague- ly ppplied by the whalers to a sweep of coast extend- ing i'roin the Devil's Thumb, or Wilcox Point, to Capes Dudley Diggs and York. It comprises on the charts the several bays of Prince Regent, Melville, Duneira, and Allison. ilF m \\\ M '■*t ,i mi m III, '■'1 . i-l , 111 'I ;|i'' ^ ,..i«i:j|i ■5|!|, '■;iri :::* :';l^ '0' 76 THE MIDDLE ICE ITS CAUSES. 1 he causes of this accumulation, so disastrous to the navigation of the w^estern and northern waters of the bay, may be attributed in some measure to the high latitudes leaving the ice as yet mipfibcted by the southerly and westerly influences to which X have al- luded, and therefore more open to local cau^'es o! de- viation, such as currents and winds. The neighbor- hood of this region to the sources of ice supply, the sounds of Jones, Lancaster, and Wolstenholme, may be referred to as another cause ; for the ice, alter changing its original axis of drift, has not yet attained its free rate of motion in a new direction. Then, too, there are seine peculiarities in the current action of the bay, as yet imperfectly studied, which can not be without their influence. It is altogether probable that a portion of the interval between the eastern and western coasts is the seat of a partial slackwater, or even rotating eddy. And, in addition to all these, there is the direct agency of that great body of water which issues from Lancaster Sound. This passes from west to east, in latitude 74° 30' ; and my notes indicate the axis of its course as the line at which the Melville Bay accumulation begins. All of these causes are undoubtedly aided by the numerous bergs discharged from the glaciers of this portion of the Greenland coast, which have often move- ments counter to those of the surface ice, and retard its descent and progress very considerably. It is through this ice-clogged bay that the great fleets of Baffin whale ships have, for the last thirty- two years, made an annual attempt to pass. The mysticete, driven from their feeding grounds on the coast of Greenland, have sought a refuge on the west- ern side; and their seats of favorite resort, in the ear- ly part of the season, are now in the waters oi' Lan- THE MIDDLE ICE. 77 caster, Prince Regent, and Wellington Sounds, and the indentations of the northwestern coast of Baffin's Bay. The vessels which have succeeded in penetrating this intervening ice-barrier before August are sure of a full cargo ; but after this time all efforts are useless. The " fleet" is spoken of as " baffled," and is obliged to seek other "grounds" to the south and west. It is, in fact, a great lottery, the caprices of the ice controlling the efforts of the most daring; and, for the last two years or "seasons" before our arrival, the whalers had com- pletely failed in effecting a passage. I have been surprised that this region has been so little attended to by the very able English hydrogra- phers who have visited these seas. The valuable "wind and current" generalizations of Lieutenant Maury would be especially applicable to ice naviga- tion, and their application to the fishing grounds of Baffin's Bay would be a matter of large utilitarian in- terest. The commanders of the whaling ships are an intelligent set of men, and they have acquired, by dint of long and sometimes dearly bought experience, a valuable tact in the navigation of this intricate region. It is surely to be regretted that the materials which they could furnish have not yet been made a subject of scientific record and comparison. Since the year 1819, from which we may date the opening of Mel- ville Bay, no less than 210 vessels have been dostroy- ed in attempting it.i passage ! MIDDLE P\(K. .1 " J'li ill il ill •■S'l"!!*,. ::f ■!;.'( ,|i l*i;|i|-l •y. 'if;.-' '"'!iH CHAPTER XI. We left the American expedition on the threshold of the ice of Melville Bay, immovahly fixed, to all appearance, in the middle pack. I promised at that time to describe the sort of efforts that were making for its release ; but I shall do better, perhaps, by giv- ing a general view of what one of the figures of speech allows us to call ice navigation. To those wlio pre- fer a more specific form of narrative, I give the choice of dates from the 8th to the 29th of July, and permit them to be assured that they are reading the story of our progress for the day they have clio ii. Let us begin by imagining a vessel, or, for variety, two of them, speeding along at eight knots an hour, and heading directly for a long, low margin of ice about two miles off'. "D'ye see any opening?" cries the captain, hailing an officer on the foretopsail-yard. "Something like 'a lead' a little to leeward of that iceberg on our port-bow." In a little while we near the ice ; our light sails are got in, our commander taking the place of the officer, who has resumed his station on the deck. Before you, in a plain of solid ice, is a huge iceberg, and near it a black, zigzag canal, checkered with re- cent fragments. Now commences the process of " conning." Such work with the helm is not often seen in ordinary seas. The brig's head is pointed for the open gap ; the watch ■:;i'!i '' i )■ ■ 1 1 r * 1 im t;»i. ,.;;*'* ^ IH^ II, * ^^ A JAM. 81 are stationed at the braces ; a sort of silence prevails. Presently comes down the stentorian voice of our com- mander, " Ilard-a-starboard," and at the same moment the yards yield to the ready haul at the braces. The brig turns her nose into a sudden indentation, and bangs her quarter against a big lump of " swashing" ice. " Steady there !" For half a minute not a sound, until a second yell — " Down, down ! hard down !" and then we rub, and scrape, and jam, and thrust aside, and are thrust aside ; but somehow or other find our- selves in an open canal, losing itself in the distance. This is " a lead." As we move on, congratulating ourselves — if we think about the thing at all — that we are " good" for a few hundred yards more, a sudden exclamation, ad- dressed to nobody, but sufficiently distinctive, comes from the yard-arm (we'll call it " pshaw !"), and, look- ing ahead, we see that our " lead" is getting narrower, its sides edging toward each other — it is losing its straightness. At the same moment comes a complica- ted succession of ordt s : " Helm-a-starboard !" " Port !" " Easy !" '' So !" « Steiidie-ee-ee .'" " Hard-a-port !" " Hard, hard, hard !" (scrape, scratch, thump !) " Eugh !" an anomalous grunt, and we are jammed fast between two great ice-fields of unknown extent. The captain comes down, and we all go quietly to supper. Next come some processes unconnected with the sails, our wings. These will explain, after Arctic fashion, the terms " heave," and " warp," and " track," and " haul," for we are now beset in ice, and what lit- tle wind we have is dead ahead. A couple of hands;, under orders, of course, seize an iron hook or " ice-an- chor," of which we have two sizes, one of forty, 'ond another of about a hundred pounds. With this they F ^11 nti m 82 HEAVING. ill-i^-: jump from the bows, and "plant it" in the ice ahead, close to the edge of the crack, along which we wish to force our way. To plant an ice-anchor, a hole is cut obliquely to the surface of the floe, either with "n ice-chisel, or with the anchor itself used pickaxe fashion, and into this hole the larger curve of the an- chor is hooked. Once fast, you slip a hawser around its smaller end, and secure it from = slips by a "mousing" of rope-yarn. The slack i of the hawser is passed around the shaft of our patent winch — an apparatus of cogs and levers standing in our bows — and every thing, in far less time than it has taken me to describe it, is ready for " heaving." Then comes the hard work, i ue hawser is hauled taut ; the strain is increased ; every body, captain, cook, steward, and doctor, is tak- ing a spell at the " pump handles" or overhaul- ing the warping gear ; for dignity does not take care of its hands in the middle pack ; until at last, if the floes be not too obdurate, they separate by the wedge action of our bows, and we force our way into a little cleft, which is kept open on either side by the vessel's beam. 13ut the quiescence, the equilibrium of the ice, which allows it to be thus severed at its line of junction, is rare enough. Oftentimes we heave, and haul, and sweat, and, after parting a ten-inch hawser, go to bed TRACKING. 83 wet, and tired, and discontented, with nothing but ex- perience to pay for our toil. This is " warping." But let us suppose that, after many hours of this sort of unprofitable labor, the floes release their press- ure, or the ice becomes frail and light. " Get ready the lines !" Out jumps an unfortunate with a forty- pound " hook" upon his shoulder, and, after one or two duckings, tumbles over the ice and plants his anchor on a distant cape, in line with our wished-for direction. The poor fellow has done more than carry his anchor ; for a long white cord has been securely fastened to it, which they " pay out" from aboard ship as occasion requires. This is a whale-line — cordage thin, light, strong, and of the best material. It passes inboard through a block, and then, with a few artistic turns, around the capstan. Its " slack" or loose end is car- ried to a little windlass at our main-mast. Now comes the warping again. The first or heavy warping we called " heaving:" this last is a civilized performance; "all hands" walking round with the capstan-bars to the click of its iron pauls, or else, if the watch be fresh, to a jolly chorus of sailors' songs. We have made a few hundred yards of this light warping, when the floes, never at rest, open into a tort- uous canal again. We can dispense with the slow traction of the capstan. The same whale-line is passed out ahead, and a party of human horses take us in tow. Each man — or horse, if you please — has a canvas strap passing over his shoulder and fastened to the tow-line ; or, nautically, as this is a chapter ex- planatory of terms, " toggled to the warp." This har- nessing is no slight comfort to hands wet with water at the freezing point ; and with its aid they tug along, i W^f ^lAA I (.H i ■g- gr:' lor BX- ing lod. ►ur- >me Ms nen tter jver and han 3wn iMVHI g^^^HB^Sl^H^^^^Kt^Mite:-£='j toss- f^ •-I devii.'h thumb. CHAPTER XII. "Jm/^ 10. For the past twenty-four hours helplessly fast, unahle to move in any direction more than twen- ty yards. The wind, which had been from the north- east, hauled yesterday afternoon to the westward, since when, blowing at times quite freshly, it has ac- quired more and more southing, till it has got round to southwest by west. From the commencement of this change to this moment, the pack has been stead- ily closing, becoming more and more impenetrable. " Now I begin to realize some of the scenes de- scribed in polar travel. Go up to the foretop, a height of eighty-five feet, and the entire horizon is snow-cov- ered ice. Here and there a very distant berg breaks the uniformity, but the hummocks and the water-pools are softened down by the distance into one plane sur- ^i 86 SEALS. face of cold white, and, except to landward, there is nothing to arrest the eye. " This shore, however, although fifty miles off, is visihle enough, showing throughout all the hours of our now perpetual day a tall peak, rising like a light- house from a group of hills. This striking landmark is called the ' Devil's Thumb.' "Juli/ 11. The wind changed at 8 A.M., coming from the northward and eastward ; but the pack seems as yet uninfluenced. We are hemmed in as closely as ever. " Last night Lieutenant De Haven, who had been fixedly examining an object between us and the shore, passed the glass to me, with the question, ' What do you make of that ?' Without any hesitation, I an- swered, *A mast, with gaff and main-sail partially clewed up.' It seemed to me that one of the Danish foru-and-aft schooners had anchored at the edge of the pack, or just within it. Our commander thought so too ; but a glance through a Fraunhofer telescope showed it to be a mere freak of refraction. "Several seals were seen upon the more distant floes, but, in spite of all my efforts, I could not approach near enough for a shot. They are always on the alert, and at the slightest suspicion betake themselves to their holes. The Esquimau ix use a canvas frame or screen, which they move before their persons, and, by a patient process of stalking, succeed in getting with- in rifle shot. The Danish company supply them with arms, and they seldom miss their aim. I managed to get sufliciently close to recognize two species — the Greenland Saddle -back and the Vituline (Phoca Groenlandica and P. vitulina) ; but strange to say, the Rough seal, the Phoca fcetida of the Greenland fau- SEALS BIRDS. 8f na, of which we had seen so many, was not with them. " With a good glass, you may study these animals in their natural habitudes undisturbed by suspicion. As thus seen, in the centre of a large floe, and within retreating distance of his hole, the seal is a perfect pic- ture of solitary enjoyment, rolling not unlike a horse stretching his hide, awkwardly spreading out his flip- pers, and twisting his rump toward his head. Again he will wriggle about in the most grotesque manner — the sailors call it ' squirming' — every now and then rubbing his head against the snow. The shapes of a seal, or rather his aspects, are full of strange variety. At a side view, with his caudal end slued round to the side from you, and his head lifted suspiciously in the air, he is the exact image of a dog — Chien de mer. During his wriggles, he resembles a great snail : a lit- tle while after, he turns his back to you, and rises up on his side flippers like a couching hunter preparing for a shot, the very image of an Esquimaux. " It is said by the systematic writers that the ice- hole of the Vituline seal is often used by several of them in common. This was not conflrmed by our ob- servations while in the pack. Each animal seemed to have its separate hole, though two of them would occasionally be close to one another. ; " The Bearded seal (P. barbata) attains a greater size than any of these. Two overgrown obese mon- sters were seen at a distance. They are regarded by the Danes as diflering only in age from the Greenland seal (P. Groenlandica), the lighter color and greater flneness of the fur being a universal accompaniment of youth. " I shot to-day several specimens of the white gull Hi ■^1 J!I !ii: ii' 88 SLOW PROGRESS. of Baffin's Bay, well called the Ivory {Larus eburne- vs). It is a singularly beautiful bird, so faultless in its purity of white as to be descried with difficulty on the surface of the snow. The legs, which are deep black, are all that you see at a little distance. A specimen shot a few days afterward had numerous ash-colored spots on the wings and shoulders, perhaps immature markings. " In addition to the Ivory, I have noticed, since our entry into the pack, the Silvery and Burgomaster gulls ( L. argentatus and L. glaucus ), but the kittiwakes (L. tridactylus) have disappeared. The moUemokes are still abundant. Two terns, one the Sterna arctica, the other unrecognized, with a solitary Lestris (L. par- asitica), complete our catalogue of birds. " The Aneroid index now stands at 29" 05', correct- ed — lower than it has been since leaving New York. "c/w/y 12. The changes in the ice since dinner have been such as to invito us to renewed exertion. They were indeed protean ; the pack was not the same for ten minutes together. Go below, congratulating your- self on the headway you are making, and when you come back you are hopelessly * fast.' Go down again to chronicle your vexation, and you are surrounded by open leads before you have put away your journal. Stranger still is the uncertain influence of warping. A single whale-line will sometimes force the brig into a barely perceptible crevice, enlarging it into a ' track- able' canal, while in another attempt a four-inch hawser will be stranded without producing the slight- est effect. " This afternoon before we began our work, except that the water-pools had become larger and more fre- quent, you would not at first glance have detected any A BEAR. 89 change ; but by fixing the eye carefully and continu> ously upon a line in advance of us, where an old lead had closed two days before, you could perceive a very slight separation. The closed line had become a crack at least three or four inches wide. On our sending out a hawser to a solid floe ahead, and heaving in with the patent windlass, a distinct movement was seen in the floe. The aperture, at first a mere crack, widen- ed to a couple of feet, dividing, as it did so, two fields of at least twenty acres area. The traction continu- ing, our wedge-shaped bows insinuated themselves into a self-made channel, and, acquiring new momen- tum, we forced a barrier ahead, dragging the Rescue after us. Such instances illustrate strikingly the ef- fects of a constant force upon large masses in equili- brium. To the eye it would seem impossible to influ- ence by such means fields of ice weighing hundreds of thousands of tons. Yet, in the nicely poised con- dition of the floes, they invariably yield to continued traction. " While working with the rest of the crew upon the ice, I was startled by a cry of ' bear.' Sure enough it was that menagerie wonder. Not, however, the sleepy thing which, with begrimed hair, and subdued, dirty face, appeals to your sympathies as he walks the endless rounds of a wet cage. Our first polar bear moved past us on the floes, a short half mile off", with the leisurely march of fearless freedom. He was a bear of the first magnitude, about nine feet long, as we afterward found by measuring his tracks. His length appeared to us still greater than this, for he carried his head and neck on a line with the long axis of his body. His color, as defined upon the white snow, was a delicate yellow — not tawny, but a true i I m A BEAR. fill w ochre or gamboge — and his black, blue-black, nose looked abrupt and accidental. His haunches wrere regularly arched, and, supported as they were on pon* derous legs, gave him an almost elephantine look. The movements of the animal were peculiar. A sort of drawling dignity seemed to oppress him, and to for- bid his lifting his august legs higher than was abso- lutely necessary. It might have been an instinctive philosophy that led him to avoid the impact of his toes upon ice of uncertain strength ; but whatever it was, he reminded me of a colossal puss in boots. " I will not dwell upon our adventures, as, on mur- derous thoughts intent, we chased this bear. We were an absurd party of zealots, rushing pell-mell upon the floes with vastly more energy than discre- tion. While walking in the lightest manner over sus- picious ice, my companion next in line behind me dis- appeared, gun and all ; yet, afler getting him out, we insanely continued our chase with the aid of boats. After laboring very hard for about three hours, repeat- ed duckings in water at 30" cooled down our enthu- siasm. The bear, meantime, never varied from his un- concerned walk. We saw him last in a labyrinth of hummock ice. " In the evening it blew a gale from the southward and eastward, holding on until midnight. Strange to say, it produced no marked effects on the pack. At first we feared a nip, for, judging from the wind which swept our floes, it must have been severe in the open sea. But we rode it out in our icy harbor without any trouble, although the undulations of both ice and wa- ter told of the commotion outside. " Our day's progress was one mile and a half. "t/u/y 13. Fast again ! for, except that mile and a FAST. 91 half of yesterday, we are nearly where we started from. The prevalent winds have been from the southward. Is it to them that we owe our exemption from the southeasterly drift, which otherwise we had been taught to expect ? " The drift of the surface acalephse, as seen in the leads, is to the northward. " Day delightful, crew playing foot-ball and running races on the ice. "Ji/Zy 14-15. The American expedition advances half a ship's length. "Jiw/y 16. How very strange! can it be midsum- mer ? The ice through which we yesterday attempt- ed to work our way was from two to four feet thick, and, as the broken fragments closed around the ves- sels, they froze into a solid mass. For sixteen hours the thermometer stood below the freezing point, and the mean temperature of the entire day was but 34° 4\ " The sun shines always, and, except when in his low curve, about the northern meridian, his glare is so bright that we go about in owl-like goggles, that buckle over the nose. Yet, with all this light, we are fortunate if our noonday thermometers give us 40°. " On the 13th two vessels were • litered in the log- book as seen to the southward an; eastward, on the margin of the pack. On the 15th they were observed to have changed their bearings, thus proving that it was not a freak of refraction. On the 16th five were reported ; as nearly as we could make out, one ship, a brig, and three barques. They proved to be whal- ers, returning from their unsuccessful attempt to pen- etrate Melville Bay to the North Water. "Ji//y 17. New ice forming constantly in the little pool which holds our vessels. This morning it was rlili I Til i.W FAST ENOUGH. half an inch thick. This process of cementing going on in the month of July looks discouraging. We have now been ten days beset ; and, with the exception of the 12th, when an unusual wind slightly afl'ected our ice, we have advanced but little more than a couple of ship's lengths. Indeed, for the past five days, our progress has been absolutely nothing; for, although our daily observations prove that the great pack is in motion, our relative position remains unchanged, in four days we have made about four miles of southerly drift, and to-day our chronometers indicate another four to the west. How very sad it would be to remain prison-bound in this icy prairie until the season of search has passed by ! Certain it is that some great commotion must influence this ice, if it is ever to lib- erate us, for upon thaws we can place no reliance. " To-day we organized foot-races, and our friends of the Rescue had a regular divertissement of single-stick, foot-ball, and fancy matches against time. Our best runner made his mile in seven minutes eleven seconds. "July 18. To-day is our eleventh day since enter- ing the ice, our sixth of nearly absolute immobility. We made, however, two ship's lengths by alternate warping and cutting through ice three feet thick. Our incessant exertions have fatigued us: we have already parted four cables by heaving; fortunately no- body injured. " I took to-day a long gun- walk, bringing back a couple of tern and some gulls. Our commander counted from aloft nearly a hundred seals, distributed listlessly over the ice. I have tried in vain to stalk them. " Jiw/y 19. The men turned in at midnight, to awake again at six. All hands are pretty well used up. HEAVING. 93 " Ahead of us a hundred and fifty yards is a sheet of water, which some of us have called 'the lake.' During the processes by which the various floes of the great pack have been condensed into one unbroken level, some peculiarity in the shape of the floes has rescued here and there a little of the mother element, leaving it in the form of open pools or lakes. These form the radiating centres of the leads, which are now our only avenues of escape. It is toward one of them that our eflbrts of progress are directed. If we reach it to-night, we may make a good mile on our dreary course. Such is our immovable besetment, that we look to ' a mile' as a marked progress. " Our men are now ' all hands' at the windlass, sing- ing and heaving, ' rousing her home.' The strain is sometimes enormous, but there is no remedy: it is tug or stick. We have parted two hawsers already, and, although some half dozen strong men take charge of the slack, the great cable sometimes surges from the snatch with such force and speed that clouds of smoke arise from the friction. " Sending out or ' planting' these cables is an oper- ation of no little danger. The ice is very varying in its thickness and tenacity, and long detours are nec- essary before the anchor can be placed in the desired position. On such parties a ducking is an expected consummation ; and more than once I have seen both man and anchor suddenly disappear together. It is often necessary, also, to clear or straighten the haws- er after its attachment, for the hummocks and other projections catch the rope, and, unless released, would divert the line of traction from the required direction. On such occasions the men must crawl, jump, wade, or swim to clear the * slack.' Operations like this are 04 ANOTHER BEAR. PHI i' severe trials, both of energy and health ; more severe, I sometimes think, than any which are encountered in the systematic explorations of the British voyagers. "Juli/ 20. We failed to reach the 'lake' yesterday, gaining it to-day. We cast off from the Rescue and made three minutes and twenty seconds of sail, meas- ured by a Parkinson and Frodsham chronometer ! That over, we are again wedged in ice. " Our commander, who had heretofore miraculously escaped his ducking, while standing upon a miniature South America of ice, punching with a boat-hook at a little Cape Horn, went down suddenly this morning, leaving a Terra del Fuego of slush and water to mark the place where he had been. He had some trouble in scrambling out. "A short time after this, while we were joking about his adventure over a quiet little noggin of whisky- punch, Mr. Boatswain Brooks, a capital seaman, who did watch duties on board the Rescue, whispered down the hatchway, 'A bear along side !' This time the ras- cal was right aboard of us, and we kept below the bul- warks, so that his wanderings were rather matters of caprice th^^^n of fear. " He was a young animal, not more than six or sev- en feet in length, with a color even more delicately tinted than the other, for the yellow was only appar- ent at the armpits, haunches, and spinal ridge; his muzzle, lips, and dew-laps were of dark purple. " When first seen he rose upon his hind palms, and, lifling his neck in the direction of our brig, snuffed the air inspectingly. Satisfied with our appearance, he walked well within shot; but iust as we were about to reward his confidence with a bullet, he gam- boled off to a neighboring hummock. The poor fel- NO PROGRESS. 9d low had such a look of life enjoyment that I felt glad that I had not fired, although my hand was upon the trigger. " Once upon this little hill of ice, he was at home again, favoring us with some hear play, snapping at the inoffending icicles, ruhhing his mouth sideways against the snow, and rolling over and over from top to hottom. I mention all these as characteristics of the animal. Of course we chased him, and of course we failed. We had not yet acquired our experience as hear hunters. "Tw/y 21. It rained yesterday, and the ice is per- ceptibly affected. These rains, of which we have now had several, exercise a very rapid influence upon the weaker floes. "Heaving, boring, sailing, but no progress worth noting ! "Jw/y 22. As we were in the act of warping into a narrow chasm, the capricious ice closed in upon us, nipping us on our counter, and heaping up some two feet. " We filled our water casks from a pool in a glued- up iceberg, and saw another bear ! We were too wise this time to chase him. " Our progress — not to be measured by yards." 'I I I 1H 1 i; I' ' 1^^^^^ Tm^if i iJi'l ll: ||:| '! ; 1 i i| \ Ki i i' 1 ' ,*'< CHAPTER XIII. I HAVE continued my journal long enough to prove the wearying sameness of our days. I wish now to say a few words about the local characters of the seat of our imprisonment. The ice was of several kinds. One was the true material of the winter floe, varying in thickness from seven feet to as many inches. This was snow-cover- ed, patched by fresh water-pools, and suflficiently un- altered to retain its crystalline structure in full integ- rity. When it was over two feet in thickness, por- tions taken from its surface gave no evidence of salt under the test of nitrate of silver. A second ice I have called ^/ater-sodden. It sel- dom exceeded a foot in thickness, but war irregularly thawed in patches and striated lines. 7 , was thor- oughly infiltrated with salt water, and b >ke readily under a blow, displaying at the lines of acture the vertical prisms of its crystalline structure. This ice formed the basis of the pack ; and although, by select- SNOW ICE. 97 i ing our pathway, it could be traversed on foot, it was irregular and unsafe. It cracked readily before the wedge-action of our bows. A third variety of ice was the honey-combed or eel- lular, seen beneath the surface in crude, olive-green masses. This ice, though generally verjr tenacious, was sometimes so soft that you could plunge a boat- hook through it. It resembled a grossly-cellular Par- mesan cheese. A fourth was as finely granulated as loaf-sugar, yet as tough as whitleather. Al- though thoroughly permeated with water, it was as unyielding as asphalt. We were often help- lessly impacted in its insidious rottenness. It would neither fracture nor give. A cutting instrument pierced it like a cork, leaving a merely local puncture, and it differed so little in specific gravity from the water as to remain almost suspended. But the surface of all this diversity was mantled over by the leading feature of our prospect, snow ; not snow as at home, with rounded hill slope and gestic- ulating tree, but a surface deprived of all variety save such as resides in itself This is not so scanty as one might at first suppose, for it rises into hummocks, which impress their shadows on the ice ; it thaws, and black pools eat themselves into its level wastes ; it freezes again, and bright silver streaks run like metal rivers along the leads. The winds, too, which drive into one this great mass of floating fields, leave here and there little areas protected by icy edges. These lake-like pools are haunts of the seal and the diver. I have often observed the white lip of the snow at the mar- gin of them reflected in the water of a marked claret |ij!it ' 98 CURRENTS. color, the shades varying from a rose-pink to a de- cided red. For a long time I supposed these reflected images to he real, till one day the captain, calling my attention to this " red ice," thrust a hoat-hook at it, and cried out that it was a reflection. This reflected im- age is generally very well defined, and heneath it there is sometimes a second image of a hluish tinge. The explanation is at once suggested hy the fact. The movements of this aggregated plain upon itself are even more incapahle of analysis than the great general laws of its drift. I spent many days in trying to determine the sur- face currents hy the movements of the acalephse, es- pecially the clios, in the leads ; hut the disturbing in- fluences of the floes moving upon each other prevented any reliable deductions. Camphor floats were equally deceptive, probably from the same cause. I found, however, that there existed in nearly every case a second current, some one or two fathoms be- low the first, and that the upper of them generally followed the direction of the wind ; so that I regarded it at last as a tolerable index of the surface drift. The second or inferior current is more difldcult to explain by rule. It is influenced, of course, by the shape of the floes, their various deflecting angles, the degrees of resistance they exert, as determined by their weight and mass, and no doubt by other causes of which we are ignorant. Taken in connection with the great general move- ment of the pack, these currents form a complicated problem of high practical interest to those who navi- gate in the ice. But its solution must be reserved for scientific men. Much as I respect the ice-masters, the Greenland pilots as they are termed, who have devoted their lives to its practical study. I confess that I am al- FISH. together skeptical as to their ability to generalize in an area like this. Even the general axis of motion, the trend of the pack, can seldom be ascertained. I have seen the ice open into parallel and transverse canals from horizon to horizon; and a few moments after- ward, without any observed changes of current, wind, or temperature, these canals would rapidly become cur- vilinear, and we seemed as if in the centre of a great system of rotation. Since our entry into the ice, we were comparatively without visits from birds. The ducks had deserted us ; but the red-throated diver [Colymhus septentrionalis, Temm.) abounded in the larger openings. The black guillemots (Uria grylle, Temm.) sometimes passed us in groups, or were started up in the leads. We missed the kittiwake. The LaridsB were represented only by the Glaucous and Ivory gulls. These last were in company with tern, and flew over the floes seeking the refuse of our vessels. The strong and graceful flight which distinguishes the gulls is especially evi- dent in the Ivory variety — without exception, the most attractive bird I ever saw. The Fulmar petrel, a sol- itary jager (Lestris parasitica), the Stunt jager of Mar- ten, one "boatswain," a bird which I had not previous- ly seen, except in company with the Tridaccyl gull — these complete the list. The only fish we met with at this time was the Merlangus polaris of Parry's first voyage. We caught it often in the surface pools that adjoined the leads. It never exceeded six inches in length. From these I obtained some specimens of lernians. Strange to say, no less than three individuals were noticed with these parasites, and in one the dorsal ridge was completely covered with them. 111! I:' » I'll ' '»4 .ti. ' 11 '■ GNTEBINO MELVILLE BAT. CHAPTER XIV. Our position, on entering this pack twenty-one days ago, was latitude 74° 08', longitude 59° 04'. Our ob- servations now gave us a latitude of 73° 54', longitude 60° 06' — an average progress of about a mile a day. We had therefore been three weeks completely im- prisoned, and the season for useful search was rapidly flitting by, when, on the 27th of July, came the dawn- ing promise of escape. A steady breeze had been blowing for several days from the r orthward and westward, and under its in- fluence tho ice had so relaxed, that, had not the wind been dead ahead, we should have attempted sails. Our floe surface, disturbed by these new influences, gave us a constantly-shifting topography. It was cu- rious to see the rapidity of the transformations. At 'ii BORING. 101 one moment we were closed in by ice three feet thick, with a worn-down berg fifty feet deep on our beam ; our bows buried in hummocky masses, and our stern- post cloggfed with frozen sludge : in ten minutes open lanes were radiating from us in every direction, cracks becoming rivers, and puddles lakes: warping ahead for five minutes, every thing around us was ice again. But changes were going on. The sky had become lowering, the gulls had left us, and the barometer had fallen eight tenths since the day before. Late on the afternoon of the 28th, after another long day of unprofitable warping, the wind shifted to the eastward. The floes opened still wider, something like water was visible to the north and east, and at 9h. 30m. P.M. we " cast ofi"," set our main-sail, and, with feelings of joyous relief, began to bore the ice. This wind soon freshened to a southeaster, and we dashed along to the northeast in a sea studded with icebergs. Broken floes running out into " streams" were on all sides of us ; but, only too glad to be once more free, we bored through them for the inshore circuit of Melville Bav. After a little while the horizon thickened ; and al- though our wind, surrounded as we were by ice, could hardly be called a gale, heavy undulations began to set in, making an uncomfortable sea, rendered danger- ous indeed by the swashing ice and a growing fog. The ice, too, after a little while, was no longer the rotten, half-thawed material of the middle pack, but heavy floes eight or ten feet of solid thickness, which seemed to stand out from the shore. Presently we found ourselves, urged by wind and sea, on a lee ridge of undulating fragments. There was no help for it : with grinding crash we entered its ■i m 102 MELVILLE BAY. tumultuous margin. Before we had bored into it more than ten yards, we were on the edge of a nearly sub- merged iceberg, which, not being large enough to re- sist the swell, rolled fearfully. The sea dashed in an angry surf over its inclined sides, rattling the icy frag- ments or " brash" against its irregular surface. Our position reminded me of the scenes so well described by Beechy in the voyage of the Dorothea and Trent. For a time we were awkwardly placed, but we bored through ; and the Rescue, after skirting the same ob- struction, managed also to get through without damage. We continued to run along with our top-sail yard on the cap> but the growing fog made it impossible to keep on our course very long. After several encoun- ters with the floating hummocks, we succeeded in ty- ing fast to a heavy floe, which seemed to be connected with the land, and were thus moored within that mys- terious circuit known as Melville Bay. It is during the transit of this bay that most of the catastrophes occur which have made the statistics of the whalers so fearful. It was here, about twenty miles to the south of us, that in one year more than one thousand human beings were cast shelterless upon the ice, their ships ground up before their eyes. It is rarely that a season goes by in which the passage is attempted without disaster. The inshore side of the indentation is lined by a sweep of glacier, through which here and there the dark headlands of the coast force themselves with se- vere contrast. Outside of this, the sho/e, if we can call it such, is again lined with a heavy ledge of ground ice, thicker and more permanent than that in motion. This extends out for miles, forming an icy margin or beach, known technically as the " land ice," i I ■r * H * ( o 2. 3E :S o 130 as 'J tj 111 ^ ^i»,->- .-jwasjaE J i^' i*,p m lUJ^Ul* t* };.; 'it1««» by »w 1 <.. »i} * H more .^u to r«- * ?n ttu •-> > ijt*i|(- • , «.h«r '«< itu: > .1 -« . . , »i4P6m'rib«tl : luo voyafy*? «>i ill** r>(im^K«a ami "km*.*!. A't} \vnr« awkwardly pl'u.'*^i i»«t wr' *«», niter skirt mtr rhe mVhu* ub- (vjxnagtui also to ji;*a t!iroim"h w ithoul ihuitaafft. '♦iiii*»il ^> run Jiionjjr ^vitli our rop-siiLl yard •.,•! t,%w p«pr.«'»nf %** liti^iti of |!? '&■■ 03BW < the it'i' "^ rarel/ ein^.'« were ca>.i ifct«:*£efst\ss upon \^s jEfrouiid v'p bnloYe their eye^. It is ;- i'oes by in wiiicVi the passage is , — : •■st> and there th^) Mt' (.ft? »niles, Ibrihing an ?r| ; if*! ICQiiiiiftttiy «a the " iaaiJ ii«»/* i r T r S o CD C -< PC OS en O Ml i BERGS. 103 or " the fast." Against this margin, the great " drift" through which we had been passing exerts a remitting action, receding sometimes under the influence of wind and currents so as to open a tortuous and uncertain canal along its edge, at others closing against it in a barrier of contending floes and bergs. Our initiation into the mysteries of this region was ominous enough. It blew a gale. The offing was a scene of noisy contention, obscured by a dense fog, through which rose the tops of the icebergs as they drifted by us. Twice in the night we were called up to escape these bergs by warping out of their path. Imagine d. mass as large as the Parthenon bearing down upon you before a storm-wind ! The immediate site of our anchorage was about eighteen miles from the Black Hills, which rose above the glacier. It was truly an iron-bound coast, bergs, floes, and hummock ridges, in all the disarray of win- tery conflict, cemented in a basis of ice ten feet thick, and lashed by an angry sea. It was the first time I had witnessed the stupendous results of ice action. I went out with Captain De Haven to observe them more closely. The hummocks had piled themselves at the edges of the floes in a set of rugged walls, some- times twenty feet high ; and here and there were ice- bergs firmly incorporated in the vast plain. Our at- tention was of course directed more anxiously to those which were drifting at large upon the open water ; but we could not help being impressed by the solid majes- ty of these stationary mountains. The height of one of them, measured by the sextant, was two hundred and forty feet. It was the motion of the floating bergs that sur- rounded us at this time, which flrst gave me the idea I n B !,.j III ' J 104 A RACE. i &■■ of a great under-current to the northward. Their drift followed some system of advance entirely independent of the wind, and not apparently at variance with the received views of a great southern current. On the night of the 30th, while the surface ice or floe was drifting to the southward with the wind, the bergs were making a northern progress, crushing through the floes in the very eye of the breeze at a measured rate of a mile and a half an hour. The disproportion that uniformly subsists between the submerged and upper masses of a floating berg makes it a good index of the deep sea current, especially when its movement is against the wind. I noticed very many ice-mount- ains traveling to the north in opposition to both wind and surface ice. One of them we recognized five days afterward, nearly a hundred miles on its northern journey. In the so-called night, "all hands" were turned to, and the old system of warping was renewed. The unyielding ice made it a slow process, but enough was gained to give us an entrance to some clear wa- ter about a mile in apparent length. While we were warping, one of these current-driven bergs kept us constant company, and at one time it was a regular race between us, for the narrow passage we were striving to reach would have been completely barri- caded if our icy opponent had got ahead. This exciting race, against wind and drift, and with the Rescue in tow, was at its height when we reached a point where, by warping around our opponent, we might be able to make sail. Three active men were instantly dispatched to prepare the warps. One took charge of the hawser, and another of the iron crow or chisel which is used to cut the hole; the third, a OUR PROSPECTS. 105 brawny seaman, named Costa, was in the act of lift- ing the anchor and driving it by main force into the solid ice, when, with a roar like near thunder, a crack ran across the berg, and almost instantly a segment about twice the size of our ship was severed from the rest. One man remained oscillating on the principal mass, a second escaped by jumping to the back ropes and chain shrouds of the bowsprit ; but poor Costa ! anchor and all, disappeared in the chasm ! By a mer> ciful Godsend, the sunken fragment had broken oflf so cleanly that, when it rose, it scraped against the fractured surface, and brought up its living freight along with it. Scared half to death, he was caught by the captain as he passed the jib-boom, and brought safe on board. This incident, coming thus early in our cruise, was a useful warning. In spite of all our eflforts, we had effected little since anchoring to this ice ; but our position, as determined by observation and chronometer, was latitude 75° 02' 27", longitude 59° 50' 42", showing an advance of 40 miles to the northward since leaving the pack on the 29th. "August 1. The last month of summer was upon us. July, the mid-summer of highest mean temperature and greatest ice dissolution, had done little for us. Our prospects were far from cheery. The season of complete consolidation, when winter closes the navi- gation of these seas, could not be postponed beyond fifty days longer, and we had yet to double the ice of Melville. Our mean daily temperature for the past week had been 37° 1', and ice had formed during the hours of low sun three quarters of an inch thick. What an idea it gives one of the Arctic winter, to think that this short summer is nature's only compen- 'HI lOG COLD SUNSHINE. i'M satioii lor tho oi|[?lit months of ' ..■■:0-yy Iff I 1 *l! i:l I I i h I! I \ ! .'!^- lii *ii^ihir i^» (MhtiT veri.sol Ir.is U-. ' *''tJ» ir u fis perhaps ■ttfxuil marks •v-<»{od over, tfxr,.' tJin^r f*u«k I'roiii hf« '(^wt-w^st**^ ^< bav, :r. more exjicr.U ^|H**ik»ii|E, ^itbta ;i ni %t*- XI'*- tatic<"' i*f perhaps twelvv ixnU-^ ihrni the »»»» rv ;W scejifTV M'as peculiar, winiMnj.' tho S!H^eru«s^ suH^Kh g'cuerally cliariicierizes an Arctic lainiscapf. nn*i '^?Mt atUK.ispliere so bright 1fhj:\t vso could sec nvcry wrinklrt nn rhe i':tc« of the hills. An iiumojisr irlacior foriiifr'd i pi4.rap€'t wall ol' \> hitc iiiasioiiry ul their t't- I't. On the 'iiil«5T «i^^'» of' us wits what hi'd beca the .sea, a rairj^od «i2/fft«**» '4 n'«, unbroken cx««»t by the bia'-k rivers ' .j:'v>^i >■-:'. r^-yTi^i fh*'j»i^'i"('y- VH'iiOii^ jta nu^^**i, tiiui here Th« im.^^ w<'re ail iatercsting- subject of stiKly. I countefi V ''■« sa^maug no less tliari two hviudreil aiid N*( J^ >X • «,,.' decks, i'urniiKjft" alHiaw;lwi Unr t'coiu t^e ^i N, ^ > S K. It wa#, lb i*e*^t, #ut inventing eJ***^ till im ***.'<; >i*^j«#. tor the oil'^ets tiojn the liflaciers r:'ijsi>l^^d »^, Hi! circle. ^i- m^ wMpiSr •. ^ viv ftlonff, T had nu opj)ortuni{Y 5>i ^ .^^v^^sV r*i*nfe4af«M4? «i'jss*» ol'thcni. One. a iiiaj?nil- K#ii.-*' '"'.mr.! *tt tc<' ftM-hil«cinre, was :i9o I'eet h.y;h; an**^*;- s v;^ mv 's^ h'^^^l face, IHO Ikthoiue, i.n 1*^60 itm it'v- Jf.frv^f|i v.;»r I -.•.i fect ; and, roiliiciD!? iU iuass i:'i ii< W;> FORMATION OF BERGS. 113 to a parallelopipedon, its remaining side could not have been less than 1000 feet. The symmetrical character of this great body of ice allowed me to estimate its magnitude and weight. Applying the recognized proportion of 8.2 below wa- ter for 1 above, and assuming, as Scoresby's experi- ments seem to justify, that thirty-five cubic feet of water in the Greenland seas have a weight of one ton, we have more than 2135 millions of cubic feet as the solid contents of the berg, and 61 millions of tons for its weight. It was therefore at least one third larger than the one which Scoresby measured on the eastern coast (Scoresby's Jour., p. 233). But great as it was, we saw others afterward still more stupendous, one of which I measured topographically. Many of the bergs were covered with detritus. From one which had thawed down to the water's edge, I obtained some specimens of diiferent rocks, which were found adhering to its upper face. They all belonged to the primary series — quartz, gneiss, sy- enite, augitic green-stone and clay slate. Some of them were marked with well-defined striae, without angular crossings, smooth, and occasionally polished even highly ; others were cut in facets of more or less regularity. They varied in size from large blocks to mere pebbles, conglomerated in the ice with finely- powdered gneissoid material. The berg had evident- ly changed its equilibrium ; and it seemed as if these rocks had been cemented in its former base, and had there been subjected to attrition during its rotary os- dilations against the bottom of the sea. Others of them bore unmistakable marks of the mo- raines through which they had passed. The depos- ited material had a linear arrangement, as if dropped H ill w 'I ' 'I I m m *4 114 FORMS or BKRGS. ill series during the progress of the original glacier. In one instance an escarped face of berg was impressed in intaglio with the mould of the cliff from which it had been severed, and the upper marginal line was studded with angular and attrited fragments, evident- ly deposited during the movement of the glacier. This interesting fact, which I have not found noticed in any of the books, admitted of no deception. We could not stop to collect specimens, but I had time to make an accurate sketch of the section, and was near enough to recognize the schistose character of the adhering detritus. The glacier, although too distant for nice observa- tion, showed how very readily such a debacle might carry with it not only the impression of its valley side, but rudimentary moraine traces, deposited from the ridges adjacent and above. With a Fraunhofer glass, I could see that the dark knob-like protrusions, which rose here and there above the surface of the glacier, were the presenting faces of hills that went back in winding ridges, on both sides of which a discolored line indicated the accumulation of detritus. . The forms of these bergs were constantly varying under the action of the waves and the consequent changes in their equilibrium. Many of them were in- teresting, some fantastic, and some occasionally beau- tiful for their symmetry ; but I do not think they im- pressed us as vividly as they seem to have done other voyagers with their resemblance to more familiar ob- jects. Except when they came to us embellished by refraction, we had few of these imaginative pictures. Yet there was about the forms, and the coloring also, of the berg ice, a harmonious variety and grace, that needed no prototype to commend them. 9 • h iL ^ __ . M.-^im^..'M'^ rESEnr^ ^ .i-icr ? r. 5(1 1 •f: *^. ,:.■.. I ' i! 1 i^^^H 1 i^^Hfl , ifli ;>. Hi ^^H ^^H ^ ...' ^^^K !■'■' ^B' '■i' B ll ■ *m /I* B M'-\ iJ'iS I P O ^ ,v. .■ a rjKJilirlu) With *;,. [y tin* ■ ><. -'^i during tiw? i*«»>^#^^:f^ of ritM i'iCM/k.s, a^hnitted uf no «btir^optii«ai, ^ *>^^^* swH i4t(>p to collect speciinens, liut ( luui fclm" to lAi^k** m» ac<'iimte skfitcli oi' the section, and was near enou*.^li to rfMV'iiUvise tlh-^ 8o!«i>;tv)se character of f'\e adiiorin^ d.C'i.J'*i JiiciS.. Thr ^m'^-1^ '»*^v M/" . .<• :^•,>•sU^i^t f--i?lB ■ ih** lirf' ^;'V- t* >^ t *«,.'. V •V ' ''';,>■.-■■%■•■>• -fv^'v,- :i.>'^> lfe^.. ■;- ■• : l-r./- ■ v-;;^- ¥f??iu^~r!-^ jk^^'- liii'- iu.Y e<^nilibri.uin. Many oi' them were m- ':'^p*,-3*ii^i ■ M.I ?f»..nic, and some uc-tsaiooiAl^- Ueaii- '.,t'^<; ilk . .a.;i»'lry ; but 1 do »f4 tinuk they ini- .,»isii m *■ f'^x^- u;« they set^ii Us have don«? other -"^itv wiU? < f-' 4>«t:;/)jl)la(iC'j to more familiar oh- ,>«,, r >;rt*.|>i %»;«" i^*"* oame to us eniheliished by . ^*«. *r Hm^ n.w i?* these inia'.'-inative picture?!. *, .4^ *i,iHKit. ilki- tsimBi?';, and the coloriuj^" nUo, 01 - j»t^r;' r vi, a hi^rmouioiiit Ttti'iety and ^msu '.hat i)f*e< !o eomniend th^t'i! HI ' m^ wM MM ISI i '0 ''in' i I jII ' ii' 5 ¥ DECEPTIVE DISTANCES. 115 The general shapes were those of the symmetrical solids, cubes, rhombs, and wedges, with surfaces pre- senting all the varieties of terrene configuration ; but these were of the recently disrupted ice. In the oldei structures, where the degrading actions of the sea and air were aided by constantly recurring fractures, and with these constantly shifting centres of flotation, the changes had a more picturesque character ; archways, natural bridges, terraces, and spiral ledges, from which the long icicles hung in grotesque and sparkling va- riety. Sometimes, while I was studying the escarped faces of these bergs, we would enter little caves with shelv- ing bottoms of pure blue, and, strange to say, teeming with crustacean life. I see by my journal that on one occasion, while trying, in company with my friend, Mr. Murdaugh, to net some of these misplaced ento- mostraca, I brought up a couple of forms of beroe, both with ciliate margins, apparently quite at home upon the pure surface of this icy basin. In the course of our observations upon the differ- ent forms of ice that surrounded us, we realized some additional proofs of the deceptive character of Arctic distances. That aerial perspective, which is with us so palpable an element in the composition of a land- scape, was scarcely to be noticed, except as tinting the background with a deeper transparency of blue. In the estimate of both altitude and horizontal distance, the iceberg was a complete puzzle. I have often started for a berg fast in the land floe, seemingly within musket-shot, and, after walking for nearly an hour, found its apparent position unchanged. On one occasion, when engaged with our command- er in an attempt to inspect a low mass of ice covered I i II I ti' PI I w IHH^iiii^il.^E^"S"<*'''^*' ■''■■- V .• ■^■*'^•-.•i*|;^%<^•^;'^■ '■-'i.-:. ' ■■ .v-..,/ ■.■.■:'■ •■ ■ '■ ■•■ ... -'r^ . -■' ■>;. .■...■•-^.^■^m'ifM-j ■ ■ ^•■v- ..';^ .^■;:v ■ ,:^:-; r^ : ■■"- ' ■•' . —4**'. '-. ' . ' ■■/ ~ ' .*.;■ ■»'' ^,*fe . ., ■-. ^^ vv«;v :, 'v./,v -s:^-' -^^-'r -.■■■■•>■ ^•>^s ••/^- ■ ■"■■■■ ." r-m- V'^v,"•:^«J*tv*^ '.■ cv^-y^ r- ■■■■■. ,. ^ . v';:^i;-5'- .": ■'■■; i'",i n" '•'.Hi . If in i-7n •ll'tV .l^lfMi jM/t*- -^ .vt v*ju cquit' ' . ■ . ' ■••V f ;' ; jnot tliiiik ihiit w* _.^ ■, -4 . >; f'< r itn occasion tlnit never (nLnuj. Mr L«iv».?i;. tifi^'*r '.'d )ri> bulletin the base oHLie brain, killing bis uui- ^ nifil i<( fir -A*' -'-' lliv ;•■ r'seace of a bolt • i W'*/xu \w- ^n. MiuvuintM-'' i>s the sauiv ico jjitlnencf:? wbicb 'b^prt?^s,ed it b^'tovfv i ]m-:o bu'i '•^iH'^sij.twl occasion, Mill b» pass",! ag through thii^ \my, t'- 'h'v»' >n»bbm elc vuf'«ins ot" tr-mpeni- ■ water: the s;irtje .\ve;i^!. <., ;■ < jm - >>^?!bt>rhooil nial: ' th-- i*.^ i ^^•(•rj ►- •<■*;». '. vi^f t*i|^ 5 ^, wv- ^#%4f? fkst to a p','.^ito quarter. •wr^Hsd spir«* ^jf trap, \'ei<» ,i , - ^ . ■ ' I 1?' 'm ''H 1 1 m mt i ROUGH WEATHER. 121 the Devil's Thumb. It was Lord Melville's Monu- ment ; so named by Sir John Ross. The islands which are marked on the chart as " Brown's" we did not see, though we passed near their assumed position. "August 10. Another day of sunshine. Were we in the Mediterranean, there could not be a warmer sky. It ends with the sky though ; for our thermom- eters fell at four A.M. to 24°. A careful set of observa- tions with Green's standard thermometers gave 18° as the diflference between the sunshine and shade at noonday. The young ice was nearly an inch thick. Myriads of Auks were seen, and the usual supply duly slaughtered. " Melville's Monument appeared to-day under a new phase, rising out from the surrounding floe ice, either a salient peninsula or an isolated rock. - " The land ice measured but five feet seven inches, the reduced growth, probably, of a single season. The open leads multiply, for we made under sail about fifteen miles N.N.W." As the next day glided in, the skies became over- cast, and the wind rose. Mist gathered about the horizon, shutting out the icebergs. The floes, which had opened before with a slender wind from the north- ward, now shed off dusty wreaths of snow, and began to close rapidly. Moving along in our little river passage, we ob- served it growing almost too narrow for navigation, and every now and then, where a projecting cape stretched out toward this advancing ice, we had to run the gauntlet between the opposing margins. It is under these circumstances, with a gale prob' ably outside, and a fog gathering around, that the whalers, less strengthened than ourselves, and taught r f ;■ 1 » t. 1 ■ 122 HUMMOCKING. %i by a fearful experience, seek protecting bights among the floes or cut harbors in the ice. For us, the word delay did not enter into our commander's thoughts. We had not purchased caution by disaster ; and it was essential to success that we should make the most of this Godsend, a "slant" from the southeast. We pushed on ; but the Rescue, less fortunate than ourselves, could not follow. She was jammed in be- tween two closing surfaces. We were looking out for a temporary niche in which to secure ourselves, when we were challenged to the bear hunt I have spoken of a few pages back. Upon regaining the deck with Mr. Lovell's prize, we were struck with the indications of a brooding wind outside. The ice was closing in every direction ; and our master, Mr. Murdaugh, had no alternative but to tie up and await events. The Rescue did the same, some three hundred yards to the southward. By five A.M., a projecting edge of the outside floe came into contact with our own, at a point midway between the two vessels. This assailing floe was three feet eight inches thick, perhaps a mile in diameter, and moving at a rate of a knot an hour. Its weight was some two or three millions of tons. So irresistible was its momentum, that, as it impinged against the solid margin of the land ice, there was no recoil, no in- terruption to its progress. The elastic material cor- rugated before the enormous pressure ; then cracked, then crumbled, and at last rose, the lesser over the greater, sliding up in great inclined planes : and these, again, breaking by their weight and their continued impulse, toppled over in long lines of fragmentary ice. This imposing process of dynamics is called " Hummocking." Its most striking feature was its i f A PINCH. 123 unswerving, unchecked continuousness. The mere commotion was hardly proportioned either to the in- tensity of the force or the tremendous effects which it produced. Tables of white marble were thrust into the air, as if by invisible machinery. First, an inclined face would rise, say ten feet ; then you would hear a grinding, tooth-pulling crunch : it has cracked at its base, and a second is sliding up upon it. Over this, again, comes a third ; and here- upon the first breaks down, carrying with it the sec- ond ; and just as you are expecting to see the whole pile disappear, up comes a fourth, larger than any of the rest, and converts all its predecessors into a cha- otic mass of crushed marble. Now the fragments thus comminuted are about the size of an old-fashioned Conestoga wagon, and the line thus eating its way is several hundred yards long. The action soon began to near our brig, which now, fast by a heavy cable, stood bows on awaiting the onset. It was an uncomfortable time for us, as we momentarily expected it to " nip" her sides, or bear her down with the pressure. But, thanks to the in- verted wedge action of her bows, she shot out like a squeezed water-melon seed, snapping her hawser like pack-thread, and backing into wider quarters. The Rescue was borne almost to her beam ends, but event- ually rose upon the ice. The rudders of both brigs were unshipped. This closure of the seaward ice upon the land floe was evidently connected with a change of winds. On the day before, the 10th, the ice had relaxed all around us, under a gentle air from the northward ; but a grad- ually increasing breeze from the E.S.E., commencing about nine in the evening, had tightened the floes, P I 4i' 124 ICE OPENS CRUSTACEA. and this morning bore them down upon us. As the wind hauled to the S.S.E., the ice opened again ; and on the early morning of the twelfth we warped ahead into a safer berth. We cast off again about 7 A.M. ; and after a weari- some day of warping, tracking, towing, and sailing, advanced some six or eight miles, along a coast-line of hills to the northeast, edged with glaciers. The currents were such as to entirely destroy our steerage way. Our rudder was for a time useless; and the surface water was covered by ripple marks, which flowed in strangely looping curves. On the 13th the sea abounded with life. Cetochili, as well as other entomostracan forms which I had not seen be- fore, lined, and, in fact, tinted the margins of the floe ice ; and for the first time I noticed among them some of those higher orders of crustacean life, which had heretofore been only found adhering to our warping lines. Among these were asellus and idotea, and that jerking little amphipod, the gammarus. Acalephse and limacinae abounded in the quiet leads. The birds, too, were back with us, the mollemoke, the Ivory gull, the Burgomaster, and the tern ; and while the little Auks crowded the floes below, feeding eagerly upon the abundant harvest of the ice, the air above us was filled with swooping crowds, equally intent on their marine pasture grounds. I can not think that the powerful mandible of the Fulmar petrels ever conde- scends to the surface forms of acalephaB. It is true that they follow in the stormy wake of vessels, like the Mother Carey's chickens, but their food is of a higher grade. It was a curious spectacle to see them fighting for the garbage of our vessel, and gormandiz- ing on the blubber of our game. GOING AHEAD. 125 We saw to-day two Rorqual whales (Rorqualis Bo- realis), apparently feeding upon these living waters. They were the first that we had seen since leaving Disco. We hailed them as an earnest of an open sea. As the day grew older, a breeze carried us along glo- riously. We made at least twenty miles upon our course ; and although we were forced to cut through some intercepting ice, it became evident that we had passed the trials of the bay, and were hourly approach- ing the North Water. The shore, which we had been so long skirting, again rose into mountains ; on whose bouthern flanks, as they receded, we could still see the great glacier. We had traced it all the way from the Devil's Thumb in a nearly continuous circuit; now we were about to lose it. The icebergs had sensibly diminished al ready. CHAPTER XVII. As the afternoon advanced, we had another visit of the phenomena of refraction This time they passed before us in all the costumes and mutations of a car- nival frolic. I am afraid to paint them from recollec- tion, and would make an apology, if I could, for the seeming extravagance with which they reflect them- selves in my journal. " 6 P.M Refraction again ! There is a black globe floating in the air, about 3° north of the sun. What it is you can not tell. Is it a bird or a balloon ? Pres- ently comes a sort of shimmering about its circumfer- ence, and on a sudden it changes its «hape. Now you see plainly what it is. It is a grand piano, and nothing else. Too quick this time ! You had hardly named it, before it was an anvil — an anvil large enough for Mulciber and his Cyclops to beat out the loadstone of the poles. You have not got it quite adjusted to your satisfaction, before your anvil itself is changing ; it contracts itself centrewise, and rounds itself end- wise, and, presto, it has made itself duplicate — a pair of colossal dumb-bells. A moment! and it is the black globe again." REFRACTION. 127 About an hour after this necromantic juggle, the whole horizon became distorted: great bergs lifted themselves above it, and a pearly sky and pearly water blended with each other in such a way, that you could not determine where the one began or the other ended. Your ship was in the concave of a vast sphere ; ice shapes of indescribable variety around you, floating, like yourself, on nothingness ; the flight of a bird as apparent in the deeps of the sea as in the continuous element above. Nothing could be more curiously beautiful than our consort the Rescue, as she lay in mid-space, duplicated by her secondary im- age. This unequally refractive condition continued on into the next day ; diminishing as the sun approached his meridian altitude, but again coming back in the afternoon with augmented intensity. The appearance at night was more wonderful than it had been on the 12th. I am desirous to give the impressions it made on me at the moment, and I therefore copy again from my journal, without erasing or modifying a sin- gle line. "August 13. To-night, at ten o'clock, we were op- posite a striking cliff", supposed to be Cape Melville, when, attracted by the irregular radiation from the snn, then about two hours from the lowest point of his curve, I saw suddenly flaring up all around him the signs of active combustion. Great volumes of black smoke rose above the horizon, narrowing and expanding as it rolled away. Black specks, to which the eye, by its compensation for distance, gave the size of masses, mingled with it, rising and falling, appear- ing and disappearing ; and above all this was the pe- culiar waving movement of air, rarefied by an adjacent II I I I ill 128 REFRACTION. heat. The whole intervening atmosphere was dis- turbed and flickering. " Upon looking at tl^is curious spectacle through our best Fraunhofer glass, the clearly defined edges of a number of large icebergs could be seen, borne by re- fraction into the air, duplicated by inversion, and pre- serving that vertical parallelism of sides before alluded to as characteristic of the refracted berg. From the lower face of their inverted images were exhaling — if I may use the word — ^those wonderful clouds of ap- parent smoke. Here, too, at an altitude which, judg- ing by the bases of the bergs, corresponded to the re- fracted or secondary horizon, a lateral distortion sent out huge tongues, like projecting rafters, which, when not obscured by the ' smoke,' contrasted black against the sky. All this was so combined with architectur- al forms, that it was hard to avoid the impression of some mighty city in conflagration." During all these phenomena, the position of the sun with reference to the elevated object had a marked influence. Immediately below his disk, the excessive illumination prevented my taking altitudes by the sex- tant ; but on either side of it, to a distance of twenty degrees, I could note that the false horizon, which I had selected as an index of the uplift, rose as it reced- ed from the sun. A similarly progressive elevation of the refracted bergs was observable by the unassisted eye. The range thus noted was from .06' to 1° 40'. The entire sea at this time was studded with frag- ments of floating ice. Heretofore the more striking manifestations of this sort of refraction had occurred on warm sunny days, when the area immediately ad- jacent to us was entirely ice-bound ; and we had re- marked, on several occasions, that the presence of open THE CUISINE. 129 water between us and the sun had the effect of de- pressing the refracted images. I have prepared some curious tables, indicating the relation of the surface temperature of the water to the temperature of the air on board ship. They would be out of place here. Another extract from my journal of the next morn- ing has less of imaginative interest : "August 14. I have just returned from a couple of hours' ho ting. Wit-h two sailors to row, and as many ships' muskets to slay with, I brought back sev- enty birds. They are more scattered than they were, not flocking along the floes, but covering the sea. I notice them, with their crops full of shrimps, the un- grateful little gluttons, winging their way off to shore- ward. " We are living luxuriously. Yesterday our French cook, Henri, gave us a salmi of Auks, worthy of the Trots Freres ; and to-day I enjoyed an Arctic imitation of a trussed partridge. Bear is strong, very strong, and withal most capricious meat; you can not tell where to find him. One day he is quite beefy and bearable ; another, hircine, hippuric, and damnable. As a part of my Polar practice, I make it a point — al- beit I esteem a discriminating palate — to eat of every thing ; and, in the course of my culinary experience, I have already managed to convert several outcast eat- ables to good palatable food. Seal is not fishy, but sealy ; and with a little patience and a good deal of sauce piquante, is very excellent diet. The mollemoke is the hardest to manage ; the infiltration of fatty mat- ter is rather alarming. But I give my method, for future maitres d^hotels who may task themselves in these regions. Cut off his breast; fling every thing else to his fellows, who are waiting for him outside ; I m \ 1 *. I iy h : 130 GLACIERS. rub with soda; wash out the soap thus freely made; parboil and pickle. The bird is, after all, not so de- testable, early in the season. At the Hudson Bay's settlements they preserve him in salt. Sea-gull is worthy of all honorable mention. The Jilet of a large Ivory one is a morceau between a spring chicken and our own unsurpassed canvas back. As to these little Guillemots or Auks (Uria alle, or alke), quocunque no- mine gaudent, like all birds feeding on crustaceal life, they are very red in meat, juicy, fat, delicate, and fla- vorsome, something between a blue- wing and a Dela- ware rail ; in a word, the perfection of good eating. " We ran along the coast to-day with gentle airs, and near enough to keep me busy with my pencil. Glacier after glacier met us, and the background of rounding snow-covered mountains contrasted finely with the square blocking of the rugged precipices at the water-line. These glaciers, however, were de- tached, not running in continuous curves along the coast, but abutting from opening valleys. The struc- ture of the shore was evidently metamorphic. It re- minded me of some portions of our Alleghany ridge, and I even thought that I could distinguish in the ar- rangement of these valley indentations our own famil- iar form of anticlinal rupture. "Although icebergs still crowd the horizon, and some two hundred of them can be counted within the eye circle, we are evidently fast getting rid of the ice. It is true that the shore pack still stretches out close upon our left — a barrier apparently as permanent as the glaciered hills with which it is united ; but to sea- ward, open water-leads gladden us in every direction. We forced to-day through but one floe tongue, using the hawser and windlass about an hour. With this ex- ADVANTAGES OF STEAMER. 131 ception, we have had no drawback but that capricious and feeble motive power, upon which, under the most favorable circumstances, our little craft is dependent. How often, when retarded by baffling winds or unfa- voring leads, have I wished for a few hours of steam !" The arguments in favor of a towing steamer to pro- mote the transit of this tedious bay seem to me very simple and conclusive. The linear distance, including tortuosities, is but three hundred miles, or two days' run. It had cost us already, including our besetment off the Thumb, five weeks. The causes of this delay were either closed ice, calms and adverse surface currents, contrary winds, or baf- fling leads. None of these, except the first, would have arrested a steamer. The predominant winds of July and August are, to use the expression of the whal- ers, " closing winds ;" and, except casters and south- easters (true), which are comparatively rare and of short continuance, all the " opening winds" are con- trary, and impracticable for sailing vessels. I have observed that in calm weather, especially if it continues for some time, the ice becomes less te- nacious, and opens gradually in leads ; but sails are powerless in a calm. Slight airs from the north al- ways relaxed the ice, and these were frequent; yet here, too, we were hampered, for the north wind was dead ahead ; and, while it lasted, we had nothing to do but tie up and await a change. Even in that rare conjunction of an opening wind and a favoring wind, the tortuous leads may utterly check the navigator's advance. When a " slant" from the southward and eastward did come, as my wind tables will show that it sometimes did, a single tongue of ice or a zigzag lead would delay us until the favor- i I 132 ESQUIMAUX. I* f^ If ing opportunity had gone by. In all of these cases a steamer would have been of incalculable advantage. *^ August 15. The Rescue, which has proved herself a dull sailer, had lagged astern of us, when our master, Mr. Murdaugh, observed the signal of *men ashore' flying from her peak. We were now as far north as latitude 75° 58', and the idea of hum^an life somehow or other involuntarily connected itself with disaster. A boat was hastily stocked with provisions and dis- patched for the shore. Two men were there upon the land ice, gesticulating in grotesque and not very decent pantomime — genuine, unmitigated Esquimaux. Verging on 76° is a far northern limit for human life; yet these poor animals were as fat as the bears which we killed a few days ago. Their hair, mane-like, flowed over their oily cheeks, and their countenances had the true prognathous character seen so rarely among the adulterated breeds of the Danish settle- ments. They were jolly, laughing fellows, full of so- cial feeling. Their dress consisted of a bear-skin pair of breeches, considerably the worse for wear; a seal- skin jacket, hooded, but not pointed at its skirt ; and a pair of coarsely-stitched seal-hide boots. They were armed with a lance, harpoon, and air-bladder, for spear- ing seals upon the land floe. The kaiack, with its host of resources, they seemed unacquainted with. " When questioned by Mr. Murdaugh, to whom I owe these details, they indicated five huts, or fam- ilies, or individuals, toward a sort of valley between two hills. They were ignorant of the use of bread, and rejected salt beef; but they appeared familiar with ships, and would have gladly invited themselves to visit us, if the ofliicer had not inhospitably declined the honor." ;!!« iil| FROZEN FAMILIES. 133 It was not very far from Cape York that we met these men. They belonged, probably, to the same de- tached parties of seal and fish catching coast nomads, that were met by Sir John Ross in his voyage of 1819, and whom he designated, fancifully enough, as the "Arctic Highlanders." Eleven years after his visit, some boat-crews, from a whaler which had escaped the ice disasters of 1830, landed at nearly the same spot, and made for a group of huts. They were struck as they approached them to find no beaten snow-tracks about the entrance, nor any of the more unsavory indications of an Esquimaux homestead. The riddle was read when they lifted up the skin curtain, that served to cover at once doorway and window. Grouped around an oilless lamp, in the attitudes of life, were four or five human corpses, with darkened lip and sunken eyeball ; but all else preserved in perennial ice. The frozen dog lay beside his frozen master, and the child, stark and stiff, in the reindeer hood which enveloped the frozen mother. The cause was a mystery, for the hunting apparatus was near them, and the bay abounds with seals, the habitual food, and light, and fire of the Esquimaux. Perhaps the ex- cessive cold had shut off their supplies for a time by closing the ice-holes — perhaps an epidemic had strick- en them. Some three or four huts that were near had the same melancholy furniture of extinct life. ESQUIMAUX ON SNOW-SHOES. •«» I 'Wf Mm ' '^^H^H'- ' '^^DKlfl^ ',Hhp ^flp' Bessie's cove. CHAPTER XVni. We sailed along the coast quietly, but with the com- fortable excitement of expectation. We had not yet seen such open water, and were momentarily expect- ing the change, of course, which was to lead us through the North Water to Lancaster Sound. The glaciers were no longer near the water-line ; but an escarped shore, of the usual primary structure, gave us a pleas- ing substitute. In a short time we reached the " Crimson Cliffs of Beverley," the seat of the often-described " red snow." The coast was high and rugged, the sea-line broken by precipitous sections and choked by detritus. Sail- ing slowly along, at a distance of about ten miles, we could distinctly see outcropping faces of red feldspathic rock, while in depending positions, between the cones of detritus, the scanty patches of snow were tinged BESSIE S COVE. 135 with a brick-dust or brown stain. It is true that we could not see the " Crimson" of Sir John Ross, who gave to this spot its somewhat euphonious title ; but the locality was not without indications which should excuse this gallant navigator from imputations against his veracity of narrative. The bright red outcroppings of the feldspar, the scarlet patches of a lichen (Lepra- ria) which was in extreme abundance, and, finally, the excretions of the numerous birds that resort to these cliffs, might, in favoring seasons, combine with the snow in such a manner as to give at a distance the tint which he has described. But it fell calm, and I had an opportunity of visit- ing the shore. The place where we landed was in latitude 76° 04' N., nearly. It was a little cove, bor- dered on one side by a glacier ; on the other, watered by distillations from it, and green with luxuriant .nosses. It was, indeed, a fairy little spot, brightened, ?erhaps, by its contrast with the icy element, on which i had been floating for a month and a half before ; yet even now, as it comes back to me in beautiful com- panionship with many sweet places of the earth, I am sure that its charms were real. The glacier came down by a twisted circuit from a deep valley, which it nearly filled. As it approached the sea, it seemed unable to spread itself over the horse- shoe-like expansion in which we stood ; but, retaining still the impress marks of its own little valley birth- place, it rose up in a huge dome-like escarpment, one side frozen to the cliffs, the other a wall beside us, and the end a rounded mass protruding into the sea. Close by the foot of its precipitous face, in a fur- rowed water-course, was a mountain torrent, which, emerging from the point at which the glacier met the if 1 1! ;11 In I !| l! '- ;!■ ii i m m I •{ 136 GLACIER FORMATION. hill, came dashing wildly over the rocks, green with the mosses and carices of Arctic vegetation ; while from the dome-like summit a stream, that had tun- neled its way through the ice from the valley still higher above, burst out like a fountain, and fell in a cascade of foam- whitened water into the sea. The glacier itself was of the class which Saussure has designated as the second order. It was a small but elegant type of glacial structure, and was to me conclusive as to the identity in all essential features of the Polar and Alpine ice-growths. Its material was hard but vesicular ice, and seemed marked by strati- fied bands rudely parallel with its rocky base. These bands commenced with bluish-green compact ice, near- ly transparent, and then gradually shaded off as they rose into a more vesicular structure, which ended in an almost granular whiteness. These markings, which I had an opportunity after- ward of studying in the bergs, were seemingly inde- pendent of veined or ribboned structure. I look upon them as indices of the annual growth ; made up by the snows and atmospheric deposits of the non-thaw- ing season, gradually melted, compressed, and refrozen during the alternating temperatures of the summer months. This view will explain the compact, trans- parent character of the lower portions of the band, and also its gradual transition into a nearly granular ma- terial ; for the surface thaws and rains which follow the long winter growth, percolating to the bottom, would impress the mass throughout its extent with these different changes. The direction of these lines was thus nearly in the long axis of the glacier. As they descended to the surface of its trough, a gradually deepening earth-stain V'-A GLACIERS. 137 made the stratification for a time more apparent ; but near its base its substance was so incorporated with detritus and pasty silt, that it was hard to distinguish it from soil. The shape of the mass which protruded into the cove was that of a horse-shoe, its curve pointing to the west upon the waters of the bay. Its northern side was flanked by the walls of the valley ; but its entire southern sweep was completely clear and unobstruct- ed. On this I made the observations which I have just detailed. It is with mortification that I confess that I had not then made myself familiar with the views detailed by Professor Forbes in his work on the Pennine Alps; for it has since occurred to me that this so-called dome was of a true scallop-shell shape, and might, perhaps, have illustrated the conoidal structure, which forms so beautiful a feature of the viscous theory. But I have thought it best to adhere to my original remarks, lest I should impair the value of my facts by connecting them with views not directly imparted by the occa- sion. Four of these bands I succeeded, with some trouble, in measuring. They ranged from sixteen to nineteen inches in width. The height of the glacier where it entored the sea was eighty-four feet. Sixty paces back from its face, measured rudely by stepping a corre- sponding line of ground, its height was but seventy ; and it there spread itself out so as to cover a greater area, and its sides were less precipitous. Its protrusion into the sea beyond the water-line was but eight feet, passing over a bottom of rounded pebbles, none of which presented facettes of attrition. The depth of the portion thus immersed could be sounded with a I I i I 138 RED SNOW. i JM ^ IHi4 m mm' urn ■•Jf; boat-hook; and through the clear liquid I could see that a sort of beveling prevented the ice-mass from actual contact with the bottom. Our very limited time prevented me from tracing this glacier up to its trough, my entire attention being occupied with its presenting face. Captain De Haven, who walked for a mile and a half up the valley, de- scribed it to me as rapidly diminishing in size, and de- riving contributions from the ice-streams of several minor valleys. I made a careful sketch of the configuration of this cove. Sandstones and coarse conglomerates, rounded porphyritic quartzes and altered slates, with green- stone and amygdaloids, chlorites and actynolites, &c., were found freely among the loose material spread out over the shore. The detritus from the cliffs was ex- cessive, and the effect of frost as a degrading agent strikingly manifest. But the object which seemed to usurp the undi- vided attention of our party was the red snow. It abounded in the depressions between the slopes of de- posited detritus, and wherever a protected or depend- ant hollow gave protection from excessive wind or thaw. It was never seen unless in association with foreign matter, such as the fronds of lichens or fila- ments of moss. Its surface was always contaminated by these accumulations, and 1 observed that the color of the Protococcus was most decided when they were in greatest abundance. This I mention, not for its bearing upon the question whether unmixed snow can act as a vegetative matrix, but as indicating, for the locality in question, an adventitious source for the sup- ply of ammonia. I may say, while upon the subject of this interesting production, that I subsequently col- Sfl I ' ATMOSPHERIC TRANSFERS. 139 lected it at Barlow's Inlet and Point Innes, on both sides of Wellington Sound and in Baffin's Bay, at va- rious points, as high as latitude 76° 15' ; but in no in- stance, throughout this extended range, from snow un- sullied by extraneous vegetable matter. This growth, however, under a modified and less luxuriant form, may take place upon an apparently unsullied and isolated surface ; for, in addition to its high mountain localities, as described by Saussure, Bier, and others, Parry found it upon the Spitzbergen ice-fields; and I myself, in the May of 1851, met with it on the floe ice of Baffin's Bay fifty miles from any land. But I would suggest that, e/en in these far-removed situations, we can not positively assert the exemption of the atmosphere from organic matter. By this I do not mean merely effluvia, acetic and hippuric acids, &c., &CC., as detected by Fresenius and others, but a direct transportation of visibly organized material. The highly-polished and dry surface of the Arctic winter-ice admits of such transportation to an almost indefinite extent. I have exhibited to the American Philosophical Society filaments of mosses sufficiently large to be recognized as such by the unassisted eye, which I collected on the ice off" Cape Adair in the month of February, 1851, some seventy odd miles from the shore. The atmospheric transfer of volcanic ash, or the still more remarkable infusorial [Polythalamia, etc.) dust on the coast of Africa, has struck me as not superior in interest to this diffusion of organic sporules over the Arctic snows. To return to the " Crimson Cliffs." We found the red snow in greatest abundance upon a talus fronting if I I'! i 140 RED SNOW. to the southwest, which stretched obliquely across the glacier at the seat of its emergence from the valley. It was here in great abundance, staining the surface in patches six or eight yards in diametier. Similar patches were to be seen at short intervals extending up the valley. Its color was a deep but not bright red. It resem- bled, with its accompanying impurities, crushed pre- served cranberries, with the seed and capsule strewn over the snow. It imparted to paper drawn over it a nearly cherry-red, or perhaps crimson stain, which be- came brown with exposure ; and a handful thawed in a glass tumbler resembled muddy claret. Its coloring matter was evidently soluble ; for, on scraping away the surface, we found that it had dyed the snow beneath with a pure and beautiful rose color, which penetrated, with a gradually softening tint, some eight inches below the surface. CHAPTER XIX. At 4 P.M. we left this interesting spot, for which some pleasant associations had suggested to me the name of " Bessie's Cove," and commenced beating to the northward. The sea was crowded with entomos- traca and clios, on which myriads of Auks were feed- ing. The prospects of open water were most cheering. One mile from the shore, we got soundings in rooky bottom, at twenty-three fathoms, and then, wishing to " fill up" with water before attempting our passage to the west, we stood close in, seeking a favorable spot. About eleven o'clock we were attracted by a bight, midway between Capes York and Dudley Diggs. Its foreground was of rugged syenitic rocks, and over these we could distinctly see the water rushing down in a foaming torrent. Here was a watering-place. By means of our old friends the warps, we hauled in so close that the sides of our vessels touched the rocks. A few inches only intervened between our keel and the shining pebbles. We could jump on shore as from a wharf The sun was so low at this midnight hour as to bathe every thing in an atmosphere of Italian pink, deliciously unlike the Arctic regions. The recess was in blackest shadow, but the cliffs which formed the walls of the cove rose up into full sunshine. The Auks crowded these rocks in myriads. So, with gun and sextant, I started on a tramp. This range, called by Sir John Ross the " Arctic Highlands," is not simply a continuation of the !Du- ist ridge, observed neira part of a great it 142 FLORULA. IJ on either side of the so-called Peninsula of Greenland. The culminating peak of the northern abutment of this indentation gave me, trigonometrically, 1383 feet; and others, more distant, were at least one third higher. The cove itself measured but six hundred yards from bluff to bluff. It was recessed in a regular ellipse, or rather horseshoe, around which the strongly-featured gneisses, relieved, as usual, with the outcroppings of feldspar, formed lofty mural precipices. I estimated their mean elevation at twelve hundred feet. At their bases a mass of schistose rubbish had accumulated. I have described this recess as a perfect horseshoe : it was not exactly such, for at its northeast end a rug- ged little water-feeder, formed by the melting snows, sent down a stream of foam which buried itself under the frozen surface of a lake. Yet to the eye it was a nearly absolute theatre, this little cove, and its arena a moss-covered succession of terraces, each of indescrib- able richness. Strange as it seemed, on the immediate level of snow and ice, the constant infiltrations, aided by solar rever- beration, had made an Arctic garden-spot. The sur- face of the moss, owing, probably, to the extreme altern- ations of heat and cold, was divided into regular hex- agons and other polyhedral figures, and scattered over these, nestling between the tufts, and forming little groups on their southern faces, was a quiet, unobtru- sive community of Alpine flowering plants. The weak- ness of individual growth allowed no ambitious species to overpower its neighbor, so that many families were crowded together in a rich flower-bed. In a little space that I could cover with my pea-jacket, the veined leaves of the Pyrola were peeping out among chickweeds and saxifrages, the sorrel and Ranunculus. I even found a FLORULA. 143 poor gentian, stunted and reduced, but still, like every thing around it, in all the perfection of miniature pro- portions. As this mossy parterre approached the rocky walls that hemmed it in, tussocks of sedges and coarse grass began to show themselves, mixed with heaths and birches ; and still further on, at the margin of the horse- shoe, and fringing its union with the stupendous piles of debris, came an annulus of Arctic shrubs and trees. Shrubs and trees ! the words recall a smile, for they only typed those natives of another zone. The poor things had lost their uprightness, and learned to escape the elements by trailing along the rocks. Few rose above my shoes, and none above my ankles ; yet shady alleys and heaven-pointing avenues could not be more impressive examples of creative adaptation. Here I saw the bleaberry {Vaccinium uliginosum) in flower and in fruit — I could cover it with a wine-glass ; the wild honeysuckle [Azalea procumbens) of our Penn- sylvania woods — I could stick the entire plant in my button-hole ; the Andromeda tetragona, like a green marabou feather. Strangest among these transformations came the willows. One, the Salix herhacea, hardly larger than a trefoil clover ; another, the S. glauca, like a young althea, just bursting from its seed. A third, the S. lanata, a triton among these boreal minnows, looked like an unfortunate garter-snake, bound here and there by claw-like radicles, which, unable to penetrate the inhospitable soil, had spread themselves out upon the surface — traps for the broken lichens and fostering moss which formed its scanty mould. I had several opportunities, while taking sextant el- evations of the headlands, to measure the moss-beds 144 ml MOSS-BEDS. them with a pointed staff Th ^ ^'"'"^^ *™»gl' investing mould, built IL ^^ """''"" '°™e'':^^:^^ •f*SfJlfltv^-5^- t , . * '^ ■^■,* * "., - ■■■' «■ ■-*r'.aA%: m ft, 144 '*»«■ f: MOSS-BEDS. 'til b ) ■■^■•i'ti'in'i vvj! i^i'. (ItMuuIed fa01Ut»-t} t^y.Jl r^'^ -inetJ up j;,yt f i«^*-^ mo.^.se* jorijj upon ».Vl Ui? fj 't^" '^-a Lju< ., ^^'<^"»'W. ^A.-ie<.t. Ar '^ 'Jiihl It. It. (I ^'^■rcy^d the ,h: • ''■ i--'t.- . ■ H^^-. Aad evMf, hud ' . ' • Hi ''?''M> iiHie lux «^r;i It :,". ■■■'"'^''M«'V!,m,fr,-.Vf,„,,:'' ','-'''' "'■ \f • ■■.t ■/-•■■-;■•■•--.:. .£'„r:;r:r: '■ ;{^- :^ "«UMu marked in ,,v,o.n.;. . . 'fd ^('.r u,rg,> nwnV,. .. , , I ! '■--4r»NJr-. <'-p i 'it' S«>. ,... .1. ,,^,!,. icir^t- :.|.s thisi .f.. . ilit it j,; <( » *.''', > ar ill*; sltrvv ""*:iv (if- :io(Jj;. ! out :iu.. '•'lO . I •' :'■('! 'i- •»ti.> VV V \.. -'^^ X >^- ' i\ K -nJ ~>v ^ n: !,<*•.:' 'f>. \ > 'fc t ^„ , ' AUKS NESTS. 145 that these talus or debris are impressive. They tell of changes which have begun and been going on since the existence of the earth in its present state by the friction of time against its surface ; and they carry us on with solemn force to the period when the dehiscent edges and mountain ravines of this same earth shall have been worn down into rounded hill and gentle val- ley. Well may they be called " geological chronome- ters."* They point with impressive finger to the ro- tation of years. The dial-plate and the index are both there, and human wisdom almost deciphers the nota- tion! On the steeper flanks of these rocky cones the little Auks had built their nests. The season of incubation, though far advanced, had not gone by, for the young fledglings were looking down upon me in thousands ; and the mothers, with crops full of provender, were constantly arriving from the sea. Urged by a wish to study the domestic habits of these little Arctic emi- grants at their homestead, I foolishly clambered up to one of their most popular colonies, without thinking of my descent. The angle of deposit was already very great, not much less than 50° ; and as I moved on, with a walk- ing-pole substituted for my gun, I was not surprised to find the fragments receding under my feet, and rolling, with a resounding crash, to the plain below. Stop- ping, however, to regain my breath, I found that above, beneath, around me, every thing was in motion. The entire surface seemed to be sliding down. Ridiculous as it may seem to dwell upon a matter apparently so trivial, my position became one of danger. The accel- erated velocity of the masses caused them to leap off * Mantell's " Wonders of Geology."" K 11 146 TRAPPING THE AUKS. in deflected lines. Several uncomfortable fragments had already passed by me, some even over my head, and my walking-pole was jerked from my hands and buried in the ruins. Thus helpless, I commenced my own half-involuntary descent, expecting momentarily to follow my pole, when my eye caught a projecting outcrop of feldspar, against which the strong current split into two minor streams. This, with some hard jumps, I succeeded in reaching. As I sat upon the temporary security of this little rock, surrounded by falling fragments, and awaiting their slow adjustment to a new equilibrium before I ventured to descend, I was struck with the Arctic orig- inality of every thing around. It was midnight, and the sun, now to the north, was hidden by the rocks ; but the whole atmosphere was pink with light. Over head and around me whirled innumerable crowds of Auks and Ivory gulls, screeching with execrable clam- or, almost in contact with my person. On tht. frozen lake below, contrasting with its snowy covering, were a couple of ravens, fighting zealously for a morsel of garbage ; and high up, on the crags above me, sat some unmoved, phlegmatic burgomasters. I missed my opportunity of inspecting the nests of the Auks. They issued from the crevices between the detached fragments, and, it is probable, deposit- ed their eggs, like other Uria, upon the naked rock. Some of the men succeeded in reaching their squabs by introducing their arms. It is said that the Esqui- maux trap them by spreading out their clothing oppo- site these apertures, so that the birds, when disturbed, pass into and fill the sleeves and legs. While at this cove, I saw at a distance a black ani- mal, which, but for its apparently lesser size, I would "I f A BLACK FOX. 147 have taken for a fox. One of our officers fired at anoth- er, and I saw a third fifteen miles further north, hoth of which were undouhtedly of the same species. They were probably the " black fox" of Sir John Ross, about which there has been much discussion. Throwing aside less obvious marks of distinction, this fox was dark sooty brown or black, not blue, nor, as I am disposed to think, of the shed summer-coat-color of the white fox ( Canis lagopus). Its pinched expres- sion of head and diminished size might be explained by the absence of its winter covering. The rest of the day was beautifully clear. We spent it in working to windward, and at 4 P.M. again land- ed to get observations. This spot, the most northern that we reached in Baffin's Bay, was in latitude 76° 25'. I here saw and collected in the protected nooks, among the grasses and saxifrages, a large number of the Coch- learia {C. Danica) and Ranunculus. Emberiza and Plectrophanes were seen also. The calm which had given us these two days of shore rambles left us suddenly on the 18th. We stood towards Wolstenholme Sound, and bore across to the west in more open water than we had seen for several weeks. It was now beyond doubt that we were to winter somewhere among the scenes of arctic trial. We were past the barrier, heading direct for Lancas- ter Sound, with the motion of waves once more under us, and a breeze aloft. As I refer to my journal, I see how the tone of feeling rose among our little party We began again with something of confidence to con- nect the probable results with the objects of the ex- pedition. We had lost three weeks off the Devil's Tongue, the British steamers were far ahead of us in point of time, and their superior ability and practice I; V. 148 GOOD-BY TO BAFFIN. |M| ¥ i^m m\ 1^ n ' ^m '■ twm f BujjrT' £' '^m «! H fi 'fl M'l Wm 1 would still keep them in the advance ; and we were ignorant of their course and intended scheme of search. We had dreamed hefcre this, and pleasantly enough, of fellowship with them in our efforts, dividing be- tween us the hazards of the way, and perhaps in the long winter holding with them the cheery intercourse of kindred sympathies. We waked now to the proh- abilities of passing the dark days alone. Yet fairly on the way, an energetic commander, a united ship's com- pany, the wind freshening, our well-tried little ice- boat now groping her way like a blind man through fog and bergs, and now dashing on as if reckless of all but success — it was impossible to repress a sentiment almost akin to the so-called joyous excitement of con- flict. We were bidding good-by to "ye goode baye of old William Baffin ;" and as we looked round with a fare- well remembrance upon the still water, the diminished icebergs, and the constant sun which had served us so long and faithfully, we felt that the bay had used us kindly. Though I had read a good deal in the voyagers' books about Baffin's Bay, I had strangely and entirely misconceived the prominent features of its summer scenery. There is a combination of warmth and cold in the tone of its landscapes, a daring, eccentric vari- ety of forms, an intense clearness, almost energy of ex- pression, which might tax Turner and Stanfield to- gether to reproduce them with an approach to truth. How could they trace the features of the iceberg, melt- ing into shapes so boldly marked, yet so undefined ; or body forth its cold varieties of unshaded white, or the azure clare-obscure of the ice-chasrn! There are the black hills, blots upon rolling snow ; the ice-plain, mar- i CONTINUOUS DAYLIGHT. 149 gined with glaciers, and jutting out in capes from the cliffed shore : there is the still blue water. Or, if you want action instead of repose, here is the crashing floe, the grinding hummock, and the monumental berg ris- ing above both ! itself, though perishable, a seeming permanency compared with the ephemeral ruins that beat against its sides. All this is attempered by the warm glazing of a tint- ed atmosphere. The sky of Baffin's Bay, though but eight hundred miles from the Polar limit of all north- ernness, is as warm as the Bay of Naples after a June rain. What artist, then, could give this mysterious union of warm atmosphere and cold landscape ? The perpetual daylight had continued up to this moment with unabated glare. The sun had reached his north meridian altitude some days before, but the eye was hardly aware of change. Midnight had a softened character, like the low summer's sun at home, but there was no twilight. At first the novelty of this great unvarying day made it pleasing. It was curious to see the " mid- night Arctic sun set into sunrise," and pleasant to find that, whether you ate or slept, or idled or toiled, the same daylight was always there. No irksome night forced upon you its system of compulsory alternations. I could dine at midnight, sup at breakfast-tirne, and go to bed at noonday ; and but for an apparatus of coils and cogs, called Oi watch, would have been no wiser and no worse. My feeling was at first an extravagant sense of un- defined relief, of some vague restraint removed. I seemeH to have thrown off" the slavery of hours. In fact, I could hardly realize its entirety. The astral lamps, standing, dust-covered, on our lockers — I am I • ■" loO CONTINUOUS DAYLIGHT. III )('< quoting the words of my journal — puzzled me, as things obsolete and fanciful. This Wcts mstinctive, perhaps ; but by-and-by came other feelings. The perpetual light, garish and un- fluctuating, disturbed me. I became gradually aware of an unknown excitant, a stimulus, acting constant- ly, like the diminutive of a cup of strong coffee. My sleep was curtailed and irregular ; my meal hours trod upon each other's heels ; and but for stringent regula- tions of my own imposing, my routine would have been completely broken up. My lot had been cast in the zone of liriodendrons and sugar-maples, in the nearly midway latitude of 40°. I had been habituated to day and night ; and every portion of these two great divisions had for me its pe- riods of peculiar association. Even in the tropics, I had mourned the lost twilight. How much more did I miss the soothing darkness, of which twilight should have been the precursor ! I began to feel, with more of einoti(m than a man writing for others likes to con- fess to, how admirable, as a systematic law, is the al- ternation of day and night — words that type the two great conditions of living nature, action and repose. To those who with daily labor earn the daily bread, how kindly the season of sleep ! To the drone who, urged by the waning daylight, hastens the deferred task, how fortunate that his procrastination has not a six months' morrow! To the brain-workers among men, the enthusiasts, who bear irksomely the dark screen which falls upon their day-dreams, how benig- nant the dear night blessing, which enforces reluctant rest! i l^iJ!, \ ;^'vj%ir!?'n^i:;-. -^ f^yf.rv'^emf: %i^ 7 DEECHY. KHOM POINT INNES. CHAPTER XX. "Ay gust 19. The wind continued freshening, the Aneroid falling two tenths in the night. Ahout eight I was called by our master, with the news that a couple of vessels were following in our wake. We were shortening sail for our consort ; and by half past twelve, the larger stranger, the Lady Franklin, came up along side of us. A cordial greeting, such as those only know who have been pelted for weeks in the sol- itudes of Arctic ice — and we learned that this was Captiiin Penny's squadron, bound on the same pursuit as ourselves. A hurried interchange of news followed. The ice in Melville Bay had bothered both parties alike ; Commodore Austin, with his steamer tenders, was three days ago at Carey's Islands, a group near- ly as high as 77" north latitude; the North Star^ the missing provision transport of last summer, was safe ■m 152 ENTERING LANCASTER SOUND. somewhere in Lancaster Sound, probably at Leopold Island. For the rest, God speed ! " As she slowly forged ahead, there came over the rough sea that good old English hurra, which we in- herit on our side the water. ' Three cheers, hearty, with a will !' indicating as much of brotherhood as sympathy. ' Stand aloft, boys !' and we gave back the greeting. One cheer more of acknowledgment on each side, aiul the sister flags separated, each on its errand of mercy. " 8 P.M. The breeze has freshened to a gale. Fogs have closed round us, and we are driving ahead again, with look-outs on every side. We have no observa- tion ; but by estimate we must have got into Lancas- ter Sound. " The sea is short and excessive. Every thing on deck, even anchors and quarter- boats, have ' let cIkhI away,' and the little cabin is half afloat. The Rescue is staggering under heavy sail astern of us. We are making six or seven knots an hour. Murdaugh is ahead, looking out for ice and rocks; De Haven con- ning the ship. " All at once a high mountain shore rises before us, and a couple of isolated rocks show themselves, not more than a quarter of a mile ahead, white with break- ers. Both vessels are laid to." The storm reminded me of a Mexican " norther." It was not till the afternoon of the next day that we were able to resume our track, under a double-reefed top-sail, stay-sail, and spencer. We wore, of course, without observation still, and could only reckon that we had passed the Cunningham Mountains and Cape Warrender. About three o'clock in the morning of the 21st, an- 'I ! SIR JOHN ROSS. 153 other sail was reported ahead, a top-sail schooner, tow- ing after her what appeared to be a launch, decked over. " When I reached the deck, we were nearly up to her, for we had shaken out our reefs, and were driving before the wind, shipping seas at every roll. The lit- tle schooner was under a single close-reefed top-sail, and seemed fluttering over the waves like a crippled bird. Presently an old fellow, with a cloak tossed over his night gear, appeared in the lee gangway, and saluted with a voice that rose above the winds. "It was the Felix, commanded by that practical Arctic veteran. Sir John Ross. I shall never forget the heartiness with which the hailing officer sang out, in the midst of our dialogue, * You and I are ahead of them all.' It was so indeed. Austin, with two vessels, was at Pond's Bay ; Penny was somewhere in the gale ; and others of Austin's squadron were exploring the north side of the Sound. The Felix and the Advance were on the lead. " Before we separated. Sir John Ross came on deck, and stood at the side of his officer. He was a square- built man, apparently very little stricken in years, and well able to bear his part in the toils and hazards of life. He has been wounded in four several engage- ments — twice desperately — and is scarred from head to foot. He has conducted two Polar expeditions al- ready, and performed in one of them the unparalleled feat of wintering four years in Arctic snows. And here he is again, in a flimsy cockle-shell, after contrib- uting his purse and his influence, embarked himself in the crusade of search for a lost comrade. We met him off" Admiralty Inlet, just about the spot at which he was picked up seventeen years before." i ■ 1} <:, fl 1'^ 154 THE PRINCE ALBERT. Soon after midnight, the land became visible on the north side of the Sound. We had passed Cape Charles Yorke and Cape Crawfurd, and were fanning along sluggishly with all the sail we could crowd for Port Leopold. • It was the next day, however, before we came in sight of the island, and it was nearly spent when we found ourselves slowly approaching Whaler Point, the seat of the harbor. Our way had been remarkably clear of ice for some days, and we were vexed to find, therefore, that a firm and rugged barrier extended along the western shore of the inlet, and apparently across the entrance we were seeking. It was a great relief to us to see, at half past six in the evening, a top-sail schooner working toward us through the ice. She boarded us at ten, and proved to be Lady Franklin's own search- vessel, the Prince Albert. This was a very pleasant meeting. Captain For- syth, who commanded the Albert, and Mr. Snow, who acted as a sort of adjutant under him, were very agree- able gentlemen. They spent some hours with us, which Mr. Snow has remembered kindly in the journal he has published since his return to England. Their little vessel was much less perfectly fitted than ours to encounter the perils of the ice ; but in ono respect at least their expedition resembled our own. They had to rough it : to use a Western phrase, they had no fan- cy fixings — nothing but what a hasty outfit and a lim- ited purse could supply. They were now bound for Cape Rennell, after which they proposed making a sledge excursion over the lower Boothian au-? Cock- burne lands. The North Star, they told us, had been caught by CAPE RILEY. 155 I the ice last season in the neighhorhood of our own first imprisonment, off the Devil's Thumb. After a peril- ous drift, she had succeeded in entering Wolstenholme Sound, whence, after a tedious winter, she had only re- cently arrived at Port Bo wen. They followed in our wake the next day as we push- ed through many streams of ice across the strait. We sighted the shore about five miles to the west of Cape Hurd very closely ; a miserable wilderness, rising in terraces of broken-down limestone, arranged between the hills like a vast theatre. On the 25th, still beating through the ice off" Rad- stock Bay, we discovered on Cape Riley two cairns, one of them, the most conspicuous, with a flag-staff" and ball. A couple of hours after, we were near enough to land. The cape itself is a low projecting tongue of limestone, but at a short distance behind it the cliff" rises to the height of some eight hundred feet. We found a tin canister within the larger cairn, contain- ing the information that Captain Ommanney had been there two days before us, with the Assistance and In- trepid, belonging to Captain Austin's squadron, and had discovered traces of an encampment, and other indications " that some party belonging to her Britan- nic majesty's service had been detained at this spot." Similar traces, it was a*' led, had been found also on Beechy Island, a projection on the channel side some ten miles from Cape Riley. Our consort, the Rescue, as we afterward learned, had shared in this discovery, though the British com- mander's inscription in the cairn, as well as his offi- cial reports, might lead perhaps to a diff"erent conclu- sion. Captain Griffin, in fact, landed with Captain Ommanney, and the traces were registered while the two officers were in company. 156 FRANKLIN S ENCAMPMENT. ■iSl \ .i\ • v* MJ J I inspected these different traces very carefully, and noted what I observed at the moment. The appear- ances which connect them with the story of Sir John Franklin have been described by others ; but there may still be interest in a description of them made while they were under my eye. I transcribe it word for word from my journal. "On a tongue of fossiliferous limestone, 'onting to- ward the west on a little indentation of the water, and shielded from the north by the precipitous cliffs, are five distinct remnants of habitation. " Nearest the cliffs, four circular mounds or heap- ings-up of the crumbled limestone, aided by larger stones placed at the outer edge, as if to protect the leash of a tent. Two larger stones, with an interval of two feet, fronting the west, mark the places of en- trance. " Several large square stones, so arranged as to serve probably for a fire-place. These have been tumbled over by parties before us. " More distant from the cliffs, yet in line with the four already described, is a larger inclosure ; the door facing south, and looking toward the strait : this so- called door is simply an entrance made of large ^lones placed one above the other. The inclosure itself tri- angular; its northern side about eighteen inches high, built up of flat stones. Some bird bones and one rib of a seal were found exactly in the centre of this tri- angle, as if a party had sat round it eating ; and the top of a preserved meat case, much rusted, was found in the same place. I picked up a piece of canvas or duck on the cliff side, well worn by the weather : the sailors recognized it at once as the gore of a pair of trowsers. FRANKLIN S ENCAMPMENT. 157 " A fifth circle is discernible nearer the cliffs, which may have belonged to the same party. It was less perfect than the others, and seemed of an older date. " On the beach, some twenty or thirty yards from the triangular inclosure, were several pieces of pine wood about four inches long, painted green, and white, and black, and, in one instance, puttied; evidently parts of a boat, and apparently collected as kindling wood." The indications were meagre, but the conclusion they led to was irresistible. They could not be the work of Esquimaux : the whole character of them con- tradicted it : and the only European who could have visited Cape Riley was Parry, twenty-eight years be- fore ; and we knew from his journal that he had not encamped here. Then, again, Ommanney's discovery of like vestiges on Beechy Island, just on the track of a party moving in either direction between it and the channel : all these speak of a land party from Frank- lin's squadron. Our commander resolved to press onward along the eastern shore of Wellington Channel. We were un- der weigh in the early morning of the 26th, and work- ing along with our consort toward Beechy — I drop the " Island," for it is more strictly a peninsula or a promontory of limestone, as high and abrupt as that at Cape Riley, connected with what we call the main by a low isthmus. Still further on we passed Cape Spencer ; then a fine bluft' point, called by Parry Point Innes ; and further on again, the trend being to the east of north, we saw the low tongue. Cape Bowden. Parry merely sighted these points from a distance, so that the shore line has never been traced. I sketch- ed it myself with some care ; but the running survey .^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 1.1 lu 122 12.2 S[ Ug 12.0 6" Fholograiiiic Sciences Corporation S^ ■^ \ v <^ ^. 6^ 33 WIST MAIN STMIT WIBSTIR.H.Y. UStO (716)I72.4S03 '^ 4 i^^ ^\7 4ip 158 FRANKLIN S ENCAMPMENT. I : r' of this celebrated explorer had left nothing to alter. To the north of Cape Innes, though the coast retains the same geognostical character, the bluff promonto- ries subside into low hills, between which the beach, composed of coarse silicious limestone, sweeps in long curvilinear terraces. Measuring some of these rudely afterward, I found that the elevation of the highest plateau did not exceed forty feet. Our way northward was along an ice channel close under the eastern shore, and bounded on the other side by the ice-pack, at a distance varying from a quarter of a mile to a mile and three quarters. Off Cape Spen- cer the way seemed more open, widening perhaps to two miles, and showing something like continued free water to the north and west. Here we met Captain Penny, with the Lady Franklin and Sophia. He told us that the channel was completely shut in ahead by a compact ice barrier, whicl^ connected itself with that to the west, describing a horseshoe bend. He thought a southwester was coming on, and counseled us to pre- pare for the chances of an impactment. The go-ahead determination which characterized our commander made us test the correctness of his advice. We push- ed on, tracked the horseshoe circuit of the ice without finding an outlet, and were glad to labor back again almost in the teeth of a gale. Captain Penny had occupied the time more profita- bly. In company with Dr. Goodsir, an enthusiastic explorer and highly educated gentleman, whose broth- er was an assistant surgeon on board the missing ves- sels, he had been examining the shore. On the ridge of limestone, between Cape Spencer and Point Junes, they had come across additional proofs that Sir John's party had been here — very important these proofs as FRANKLIN S ENCAMPMENT. 159 extending the line along the shore over which the par- ty must have moved from Cape Riley. Among the articles they had found were tin canis- ters, with the London maker's label ; scraps of news- paper, bearing the date 1844 ; a paper fragment, with the words " until called" on it, seemingly part of a watch order ; and two other fragments, each with the name of one of Franklin's officers written on it in pen- cil. I annex a fac-simile of one of these, the assistant surgeon of the Terror. They told us, too, that among the articles found by Captain Penny's men was a dredge, rudely fashioned of iron hoops beat round, with spikes inserted in them, and arranged for a long handle, as if to fish up missing articles ; besides some footless stockings, tied up at the lower end to serve as socks, an officer's pocket, velvet-lined, torn off from the dress, &c., &c. ; all of which, they thought, spoke of a party that had suffered wreck, and were moving east- ward. Acting on this impression. Captain Penny was about to proceed toward Baffin's Bay, along the north shore of Lancaster Sound, in the hope of encountering them, or, more probably, their bleached remains. For myself, looking only at tho facts, and carefully discarding every deduction that might be prompted by sympathy rather than reason, my journal reminds me that I did not see in these signs the evidence of a lost party. The party was evidently in motion ; but it might be that it was a detachment, engaged in making observations, or in exploring with a view to the oper- ations of the spring, while the ships were locked in winter quarters at Cape Riley or Beechy, which had returned on board before the opening of the ice. I may add, as not without some bearing on the for- tunes of this party, whatever may have been its condi- I I 160 FRANKLIN S ENCAMPMENT. tion or purposes, that the vacant water-spaces around us at this time were teeming with animal life. After passing Beechy, we saw seal disporting in great flocks, rising out of the water as high as their middle, like boys in swimming; the white whale, the first we had seen, to the extent of thirty-eight separate shoals ; the narwhal, or sea-unicorn ; and, finally, that marine pachyderm, the tusky walrus. These last were always crowded on small tongues of ice, whose purity they marred not a little — grim-looking monsters, reminding me of the stage hobgoblins, something venerable and semi-Egyptian withal. We passed so close as to have several shots at them. They invariably rose after plunging, and looked snortingly around, as if to make fight. Polar bears were numerous beyond our previous experience, and the Arctic fox and hare abounded. If we add to these the crowding tenants of the air, the Brent goose, which now came in great cunoid flocks from the north and north by east, the loons, the mol- lemokes, and the divers, we may form an estimate of the means of human subsistence in these seas. CHAPTER XXI. On the 27th, the chances of this narrow and capri- cious navigation had gathered five of the searching vessels, under three different commands, within the same quarter of a mile — Sir John Ross', Penny's, and our own. Both Ross and Penny had made the effort to push through the sound to the west, but found a great belt of ice, reaching in an almost regular cres- cent from Leopold's Island across to the northern shore, about half a mile from the entrance of the channel. Captain Ommanney, with the Intrepid and Assistance, had been less fortunate. He had attempted to break his way through the barrier, but it had closed on him, and he was now fast, within fifteen miles of us, to the west. After breakfast, our commander and myself took a boat to visit the traces discovered yesterday by Cap- tain Penny. Taking the Lady Franklin in our way, we met Sir John Ross and Commander Phillips, and a conference naturally took place upon the best plans for concerted operations. I was very much struck v/ith the gallant disinterestedness of spirit which was shown by all the officers in this discussion. Penny, an energetic, practical fellow, sketched out at once a plan of action for each vessel of the party. He him- self would take the western search ; Ross should run L ! 'i 1 1 162 THE GRAVES. f'i H' : * i! ( II li in ( • i over to Prince Regent's Sound, communicate the news to the Prince Albert, and so relieve that little vessel from the now unnecessary perils of her intended expe- dition ; and we were to press through the first open- ings in the ice by Wellington Channel, to the north and east. It was wisely determined by brave old Sir John that he would leave the Mary, his tender of twelve tons, at a little inlet near the point, to serve as a fall- back in case we should lose our vessels or become sealed up in permanent ice, and De Haven and Penny engaged their respective shares of her outfit, in the shape of some barrels of beef and flour. Sir John Ross, I think, had just left us to go on board his little craft, and I was still talking over our projects with Captain Penny, when a messenger was reported, mak- ing all speed to us over the ice. The news he brought was thrilling. " Graves, Cap- tain Penny ! graves ! Franklin's winter quarters !" "We v\'ere instantly in motion. Captain De Haven, Captain Penny, Commander Phillips, and myself, join- ed by a party from the Rescue, hurried on over the ice, and, scrambling along the loose and rugged slope that extends from Beechy to the shore, came, after a weary walk, to the crest of the isthmus. Here, amid the ster- ile uniformity of snow and slate, were the head -boards of three graves, made after the old orthodox fashion of gravestones at home. The mounds which adjoined them were arranged with some pretensions to symme- try, coped and defended with limestone slabs. They occupied a line facing toward Cape Riley, which was distinctly visible across a little cove at the distance of some four hundred yards. The first, or that most to the southward, is nearest to i ! I' ^ i:^ .*-; v^-- . •4 ■>'.•.*' . c '■'k:'^: '■^'^v-.. *^. '"'.''*■'! •^■>- ^■V .■..■ ." . ■ ^-^v.-y-^^. ' «^'^ '-•.)'-'i,' ' '" ' >", -l.- vii •. ■'.t.5v/- ■ #■ "= - !U •, - • . ■^-f'v.:^^- .. * ■, ■•• ' "'%-■•-;:" ,.;,,,,r,Vf'^-v (^ m 162 .'*! i.y It 4 ■All •M. a ■ » :i .flip '. »^ vf^sso; •'\i) }' I , lilU Wl? VVtM*» » II "f^ ir> the Il'o bv W«'j' y.: u* ( i:» ';;lSt. y I J ./ ;|i;ii ii'- would }c;i.v<' •." 'lu-k in case A\r -li-uii- • [1 ^^;,»-v,.., ,)^ 8ir 3 '.'hi I ••.*iri) Mu little h ijit* •>}' Noipc bar- 1- of 1h m ,1/ - > ;ii't iip.l \ \\\\>, stir' i. ikiui; >• ,V.. . ! >,. ^,H ,:'' I-. ij.- f ' • ) -i:» tho 1^, ."r - , . iVi6d Oil over the i < , ;i!iu. si'ioin'.-iiiiji tiiontf lirt |rv()8e and ruji,'ed ^lope i}i;\t • '■.;< iids iioui n«HH'hy the shore, came, after a \vQiry v: *k, in I ii-* ; ••••t t»f tie Lsthinus. Il<»re. amut fix ' • r- i iU'T'tuV) fkfs/.. w ami slat^i. w*-*^ "V b^-«:« \. , ,,„ C " ,•,•^"•'^,19 J ♦mailer tbo •.•-• ..vH..*os ^.. 'ji *f S tl tr -^Ki *;y •(•■■ ■ ■^^ , < -v-^- oe dij ■»»;!•■; sil it/ ^ii<\ ', *^t *;y •<•■■ •J- . I,;. at. i!i«' «iis;frui<'. if* SOI V TL. .7 vi'Uhwnfd, IS ;u-Vi ;•• ; t.> *.' i M ■'» ; Si y| lik. «i •u I; {' 'I If |l hi 'i IL._ \ \ THE GRAVES. 163 the front in the accompanying sketch. Its inscrip- tion, cut in hy a chisel, ran thus : "Sacred to the memory of I W. Brainb, R. M., H. M. S. Erebus. Died April 3d, 1846, aged 32 years. ' Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.' Joshua, ch. xxiv., 16." The second was : " Sacred to the memory of John Hartnell, A. B. of H. M. S. Erebus, aged 23 years. 'Thus saith the Lord, consider your ways.' Haggai» i, 7." The third and last of these memorials was not quite so well finished as the others. The mound was not of stone- work, but its general appearance was more grave-like, more like the sleeping-place of Christians in happier lands. It was inscribed : " Sacred to the memory of John Torrinuton, who departed this life January 1st,. A.D. 1846, on board of H. M. ship Terror, v aged 20 years." " Departed this life on board the Terror, 1st January. 1846 !" Franklin's ships, then, had not been wrecked when he occupied the encampment at Beechy ! Two large stones were imbedded in the friable lime- stone a little to the left of these sad records, and near them was a piece of wood, more than a foot in diam- I' : Ii II 1 164 MOUNDS. eter, and two feet eight inches high, which had evi- dently served for an anvil-block : the marks were un- mistakable. Near it again, but still more to the east, and therefore nearer the beach, was a large blackened space, covered with coal cinders, iron nails, spikes, hinges, rings, clearly the remains of the armorer's forge. Still nearer the beach, but more to the south, was the carpenter's shop, its marks equally distinctive. Leaving "the graves," and walking toward Wel- lington Straits, about four hundred yards, or perhaps less, we came to a mound, or rather a series of mounds, which, considering the Arctic character of the surface at this spot, must have been a work of labor. It in- closed one nearly elliptical area, and one other, which, though separated from the first by a lesser mound, appeared to be connected with it. The spaces thus inclosed abounded in fragmentary remains. Among them I saw a stocking without a foot, sewed up at its edge, and a mitten not so much the worse for use as to have been without value to its owner. Shavings of wood were strewed freely on the southern side of the mound, as if they had been collected there by the continued labor of artificers, and not far from these, a few hundred yards lower down, was the remnant of a garden. Weighing all the signs carefully, I had no doubt that this was some central shore establishment, connected with the squadron, and that the lesser area was used as an observatory, for it had large stones fixed as if to support instruments, and the scantling props still stuck in the frozen soil. Travelling on about a quarter of a mile further, and in the same direction, we came upon a deposit of more than six hundred preserved-meat cans, arranged in regular order. They had been emptied, and were now TRACES. 165 filled with limestone pebbles, perhaps to serve as con- venient ballast on boating expeditions. These were among the more obvious vestiges of Sir John Franklin's party. The minor indications about the ground were innumerable : fragments of canvas, rope, cordage, sail-cloth, tarpaulins ; of casks, iron-work, wood, rough and carved ; of clothing, such as a blank- et lined by long stitches with common cotton stuff, and made into a sort of rude coat ; paper in scraps, white, waste, and journal ; a small key : a few odds and ends of brass- work, such as might be part of the furniture of a locker ; in a word, the numberless re- liquisB of a winter resting-place. One of the papers, which I have preserved, has on it the notation of an astronomical sight, worked out to Greenwich time. With all this, not a written memorandum, or point- ing cross, or even the vaguest intimation of the condi- tion or intentions of the party. The traces found at Cape Riley and Beechy were still more baffling. The cairn was mounted on a high and conspicuous portion of the shore, and evidently intended to attract observa- tion ; but, though several parties examined it, digging round it in every direction, not a single particle of in- formation could be gleaned. This is remarkable ; and for so able and practiced an Arctic commander as Sir John Franklin, an incomprehensible omission. In a narrow interval between the bills which come down toward Beechy Island, the searching parties of the Rescue and Mr. Murdaugh of our own vessel found the tracks of a sledge clearly defined, and unmistaka- ble both as to character and direction. They pointed to the eastern shores of Wellington Sound, in the same general course with the traces discovered by Penny between Cape Spencer and Point Innes. II 1 1 II 166 CONCLUSIONS. Similar traces were seen toward Caswell's Tower and Cape Riley, which gave additional proofs of sys- tematic journey ings. They could be traced through the comminuted limestone shingle in the direction of Cape Spencer ; and at intervals further on were scraps of paper, lucifer matches, and even the cinders of the temporary fire. The sledge parties must have been regularly organized, for their course had evidently been the subject of a previous reconnoissance. I observed their runner tracks not only in the limestone crust, but upon some snow slopes further to the north. It was startling to see the evidences of a travel nearly six years old, preserved in intaglio on a material so perishable. The snows of the Arctic regions, by alternations of congelation and thaw, acquire sometimes an ice-like durability ; but these traces had been covered by the after-snows of five winters. They pointed, like the Sastrugi, or snow- waves of the Siberian ,to the march- es of the lost company. Mr. Griffin, who performed a jourr. y of research along this coast toward the north, foui I at intervals, almost to Cape Bowden, traces of a pa' in seen. It is clear to my own mind that a systematic recon- noissance was undertaken by Franklin of the upper waters of the Wellington, and that it had for its object an exploration in that direction as soon as the ice would permit. There were some features about this deserted home- stead inexpressibly touching. The frozen trough of an CONCLUSIONS. 167 old water channel had served as the wash-house stream for the crews of the lost squadron. The tubs, such as Jack makes by sawing in half the beef barrels, al- though no longer fed by the melted snows, remained as the washers had left them five years ago. The lit- tle garden, too : I did not see it ; but Lieutenant Osborn describes it as still showing the mosses and anemones that were transplanted by its framers. A garden im- plies a purpose either to remain or to return : he who makes it is looking to the future. The same officer found a pair of Cashmere gloves, carefully " laid out to dry, with two small stones upon the palms to keep them from blowing away." It would be wrong to measure the value of these gloves by the price they could be bought for in Bond Street or Broadway. The Arctic traveler they belonged to intended to come back for them, and did not probably forget them in his hurry. The facts I have mentioned, almost all of them, have been so ably analyzed already, that I might be ex- cused from venturing any deductions of my own. But it was impossible to review the circumstances as we stood upon the ground without forming an opinion ; and such as mine was, it is perhaps best that I should express it here. In the first place, it is plain that Sir John Franklin's consort, the Terror, wintered in 1845-6 at or near the promontory of Beechy ; that at least part of her crew remained on board of her; and that some of the crew of the flag-ship, the Erebus, if not the ship herself, were also there. It is also plain that a part of one or both these crews were occupied during a portion of the win- ter in the various pursuits of an organized squadron, at an encampment on the isthmus I have described. 'I ; I ; ii ii 168 CONJECTURE. a position which commanded a full view of Lancaster Sound to the east of south, and of Wellington Chan- nel extending north. It may be fairly inferred, also, that the general health of the crews had not suffered severely, three only having died out of a hundred and thirty odd ; and that in addition to the ordinary details of duty, they were occupied in conducting and comput- ing astronomical observations, making sledges, prepar- ing their little anti-scorbutic garden patches, and ex- ploring the eastern shore of the channel. Many facts that we ourselves observed nuide it seem probable that Franklin had not, in the first instance, been able to prosecute his instructions for the Western search ; and the examinations made so fully since by Captain Aus- tin's officers have proved that he never reached Cape AValker, Banks' Land, Melville Island, Prince Regent's Inlet, or any point of the sound considerably to the west or southwest. The whole story of our combined operations in and about the channel shows that it is along its eastern margin that the water-leads occur most frequently : natural causes of general application may be assigned for this, some of which will readily suggest themselves to the physicist ; but I have only to do here with the recognized fact. 80 far I think we proceed safely. The rest is con- jectural. Let us suppose the season for renewed prog- ress to be approaching ; Franklin and his crews, with their vessels, one or both, looking out anxiously from their narrow isthmus for the first openings of the ice. They come : a gale of wind has severed the pack, and the drill begins. The first clear water that would meet his eye would be close to the shore on which he had his encampment. Would he wait till the continued drift had made the navigation practicable in Lancas- III CONJECTURE. 1()9 111 e. Id d ter Sound, and then retrace his steps to try the upper regions of Baffin's Bay, which he could not reach with- out a long circuit; or would he press to the north through the open lead that lay before him t Those who know Franklin's character, his declared opinions, his determined purpose, so well portrayed in the late- ly published letters of one of his officers, will hardly think the question difficult to answer : his sledges had already pioneered the way. We, the searchers, were ourselves tempted, by the insidious openings to the north in Wellington Channel, to push on in the hope that some lucky chance might point us to an outlet beyond. Might not the same temptation have had its influence for Sir John Franklin ? A careful and dar- ing navigator, such as he was, would not wait for the lead to close. I can imagine the dispatch with which the observatory would be dismantled, the armorer's es- tablishment broken up, and the camp vacated. I can understand how the preserved meat cans, not very val- uable, yet not worthless, might be left piled upon the shore ; how one man might leave his mittens, another his blanket coat, and a third hurry over the search for his lost key. And if 1 were required to conjecture some explanation of the empty signal cairn, I do not know what I could refer it to but the excitement at- tendant on just such a sudden and unexpected release from a weary imprisonment, and the instant prospect of energetic and perilous adventure. 'vt . pi i CHAPTER XXII. "August 28. Strange enough, during the night, Captain Austin, of her majesty's search squadron, with his ilag-ship the Resolute, entered the same little in- dentation in which five of us were moored hefore. His steam-tender, the Pioneer, grounded off the point of Beechy Island, and is now in sight, canted over by the ice nearly to her beam ends. He has come to us not of design, but under the irresistible guidance of the ice. We are now seven vessels within hailing dis- tance, not counting Captain Ommanney's, imbedded in the field to the westward. " I called this morning on Sir John Ross, and had a long talk with him. He said that, as far back as 1847, anticipating the ' detention' of Sir John Franklin — I use his own word — he had volunteered his services for an expedition of retrieve, asking for the purpose four small vessels, something like our own ; but no one list- ened to him. Volunteering again in 1848, he was told that his nephew's claim to the service had re- ceived a recognition ; whereupon his own was with- drawn. ' I told Sir John,' said Ross, ' that my own ex- perience in these seas proved that all these sounds and inlets may, by the caprice or even the routine of sea- sons, b(( closed so as to prevent any egress, and that a missi'ij; or shut-off party must have some means of falling ^ack. It was thus I saved myself from the abandoned Victory by a previously constructed house for wintering, and a boat for temporary refuge.' All this, he says, he pressed on Sir John Franklin before VISIT TO THE RESOLUTE. 171 he set out, and he thinks that Melville Island is now the seat of such a house-asylum. ' For, depend upon it,' he added, * Franklin will he expecting some of us to be following on his traces. Now, may it be that the party, whose winter quarters we have discovered, sent out only exploring detachments along Wellington Sound in the spring, and then, when themselves re- leased, continued on to the west, by Cape Hotham and Barrow's Straits V I have given this extract from my journal, though the theory it suggests has since been disproved by Lieutenant M'Clintock, because the tone and language of Sir John Ross may be regarded as characteristic of this manly old seaman. " I next visited the Resolute. I shall not here say how their perfect organization and provision for win- ter contrasted with those of our own little expedition. I had to shake off a feeling almost of despondency when I saw how much better fitted they were to grap- ple with the grim enemy, Cold. Winter, if we may judge of it by the clothing and warming appliances of the British squadron, must be something beyond our power to cope with ; for, in comparison with them, we have nothing, absolutely nothing. , " The officers received me, for I was alone, with the cordiality of recognized brotherhood. They are a gen- tlemanly, well-educated set of men, thoroughly up to the history of what has been done by others, and full of personal resource. Among them I was rejoiced to meet an old acquaintance, Lieutenant Brown, whose admirably artistic sketches I had seen in Haghe's lith- otints, at Mr. Grinnell's, before leaving New York. When we were together last, it was among the trop- ical jungles of Luzon, surrounded by the palm, the cycas, and bamboo, in the glowing extreme of vegeta- ill i' :l 172 VISIT TO PENNY. ble exuberance : here we are met once more, in the stinted region of lichen and mosses. He was then a junior, under Sir Edward Belcher : I — what I am yet. The lights and shadows of a naval life are nowhere better, and, alas ! nowhere worse displayed, than in these remote accidental greetings. " Returning, I paid a visit to Penny's vessels, and formed a very agreeable acquaintance with the med- ical officer. Dr. R. Anstruther Goodsir, a brother of as- sistant surgeon Goodsir of Franklin's flag-ship. " In commemoration of the gathering of the search- ing squadrons within the little cove of Beechy Point, Commodore Austin has named it, very appropriately. Union Bay. It is here the Mary is deposited as an asylum to fall back upon in case of disaster. " The sun is traveling rapidly to the south, so that our recently glaring midnight is now a twilight gloom. The coloring over the hills at Point Innes this even- ing was sombre, but in deep reds ; and the sky had an inhospitable coldness. It made me thoughtful to see the long shadows stretching out upon the snow toward the isthmus of the Graves. " The wind is from the north and westward, and the ice is so driven in around us as to grate and groan against the sides of our little vessel. The masses, though small, are very thick, and by the surging of the sea have been rubbed as round as pebbles. They make an abominable noise." The remaining days of August were not character- ized by any incident of note. We had the same al- ternations of progress and retreat through the ice as before, and without sensibly advancing toward the western shore, which it was now our object to reach. The next extracts from my journal are of the date of September 3. ICE DRIFTING. 173 h. " After floating down, warping, to avoid the loose ice, we Anally cast off in comparatively open water, and began beating toward Cape Spencer to get round the field. Once chere, we got along finely, sinking the eastern shore by degrees, and nearing the undelineated coasts of Cornwallis Island. White whales, narwhals, seals — among them the Phoca leonina with his puffed cheeks — and two bears, were seen. " The ice is tremendous, far ahead of any thing we have met with. The thickness of the upraised tables is sometimes fourteen feet ; and the hummocks are so ground and distorted by the rude attrition of the floes, that they rise up in cones like crushed sugar, some of them forty feet high. But that the queer life we are leading — a life of constant exposure and excitement, and one that seems more like the * roughing it' of a I«,ud party than the life of shipboard — has inured us to the eccentric fancies of the ice, our position would be a sleepless one. ^^ September 4, 2 A.M. Was awakened by Captain De Haven to look at the ice : an impressive sight. We were fast with three anchors to the main floe ; and now, though the wind was still from the northward, and therefore in opposition to the drift, the floating masses under the action of the tide came with a west- ward trend directly past us. Fortunately, they were not borne down upon the vessels ; but, as they went by in slow procession to the west, our sensations were, to say the least, sensations. It was very grand to see up-piled blocks twenty feet and more above our heads, and to wonder whether this fellow would strike om main-yard or clear our stern. Some of the moving hummocks were thirty feet high. They grazed us ; but a little projection of the main field to windward shied them off. 174 MY FIRST BEAR. ': " I killed to-day my first polar bear. "We made the animal on a large floe to the northward while we were sighting the western shores of Wellington, and of course could not stop to shoot bears. But he took to the water ahead of us, and came so near that we fired at him from the bows of the vessel. Mr. Lovell and myself fired so simultaneously, that we had to weigh the ball to determine which had hit. My bullet struck exactly in the ear, the mark I had aimed at, for he had only his head above water. The young ice was form- ing so rapidly around us that it was hard work get- ting him on board. I was one of the oarsmen, and sweated rarely, with the thermometer at 25°. " On the way back I succeeded in hitting an enor- mous seal ; but, much to my mortification, he sunk, after floating till we nearly reached him. "Without any organization, and with very little time for the hunt, the Advance now counts upon her game list two polar bears, three seals, a single goose, and a fair table allowance of loons, divers, and snipes. The Rescue boasts of four bears, and, in addition to the small game, a couple of Arctic hares. Our solita- ry goose was the Anas bernicla, crowds of which now begin to fly over the land and ice in cunoid streams to the east of south. It was killed by Mr. Murdaugh with a rifle, on the wing. " How very much I miss my good home assortment of hunting materials ! We have not a decent gun on board ; as for the rifle I am now shooting, it is a flint- lock concern, and half the time hangs fire." The next morning found me at work skinning my bear, not a pleasant task with the thermometer below the freezing point. He was a noble specimen, larger than the largest recorded by Parry, measuring eight ,1 MY BEAR. 175 feet eight inches and three quarters from tip to tip. I presented the skin, on my return home, to the Acad- emy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia. The carcass was larger than that of an ordinary ox fatted for market. We estimated his weight at near- ly sixteen hundred pounds. In build he was very sol- id, and the muscles of the arms and haunch fearfully developed. I once before compared the posterior as- pect of the Arctic bear to an elephant's. All my mess- mates used the same comparison. The extreme round- ness of his back and haunches, with the columnar char- acter of the legs, and the round expansion of the feet, give you the impression of a small elephant. The plantigrade base of support overlapped by long hair heightens the resemblance. The head and neck, of course, are excluded from the comparison. At five in the afternoon we succeeded in reaching within a quarter of a mile of the shore off Barlow's In- let, and made fast there to the floe. This inlet is but a few miles from Cape Hotham, and is marked on the charts as a mere interruption of the coast line. Parry, who named it, must have had wonderfully favoring weather to sight so accurately an insignificant cov§. He was a practiced hydrographer. The limestone clifls rise on each side, forming stu- pendous piers gnarled by frost degradation, between which is the entrance, about a quarter of a mile wide. The moment our little vessel entered the shadow of these cliffs, a quiet gloom took the place of bustling movement. "We ground our way into the newly-form- ed ice, and, after making a couple of ships' lengths, found ourselves within a sort of cape of land floe, sur- rounded by high hummocks and anchored bergs. It was a melancholy spot ; not one warm sun tint ; ev- ery thing blank, repulsive sterility. EXPLORING. *^ September 6. The captain, Mr.Murdaugh, Mr. Car- ter, and myself started on a walk of exploration. The distance between the brig and the shore is not over three hundred yards, but the travel was arduous. The ice was eight and ten feet thick, studded with broken bergs and hummocks. These fragments were seldom larger than our Rensselaer dining-room, some twenty feet square, and, owing either to the rise and fall of the tides or the piling action of storms, deep crevices were formed around their edges, partially masked by the snow which had found its way into them, and by an icy crust over the surface. Alternately jumping these crevices and clambering up the hummocks between them made it a dangerous walk. We had some nar- row escapes. Reaching the shore, we pushed forward about a mile and a quarter to the head of the inlet, and then crossed over on the ice to a cairn that stood near it. We found nothing but a communication from Captain Ommanney, whose vessels we saw as we en- tered the lead yesterday, informing the Secretary of the Admiralty that he had been off this place since the 24th, and that * no traces are to be found on Cornwal- lis Island of the party under Sir John Franklin' — a somewhat too confident assertion perhaps, seeing that the island, if it be one, is more than fifty miles across, and that the observations can hardly have extended beyond the coast line. "September 7. The spot at which we have been ly- ing is in front of Barlow's Inlet. There is no barrier between it and our vessels but the young ice, which has now attained a thickness of three inches. On the east we have the drift plain of Wellington Channel, impacted with fioes, hummocks, and broken bergs ; and to the south we look out upon a wild aggregation of HUMMMOCKS BREAK UP. 177 ly. ier ich ;he of enormous hummocks. There hummocks are totally unlike any thing we saw in Baffin's Bay. They seem to have heen so disintegrated by the conflicting forces that raised them as to have lost altogether the char- acter of tables. If hogshead upon hogshead of crush- ed sugar had been emptied out at random, two or three in one pile, and two or three ship loads in another, and the summits of these irregular heaps were covered over with a succession of layers of snow, and the heaps themselves multiplied in number indefinitely, and crowded together in a disordered phalanx, they would look a good deal like the hummock field some twen- ty yards south of us. These fearful masses axe all an- chored, solid hills, rising thirty feet above the level from a bottom twenty-two feet below it. " Our situation might be regarded as an ugly one in some states of the wind, but for the solid main floe to the north of us. This projected from the cliff", which served as an abutment for it ; and, after forming a sort of cape outside of our position, extended with a horse- shoe sweep to the northward and eastward, as far as the eye could reach, following the trend of the shore. It formed, of course, a reliable breakwater. Commo- dore Austin's vessels were made fast to it some dis- tance to the north and east of us. " The barometer had given us, in the early morning of the 4th, 29*90, since when it rose steadily till the 5th, at 6 A.M., when it stood at 30*38. For the next twenty-four hours it fluctuated between '22 and *37 ; but at 6 A.M. of the 6th, it again began to rise ; by midnight, it had reached 30*44 ; and before ten o'clock P.M. of the 7th, it was at the unwonted height of 30*68. At 2 P.M. the wind had changed from S.S.E. to N.N.E., and went on increasing to a gale. M «l I • :] i i II 178 ICE FORMING. "We were seated cosily around our little table in the cabin, imagining our harbor of land ice perfectly secure, when we were startled by a crash. We rush- ed on deck just in time to see the solid floe to wind- ward part in the middle, liberate itself from its attach- ment to the shore, and bear down upon us with the full energy of the storm. Our lee bristled ominously half a ship's length from us, and to the east was the main drift. The Rescue was first caught, nipped astern, and lifted bodily out of water; fortunately, she withstood the pressure, and rising till she snapped her cable, launched into open water, crushing the young ice before her. The Advance, by hard warping, drew a little closer to the cove ; and, a moment after, the ice drove by, j ust clearing our stern. Commodore Austin's vessels were imprisoned in the moving fragments, and carried helplessly past us. In a very little while they were some four miles off." The summer was now leaving us rapidly. The thermometer had been at 21° and 23° for several nights, and scarcely rose above 32° in the daytime. Our lit- tle harbor at Barlow's Inlet was completely blocked in by heavy masses ; the new ice gave plenty of sport to the skaters ; but on shipboard it was uncomfortably cold. As yet we had no fires below; and, after draw- ing around me the India-rubber curtains of my berth, with my lamp burning inside, I frequently wrote my journal in a freezing temperature. "This is not very cold, no doubt" — I quote from an entry of the 8th — " not very cold to your forty-five minus men of Arctic winters ; but to us poor devils from the zone of the liriodendrons and peaches, it is rather cool for the September month of water-melons. My bear with his arsenic swabs is a solid lump, and some birds that RENDEZVOUS. 179 are waiting to be skinned are absolutely rigid with frost." In the afternoon of this day, the 8th, we went to work, all hands, officers included, to cut up the young ice and tow it out into the current : once there, the drift carried it rapidly to the south. We cleared away in this manner a space of some forty yards square, and at five the next morning were rewarded by being again under weigh. We were past Cape Hotham by break- fast-time on the 9th, and in the afternoon were beat- ing to the west in Lancaster Sound. " The sound presented a novel spectacle to us ; the young ice glazing it over, so as to form a viscid sea of sludge and tickly-benders, from the northern shore to the pack, a distance of at least ten miles. This was mingled with the drift floes from Wellington Chan- nel ; and in them, steaming away manfully, were the Resolute and Pioneer. The wind was dead ahead ; yet, but for the new ice, there was a clear sea to the west. What, then, was our mortification, first, to see our pack-bound neighbors force themselves from their prison and steam ahead dead in the wind's eye, and, next, to be overhauled by Penny, and passed by both his brigs. We are now the last of all the searchers, except perhaps old Sir John, who is probably yet in Union Bay, or at least east of the straits. " The shores along which we are passing are of the same configuration with the coast to the east of Beechy Island ; the clifls, however, are not so high, and their bluff" appearance is relieved occasionally by terraces and shingle beach. The lithological characters of the limestone appear to be the same. " We are all together here, on a single track but lit- tle wider than the Delaware or Hudson. There is no 'I 11* ■i I ■' 180 RENDEZVOUS. getting out of it, for the shore is on one side and the fixed ice close on the other. All have the lead of us, and we are working only to save a distance. Omman- ney must he near Melville hy this time : pleasant, very! " Closing memoranda for the day : 1. I have the rheumatism in my knees ; 2. I left a hag containing my dress suit of uniforms, and, what is worse, my win- ter suit of furs, and with them my double-harrel gun, on hoard Austin's vessel. The gale of the 7th has carried him and them out of sight. " September 10. Unaccountable, most unaccounta- hie, the caprices of this ice-locked region ! Here we are again all together, even Ommanney with the rest. Tlic Resolute, Intrepid, Assistance, Pioneer, Lady Franklin, Sophia, Advance, and Rescue ; Austin, Om- manney, Penny, and De Haven, all anchored to the ' fast' off Griffith's Island. The way to the west com- pletely shut out." CHAPTER XXIII. The succeeding pages are very little else than a tran- script from my journal. It would have been easy to condense them into a more attractive form ; but they relate to the furthest limits of our cruise, " longarum meta viarum ;" and some of the topics which they em- brace may perhaps invite that sort of evidence which is best furnished by a contemporary record. * ' September 1 1 , Wednesday. Snow, light and fleecy, covering the decks, and carried by our clothes into our little cabin. The moisture of the atmosphere con- denses over the beams, and trickles down over the lockers and bedding. We are still along side of the fixed ice off Griffith's Island, and the British squad- ron under Commodore Austin are clustered together within three hundred yards of us. Penny, like an in- defatigable old trump, as he is, is out, pushing, work- ing, groping in the fog. The sludge ice, that had driven in around us and almost congealed under our stern, is now by the ebb of the tide, or at least its change, carried out again, although the wind still sets toward the floe. " September 12, Thursday. We have had a rough night. About 4 P.M., the heavy snow which had cov- ered our decks changed to a driving drift ; the wind blew a gale from the northwest, and the thermometer fell as low as +16°. All the squadron of search, with the exception of Penny, were fastened by ice-anchors to the main ice ; but the great obscurity made us in- visible to each other. M 5 ;i y !l! 182 A GALE. " At three the Rescue parted her cable's hold, and was carried out to sea, leaving two men, her boat, and her anchors behind. We snapped our stern-cable, lost our anchor, swung out, but fortunately held by the forward line. All the English vessels were in similar peril, the Pioneer being at one time actually free ; and Commodore Austin, who in the Resolute occupied the head of the line, was in momentary fear of coming down upon us. Altogether I have seldom seen a night of greater trial. The wind roared over the snow floes, and every thing about the vessel froze into heavy ice stalactites. Had the main floe parted, we had been carried down with the liberated ice. Fortunately, ev- ery thing held ; and here we are, safe and sound. The Rescue was last seen beating to windward against the gale, probably seeking a lee under Griffith's Island. This morning the snow continues in the form of a fine cutting drift, the water freezes wherever it touches, and the thermometer has been at no time above 17°. "September 12, 10 P.M. Just from deck. How very dismal every thing seems ! The snow is driven like sand upon a level reach, lifted up in long curve lines, and then obscuring the atmosphere with a white dark- ness. The wind, too, is howling in a shrill minor, singing across the hummock ridges. The eight ves- sels are no longer here. The Rescue is driven out to sea, and poor Penny is probably to the southward. Five black masses, however, their cordage defined by rime and snow, are seen with their snouts shoved into the shore of ice : cables, chains, and anchors are cov- ered feet below the drift, and the ships adhere mys- teriously, their tackle completely invisible. Should any of us break away, the gale would carry us into streams of heavy floating ice ; and our running rig- THE GALE. 183 ging is so coated with icicles as to make it impossible to work it. The thermometer stands at 14°. "At this temperature the young ice forms in spite of the increasing movement of the waves, stretching out from the floe in long, zigzag lines of smoothness resembling watered silk. The loose ice seems to have a southerly and easterly drift ; and, from the increas- ing distance of Griffith's Island, seen during occasional intervals, we are evidently moving en masse to the south. "Now when you remember that we are in open sea, attached to precarious ice, and surrounded by floating streams ; that the coast is unknown, and the ice forming inshore, so as to make harbors, if we knew of them, inaccessible, you may suppose that our posi- tion is far from pleasant. One harbor was discovered by a lieutenant of the Assistance some days ago, and named Assistance Harbor, but that is out of the ques- tion ; the wind is not only a gale, but ahead. Had we the quarters of Capua before us, we should be un- able to reach them. It is a windward shore. "11 P.M. Captain De Haven reports ice forming fast: extra anchors are out; thermometer +8". The British squadron, under Austin, have fires in full blast : we are without them still. " 12 M. In bed, reading or trying to read. The gale has increased ; the floes are in upon us from the east- ward ; and it is evident that we are all of us drifting bodily, God knows where, for we have no means of taking observations. " September 13, 10 A.M. Found, on awaking, that at about three this morning the squadron commenced getting under weigh. The rime-coated rigging was cleared ; the hawsers thashed ; the ics-clogged boats 184 FOR GRIFFITH S ISLAND. hauled in ; the steamers steamed, and off went the rest of us as we might. This step was not taken a whit too soon, if it be ordained that we are yet in time ; for the stream-ice covers the entire horizon, and the hirge floe or main which we ha -e deserted is bare- ly separated from the drifting masses. The Rescue is now the object of our search. Could she be found, the captain has determined to turn his steps home- ward. "11 20 A.M. We are working, i. e., beating our way in the narrow leads intervening irregularly between the main ice and the drift. We have gained at least two miles to windward of Austin's squadron, who aro unable, in spite of steamers, to move along these dan- gerous passages like ourselves. Our object is to reach Griffith's Island, from which we have drifted some fif- teen miles with the main ice, and then look out for our lost consort. " The lowest temperature last night was +5°, but the wind makes it colder to sensation. We are grind- ing through newly-formed ice three inches thick ; the perfect consolidation being prevented by its motion and the wind. Even in the little fireless cabin in which I now write, water and coffee are freezing, and the mercury stands at 29°. " The navigation is certainly exciting. I have nev- er seen a description in my Arctic readings of any thing like this. We are literally running for our lives, surrounded by the imminent he-zards of sudden con- solidation in an open sea. All minor perils, nips, bumps, and sunken bergs are discarded ; we are stag- gering alorg under all sail, forcing our way while we can. One thump, received since I commenced writ- ing, jerked the time-keeper from our binnacle down ORDER FOR RETURN. 185 the cabin hatch, and, but for our strong bows, seven and a half solid feet, would have stove us in. Anoth- er time, we cleared a tongue of the main pack by rid- ing it down at eight knots. Commodore Austin seems caught by the closing floes. This is really sharp work. "4 P.M. We continued beating toward Griflith's Island, till, by doubling a tongue of ice, we were able to force our way. The English seemed to watch our movements, and almost to follow in our wake, till we came to a comparatively open space, about the area of Washington Square, where we stood off and on, the ice being too close upon the eastern end of Griffith's Island to permit us to pass. Our companions in this little vacancy were Captain Ommanney's Assistance, Osborne's steam tender the Pioneer, and Kater's si-eam- er the Intrepid. Commodore Austin's vessel was to the southward, entangled in the moving ice, but mo- mentarily nearing the open leads. " While thus boxing about on one of our tacks, we neared the north edge of our little opening, and were hailed by the Assistance with the glad intelligence of the Rescue close under the island. Our captain, who was at his usual post, conning the ship from the fore- top-sail yard, made her out at the same time, and im- mediately determined upon boring the intervening ice. This was done successfully, the brig bearing the hard knocks nobly. Strange to say, the English vessels, now joined by Austin, followed in our wake — a com- pliment, certainly, to De Haven's ice-mastership. *' We were no sooner through, than signal was made to the Rescue to * cast off,' and our ensign was run up from the peak : the captain had determined upon attempting a return to the United States." It could not be my office to discuss the policy of ■iRl 186 THE RESCUE NIPPED. ffii tii ' ■' ;,i ' I' this step, even if the question were one of policy alone. But it was one of instructions. The Navy Depart- ment, imitating in this the English Board of Admiral- ty, had, in its orders to our commander, marked out to him the course of the expedition, and had enjoined that, unless under special circumstances, he should " endeavor not to be caught in the ice during the win- ter, but that he should, after completing his examina- tions for the season, make his escape, and return to New York in the fall." In the judgment of Commo- dore De Haven, these special circumstances did not exist ; and he felt himself, therefore, controlled by the general terms of the injunction. I believe that there was but one feeling among the officers of our little squadron, that of unmitigated regret that we were no longer to co-operate with our gallant associates under the sister flag. Our intercourse with them had been most cordial from the very first. We had interchanged many courtesies, and I should be sorry to think that there had not been formed on both sides some endur- ing friendships. In a little while we had the Rescue in tow, and were heading to the east. She had had a fearful night of it after leaving us. She beat about, short-handed, clogged with ice, and with the thermometer at 8°. The snow fell heavily, and the rigging was a solid, al- most unmanageable lump. Steering, or rather beat- ing, she made, on the evening of the 12th, the southern edge of Griffith's Island, and by good luck and excel- lent management succeeded in holding to the land hummocks. She had split her rudder-post so as to make her unworkable^ and now we have her in tow. An anchor with its fluke snapped — her best bower ; and her little boat, stove in by the ice, was cut .adrift. ! ILLUSION. 187 We were now homeward bound, but a saddened homeward bound for all of us. The vessels of our gallant brethren soon lost themselves in the mist, and we steered our course with a fresh breeze for Cape Hotham. "As we passed the sweep of coast between Capes Martyr and Hotham, and were making the chord of the curve, our captain called my attention to a point of the coast line about six miles off. On looking with- out a glass, I distinctly saw the naked spars of a couple of vessels. ' Brigs !' said I. * Undoubtedly,' said De Haven ; and then both of us simultaneously, * Penny !' On looking with the glass, the masts, yards, gaffs, ev- ery thing but the bowsprits, were made out distinctly. Lovell was called and saw the same. Murdaugh, who was half undressed, was summoned ; and he, ex- amining with the glass, saw a third, which De Haven, after a look, confirmed as a top-sail schooner, ' The Felix' of old Sir John. "We changed our course, ran in, and determined to convince ourselves of their character, and perhaps to speak them. The fog, however, closed around them. Still we stood on. Presently, a flaw of wind drove off the vapor ; and upon eagerly gazing at the spot, now less than three miles oflF, no vessels were to be seen. "I can hardly comment upon this strange circum- stance. It was a complete puzzle to all of us. Re- fractive distortion plays strange freaks in these Arctic solitudes ; but this could hardly be one of its illusions. Four persons saw the same image with the naked eye, and the glass confirmed the details. There was no disagreement. As plainly as I see these letters did I see those brigs ; and although we supposed the Lady l^il' I III r ,., I-: is P' i i| ^ i^i ! ' ■ III I M|i IIP 1.1 'I 188 ICE THICKENING. Franklin and Sophia to be ice-caught at or toward Cape Walker, I did not hesitate to name them as the vessels before us. Ten minutes of obscurity, we sail- ing directly toward them, a sudden interval of bright- ness — and they had passed away. " Some large hummocks of grounded ice were near them, and we try to convince ourselves that they may have been closed in by changes in our relative posi- tions ; but this is hard to believe, for we should have seen their upper spars above the ice. I gazed long and attentively with our Fraunhofer telescope, at three miles' distance, but saw absolutely no semblance of what a few minutes before was so apparent." We were obliged several times the next day to bore through the young ice ; for the low temperature con- tinued, and our wind lulled under Cape Hotham. The night gave us no^ tr three hours of complete dark- ness. It was danger to run on, yet equally danger to pause. Grim winter was following close upon our heels ; and even the captain, sanguine and fearless in emergency as he always proved himself, as he saw the tenacious fields of sludge and pancake thickening around us, began to feel anxious. Mine was a jum- ble of sensations. I had been desirous to the last de- gree that we might remain on the field of search, and could hardly be dissatisfied at what promised to real- ize my wish. Yet I had hoped that our wintering would be near our English friends, that in case of trouble or disease we might mutually sustain each other. But the interval of fifty miles between us, in these inhospitable deserts, was as complete a separa- tion as an entire continent ; and I confess that I look- ed at the dark shadows closing around Barlow's Inlet, the prison from which we cui ourselves on the seventh. !n hi III PARTIAL OPENING. 189 th, just six days before, with feelings as sombre as the landscape itself. The sound of our vessel crunching her way through the new ice is not easy to be described. It was not like the grinding of the old formed ice, nor was it the slushy scraping of sludge. We may all of us remem- ber, in the skating frolics of early days, the peculiar reverberating outcry of a pebble, as we tossed it from us along the edges of an old mill-dam, and heard it dying away in echoes almost musical. Imagine such a tone as this, combined with the whir of rapid mo- tion, and the rasping noise of close-grained sugar. I was listening to the sound in my little den, after a sorrowful day, close upon zero, trying to warm up my stiffened limbs. Presently it grew less, then increas- ed, then stopped, then went on again, but jerking and irregular ; and then it waned, and waned, and waned away to silence. Down came the captain : " Doctor, the ice has caught us : we are frozen up." On went my furs at once. As I reached the deck, the wind was there, blowing stiff, and the sails were filled and pujQing with it. It was not yet dark enough to hide the smooth surface of ice that filled up the horizon, holding the American expedition in search of Sir John Franklin imbedded in its centre. There we were, literally fro- zen tight in the mid-channel of Wellington's Straits. "September 15. The change of tide, or, rather, those diurnal changes in the movement of the ice which seem to be indirectly connected with it, gave us a lit- tle while before noon a partial opening in the solid ice around us. We made by hard work about a mile, and were then more fast than ever. The ice along side will now bear a man : the wind, however, is hauling •m ' !" fei. f. ] i r ( ;!! i iS W f}\ [3 !i ■•i 190 THE BALLOON. around to the westward. With a strong northwester, there might still be a hope for us. " This afternoon, at 6h. 20m., a large spheroidal mass was seen floating in the air at an unknown distance to the north. It undulated for a while over the ice- lined horizon of Wellington Channel ; and after a lit- tle while, another, smaller than the first, became \is- ible a short distance below it. They receded with the wind from the southward and eastward, but did not disappear for some time. Captain De Haven at first thought it a kite ; but, independently of the dif- ficulty of imagining a kite flying without a master, and where no master could be, its outline and move- ment convinced me it was a balloon. The Resolute dispatched a courier balloon on the 2d ; but ^,hat could never have survived the storms of the past week. I therefore suppose it must have been sent up by some English vessel to the west of us. " I make a formal note of this circumstance, trivii 1 as it may be ; for at first Franklin rose to my mind, as possibly signalizing up Wellington Channel." Cape Hotliam was at this time nearly in range, from our position, with the first headland to the west of it ; and our captain estimated that we were about thirty miles from the eastern side of the strait. The balloon was to leeward, nearly due north of us, more so than could be referred to the course of the wiad as we ob- served it, supposing it to have set out frOiH any vessel of whose place we were aware. It appeared to me, the principal one, about two feet long by eighteen inches broad ; its appendage larger than an ordinary dinner-plate. The incident interested us much at the time, and I have not seen any thing in the published journals of the English searchers that explains it. ■^m^ CHAPTER XXIV. The region, which ten days before was teeming with animal life, was now almost deserted. We saw but one narwhal and a few seal. The Ivory gull too, a solitary traveler, occasionally flitted by us ; but the season had evidently wrought its change. Several flocks of the snow bunting had passed over us while we were attached to the main ice off" Grif- fith's Island, and a single raven was seen from the Rescue at her holding grounds. The Brent geese, how- ever, the dovekies, the divers, indeed all the anatidsB, the white whales, the walrus, the bearded and the hir- sute seal, the white bear, whatever gave us life and incident, had vanished. The following Sunday, the 15th, was signalized by the introduction of a bright new " Cornelius" lard lamp into the cabin, a luxury which I had often urged be- fore, but which the difficulties of opening the hold had compelled the captain to deny us. The condensation of moisture had been excessive ; the beams had been sweating great drops, and my bedding and bunk-boards bore the look of having been exposed to a drizzling mist. The temperature had been below the freezing point for a week before. The lamp gave us the very comfortable warmth of 44°, twelve degrees above con- gelation. It was a luxury such as few but Arctic travelers can apprehend. For some days after this, an obscurity of fog and snow made it impossible to see more than a few hund- red yards from the ship. This little area remained I if III' , I' t ! ■J ' 1 'Mill !•: P^ Pi- . 192 DRIFT UP CHANNEL. fast bound, the ice bearing us readily, though a very- slight motion against the sides of the vessel seemed to show that it was not perfectly attached to the shores. But as I stood on deck in the afternoon of the 16th, watching the coast to the east of us, as the clouds cleared away for the first time, it struck me that its configuration was unknown to me. By-and-by, Cape Beechy, the isthmus of the Graves, loomed up ; and we then found that we were a little to the north of Cape Bowden. The next two days this northward drift continued without remission. The wind blew strong from the southward and eastward, sometimes approaching to a gale ; but the ice-pack around us retained its tenacity, and increased rapidly in thickness. Yet every now and then we could see that at some short distance it was broken by small pools of water, which would be effaced again, soon after they were formed, by an external pressure. At these times our vessels underwent a nipping on a small scale. The smoother ice-field that held us would be driven in, pil- ing itself in miniature hummocks about us, sometimes higher than our decks, and much too near them to leave us a sense of security against their further ad- vance. The noises, too, of whining puppies and swarm- ing bees made part of these demonstrations, much, as when the heavier masses were at work, but shriller perhaps, and more clamorous. I was aroused at midnight of the 16th by one of these onsets of the enemy, crunching and creaking against the ship's sides till the masses ground them- selves to powder. Our vessel was trembling like an ague-fit under the pressure ; and when so pinched that she could not vibrate any longer between the driving UP WELLINGTON CHANNEL. 193 and the stationary fields, making a quick, liberating jump above them that rattled the movables fore and aft. As it wore on toward morning, the ice, now ten inches thick, kept crowding upon us with increased energy; and the whole of the 17 th was passed in a succession of conflicts with it. The 18th began with a nipping that promised more of danger. The banks of ice rose one above another till they reached the line of our bulwarks. This, too, continued through the day, sometimes lulling for a while into comparative repose, but recurring after a few minutes of partial intermission. While I was watching this angry contest of the ice-tables, as they clashed together in the da,rkness of early dawn, I saw for the first time the luminous appearance, which has been described by voyagers as attending the collision of bergs. It was very marked ; as decided a phos- phorescence as that of the fire-fly, or the fox-fire of the Virginia meadows. Still, amid all the tumult, our drift was toward the north. From the bearings of the coast, badly obtained through the fogs, it was quite evident that we had passed beyond any thing recorded on the charts. Cape Bowden, Parry's furthest headland, was at least twen- ty-five miles south of us ; and our old landmarks. Cape Hotham and Beechy, had entirely disappeared. Even the high bluffs of Barlow's Inlet had gone. I hardly know why it was so, but this inlet had some how or other been for me an object of special aversion : the naked desolation of its frost-bitten limestone, the cav- ernous recess of its clifl's, the cheerlessness of its dark shadows, had connected it, from the first day I saw it, with some dimly-remembered feeling of pain. But how glad we should all of us have been, as we floated N - *, nu'.f i ill ■I > I ir 194 DISCOVERIES. irt. \^4 ■ji s •^»: 'id!! •1 Hi! along in hopeless isolation, to find a way open to its grim but protecting barriers. I return to my journal. " September 19, Thursday. About five o'clock this morning the wind set in from the northward and east- ward ; but the ice was tightly compacted, and for a while did not budge. Presently, however, we could see the water-pools extending their irregular margins. Ahead of us, that is, still further to the north, was ice apparently more solid than the ten-inch field around us. It shot up into larger hummocks and heavier masses, and was evidently thicker rnd more perma- nent. It had been for the past two days not more than fifty yards ahead, and we called it in the log the ' fixed ice.' By breakfast -time this opened into two long pools on our right, and one on the left, which seemed to extend pretty well toward the western shore. It was evident that we were now drifting to the south- ward again. " The sun, so long obscured, gave us to-day a rough meridian altitude. Murdaugh, always active and ef- ficient, had his artificial horizon ready upon the ice, and gave us an approximate latitude. We were in 75° 20' 11 " north. A large cape and several smaller headlands were seen, together with apparently an in- let or harbor, all on the western side. They remain unchristened. From our mast-head, no positive land was visible to the north. Tides we have not had the means of observing. Our soundings on the 17th gave us bottom at 110 fathoms, nearly in mid-channel. "September 19, 11 20 P.M. The wind continued all day from the northward and westward, freshening gradually to a gale. The barometer fell from 29° 73' to 32, and our maximum temperature was 26°. A heavy fall of snow covered the deck. DRIFT NORTHWARD. 195 ^^ September 20. I have been keeping the first watch, and anxiously observing the ice ; for I am no sailor, and in emergency can only wake my comrades. The darkness is now complete. The wind has changed again. At three A.M. it set in from the southward and eastward, increasing gradually to a fresh gale. Perhaps it may be the breaking up of the season, or some unusual premonition of stern winter; but cer- tain it is that our experience of Lancaster Sound has given us any thing but tranquillity of winds. We en- tered on the wings of a storm ; and ever since, with the exception of about three days off Cape Riley, we have had nothing but gales, rising and falling in al- ternating series from the north to northward and west- ward, and from the south to southward and eastward. The day was as usual ushered in with snow, and the thermometer rose to the height of 29" ; yet to sensa- tion it was cold. There is something very queer about this discrepancy between the thermometrical register and the effects of heat. It thawed palpably to-day at 28° ; and yet all complain of cold, even without the influence of the wind. "We are now, poor devils! drifting northward again. Creatures of habit, those who were anxious have for- gotten anxiety : glued fast here in a moving mass, we eat, and drink, and sleep, unmindful of the morrow. It is almost beyond a doubt that, if we find our way through the contingencies of this Arctic autumn, we must spend our winter in open sea. Many miles to the south. Captain Back passed a memorable term of vigil and exposure. Here, however, I do not antici- pate such encounters with drifting floes as are spoken of in Hudson's Bay. The centre of greatest cold i& 8 I 1 :l>i, ; 1 '" i I \^ I \iV'\\; ^ 196 WELLINGTON CHANNEL. too near us, and the coininunication with open sea too distant. "1 was in the act of writing the ahove, when a start- ling sensation, resemhling the spring of a well-drawn bow, announced a fresh movement. Running on deck, I found it blowing a furious gale, and -he ice again in motion. I use the word motion inaccurately. The field, of which we are a part, is always in motion ; that is, drifting with wind or current. It is only when other ice bears down upon our own, or our own ice is borne in against other floes, that pressure and resist- ance make us conscious of motion. " The ice was again in motion. The great expanse of recently- formed solidity, already bristling with hum- mocks, had up to this moment resisted the enormous incidence of a heavy gale. Suddenly, however, the pressure increasing beyond its strength, it yielded. The twang of a bow-string is the only thing I can compare it to. In a single instant the broad field was rent asunder, cracked in every conceivable direction, tables ground against tables, and masses piled over masses. The sea seemed to be churning ice. " By the time 1 had yoked my neck in its scrape, and got up upon deck, the ice had piled up a couple of feet above our bulwarks. In less than another min- ute it had toppled over again, and we were floating helplessly in a confused mass of broken fragments. Fortunately the Rescue remained fixed ; our hawser was fast to her stern, and by it we were brought side by side again. Night passed anxiously; i. e., slept in my clothes, and dreamed of being presented to Queen Victoria. " September 21, Saturday. vVe have drifted still more to the northward and eastward. An observation GRINNELL LAND. 197 ting )nts. still .tion gave us latitude 75" 20' 38" N. We are apparently not more than seven miles from the shore. It is still of the characteristic transition limestone, very uninvit- ing, snow-covered, and destitute ; but we look at it longingly. It would be so comforting to have landed a small depot of provisions, in case of accident or im- paction further north. "No snow until afternoon. Thermometer, maxi- mum 22°, minimum 19°, mean 20° 35'. Wind gentle, and now nearly calm, from southward and eastward to southward. "About tea-time (21st), the sun sufficiently low to give the effects of sunset, we saw distinctly to the north by west a series of hill-tops, apparently of the same configuration with those around us. The trend of the western coast extending northward from the point opposite our vessel receded westward, and a va- cant space, either of unseen very low land or of water, separated it from the Terra Nova, which we see north of us. Whether this Grinnell Land, as our captain has named it, be a continuation of Cornwallis Island, or a cape from a new northern land, or a new direc- tion of the eastern coast of North Devon, or a new island, I am not prepared to say. We shall probably know more of each other before long. "September 22, Sunday. A cloudless morning: no snow till afternoon. Our drift during the night has been to the northward ; and, except an occasional crack or pool, our horizon was one mass of snow-covered ice. " The beautifully clear sky with which the day opened gave us another opportunity of seeing the un- visited shores of Upper Wellington Sound. Our lati- tude by artificial horizon was 75° 24' 21"N., about sixty ki' l''!'i^ 198 GRINNELL LAND. )'■:' l!li,,„ miles from Cape Hotham. Cape Bowden, on the east- ern side, has disappeared ; and on the west, Advance filuff, a dark, projecting cape, from which we took sextant angles, was seen bearing to the west of south. To the northward and westward low land was seen, having the appearance of an island,* and mountain -tops terminating the low strip ahead. The trend of the shore on our left, the western, is clearly to the westward since leaving Advance Bluff. It is rolling, with terraced shingle beach, and without bluffs. It terminates, or apparently terminates, abruptly, thus : after which comes a strip without visible land, and then the mountain tops mentioned above. Beyond this western shore, distant only seven miles, we see mount- ain tops, distant and very high, rising above the clouds. ^^ September 25, Wednesday. The wind has changed, so that our helpless drift is now again to the north. The day was comparatively free from snow ; but not clear enough to give us an observation, or to exhibit the more distant coast-lines. We can see the western shore very plainly covered with snow, and stretching in rolling hills to the north and west. A little indent- ation, nearly opposite the day before yesterday, is now in nearly the same phase — if any thing, a little to the southward. We have therefore changed our position by drift not so much as on the preceding days. The * I have followed my journal literally. I find, however, in my copy of the log-book, below the entry of the watch-officer which mentions this island, a Hote made by me at the time : " I can see no island, but smiply this prolonga- tion or tongue." GUINNELL LAND. 199 winds, however, have been very light. Advance Bluff is now shut in by ' Cape Rescue,' the westernmost point yet discovered of Cornwallis Island. This shows that we are nearing the shore. " Toward the noith and a little to the west is a per- manent dark cloud, a line of stratus with a cumulated thickening at the western end. This is the same dur- ing sunshine and snow-storm, night and day. It is thought by Captain De Haven to be indicative of open water. It may be that Cornwallis Island ends there, and that this is a continuation of the present channel trending to the westward. Or this dark appearance may be merely the highland clouds over the mount- ains seen on Sunday ; but De Haven suggests that it is rather a vacant space, or water free from ice ; the exemption being due to the island and adjacent west- ern shore (not more than seven miles from it), acting as a barrier to the northern drift of the present chan- nel." Hlf i !■ : i •!J 1 i ^U ;:) R^ ! 'i I''!. m I ■J- .fiiji!! if ' It I iiil CHAPTER XXV. I HAVE copied literally from my journal the observ- ations which I noted during our northward drift, be- cause some of them bear on a question, unhappily made one of controversy, as to the extent and charac- ter of the discoveries which were due to the American squadron. It has been seen that on the 19th of September, 1850, we were in latitude 75° 20' 11" N., and proba- bly some seven miles from the western shore of Wel- lington Sound. At this time I observed, but not with certainty, a large cape, several minor headlands, and an inlet or harbor, in the direction of Cornwallis Isl- and. These may, perhaps, have been the Cape De Ha- ven, Point Decision, and Helen Haven or Harbor, dis- covered and named by Captain Penny in May of the following year. On the 21st, our latitude was 75° 20' 38". The sky being clear, and the position of the sun favorable, I saw distinctly, bearing north by west, a series of hill-tops, not mountains, apparently of the same configuration with those around us, and separated from Cornwallis Island by a strip of low beach or by water. I have sometimes thought that this was the Baillie Hamilton Island, also discovered by Captain Penny in 1851. On the 22d, our latitude was 75° 24' 21". I now saw land to the north and west ; its horizon that of rolling ground, without bluffs, and terminating abrupt- ly at its northern end. Still further on to the north came a strip without visible land, and then land again, '■I V!' GRINNELL LAND. 201 with mountain tops distant and "rising above the clouds." This last was the land which received from Captain De Haven the name of Mr. Grinnell. Captain De Haven's official report, made on the 4th of October, 1851, immediately after our return to the United States, speaks of a small, low island, discovered about seven miles to the north-northwest on the 2 2d of September, 1850. " A channel," he says, " of three or four miles in width separated it from Cornwallis Island. This latter island, trending northwest from our position, terminated abruptly in an elevated cape, to which I have given the name of Manning, after a warm personal friend and ardent supporter of the ex- pedition. Between Cornwallis Island and some dis- tant high land visible in the north, appeared a wide channel leading to the westward. A dark, misty-look- ing cloud which hung over it (technically termed frost- smoke) was indicative of much open water in that di- rection. * * * To the channel, which appeared to lead into the open sea, over which the cloud of ' frost-smoke' hung as a sign, I have given the name of Maury, after the distinguished gentleman at the head of our National Observatory, whose theory with regard to an open sea to the north is likely to be real- ized through this channel. To the large mass of land visible between northwest to north-northeast, I gave the name of Grinnell, in honor of the head and heart of the man in whose philanthropic mind originated the idea of this expedition, and to whose munificence it owes its existence. " To a remarkable peak bearing N.N.E. from us, dis- tant about forty miles, was given the name of Mount Franklin. An inlet or harbor immediately to the north of Cape Bowden was discovered by Mr. Griffin in his tif Ji( I"' If ,j hi: :! lii!!';.t I ■ ii' ' 4 ill j ;1 ^' 202 GRINNELL LAND; OR, land excursion from Point Innes on the 27th of Au- gust, and has received the name of Griffin Inlet. The small island mentioned before was called Murdaugh's Island, after the acting master of the Advance. " The eastern shore of Wellington Channel appear- ed to run parallel with the western ; but it became quite low, and, being covered with snow, could not be distinguished with certainty, so that its continuity with the high land to the north was not ascertained." These discoveries, with the exception of Murdaugh Island, present themselves on the English maps in new forms and with different names. I do not refer to those which were published in the newspapers and by the Hydrographic Office in September, 1851; though in both of them the name of Prince Albert has the place which our commander had inscribed a year before with that of Mr. Grinnell : the authors of these two charts could hardly have been informed of the American discoveries. I regret that there is not an equally obvious apology for those who have followed since. * Mr. Arrowsmith's map of the " Discoveries in the Arctic Seas" bears the date of the 21st of October, 1851 ; though it was not completed, in fact, for sev- eral weeks afterward. This is clear from some of the discoveries it records ; particularly those of Dr. Rae, which were first announced to the Admiralty on the 10th of November.* The hydrographical map of the British Admiralty, with a similar title, is dated in April, 1852. Both of these documents reassert the name of Albert Land for the large tract of high lands seen by us to the north. In the former, Arrowsmith's, * See Remarks made at the meeting of the National Institute at Washington, in May, 1852, by the President of the Institute, Peter Force, Esq. ALBERT LAND. 203 the inscription runs thus : "Albert Land: seen (on the birth-day of H. R. H. Prince Albert) from H. M. S. Assistance, 26th August, 1850. — Captain Ommanney's Journal : independently seen and explored by Cap- tain Penny and his officers." The other, from the hy- drographer of the Admiralty, goes further : it not only inscribes Albert Land on the region we had named after Mr. Grinnell, but explains the error of our claim, by announcing, in a note, that Baillie Hamilton Isl- and is the " Grinnell Land of the American squad- » ron. The controversy is perhaps of little moment. The time has gone by when the mere sighting of a distant coast conferred on a navigator or his monarch either ownership of the soil or a right to govern its people : even the planting a flag-staff, with armorial emblazon- ments at the top and a record-bottle below it, does not insure nowadays a conceded title. Yet the comity of explorers has adopted the rule of the more scientific observers of nature, and holds it for law every where that he who first sees and first announces shall also give the name. I should be sorry to withdraw from the extreme charts of northern discovery any memo- rial, even an indirect one, of that Lady Sovereign, whose noble-spirited subjects we met in Lancaster Sound. It was only by accident that we preceded them, under the guidance of causes that can assert for us little honor, since they were beyond our control, and we should have been glad to escape them. But we did precede them ; and the most northern land on the meridian of 94° west must retain, therefore, the honored name which it received from the American commander. A very brief review of the facts will establish this i 'J' I : \lk "nil ra ' I j 1 i i I ii 204 GRINNELL LAND*, OR, beyond the chance of doubt. To those who have read Captain De Haven's Report, even though it were not confirmed in its leading particulars by the extracts from my journal, it must be plain that on the 22d of September, 1850, the officers of the American expedi- tion saw, or thought they saw, from a point in lati- tude 75° 24' 21", a large tract of land, extending in the distance from the northwest to the north-north- east, and that they gave to it the name of Grinnell Land. The accounts, which filled the American news- papers immediately after our return in September, 1851, announced this fact widely, and the rude charts that were inserted in several of them indicated both the locality and the name. When this announcement was made, it was not known or supposed that any other party had ever sighted this high northern tract. There was no one from whom the Americans could have borrowed the knowledge of its existence, posi- tion, or outline. The fact, more recently ascertained, that others also have seen a similar tract in the same direction, may confirm the truth of the American state- ment ; but it is difficult to imagine how it can be re- garded as impeaching it. It only proves that the land is there, as the American commander said it was; while to those who doubt his assertion that he discov- ered it, it leaves the somewhat puzzling question, bow it came to pass that he knew of its existence. . But it is not alone the report of Captain De Haven, corroborated by memoranda made on the spot — it is not on these alone that the asserted discovery rests. All the officers of the American squadron were present at the time when it is said to have taken place ; they were all of them in New York when the accounts of it were in the newspapers ; they have all of them read ■ a. 'i]ii«! Mi ALBERT LAND. 205 the official report of their commander ; and there is not a man among them who would have given for a sin- gle moment the countenance of his silence to a fabri- cated claim. I can not allow myself to discuss this branch of the question any further. A glance at the map is the fitting reply to the inti- mation of the British hydrographer, that the Grinnell Land of the American squadron was in fact Baillie Hamilton Island. Baillie Hamilton Island, as it is marked on all the maps, bears considerably to the west of northwest from the position of our vessel on the 2 2d of September. What Captain De Haven saw, and de- scribed and plotted, was a tract extending from the northwest to the north-northeast of the same position. It is scarcely a warranted assumption that the Amer- ican explorers mistook the bearings of the land some sixty or seventy degrees.* If it be conceded, then, that the American squadron did in fact discover the land in question in September, 1850, we are ready for the next inquiry. Had any one discovered it before them ? No doubt it was visited by Mr. Stewart, one of Cap- tain Penny's officers, on the 24th of May, 1851 ; and it is certain that, after Captain Penny's return, it was announced as his discovery, and took the name of Al- bert Land on the maps of Arrowsmith and of the Admi« * Our expedition was well supplied with chronometers. Besides several of the best English manufacture, carefully selected and tested at the National Ob- servatory, we had three from Bliss and Creighton, of New York. One of these, under the charge of Mr. Murdaugh, our master, varied from its given rate, be- tween the 18th of May, 1850, and the 3d of October, 1851, 10 rain. 45' ; show- ing a daily error of yj|^ of a second of time. Such an error, computed up to the 22d of September, 1850, would be equal, in latitude 75° 24' 11", to an error of position of less than a mile and a half. The weather, however, was rarely favorable for astronomical observations. The most reliable one which I find noted in my copy of the Log gives for our longitude, in our extreme drift to the north, 93° 31' 10" W. ■t fll' 1# % m\' ■II'' ill*;, j,.lr ill ■■ t ■''■' ..- i ■■-"glli ' III li! iJ ''fiii 206 GRINNELL LAND; OR, ralty of September, 1851. But this was eight months after it had been seen by us and received its American designation. The Arrowsmith map of October 21, or rather, as we have seen, of November, 1851 — it is immaterial which is regarded as the true date — was completed after the discovery of G rinnell Land by the Americans had been made known in England. Our squadron arrived at New York on the 30th of September, 1851, and the intelligence crossed the Atlantic by the next steamer. It was in the maps published immediately after this that it was first made known to the world that the English discovery was older by nine months than had been supposed before; and that the very name of Albert Land, which this region had received either from Penny or the hydrographer, after Penny's return in September, 1851, had, by a coincidence as striking as it was happy, been conferred upon it on the 26th of August, 1850, by another officer, in honor of the day on which he had himself seen it; a day doubly fortunate as the natal day of the prince con- sort and of Captain Ommanney's discovery. Yet another notice, in the recent work of Dr. Suth- erland, defines the authorship of this discovery still more precisely. Passing by the American claim with- out remarking even that it ever was asserted, this writ- er allots the honor alternatively to Captain Penny's party in May, 1851, or to Captain Ommanney, of the Assistance, and Mr. Manson, mate of the Sophia, on the 26th of August, 1850. It was for me a matter of curious inquiry, upon what evidence this newest claim of discovery might rest. I have examined with all care Captain Ommanney's report to Commodore Austin of the 10th of Septem- '^$£.^ <£ ALBERT LAND. 207 on rhat •est. ey's ;em- ber, 1850, and Commodore Austin's official reports of subsequent date, and have looked through the differ- ent letters of Captain Penny, who was the command- er of Mr. Manson, without discovering one word in any of them that could suggest, or imply, or support such a claim. Indeed, I am not aware that either Captain Ommanney or Mr. Manson has authorized the asser- tion of it. Happily, the question may be decided with- out appealing to negative evidence. It is a fact, sus- ceptible of demonstration, that neither of them did or could make the discovery which is now imputed to them. On the 26th of August, 1850, Captain Ommanney was on board his own vessel, the Assistance. He had been detached by Commodore Austin to make a thor- ough examination of the coast about Cape Hotham, and on the evening of the 25th he was fairly imbedded and fast in the ice between that point and Barlow's Inlet. He was seen there by Mr. Penny, by Commo- dore Austin, and by every one on board the Advance. He may not have been seen there by some of his Brit- ish associates on the 26th, for a reason which I shall advert to presently; but on the 27th he was there still, and his own report shows that he remained there till the 3d of September. Now he who feels interest enough in the question to extend a scale upon any of the charts, will prove for himself that on the 26th of August, Captain Ommanney, being then off Cape Ho- tham, was at the distance of a hundred miles from the land he is supposed to have that day discovered. We had drifted more than sixty miles to the north of his position before we saw that land, and it was then some forty miles still further to the north. We lost it again when we had drifted back ten miles to the south. 208 GRINNELL LAND; OR, \f >. .'/s I ' On the 26th we were off Cape Innis, and Captain Ommanney about ten miles further to the south. Our log-book speaks of two vessels beset in the ice off Cape Hotham, which were no doubt his ; but the state of the atmosphere was such as to make it impossible to recognize any thing at that distance. My meteoro- logical record for the day shows this : it was dull and heavy, till it was relieved by a fall of snow. The journal recently published by Dr. Sutherland shows it also. Under the date of August 26th, it says : "At one o'clock A.M. the ships were made fast to the floe, to take some water from it, and to wait until the weather should clear up ;" and " during the day the weather was almost perfectly calm, the sky was over- cast with a dense misty haze, and toward evening there was a great deal of soft snow." — ^Vol. i., p. 296, 298. Captain Ommanney himself, writing on the 10th of September, says : " During the day (the 25th of Au- gust), we kept along the solid field of ice, extending from Cape Innis to Barlow's Inlet, which bounded the horizon to the northward, and where no land was vis- ible. When six miles east of Barlow's Inlet, the pack- ice closed in and stopped my further progress. In this position we continued beset in Wellington Channel from the 25th ultimo to the 3d instant, strong south- easterly winds and thick weather prevailing." The question of discovery by Captain Ommanney on the 26th of August resolves itself, therefore, into this. Could he, when objects were not distinguishable at ten miles distance, make discoveries at the distance of a hund- red? As to Mr. Manson, he was on board the Sophia on the 25th, and does not appear, from Dr. Sutherland's journal, to have left her for some time afterward. On ALBERT LAND. 209 the 26th, Captain Penny was on board the Advance, in company with some of the officers of the Sophia, Mr. Hanson perhc.ps among the rest ; and it is enough for me to say that, among the many interesting pieces of information which we derived from that honest and communicative seaman, the crowning fact of such a discovery by his mate was not included. For the rest, the journals I have already quoted show that no one on board the Sophia could that day have made any distant discovery at all. I pass gladly to other topics. The nobility of char- acter and feeling that distinguished our British friends of Union Bay, and the weighty obligations I am un- der to the generous men who preside in the depart- ments of the British Admiralty, especially the hydro- graphic, have made this discussion a most unwelcome one. My recollections as a subordinate, and my much more limited experience as a superior, have taught me that the principal should not always be held answer- able for that which bears the sanction of his name ; and I am, besides, old enough to know, that the chari- ty I extend to the erroneous opinions of others, may often be invoked more properly for errors of my own. O la on ind's On m f* 1^' h i M f\\ i ' i ji Mr IS THE AOVANCB IN THE ICE, 36tH SEPTEMBER, ISSO. CHAPTER XXVI. I AM reluctant to burden my pages with the wild, but scarcely varied incidents of our continued drift through Wellington Channel. We were yet to be fa- miliarized with the strife of the ice-tables, now broken up into tambling masses, and piling themselves in angry confusion against our sides — now fixed in cha- otic disarray by the fields of new ice that imbedded them in a single night — again, perhaps, opening in treacherous pools, only to close round us with a force that threatened to grind our brigs to powder. I shall have occasion enough to speak of these things here- after. I give now a few extracts from my journal ; some of which may perhaps have interest of a differ- ent character, though they can not escape the sadden- ing monotony of the scenes that were about us. I begin with a partial break-up that occurred on the 23d. " September 23. How shall I describe to you this pressure, its fearfulness and sublimity ! Nothing that AN ICE BATTLE. 211 I have seen or read of approaches it. The voices of the ice and the heavy swash of the overturned hum- mock-tables are at this moment dinning in my ears. ' All hands' are on deck fighting our grim enemy. " Fourteen inches of solid ice thickness, with some half dozen of snow, are, with the slow uniform advance of a mighty propelling power, driving in upon our ves- sel. As they strike her, the semi-plastic mass is im- pressed with a mould of her side, and then, urged on by the force behind, slides upward, and rises in great vertical tables. When these attain their utmost height, still pressed on by others, they topple over, and form a great embankment of fallen tables. At the same time, others take a downward direction, and when pushed on, as in the other case, form a similar pile un- derneath. The side on which one or the other of these actions takes place for the time, varies with the direc- tion of the force, the strength of the opposite or resist- ing side, the inclination of the vessel, and the weight of the superincumbent mounds ; and as these condi- tions follow each other in varying succession, the ves- sel becomes perfectly imbedded after a little while in crumbling and fractured ice. " Perhaps no vessel has ever been in this position but our own. With matured ice, nothin, Df iron or wood could resist such pressure. As for vhe British vessels, their size would make it next to impossible for them to stand. Back's ' Winter' is the only thing I have read of that reminds me of our present predica- ment. No vessel has ever been caught by winter in these waters. " We are lifted bodily eighteen inches out of water. The hummocks are reared up around the ship, so as to rise in some cases a couple of feet above our bul- '»,i; I' ^! 1 212 IN THE ICE OF THE CHANNEL. warks — five feet above our deck. They are very often ten and twelve feet high. All hands are out, labor- ing with picks and crowbars to overturn the fragments that threaten to overwhelm us. Add to this darkness, snow, cold, and the absolute destitution of surround- ing shores. "This uprearing of the ice is not a slow work : it is progressive, but not slow. It was only at 4 P.M. that the nips began, and now the entire plain is triangula- ted with ice-barricades. Under the double influence of sails and warping-hawsers, we have not been able to budge a hair's-breadth. Yet, impelled by this irre- sistible, bearing-down floe-monster, we crush, grind, eat our way, surrounded by the ruins of our progress. In fourteen minutes we changed our position 80 feet, or 5.71 per minute. " Sometimes the ice cracks with violence, almost ex- plosive, throughout the entire length of the floe. Very grand this ! Sometimes the hummock masses, piled up like crushed sugar around the ship, suddenly sink into the sea, and then fresh mounds take their place. "Our little neighbor, the Rescue, is all this time within twenty yards of us, resting upon wedges of ice, and not subjected to movement or pressure — a fact of interest, as it shows how very small a difference of po- sition may determine the differing fate of two vessels. "September 24. The ice is kinder; no fresh move- ments ; a little whining in the morning, but since then undisturbed. The ice, however, is influenced by the wind ; for open water-pools have formed — three around the ship within eye distance. In one of these, the seals made their appearance toward noon ; no less than five disporting together among the sludge of the open water. I started off" on a perilous walk over the ruin- WELLINGTON CHANNEL. 218 ed barricades of last night's commotion; and, after cool- ing myself for forty minutes in an atmosphere ten de- grees above zero, came back without a shot. The condensed moisture had so affected my powder that I could not get my gun off. " This condensation is now very troublesome, drip- ping down from our carlines, andi sweating over the roof and berth-boards. When we open the hatchway, the steam rises in clouds from the little cabin below. " We have as yet no fires ; worse ! the state of un- certainty in which we are placed makes it impossible to resort to any winter arrangements. Yet these lard lamps give us a temperature of 46'', which to men like ourselves, used to constant out-door exercise, exposure, and absence of artificial heat, is quite genial. But for the moisture — that wretched, comfortless, rheumatic drawback — we would be quite snug. " Our captain is the best of sailors ; but, intent al- ways on the primary objects and duties of his cruise, he is apt to forget or postpone a provident regard for those creature-comforts which have interest for others. To-day, with the thermometer at 10°, we for the first time commenced the manufacture of stove-pipes. 1 need not say that the cold metal played hob with the tinkers. If they go on at the present rate, the pipes will be nearly ready by next summer. ^^ September 28. The hummocks around us still re- main without apparent motion, heaped up like snow- covered barriers of street rioters. W*^ are wedged in a huge mass of tables, completely out of water, cra- dled by ice. I wish it would give us an even keel. We are eighteen inches higher on one quarter than the other. " The two large pools we observed yesterday, one on n \i I I ! ■■"■'111 ^ ■' . 'i 'I 'I i "I 3 214 SEAL HUNTING. each side of us, are now coated by a thick film of ice. In this the poor seals sometimes show themselves in groups of half a dozen. They no longer sport about as they did three weeks ago, but rise up to their breasts through young ice, and gaze around with curiosity- smitten countenances. " The shyness of the seal is proverbial. The Esqui- maux, trained from earliest youth to the pursuit of them, regard a successful hunter as the great man of the settlement. If not killed instantaneously, the seal sinks and is lost. The day before yesterday, I adopted the native plan of silent watching beside a pool. Thus for a long time I was exposed to a temperature of +8° ; but no shots within head-range oifered ; and I knew that, unless the spinal column or base of the brain was entered by the ball, it would be useless to waste our already scanty ammunition. " To-day, however, I was more fortunate. A fine young seal rose about forty yards off, and I put the ball between the ear and eye. A boat was run over the ice, and the carcass secured. This is the second I have killed with this villainous carbine : it will be a valuable help to our sick. We are now very fond of seal-meat. It is far better than bear; and the fishi- ness, which at first disturbed us, is no longer disagree- able. I simply skin them, retaining the blubber with the pelt. The cold soon renders them solid. My bear, although in a barrel, is as stiff and hard as horn. ** Took a skate this morning over some lakelets re- cently frozen over. The ice was tenacious, but not strong enough for safety. As I was moving along over the tickly-henders, my ice-pole drove a hole, and came very near dropping through into the water. ^^ September 27. This evening the thermometer gave WELLINGTON CHANNEL. 215 3* above zero. A bit of ice, which I took into my mouth to suck, fastened on to my tongue and carried away the skin. When we open the cabin hatch now, a cloud of steam, visible only as the two currents meet, gives evidence of the Arctic condensation. "Afar off, skipping from hummock to hummock, I saw a black fox. Poor desolate devil! what did he, so far from his recorded home, seven miles from even the nal. h! mow-hills of this dreary wilderness ? In the night-time I heard him bark. They set a trap for him ; but I secretly placed a bigger bait outside, with- out a snare-loop or trigger. In the morning it was gone, and the dead-fall had fallen upon no fox. How the poor, hungry thing must have enjoyed his supper ! half the guts, the spleen, and the pluck of my seal. " Lovell raised a swing ; cold work, but good exer- cise. He rigged it from the main studding-sail boom. Murdaugh and Carter are building a snow-house. The doctor is hard at work patching up materials for an overland communication with the English squadron — an enterprise fast becoming desperate. Yet, drift- ing as we are to unknown regions north, it is of vast importance that others should know of our position and prospects." Our position, however, at the end of September, thanks to the rapidly-increasing cold, gave promise of a certain degree of security and rest. The Advance had been driven, by the superior momentum of the floes that pressed us on one side, some two hundred and fifty feet into the mass of less resisting floes on the other ; the Rescue meanwhile remaining station- ary ; and the two vessels were fixed for a time on two adjacent sides of a rectangle, and close to each other. The unseen and varying energies of the ice movements .I'll' i. ■■ w\< |!i' 216 PREPARING FOR THE WINTER. had occasionally modified the position of each ; but their relation to each other continued almost un- changed. We felt that we were fixed for the winter. We ar- ranged our rude embankments of ice and snow around us, began to deposit our stores within them, and got out our felt covering that was to serve as our winter roof. The temperature was severe, ranging from 1°.5, and 4° to +10° ; but the men worked with the energy, and hope too, of pioneer settlers, when building up their first home in our Western forests. The closing day of the month was signalized by a brilliant meteor, a modification of the parhelion, the more interesting to us because the first we had seen. ^^ October 1, Tuesday. To-day the work of breaking hold commenced. The coal immediately under the main hatch was passed up in buckets, and some five tons piled upon the ice. The quarter-boats were haul- ed about twenty paces from our port-bow, and the sails covered and stacked ; in short, all hands were at work preparing for the winter. Little had we calcu- lated the caprices of Arctic ice. " About ten o'clock A.M. a large crack opened near- ly east and west, running as far as the eye could see, sometimes crossing the ice-pools, and sometimes break- ing along the hummock ridges. The sun and moon will be in conjunction on the 3d ; we had notice, there- fore, that the spring tides are in action. " Captain Griffin had been dispatched with Mr. Lov- ell before this, to establish on the shore the site for a depot of provisions : at one o'clock a signal was made to recall them. At two P.M., seeing a seal, I ran out upon the ice ; but losing him, was tempted to continue on about a mile to the eastward. The wind, which REMARKS ON THE ICE-OPENING. 217 at icu- lere- ov- or a ade out niie lich had been from the westward all the morning, now shifted to the southward, and the ice-tables began to be again in motion. The humming of bees and up- heaving hummocks, together with exploding cracks, warned me back to the vessel. " At 3 20, while we were at dinner, commenting with some anxiety upon the condition of things with- out, that unmistakable monitor, the ' young puppies,^ began. Running on deck, we found a large fissure, nearly due north and south, in line with the Advance. A few minutes after, the entire floe on our starboard side was moving, and the ice breaking up in every di- rection. " The emergency was startling enough. All hands turned to, officers included. The poor land party, re- turning at this moment, tired and dinnerless, went to work with the rest. Vreeland and myself worked like horses. Before dark, every thing was on board except the coal ; and of this, such were the unwearied efforts of our crew, that we lost but a ton or two. " This ice-opening was instructive practically, be- cause it taught those of us who did not understand it before how capriciously insecure was our position. It revealed much, too, in relation to the action of the ice. " 1. The first crack was nearly at right angles to the axis of the channel ; the subsequent ones crossed the first ; the Wiud being in the one case from the west- ward, and afterward changing to the southward. " 2. The next subject of note was the disintegration of the old floes. It took place almost invariably at their original lines of junction, well marked by the hummocky ridges. This shows that the cementation was imperfect after seventeen days of very low tem- perature ; a circumstance attributable, perhaps, to the .'I it I 'I I: f I" ,!' ' '2 IS ICK-OPKNINO. :i ., :i •I nuussivo chMraclor of tlio n|>-|)ilo(l tablos, which pro- tcotiMJ tho innor portion of tluMii iVom iho air, and to (ln» oonstant inttltralion {cfufoamo^ir) of salt-wator at tiio abradod nuvr^inst. "W. T\\o oxt<»nito which tlic work ofsnpcr and in- (vii |>osition liad been carried during the actions may he roaiizcil. when 1 say tluit the lloc-picco whicli sep- arated Troni US to starh«)ard relaineil tiie exact iinpres- sit>n t>r the ship's side. Tliere it wjws, with the jjan^- way stairs ol' ice-hl«)ck nnusonry, h)okin^ wn upon the dark water, ant! t more than seven inches thick, ex- tendiujaf down for more than twenty I'eet. Thus, it is hifjhly pn>hahle, may he lormeil numy of those enor- mous ice-tahles, attributed by authors to direct and uninterrupted conptMation. '* The quantity of ice adhering to our port-side must W enormous : for althoujjh the starboard tloe, in leav- ing us, parted a six-inch hawser, it failed to bud^e us one inch from the icy cradle in which we are set." niK «i>VAN('R, orr i'kokkk'k day. CUAPTKll xxvir. TuRKi: (lays al'tor this entry t!io tlioriuoniotor had falliMi to ir holow zoro. Our liousiiipfs were not yot lix(Ml, and we had no tiros beh)w ; inihunl, our position was so liable to momentary and violent chaiifro that it would ha.ve been impraetieablo to put up stoves. JStill, our lard-lamp in the cabin gave us a tempera- ture of +44" ; and so oomplotely were our systems ac- commodated to the circui!istancos in which wo were, that we should have been quite satisfied but for the condensed moisture that dripped from every thing about us. Our conunander had allowed me to place canvas gutters around the hatchways, and from tliese we emptieil every day several tin cans full of water, that would otherwise have been added to the slop on our cabin floor. But the state of things was, on the whole, exceedingly comfortless, and, to those whom the scurvy had attacked, full of peril. I remember once, when the lard-lamp died out in the course of the night, the mercury sunk in the cabin to 1(5°. It was not till the 19th that we got up our stoves. The adaptation of the human system to varying temperatures struck me at this time with great force. I had passed the three winters before within the trop- ics — the last on the plains of Mexico — yet I could now ;^ Ml i;i 'li I '% n':% 220 WELLINGTON CHANNEL. watch patiently for hours together to get a shot at seals, with the thermometer at +10". I wrote my journal in imaginary comfort with a temperature of 40°, and was positively distressed with heat when ex- ercising on the ice with the mercury at +19°. I return to my diary. " October 3. I write at midnight. Leaving the deck, where I have heen tramping the cold out of my joints, I come helow to our little cabin. As I open the hatch, every thing seems bathed in dirty milk. A cloud of vapor gushes out at every chink, and, as the cold air travels down, it is seen condensing deeper and deeper. The thermometer above is at 7° below zero. " The brig and the ice around her are covered by a strange black obscurity — not a mist, nor a haze, but a peculiar, waving, palpable, unnatural darkness : it is the frost-smoke of Arctic winters. Its range is very low. Climbing to the yard-arm, some thirty feet above the deck, I looked over a great horizon of black smoke, and above me saw the heaven without a blemish. " October 4. The open pools can no longer be called pools; they are great rivers, whose hummock-lined shores look dimly through the haze. Contrasted with the pure white snow, their waters are black even to inkyness ; and the silent tides, undisturbed by ripple or wash, pass beneath a pasty film of constantly form- ing ice. The thermometer is at 10". Away from the ship, a long way, I walked over the older ice to a spot where the open river was as wide as the Dela- ware. Here, after some crevice-jumping and tichly- bender crossing, I set myself behind a little rampart of hummocks, watching for seals. "As I watched, the smoke, the frost-smoke, came down in wreaths, like the lambent tongues of burning SEAL HUNTING. 221 turpentine seen without the blaze. I was soon envel- oped in crapy mist. " To shoot seal, one must practice the Esquimaux tactics of much patience and complete immobility. It is no fun, I assure you after full experience, to sit mo- tionless and noiseless as a statue, with a cold iron musket in your hands, and the thermometer 10" below zero. But by-and-by I was rewarded by seeing some ovei>^rown Greenland calves come within shot. I missed. After another hour of cold expectation, they came again. Very strange are these seal. A coun- tenance between the dog and the mild African ape — an expression so like that of humanity, that it makes gun-murderers hesitate. At last, at long shot, I hit one. God forgive me ! " The ball did not kill outright. It was out of range, struck too low, and entered the lungs. The poor beust had risen breast-high out of water, like the treading- water swimmers among ourselves. He was thus sup- ported, looking about with curious, expectant eyes, when the ball entered his lungs. " For a moment he oozed a little bright blood from his mouth, and looked toward me with a sort of start- led reproachfulness. Then he dipped ; an instant aft- er, he came up still nearer, looked again, bled again, and went down. A half instant afterward, he came up flurriedly, looked about with anguish in his eyes, for he was quite near me ; but slowly he sunk, strug- gling feebly, rose again, sunk again, struggled a very little more. The thing was drowning in the element of his sportive revels. He did drown finally, and sunk ; and so I lost him. "Have naturalists ever noticed the expression of this animal's phiz ? Curiosity, contentment, pain, re- 222 PARHELIA. ••'"1(1! proach, despair, even resignation I thought, I saw on this seal's face. "About half an hour afterward, I killed another. Scurvy and sea-life craving for fresh meat led me to it ; but I shot him dead. " On returning to the ship, I found one toe frost-bit- ten — a tallow-looking dead man's toe — which was restored to its original ugly vitality by snow-rubbing. Served me right ! " Spent the afternoon in unsuccessful seal stalking, and in rigging and contriving a spring-gun for the Arc- tic foxes : a blood-thirsty day. But we ate of fox to- day for dinner ; and behold, and it was good. " October 5, Saturday. The wind evidently freshens up. The day has been bitterly cold. Although our lowest temperature was zero and — 1°, we felt it far more than the low temperature of yesterday. Our maximum was as high as 4° ; yet, with this, it required active motion on deck to keep one's self warm. "At 12h. 55m., we had an interval of clear sunshine* The utmost, however, to which it would raise one of the long register Smithsonian thermometers was 7°. The air was filled with bright particles of frozen moist- ure, which glittered in the sunshine — a shimmering of transparent dust.* " At the same time, we had a second exhibition of parhelia, not so vivid in prismatic tints as that of the 30th of September, but more complete. The sun was expanded in a bright glare of intensely- white light, and was surrounded by two distinct concentric circles, delicately tinted on. their inner margins with the red of the spectrum. The radius of the inner, as measured * Under the microscope these again showed obscure modifications of the hex- agon. ICE CHANGES. 223 by the sextant, was 22" 04' ; that of the outer, 40" 15'. The lower portions of both were beneath the horizon, and of course not seen. " From the central disk proceeded four radii, coin- cident with the vertical and the horizontal diameters of the circles. " Their visible points of intersection were marked by bright parhelia ; each parhelion having its circum- ference well defined, but compressed so as to have no resemblance to the solar disk. Six of these were visible at the same moment ; those of the outer circle being fainter than the inner. Touch- ing the upper circumference of this outer circle was the arc of a third, which extended toward the zenith. Indeed, at one time I thought I saw a luminosity over- head, which may have corresponded to its centre. The tints of this supplemental circle were \ ery bright. The glowing atmosphere about the sun was very striking. " The strange openings in the water of a few hours ago are now great rivers, lined by banks of hummocks, and wreathed in frost smoke. The continually in- creasing wind from the northward explains this south- ern drift of the ice, and with it these unwelcome open- ings. We are stationary, and the detached ice is leav- ing us. " The strong floe of ice-table under ice-table, and hummock upon hummock, makes our position one of nearly complete solidity. We are glued up in ice ; and to liberate us, some fearful disruption must take place. Twenty- five feet of solid ice is no feeble ma- trix for a brig drawing but ten. Yet the water is wider, and still widening around us ; so that now we hold on — that is, our floe holds on, to the great mass to the north of us, like a little peninsular cape. u It ^ if 224 DRIFTING SOUTH. " To the south every thing is in drifting motion — water, sludge, frost-smoke — but no seals " We caught a poor little fox to-day in a dead-fall. We ate him as an anti-scorbutic. " October 6, Sunday. A dismal day ; the wind howl- ing, and the snow, fine as flour, drifting into every chink and cranny. The cold quite a nuisance, al- though the mercury is up again to +6**. It is blowing a gale. What if the floe, in which we are providen- tially glued, should take it into its head to break off, and carry us on a cruise before the wind ! " 8 P.M. Took a pole, and started off" to make a voy- age of discovery around our floe. After some weary walking over hummocks, and some uncomfortable sous- ings in the snow-dust, found that our cape has dwin- dled to an isthmus. In the midst of snow and haze, of course, I did not venture across to the other ice. " We look now anxiously at the gale — turning in, clothes on, so as to be ready for changes. "12 Midnight. They report us adrift. Wind, a gale from the northward and westward. An odd cruise this ! The American expedition fast in a lump of ice about as big as Washington Square, and driving, like the shanty on a raft, before a bowling gale. " October 7, Monday. Going on deck this morning, a new coast met my eyes. Our little matrix of ice had floated at least twenty miles to the south from yesterday's anchorage. The gale continues ; but the day is beautifully clear, and we have neared the west- ern coast enough to recognize the features of the lime- stone cliffs, although many a wrinkle of them is now pearl-powdered with snow-drift. " Prominent among these was Advance Blaff"; and to the south of it, a great indentation in the limestone «i^ . ir;.,., .."it,(, ■'\. 'II' ', - ml 1 ■ 'if 1'^ 230 WINTERY SIGNS. son, a Livournese, rejoiced in a couple of barbaric pendules, doubtless of bad gold, but good conducting power." The indications of winter were still becoming more and more marked. On the 11th, the sun rose but 9° at meridian; on the 15th but 6°; and on the 7th of No- vember, at the same hour, it almost rested on the ho- rizon. The daylight, however, was sometimes strange- ly beautiful. One day in particular, the 8th, a rosy tint diffused itself over every thing, shaded off a little at the zenith, but passing down from pink ii violet, and from violet to an opalescent purple, that banded the entire horizon. The moon made its appearance on the 13th of Oc- tober. At first it was like a bonfire, warming up the ice with a red glare ; but afterward, on the 15th, when it rose to the height of 4°, it silvered the hummocks and frozen leads, and gave a softened lustre to the snow, through which our two little brigs stood out in black and solitary contrast. The stars seemed to have lost their twinkle, and to shine with concentrated brightness as if through gimlet-holes in the cobalt can- opy. The frost-smoke scarcely left the field of view. It generally hung in wreaths around the horizon ; but it sometimes took eccentric forms ; and one night, I remember, it piled itself into a column at the west, and Aquila flamed above it like a tall beacon-light. We were glad to note these fanc'.iul resemblances to the aspects of a more kindly region ; they withdrew us sometimes from the sullen realities of the world that encompassed us — ice, frost-s.noke, and a threatening sky. We had parhelia again more than once, but devel- oped imperfectly ; a mass of incand.3scence 22° from ^- --^^ WINTERY SIGNS. 231 the sun, with prismatic coloring, but without the cir- cular and radial appearances that had characterized it before. . On the 27 th, a partial paraselene was visible, the first we observed — merely the limbs of two broken arcs, destitute of prismatic tint, stretching like circum- flexes at about 23° distance on each side the moon; the moon about 20° high, thermometer —10°, barom- eter 30° 55', atmosphere hazy. The sky clearing short- ly afterward, it shone out with increased beauty for a while, but died away as the haze disappeared. The thermometer was now generally below the zero point, sometimes rising for a little while about noon a few degrees above it, once only as high as + 13°. When there was no wind, even the lowest of its range was quite bearable ; and while we were exercising active- ly, it was difficult to believe that our sensations could be so strikingly in contrast with the absolute temper- ature. But a breeze, or a pause of motion till we could raise the sextant to a star or make out some changing phasis of the ice-field, never failed to per- suade us, and that feelingly, that the mercury was honest. Night after night the bed-clothes froze at our feet ; and a poor copy of the New York Herald, that lay at the head of the captain's bunk, was glazed with ice. ^^November 8. Tempted by the over-arching beauty of the sky, I started off this morning with Captain De Haven on a walk of inspection shoreward. The open water, frozen since October 2d, is now nearly two feet thick, and at this low temperature (—15°) it becomes hard and brittle as glass. Wherever the nipping has caught two of the floes, they have been driven with a force inconceivable one above the other, rising and falling until they now form a ridge fifteen or twenty feet high. m ■•'!J' 232 WINTER ARRANGEMENTS. ! '» J '•! " The tension of the great field of ice over which we passed must have been enormous. It had a sensible curvature. On striking the surface with a walking- pole, loud reports issued like a pistol-shot, and lines of fissure radiated from the point of impact. It seemed as if the blow of an axe would sever the keystone, and break up by a shock the entire expanse. In one place the ice suddenly arched up like a bow while we were looking at it, burst into fragments, collapsed at the ex- terior margins of fracture, and by the work of a mo- ment created a long barrier line of ruins ten feet high. Our position was one of peril. We had crossed two miles of ice. A change of tide relieved the strain, and we returned. " The nearest break-up to our homestead floe is about one hundred and fifty yards off. It is now to the south ; though our position, constantly changing, alters the bearing by the hour. Very many of the masses that compose it are as large as the grapery at home, two hundred feet long perhaps, and lifted up, barricade-fashion, as high as our second story win- dows." The next day our winter arrangements were com- pleted. They were simple enough, and hardly worth describing in detail. A housing of thick felt was drawn completely over the deck, resting on a sort of ridge-pole running fore and aft, and coming down close at the sides. The rime and snow-drift in an hour or two made it nearly impervious to the weather. The cook's galley stood on the kelson, under the main hatch ; its stove-pipe rising through the housing above, and its funnel-shaped apparatus for melting snow at- tached below. The bulkheads between cabin and forecastle had been removed ; and two stoves, one at ''■'nil. SAND-STORMS OF THE SAHARA. 233 ve, at- Ind at each end of the berth-deck, distributed their heat among officers and seamen alike. We had of course a community of all manner of odors ; and as our only direct ventilation was by the gangway, we had the certainty of a sufficient diversity of temperatures. The e: iption from gales, that has attracted the notice of other travelers in this region, had not yet been confirmed by our experience. On the contrary, our approach to Lancaster Sound, and the earlier part of our drift after we entered it, were marked by fre- quent storms. Some of these had all the sublimity that could belong to a mingled sense of danger and discomfort. They reminded me of the sand-storms of the Sahara. " The fine particles of snow flew by us in a continuous stream. When they met the unpro- tected face, the sensation was like the puncture of nee- dles. Standing under the lee of our brig, and watch- ing the drift as it scudded on the wings of the storm through the interval between the two vessels, the lines I '■■•>f i U r i m n > >\ ■ ' i t,^„. ; im m 1 1 1 ' 1 \m 'l];;uMiS|» 234 THE CHANNEL AND THE SOUND. of sweeping snow were so unbroken that its filaments seemed woven into a mysterious tissue. Objects fifty yards off" were invisible : no one could leave the ves- sels." The month of November found us oscillating still with the winds and currents in the neighborhood of Beechy Island. Helpless as we were among the float- ing masses, we began to look upon the floe that car- ried us as a protecting barrier against the approaches of others less friendly ; and as the month advanced, and the chances increased of our passing into the sound, our apprehensions of being frozen up in the heart of the ice-pack gave place to the opposite fear of a continuous drift. We had seen enough, and en- countered enough of the angry strife among the ice- floes in the channel, to assure us of disaster if we should be forced to mingle in the sterner conflicts of the older ice-fields of the sound. Yet, as the new fields continued forming about us, thickening gradu- ally from inches to feet, and locking together the floes in one great amorphous expanse, we retained a hope to the last that our island floe, thickening like the rest, and piling its wall of hummocks around us, would continue to ward us from attack, till the all-pervading frost had made it a stationary part of the great winter covering of the Arctic Sea. It encountered almost daily immense hummocks, son.?e of them impinging against us while we were apparently at rest; some, ap- parently motionless, receiving the impact from us. At such times our floe would be deflected at an angle from its normal course, or would rotate slowly round its centre, and pass on — not, however, always in the same direction ; sometimes nearing the western shore, sometimes closing in upon the beach of "the Graves," LEOPOLD S ISLAND. 235 and sometimes fluctuating^ slowly to the northward. The chart opposite page 12 will show the capricious nature of this drift. But our general course was toward the south and east. On the 17th we were fairly in the sound. It welcomed us coldly. The mercury stood for a while at —19°, and sunk during the night to —27°. The next day, however, a shift of wind, gradually increasing in force, combined with a tidal influence to drive us back to our old position. The thermometer was at this time lower than we had ever seen it, and the sky seemed to sympathize with the temperature. The moon had a solid look, resting upon the snow- hills of Cape Riley, like a great viscid globe of illu- mination. In the morning the sky combined all the tints of the spectrum in regular zones, a broad band of orange girding the horizon with an almost uniform in- tensity of color. The stars shone during the entire day. At daybreak on the 18th, Leopold's Island rose by refraction above the ice, standing with its unmis- takable outline clearly black against the orange sky ; but it went down as the sun neared the horizon, and passed to the south of his low circuit. My journal for the next two days shows the degree of illumination at the different hours. " November 20, Wednesday. The winds are unlike those encountered by Parry, our only predecessor in this region at this season of the year. It has been very providential, and very unexpected for us, this pre- dominance of breezes from the southward and east- ward. It has prevented our drifting into the dreaded sound, there to be carried, if it pleased Fortune, into Baffin's Bay by the easterly current. "We had a heavy gale from 2 P.M. of yesterday ■ > I a, lil 4 ' ^ !f! ■'f''\ ■a 246 THE AURORA. ''M:, otherwise it resembled the mackerel fleeces and mare's tails of our summer skies at home. "It began toward the northwestern horizon as an irregular flaring cloud, sometimes sweeping out into wreaths of stratus ; sometimes a condensed opaline nebulosity, rising in a zone of clearly-defined white- ness, from 3° to 5° in breadth up to the zenith, and then arching to the opposite horizon. This zone re- sembled more a long line of white cirro-stratus than the auroral light of the systematic descriptions. There was no approach to coruscations, or even rectangular deviations from the axis of the zone. When it varied from a right line, its curvatures were waving and ir- regular, such as might be produced by w^ind, but hav- ing no relation to the observed air-currents at the earth's surface. It passed from the due northwest, be- tween the Pleiades and the Corona Borealis ; the star of greatest magnitude in the latter of these constella- tions remaining in the centre, although its waving curves sometimes reached the Pleiades. At the zenith, its mean distance from the Polar Star was 7° south, and it passed down, increasing in intensity, near Vega, in Lyra, to the southeast. " There was throughout the arc no marked seat of greatest intensity. Around the Corona of the north, its light was more diffused. The zone appeared nar- rowed at the zenith, and bright and clear, without marked intermission, to the southeast. The frost- smoke was in smoky banks to the northwest ; but the aurora did not seem to be affected by it, and the com- pass remained constant. ^^ December 2. Drifting down the sound. Every thing getting ready for the chance of a hurried good- by to our vessels. Pork, and sugar, and bread put up E'l 248 LANCASTER SOUND. cue, has not opened. Her officers have brought their private papers on board the Advance, and such indis- pensable articles as may be needed in case of her de- struction. " Our ship's head is toward a point of land to the northeastward, but her position changes so constantly that there is little use of recording it. Caught a fox this morning ; have now two on board. " Our bearings, taken by azimuth compass this morn- ing at eleven, gave Cape Hurd, S. by W. i W. ; West- ern Bluff, of Rigsby's Inlet, S.E. i S.; Table-hill of Parry, S.E. by S. i S.; Cape Ricketts, E. by N. "Wind changed at 9 P.M. to N.N.W. ; thermom- eter, minimum, -26°; maximum, -22°; mean, 23° 82^ ^^ December 4, Wednesday. This morning showed us an interval of over two hundred yaids already covered with stiff ice : so much for our chasm of last night ! All around us is a moving wreck of ice-fields. " Our drift seems to have been to the westward. We have certainly left the coast, which yesterday seemed almost over us, though it is still too near for good fel- lowship. " This is the first clear day — ^truly clear, that we have had since my record of the changing daylight. Compared with the gloomy haziness of its predeces- sors, it was cheering. The southern horizon was a zone of red light ; and although the clear blue soon absorbed it, we could read small print with a little ef- fort at noonday by turning the book to the south. The stars were visible all the time, except where the hori- zon was lighted up." The next four days were full of excitement and anxiety. One crack after another passed across our CRISIS. 249 floe, still reducing its dimensions, and at one time bringing down our vessel again to an even keel. An hour afterward, the chasms would close around us with a sound like escaping steam. Again they would open under some mysterious influence ; a field of ice from two to four inches thick would cover them ; and then, without an apparent change of causes, the separated sides would come together with an explosion like a mortar, craunching the newly-formed field, and driving it headlong in fragments for fifty feet upon the floe till it piled against our bulwarks. Every thing betokened a crisis. Sledges, boats, packages of all sorts, were dis- posed in order ; contingencies were met as they ap- proached by new delegations of duty ; every man was at work, oflicer and seaman alike ; for necessity, when it spares no one, is essentially democratic, even on ship- board. The Rescue, crippled and thrown away from us to the further side of a chasm, was deserted, and her company consolidated with ours. Our own brig groaned and quivered under the pressure against her sides. I give my diary for December 7. "December 7, Saturday. The danger which sur- rounds us is so immediate, that in the bustle of prep- aration for emergency I could not spend a moment upon my journal. Now the little knapsack is made up again, and the blanket sewed and strapped. The little home Bible at hand, and the ice-clothes ready for a jump. » yu^ II < *«eM \ 'f f *' « Doiv 1 ..- i .^:-. 1 I- (< -J:. *t 250 CRISIS. Dee. 6. Dec. " The above is a rough idea of our hist three days' positions and changes. " From this it is evident that a gradual process of breaking up has taken place. We are afloat. " The ice, as I have sketched it, December 7, began to close at 11 A.M., and, at the same time, the brig was driven toward the open crack of December 4 (c). At 1 P.M. this closed on us with fearful nipping. " 1 P.M. llan on deck. The ice was comparatively quiescent when I attempted to write ; but it recom- menced with a steady pressure, which must soon prove irresistible. It catches against a protruding tongue forward, and is again temporarily arrested. "4 P.M. Up from dinner— 'all hands!' The ice came in, with the momentum before mentioned as * ir- resistible,' progressive and grand. All expected to be- take ourselves sledgeless to the ice, for the open space around the vessel barely admits of a foot-board. The timbers, and even cross-beams protected by shores, vi- brated so as to communicate to you the peculiar tremor of a cotton-factory. Presently the stern of the brig, by a succession of jerking leaps, began to rise, while her bows dipped toward the last night's ice ahead. Every body looked to see her fall upon her beam-ends, and rushed out upon the ice. After a few anxious breath-compressed moments, our nobly-strengthened little craft rose up upon the encroaching floes bodily. •■If hi. f I 11! ANECDOTE. 251 Her dolphin-striker struck the ice ahead ; her hows he- gan to feel the pressure ; and thus lifted up upon the solid tahles, we have a temporary respite again. " Stores are now put out upon the ice, and we await — time. Cape Fellfoot, S. by W. i W. Remarkable perpendicular bluff, S.S.E. Cape Hurd, E.N.E. i E., by compass ; Cape Hurd, N.W. by W. i W. (true). " We are at least fifty miles from Beechy Island and Union Bay — about forty-five miles from Leopold Har- bor stores. Leopold Harbor, or our more distant En- glish friends, about one hundred and twenty miles off, are our only places of refuge. We are daily, hourly, drifting further from both. It is this nakednetss of resources, even more than perpetual darkness and unendurable cold, that makes our position one of bitterness. Drift a little westward; thermometer, 17°." My journal does not tell the story ; but it is worth noting, as it illustrates the sedative eflect of a protract- ed succession of hazards. Our brig had just mounted the floe, and as we stood on the ice watching her vi- bration, it seemed so certain that she must come over on her beam-ends, that our old boatswain. Brooks, called out to " stand from under." At this moment it occurred to one of the officers that the fires had not been put out, and that the stores remaining on board would be burned by the falling of the stoves. Swing- ing himself back to the deck, and rushing below, he found two persons in the cabin ; the officer who had been relieved from watch-duty a few minutes before, quietly seated at the mess-table, and the steward as quietly waiting on him. " You are a meal ahead of me," he said ; " you didn't think I was going out upon the ice without my dinner." I 1 262 LANCASTER SOUND. ft*' ■ )• ; f "'. I l1 I iSf " December 8, Sunday, 8 P.M. This has thus far been a day of rest. Our vessel, lifted up upon the heavy ice, has borne without injury a few fresh pressures. The wind has been still from the eastward, and we have drifted about six r:iiles to the westward again. This wind was almost a gale ; yet its influence upon the eastern drift is barely able to produce this limited westing. I now regard it as past a doubt, that should we survive the collisions of the journey, we must float into Baffin's Bay. "A small auroral light was seen to the northwest at 9 A.M., the second within two days. Its axis was 16° W. of the magnetic meridian. The mean tem- perature of the day has been -12*^ 70". Wind more gentle from the eastward. "Mr. Griflin, who is now the executive officer of our consolidated squadron, has undertaken a systematic drill of the crew. He has mustered them for an ice- march, with knapsacks fitted to their backs, and sledge equipments, just such as will be required when the worst comes. Every thing is rigorously inspected the provisions and stores of all sorts are packed snug and have their places marked ; and the men are in structed as to their course in the moment of emerg ency. '• Here is a sketch of the present position of our ves- sel . It looks extravagant, but it is in truth the very op- 't '?' ' >i LANCASTE R SOUND. 253 posite. Evey thing like locomotion on board is up and down hill. " December 9, Monday. Like its three predecessors, clear ; that is to say, for three scanty hours of scanty twilight, you see the skeleton shore cliffs, and the bright stars, a little paled, but bright. The moon, a second-quarter crescent, was for a while on the north- ern and western horizon, distorted and flaming like a crimson lamp. " Last night, mounted as we are, the nipping caused our timbers to complain sadly. We had to send out parties to crow-bar away the ice from our bowsprit. The bob-slays were forced up and broken. Our floe movement continued to the southeast, driving the heavy ice in upon the Rescue. She rose up under the pressure, and is now surrounded by hummock ruins like ourselves. She is not more than fifty yards dis- tant from us, astern." From this time to the 21st our drift was without in- termission. As one headland after another defined it- self against the horizon, it was apparent that we were skirting the northern coast of the sound. At first this gave us some anxiety, when our floe, pressing hard against the shore-ice as we doubled some projecting point, threatened to wreck us among its fragments. But as we drew nearer to the outlet, and began to com- pute the new hazards of entering Baffin's Bay, this very circumstance became for us an important ground of hope. Theory, as well as the accounts of the whal- ers, made the southeastern cape of Lancaster Sound the seat of intense hummock action. The greater the distance from that point, the broader must be the curv- ature of the meeting currents, and the less perilous the conflict of the ice-masses in their rotation. There was, n fl 1 A ! f ^Mi liiti^^'' •(' ^'*^i^l '7* 1 t. ' 1 1 1 ':■; ■ 1 *^^^^l 254 LANCASTER SOUND. of course, no escape for us from this encounter ; and the only question was of the degrees of hazard it must involve. On the 19th, the tall, mural precipices to the north- ward, and the cape in which they terminated toward the east, convinced us that we had almost reached the western headland of Croker's Bay. We had drifted one hundred and eleven miles since the beginning of the month. Our course had been without any cheering incident. There was the same wretched succession of openings and closings about our floe, somewhat dan- gerous, but too uniform to be exciting ; and we had drilled with knapsack and sledge, till we were almost martinets in our evolutions on the ice. I group the few entries of my journal that have any interest. " December 11. Wind last night fierce from the north ; to-day as fierce from the west. It has carried us clear of the great cape that stretches out east of Maxwell's Bay, and that threatened us with the variety of a lee shore. The Rescue has had another trial : her stern- post is carried away, her pintle and gudgeon wrenched ofl*. A party of officers and men are out, trying the ex- periment of a night upon the ice, tented and bag-bed- ded. I wish them luck ; but the thermometer fifty- seven degrees below freezing is unfavorable to a fete ckampetre. ^^ December 12. Every thing solid, and looking as if it had always been so ; yet, a few days ago, I had this journal of mine stitched up in its tarred canvas-bag, and ready for a fling upon the ice four times in the twenty-four hours. The floes have stopped abrading each other, and are driving ahead right peaceably, with our brig mounted on top : how far we are from the edges, it is too dark to see. LANCASTER SOUND, 255 *^ December 13. A little clearer than yesterday, but too dark to read small print at noon. Something like a long reach of land looming up to southward : it can not be Croker's Bay ? "All our mess took our tour of practice to-day, with a sledge and four hundred pounds of provender. Hard work, and sweating abundantly ; but we feel already the good effects of this sort of exercise. Thermometer at -11°. " December 14. A quiet day ; the winds at rest, and the stars twinkling through the hazy sky as I never saw them before. The moon, too, is in high heaven, almost a three-quarter disk. She is a great comfort to us ; her high northern declination makes her visible all the time. It looks strangely this undying fortnight moon. The frost-smoke is wreathing the red zone of our southern horizon. It would be a good night-scene for a painter. "At 7 P.M. the thermometer rose from -3° to -1°. At 10 o'clock it was -4°. Its maximum was + 10*^, a temperature mild and comfortable. The wind changed from west by south to west by north, and the ice and the drift are as yesterday. " A poor bear, fired at last night by Mr. Carter, was found this morning, about three hundred yards fron. the ship, dead. He was wedged between two slabs of ice, and in his agony had rubbed his muzzle deep into the frozen snow. Twice he had stopped to lie down during his death- walk, marking each place with a large puddle of blood, which branched out over the floe like crimson-streaked marble. He measured eight feet four inches from tip to tip. I killed a fox ; but missing his head, opened the large arteries of the neck, and spoiled his pelt. The temperature at the orifice ■'.* .=i/i I i :».,. 256 LANCASTER SOUND. ,11 .I*;.! ] of the ball was H-92°. The crew were at work till eleven, leveling our rugged floe, and heaping up snow against the sides of the brig. The position of our ves- sel, high perched in air, and dipping head foremost in a way most Arctic and uncomfortable, makes the pro- tection of snow very desirable. We feel the cold against her walls. The crew had an hour of sledging, as well by way of exercise as of preparation for their expected trials. "A point supposed to be Cape Crawfurd bore, by compass, west. Our distance from the north shore is , about five miles." > A mil >. *' il n .ix-: « ,..-^^ ARCTIC HOOD. CHAPTER XXX. I EMPLOYED the dreary intervals of leisure that her- alded our Christmas in tracing some Flemish portrait- ures of things about me. The scenes themselves had interest at the time for the parties who figured in them ; and I believe that is reason enough, according to the practice of modern academics, for submitting them to the public eye. I copy them from my scrap-book, ex- purgating only a little. " We have almost reached the solstice ; and things are so quiet that I may as well, before I forget it, tell you something about the cold in its sensible effects, and the way in which as sensible people we met it. " You will see, by turning to the early part of my journal, that the season we now look back upon as the perfection of summer contrast to this outrageous winter was in fact no summer at all. We had the young ice forming round us in Baffin's Bay, and were measuring snow-falls, while you were sweating under your grass-cloth. Yet I remember it as a time of sun- ny recreation, when we shot bears upon the floes, and R '■■n 258 THE COLD. 1, I were scrambling merrily over glaciers and murdering rotges in the bright glare of our day-midnight. Like a complaining brute, I thought it cold then — I, who am blistered if I touch a brass button or a ramrod without a woolen mit. " The ox)ld came upon us gradually. The first thing that really struck me was the freezing up of our wa- ter-casks, the drip-candle appearance of the bung-holes, and our inability to lay the tin cup down for a five- minutes' pause without having its contents made solid. Next came the complete inability to obtain drink with- out manufacturing it. For a long time we had col- lected our water from the beautiful fresh pools of the icebergs and floes ; now we had to quarry out the blocks in flinty, glassy lumps, and then melt it in tins for our daily drink. This was in Wellington Channel. "By-and-by the sludge which we passed through as we traveled became pancakes and snow-balls. We were glued up. Yet, even as late as the 11th of Sep- tember, I collected a flowering Potentilla from Bar- low's Inlet. But now any thing moist or wet began to strike me as something to be looked at — a curious, out-of-the-way production, like the bits of broken ice round a can of mint-julep. Our decks became dry, and studded with botryoidal lumps of dirty foot-trod- den ice. The rigging had nightly accumulations of rime, and we learned to be careful about coiled ropes and iron work. On the 4th of October we had a mean temperature below zero. " By this time our little entering hatchway had be- come so complete a mass of icicles, that we had to give it up, and resort to our winter door- way. The opening of a door was now the signal for a gush of smoke-like vapor : every stove-pipe sent out clouds of purple steam ; FROZEN STORES. 259 ring Like who nrod ^hing r wa- tioles, , five- solid. with- ,d col- ofthe at the in tins lannel. ugh as We f Sep. Bar- began lurious, :en ice le dry, ht-trod- lons of ropes mean lad be- Ito give Ipening Ike-like [steam; and a man's breath looked like the firing of a pistol on a small scale. "All our eatables became laughably consolidated, and after different fashions, requiring no small expe- rience before we learned to manage the peculiarities of their changed condition. Thus, dried apples be- came one solid breccial mass of impacted angularities, a conglomerate of sliced chalcedony. Dried peaches the same. To get these out of the barrel, or the barrel out of them, was a matter impossible. We found, aft- er many trials, that the shortest and best plan was to cut up both fruit and barrel by repeated blows with a heavy axe, taking the lumps below to thaw. Saur- kraut resembled mica, or rather talcose slate. A crow- bar with chiseled edge extracted the lamina badly ; but it was perhaps the best thing we could resort to. " Sugar formed a very funny compound. Take q. s. of cork raspings, and incorporate therewith another q. s. of liquid gutta percha or caoutchouc, and allow to harden : this extemporaneous formula will give you the brown sugar of our winter cruise. Extract with the saw ; nothing but the saw will suit. Butter and lard, less changed, require a heavy cold chisel and mallet. Their fracture is conchoidal, with haematitio (iron-ore pimpled) surface. Flour undergoes little change, and molasses can at —28° be half scooped, half cut by a stiff' iron ladle. "Pork and beef are rare specimens of Florentine mosaic, emulating the lost art of petrified visceral mon- strosities seen at the medical schools of Bologna and Milan : crow-bar and handspike ! for at —30° the axe can hardly chip it. A barrel sawed in half, and kept for two days in the caboose house at +76°, was still as refractory as flint a few inches below the surfiice. I i 1 » 260 ICES. 'I, ■•■*•■ "lit '■y -"!! ,i! A similar bulk of lamp oil, denuded of the staves, stood like a yellow sandstone roller for a gravel walk. " Ices for the dessert come of course unbidden, in all imaginable and unimaginable variety. I have tried my inventive powers on some of them. A Roman punch, a good deal stronger than the noblest Roman ever tasted, forms readily at —20°. Some sugared cranberries, with a little butter and scalding w liter, and you have an impromptu strawberry ice. Many a time at those funny little jams, that we call in Phila- delphia * parties,' where the lady-hostess glides with such nicely-regulated indifference through the complex machinery she has brought together, I have thought I noticed her stolen glance of anxiety at the cooing doves, whose icy bosoms were melting into one upon the supper-table before their time. We order these things better in the Arctic. Such is the ' composition and fierce quality' of our ices, that they are brought in served on the shaft of a hickory broom ; a transfix ing rod, which we use as a stirrer first and a fork aft erward. So hard is this terminating cylinder of ice that it might serve as a truncheon to knock down a ox. The only difficulty is in the processes that ft - low. It is the work of time and energy to impress t with the carving-knife, and you must handle y ^r spoon deftly, or it fastens to your tongue. One of our mess was tempted the other day by the crystal trans- parency of an icicle to break it in his mouth ; one piece froze to his tongue, and two others to his lips, and each carried off the skin : the thermometer was at -28°. "Thus much for our Arctic grub. I need not say that our preserved meats would make very fair can- non balls^ canister-shot ! ! A WALK. 261 " Now let us start out upon a walk, clothed in well- fashioned Arctic costume. The thermometer is, say -25°, not lower, and the wind blowing a royal breeze, but gently. " Close the lips for the first minute or two, and ad- mit the air suspiciously through nostril and mustache. Presently you breathe in a dry, pungent, but gracious and agreeable atmosphere. The beard, eyebrow, eye- lashes, and the downy pubescence of the ears, acquire a delicate, white, and perfectly-enveloping cover of venerable hoar-frost. The mustache and under lip form pendulous beads of dangling ice. Put out your tongue, and it instantly freezes to this icy crusting, and a rapid effort and some hand aid will be required to liberate it. The less you talk, the better. Your chin has a trick of freezing to your upper jaw by the luting aid of your beard; even my eyes have often been so glued, as to show that even a wink may be un- safe. As you walk on, you find that the iron- work of your gun begins to penetrate through two coats of woolen mittens, with a sensation like hot water. "But we have been supposing your back to the wind ; and if you are a good Arcticized subject, a warm glow has already been followed by a profuse sweat. Now turn about and face the wind ; what a devil of a change ! how the atmospheres are wafted off"! how penetratingly the cold trickles down your neck, and in at your pockets ! Whew ! a jack-knife, heretofore, like Bob Sawyer's apple, ' unpleasantly warm' in the breeches pocket, has changed to something as cold as ice and hot as fire : make your way back to the ship! ! I was once caught three miles off with a freshening wind, and at one time feared that 1 would hardly see the brig again. Morton, who accompanied me, had if 11 h4 262 FREEZING TO DEATH. ML' ^ -f^ • ■3,: n :"'! "V his cheeks frozen, and I felt that lethargic numbness mentioned in the story books. "I will tell you what this feels like, for I have been twice 'caught out.' Sleepiness is not the sensation. Have you ever received the shocks of a magneto-elec- tric machine, and had the peculiar benumbing sensa- tion of ' can't let go,' extending up to your elbow- joints ? Deprive this of its paroxysmal character ; sub- due, but diffuse it over every part of the system, and you have the so-called pleasurable feelings of incipient freezing. It seems even to extend to your brain. Its inertia is augmented ; every thing about you seems of a ponderous sort ; and the whole amount of pleasure is in gratifying the disposition to remain at rest, and spare yourself an encounter with these latent resist- ances. This is, I suppose, the pleasurable sleepiness of the story books. "I could fill page after page with the ludicrous mis- eries of our ship-board life. We have two climates, hygrometrically as well as thermometrically at oppo- site ends of the scale. A pocket-handkerchief, pocket- ed below in the region of stoves, comes up unchanged. Go below again, and it becomes moist, flaccid, and almost wet. Go on deck again, and it resembles a shingle covered with linen. I could pick my teeth with it. "You are anxious to know how I manage to stand this remorseless temperature. It is a short story, and perhaps worth the telling ' The Doctor' still retains three luxuries, remnants ot better times — silk next his skin, a tooth-brush for his teeth, and white linen for his nose. Every thing else is Arctic and hairy — fur, fur, fur. The silk is light and washable, needing neither the clean dirt of starch nor the uncomfortable — « i^ii „ ess sen Lon. lec- [isa- (OW- sub- and >ient Its Bems isure , and esist- )iness s mis- nates, oppo- cket- nged. and les a teeth stand ly, and Retains next linen liry — ceding Lrtable COSTUME. 263 trouble of flat-irons. It secures to me a clean screen between my epidermoid and seal-skin integuments. " I try to be a practical man as to clothing and the et ceteras of a traveler. All baggage beyond the essen- tial I regard as impedimenta, and believe in the wis- dom of Titian Peale, who, v, hen preparing for an ex- ploring tour around the world, purchased — a tin cup. For the sake of poor devils condemned to cold winters, I give in detail my dress, the result of much trial, and, I think, nearly perfect. Here it is, from tip to toe. " 1. Feet. A pair of cotton socks (Lisle thread) cov- ered by a pair of ribbed woolen stockings, rising above the knee and half way up the thigh. Over these a pair of Esquimaux water-proof boots, lined by a sock of dog-skin, the hair inside ; the leg of dressed seal- hide ; a sole with the edges turned up, and crimped so as to form a water-tight cup ; the furred edge of a dog- skin sock inserted as a lining ; and some clean straw laid smoothly at the bottom, which forms the elastic cushion on which you tread. "2. Legs. A pair of coarse woolen drawers, and a pair of seal-skin breeks over them, stitched with rein- deer tendon. "3. Chest. A jumper or short coat, double, of seal- skin and reiideer fur. This invaluable article I got at Disco on my fur journey, obtaining a good number besides for men and officers. It consists of an inner- hooded shirt of reindeer-skin with the hair inside, reaching as far as the upper ridge of the hips, so as to allow free swing to the legs, and fitting about the throat very closely. It is drawn on like the shirt, and, except at the neck, is perfectly loose and unbinding. " 4. Head. Our people generally wear fur caps. I wear an ear-ridge, a tiara, to speak heroically, of wolf- t-A i VjKfl^l \\ 264 COSTUME. 'g ii s skin. Excellent is this Mormon fur ! Leaving the entire poll bare to the elements, it guards the ears and forehead effectually: in any ordinary state of the wind above — 15°, I am not troubled with the cold. Before I resorted to this, my cap was full of frozen water, stiff and uncomfortable, all the condensation turning to ice the moment I uncovered. When the weather is very cold, I up hood ; when colder, say —40°, with a middling breeze — quite cold enough, I assure you — I wear an elastic silk night-cap in^ addition, one of a pair forced on me by a certain brother of mine as I was leaving New York, drawn over my head and face, and lined with a mask of wolf-skin. To prevent excessive condensation, I cut only two eye-holes, and leave a large aperture below the point of the nose for talking and breathing. A grim-looking object is this wolf-skin mask, its openings liiied with water-proof oiled silk. " The only changes in the above are a pair of cloth pants for fur, when the thermometer strays above — ^ 5°, and a pair of heavy woolen wad-mail leggins, drawn over my fur pants, and worn, stocking fashion, within my boots, in windy weather, when we get down to —30° or thereabouts. A long waist-scarf, worn like the kummerbund of the Hindoos, is a fine protection while walking, to keep the cold from intru- ding at the pockets Rnd waist: it consummates, as it floats martially on the breeze, the grotesque harmonies of my attire." ARCTIC MA^K. '■*\i I! OFF choker's bay, DEC. 23. CHAPTER XXXI. ^^ December 21, Saturday. To-day at noon we saw, dimly looming up from the redness of the southern horizon, a low range of hills ; among them some cones of great height, mountains of a character differing from the naked tahle-lands of the northern coast. The land on the other side of Croker's Bay, with one high head- land, supposed to he Cape Warrender, is in view. From all of which it is clear that we are drifting reg- ularly on toward Baffin's Bay. "An opening occurred last night in the ice to the northward. It is not more than a hundred yards from us, and it is already seventy wide. It was explored for ahout a mile in a northwest and southeast course. Another of the same character is ahout half a mile to the south of us. "Our floe has now remained in peace for nearly three weeks; and, with the happy indifference of sail- ors' human nature, we are beginning to forget the driv- ing ice and the groaning pressures which have perched us thus upon a lump of drift. I look, howdver, to the spring-tides for a renewal of the trouble. The ice ! n 266 CHANGES. ';if-- r "U '7 !^fr^ :' •■I about us is apparently as strong and solid as the slow growth of Wellington Channel ; but we know it to be recent, and less able to withstand pressure. Ev- ery thing now depends upon preserving our vessel and stores. A breaking up must take place, and for us the later in the spring the better. At the present rate of progress, we shall be in Baffin's Bay by the latter end of January. There the daylight will be with us again ; most providentially, for the icebergs are wretched en- emies in darkness. Thirty more days, and we may take a noonday walk ; forty-four, and the sun comes back. " Our men are hard at work preparing for the Christ- mas theatre, the arrangements exclusively their own. But to-morrow is a day more welcome than Christmas — the solstitial day of greatest darkness, from which we may begin to date our returning light. It makes a man feel badly to see the faces around him bleach- ing into waxen paleness. Until to-day, as a looking- glass does not enter into an Arctic toilet, I thought I was the exception, and out of delicacy said nothing about it to my comrades. One of them, introducing the topic just now, told me, with an utter unconscious- ness of his own ghostliness, that I was the palest of the party. So it is, 'AH men think all men,' &c. Why, the good fellow is as white as a cut potato !" In truth, we were all of us at this time undergoing changes unconsciously. The hazy obscurity of the nights we had gone through made them darker than the corresponding nights of Parry. The complexiono of my comrades, and my own too, as I found soon after- ward, were toned down to a peculiar waxy paleness. Our eyes were more recessed, and strangely clear. Complaints of shortness of breath became general. Our 1 1 )..; H ■'•' III "' ;..; \ , ■> t ■■ ,f !:.. •- i m^nl THE SOLSTICE. 267 appetite was almost ludicrously changed : ham-fat fro- zen, nud saur-kraut swimming in olive-oil were favor- ites ; yet we were unconscious of any tendency to- ward the gross diet of the Polar region. Most of my companions would not touch hear ; indeed, I was the only one, except Captain De Haven, that still ate it. Fox, on the other hand, was a favorite. Things seem- ed to have changed their taste, and our inclination for food was at best very slight. Worse than this, our complete solitude, combined with permanent darkness, began to affect our morale. Men became moping, testy, and imaginative. In the morning, dreams of the night — we could not help using the term — were narrated. Some had visited the naked shores of Cape Warrender, and returned laden with water-meloii::. Others had found Sir John Frank- lin in a beautiful cove, lined by quintas and orange- trees. Even Brooks, our hard-fisted, unimaginative boatswain, told me, in confidence, of having heard three strange groans out upon the ice. He " thought it was a bear, but could see nothing !" In a word, the health of our little company was broken in upon. It required strenuous and constant effort at washing, diet, and exercise to keep the scurvy at bay. Eight cases of scorbutic gums were already upon my black-list. One severe pneumonia left me in anxious doubt as to its result. There was, however, little bronchitis. ^^ December 22, Sunday. The solstice ! — the midnight of the year ! It commences with a new movement in the ice, the open lead of yesterday piling up into hum- mocks on our port-beam. No harm done. ' "The wind is from the west, increasing in fresh- ness since early in the morning. The weather over- cast ; even the moon unseen, and no indications of our i u u 268 CHRISTMAS. ii M '^1 ""^ m ■■ «;■ drift. We could not read print, not even large news, paper type, at noonday. We have been unable to leave the ship unarmed for some time on account of the bears. We remember the story of poor Barentz, one of our early predecessors. One of our crew, Blinn, a phlegmatic Dutchman, walked out to-day toward the lead, a few hundred yards off, in search of a seal-hole. Suddenly a seal rose close by him in the sludge-ice : he raised his gun to fire ; and, at the same instant, a large bear jumped over the floe, and by a dive followed the seal. Blinn's musket snapped. He was glad to get on board again, and will remember his volunteer hunt. Thermometer, minimum, -18°; maximum, —6°. A beautiful paraselene yesterday ! ! ^^Decemher 23, Monday. Perfect darkness! Drift unknown. Winds nearly at rest, with the exception of a little gasp from the westward. Thermometer never below —12°, nor above —7°. ^^December 24, Tuesday. ' Through utter darkness borne !' "Decembei 25. 'Y" Christmas of y* Arctic cruisers!' Our Christmas passed without a lack of the good things of this life. * Goodies' we had galore ; but that best of earthly blessings, the communion of loved sympa- thies, these Arctic cruisers had not. It was curious to observe the depressing influences of each man's home thoughts, and absolutely saddening the effort of each man to impose upon his neighbor and be very boon and jolly. We joked incessantly, but badly, and laughed incessantly, but badly too ; ate of good things, and drank up a moiety of our Heidsiek ; and then we sang negro songs, wanting only tune, measure, and harmony, but abounding in noise ; and after a closing bumper to Mr. Grinnell, adjourned with creditable jollity from table to the theatre. CHRISTMAS FROLICS. 269 "It was on deck, of course, but veiled from the sky by our felt covering. A large ship's ensign, stretched from the caboose to the bulwarks, was understood to hide the stage, and certain meat-casks and candle- boxes represented the parquet. The thermometer gave us —6° at first; but the favoring elements soon changed this to the more comfortable temperature of -4°. " Never had I enjoyed the tawdry quackery of the stage half so much. The theatre has always been to me a wretched simulation of realities ; and I have too little sympathy with the unreal to find pleasure in it long. Not so our Arctic theatre : it was one continual frolic from beginning to end. " The ' Blue Devils :' God bless us ! but it was very, very funny. None knew their parts, and the prompter could not read glibly enough to do his office. Every thing, whether jocose, or indignant, or commonplace, or pathetic, was delivered in a high tragedy monotone of despair ; five words at a time, or more or less, ac- cording to the facilities of the prompting. Megrim, with a pair of seal-skin boots, bestowed his gold upon the gentle Annette ; and Annette, nearly six feet high, received it with mastodonic grace. Annette was an Irishman named Daly ; and I might defy human be- ing to hear her, while balanced on the heel of her boot, exclaim, in rich masculine brogue, ' Och, feather !' with- out roaring. Bruce took the Landlord, Benson was James, and the gentle Annette and the wealthy Me- grim were taken by Messrs. Daly and Johnson. " After this followed the Star Spangled Banner ; then a complicated Marseillaise by our French cook, Hen- ri ; then a sailor's hornpipe by the diversely-talented Bruce ; the orchestra — Stewart, playing out the inter- *r!i Ill; 11 270 THE DRIFT. vals on the Jews-harp from the top of a lard-cask. In fact, we were very happy fellows. We had had a foot-race in the morning over the midnight ice for three purses of a flannel shirt each, and a splicing of the main-brace. The day was night, the stars shining feebly through the mist. " But even here that kindly custom of Christmas- gifting was not forgotten. I found in my morning stocking a jack-knife, symbolical of my altered looks, a piece of Castile soap — this last article in great re- quest — a Jews-harp, and a string of beads ! On the other hand, I prescribed from the medical stores two bottles of Cognac, to protect the mess from indiges- tion.* So passed Christmas. Thermometer, mini- mum, — 16°; maximum, -7°. Wind west. "December 26, Thursday. To-day, looming up high in the air, we catch a sight of new unknown land. Of our drift, save by analogy, we know nothing. "December 27, Friday. The shores of this coast seem to have changed their scale. At Cape Riley, as my sketches show, the limestone rises in a mural face, based by a deposit of detritus, which extends out in tongues, indentations, and salient capes ; and between these, a cemented shingle, full of corallines and en- crinites, forms a beach of varying extent. " Sometimes this beach is backed by rolling dune- like hills of the scaly mountain limestones ; but after a mile or two of intermission, the high cliffs rise up again in abutments, and continue unbroken until an- other interval occurs. As we proceeded east, these es- carped masses became more buttress-like and monu- mental, rising up into plateau-topped masses, separated * An offense which I thus publicly acknowledge in advance of the court- martial, to which this illegal dispensation of the public stores may subject me. THE DRIFT. 271 by chasms, which seem mere ruptures in the contin- uous hill-line. Now, however, a trace is seen in the clouds indicative of distant land, higher, more mount- ainous, rolling, and broken. It may be the Cunning- hame Mountains toward Cape Warrender. " The wind is quietly blowing from the west, and the misty haze gives us barely a vestige of daylight. ^^December 28, Saturday. From my very soul do I rejoice at the coming sun. Evidences not to be mis- taken convince me that the health of our crew, never resting upon a very sound basis^ must sink under the continued influences of darkness and cold. The tem- perature and foulness of air in the between-deck Tar- tarus can not be amended, otherwise it would be my duty to urge a change. Between the smoke of lamps, the dry heat of stoves, and the fumes of the galley, all of them unintermitting, what wonder that we grow feeble. The short race of Christmas-day knocked up all our officers except Griffin. It pained me to see my friend Lovell, our strongest man, fainting with the ex- ertion. The symptoms of scurvy among the crew are still increasing, and becoming more general. Faces are growing pale ; strong men pant for breath upon ascending a ladder ; and an indolence akin to apathy seems to be creeping over us. I long for the light. Dear, dear sun, no wonder you are worshiped ! " Our drift is still eastward, with a slow but unerr- ing progress. The high land mentioned yesterday took, in spite of the obscuring haze, a distinguishable outline. It is not more than eight miles off, and so high that, with its retiring flanks on either side, it can be none other than the projecting Cape Warrender. Its structure is unmistakably gneissoid. We have now left the limestones. 1 a. 272 THE DRIFT. 1 If rf h J fr. ':¥■ ■ *!? ifi " This cape is the great entering landmark of the northern shores of Lancaster Sound . Just one hundred days ago we passed it, urged by the wings of the storm ; our errand of mercy filling us with hope, and the gale calling for our best energies. We were then but a few hours from Baffin's Bay, and not over twenty-four from the coast of Greenland. How differently are we jour- neying now ! " The Bay of Baffin, with its moving ice and oppos- ing icebergs, bathed in foggy darkness and destitute of human fellowship or habitable asylum, is before us ; and we, so utterly helpless, hampered, and non- resistant, must await the inevitable action of the ice. This nearness to Cape Warrender makes us feel that our silent marches have brought us near to an- other conflict. "December 29, Sunday. The drift shows an indent of the cape now abaft our beam. We are slowly mak- ing easting. The day is one of the same obscure and dimmed fog which for the past week has wrapped us in darkness. The ice gives no change as yet: the same great field of moving whiteness. "December 30, Monday. By a comparison of our sev- eral days' positions, I find that from the 18th to the 28th we have drifted fifty-two miles and a half, some- thing over five miles a day. The winds during this period have been from the westward, constant though gentle ; and our progress has been of the same steady but gentle sort. At this rate, we will in a few days more be within the Baffin's Bay incognita. "Looking round upon my mess-mates with that sort of scrutiny that belongs to my craft and my posi- tion, I am startled at the traces, moral and physical, of our Arctic winter life. Those who con it over the- RETURNING LIGHT. 273 mat losi- Ical, the- oretically can hardly realize the operation of the host of returUing influences that belong to a Polar night. If I were asked to place in foremost rank the item that has been most trying, it would be neither the perpet- ual cold, nor the universal sameness, nor our complete exclusion from the active world of our brother men, but this constant and oppressing gloom, this unvaried darkness. "To-day was clear toward the south, so that the blessing of light came to us more largely than of late. I walked about a mile on the recent lead, now frozen to a level meandering lane. We see to the north the Cunninghame Mountains of Cape Warrender, but can not make out our change of position definitely. To the south, an outlined ridge of doubtful mountain land shows itself high in the clouds ; probably a part of the high ridges east of Admiralty Inlet. " The thermometer fell at eight this morning to -21°. By noonday it gave us -26° and -27°. It is now —22°. The wind is gentle and cold, but not severe. ^^Decemher 31, Tuesday. The ending day of 1850 ! So clear and beautiful is this parting day, that I must take it as a happy omen. Pellucid clearness, and a sky of deep ultra-marine, brought back the remem- brance of daylight. I give the record of the day. " 9 A.M. The stars visible even to the lesser groups ; but a deep zone of Italian pink rises from the south, and passes by prismatic gradations into the clear blue. The outline of the shore to the northward is well de- fined. " 10. The day is growing into clearness. The ther- mometer is at twenty-seven degrees below zero. Your lungs tingle pleasantly as you draw it in. S I'M 274 RETURNING LIGHT. % "11. Can read ordinary over-sized print. Started on a walk, the first time for twenty-odd days. Saw the great lead, and traveled it for a couple of miles, expanding into a plain of recent ice. "M. Passed noon on the ice. Can read diamond type. Stars of the first magnitude only visible. Sat- urn magnificent ! "1 P.M. With difficulty read large type. The clouds gathering in black stratus over the red light to the south. " 2. The heavens studded with stars in their group- ings. Night is again over every thing, although the minor stars are not 3ret seen. " Since the first of this month, we have drifted in solitude one hundred and seventy miles, skirting the northern shores of Lancaster Sound. Baffin's Bay is ahead of us, its current setting strong toward the south. What will be the result when the mighty masses of these two Arctic seas come together !" I . : w WINTEIl IN THE TACK : CAUIN OF THE AUVA.NCE. CHAPTER XXXIL 1851, January 1, Wednesday. The first day of 1851 set ill cold, the thermometer at —28°, and closing at —31°. We celebrated it by an extra dinner, a plum- cake unfrosted for the occasion, and a couple of our re- siduary bottles of wine. But there was no joy in our merriment : we were weary of the night, as those who watch for the morning. It was not till the 3d that the red southern zone continued long enough to give us assurance of advanc- ing day. Then, for at least three hours, the twilight enabled us to walk without stumbling. I had a feel- ing of racy enjoyment as I found myself once more away from the ship, ranging among the floes, and watching the rivalry of day with night in the zenith. There was the sunward horizon, with its evenly-dis- r!&J':''i 276 EIGHTH OF JANUARY. fl»*^^:1^i *s-^:^: .1 .f^f, : „ \ ^fl 9 ) tributed bands of primitive colors, blending softly into the clear blue overhead ; and then, by an almost magic transition, night occupying the western sky. Stars of the first magnitude, and a wandering planet here and there, shone dimly near the debatable line ; but a little further on were all the stars in their glory. The northern firmament had the familiar beauty of a pure winter night at home. The Pleiades glittered " like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver-braid," and the great stars that hang about the heads of Orion and Taurus were as intensely bright as if day was not looking out upon them from the other quarter of the sky. 1 had never seen night and day dividing the hemisphere so beautifully between them. On the 8tli we had, of course, our national festivi- ties, and remembered freshly the hero who consecrated the day in our annals. The evening brought the the- atricals again, with extempore interludes, and a hearty splicing of the main-brace. It was something new, and not thoroughly gladsome, this commemoration of the victory at New Orleans under a Polar sky. There were men not two hundred miles from us, now our partners in a nobler contest, who had bled in this very battle. But we made the best of the occasion ; and if others some degrees further to the south celebrated it more warmly, we had the thermometer on our side, with its -20^, a normal temperature for the " lauda- tur et alget." But the sun was now gradually coming up toward the horizon : every day at meridian, and for an hour before and after, we were able to trace our progress eastward by some known headland. We had passed Cape Castlereagh and Cape Warrender in succession, and were close on the meridian of Cape Osborn. The * I OUU FLOE. 277 our very and grated side, lauda- Iward hour jgress lassed 3sion, The disruptions of the ice which we had encountered so far, had always been at the periods of spring-tide. The sun and moon were in conjunction on the 21st of De- cember ; and, adopting Captain Parry's observation, that the greatest efflux was always within five day>> after the new moon, we iiad looked with some anxiety to the closing weeks of that month. But they had gone by without any unusual movement ; and there needed only an equally kind visitation of the January moon to give us our hnal struggle with the Baffin's Bay ice by daylight. Yet I had remarked that the southern shore of Lan- caster Sound extended much further out to the east- ward than the northern did ; and I had argued thai we might begin to feel the current of Baffin's Bay in a very few days, though we were still considerably to the west of a line drawn from one cape to the other. The question received its solution without waiting for the moon. I give from my journal our position in the ice on the 11th of January : ''■January 11, Saturday. The floe in which we are now imbedded has been steadily increasing in solid- ity for more than a month. Since the 8th of Decem- ber, not a fracture or collision has occurred to mar its growth. The eye can not embrace its extent. Even from the mast-head you look over an unbounded ex- panse of naked ice, bristling with contorted spires, and ridged by elevated axes of hummocks. The land on either side rises above our icy horizon ; but to the east and west, there is no such interception to our wintery- ness. "The brig remains as she was tossed at our provi- dential escape of last month, her nose burrowing in the 'Ml I ;lf. :i Ei'l 278 COMMOTION OF THE ICE. iff ill III '"»:=.. •!:. >:■ I II snow, and her stern perched high ahove the rubbish. Walking deck is an up and down hill work. She re- tains, too, her list to starboard. Her bare sides have been banked over again with snow to increase tlie warmth, and a formidable flight of nine ice-block steps admits us to the door- way of her winter cover. The stores, hastily thrown out from the vessel when we expected her to go to pieces, are still upon the little remnant of old floe on our port or northern side. The Rescue is some hundred yards off to the south of east." The next day things underwent a change. The morning was a misty one, giving us just light enough to make out objects that were near the ship ; the wind westerly, as it had been for some time, freshening per- haps to a breeze. The day went on quietly till noon, when a sudden shock brought us all up to the deck. Running out upon the ice, we found that a crack had opened between us and the Rescue, and was extending in a zigzag course from the northward and eastward to the southward and westward. At one o'clock it had become a chasm eight feet in width ; and as it contin- ued to widen, we observed a distinct undulation of the water about its edges. At three, it had expanded into a broad sheet of water, filmed over by young ice, through which the portions of the floe that bore cur two vessels began to move obliquely toward each other. Night closed round us, with the chasm reduced to forty yards and still narrowing; the Rescue on her port- bow, two hundred yards from her late position ; the wind increasing, and the thermometer at — Iti^. My journal for the next day was written at broken intervals ; but 1 give it without change of form : ^^ January 13, 4 A.M. All hands have been on deck since one o'clock, strapped and harnessed for a fare- COMMOTION OF THE ICE. 279 other, forty • port- the Iroken deck fare- well march. The water-lane of yesterday is covered by four-inch ice ; the floes at its margin more than three feet thick. These have been closing for some time by a sliding, grinding movement, one upon the other ; but every now and then coining together more directly, the thinner ice clattering between them, and marking their now outline with hummock ridges. They have been fairly in contact for the last hour : we feel their pressure extending to us through the elastic floe in which we are cradled. There is a quivering, vibratory hum about the timbers of the brig, and ev- ery now and then a harsh rubbing creak along her sides, like »vaxed cork on a mahogany table. The hummocks are driven to within four feet of our coun- ter, and stand there looming fourteen feet high through the darkness. It has been a horrible commotion so far, with one wild, booming, agonized note, made up of a thousand discords ; and now comes the deep still- ness after it, the mysterious ice-pulse, as if the ener- gies were gathering for another strife. " 6i A.M. Another pulse ! the vibration greater than we have ever yet had it. If our little brig had an an- imated centre of sensation, and some rude force had torn a nerve-trunk, she could not feel it more — she fairly shudders. Looking out to the north, this ice seems to heave up slowly against the sky in black hills ; and as we watch them rolling toward us, the hills sink again, and a distorted plain of rubbish melts before us into the night. Ours is the contrast of ut- ter helplessness with illimitable power. " 9 50 A.M. Brooks and myself took advantage of the twilight at nine o'clock to cross the hummocky fields to the Rescue. I can not convey an impression of the altered aspects of the floe. Our frozen lane has I n 4i', . «l i*'"]^ 'iJi \^ Ir ii 1^1 i 280 ICE COMMOTION. disappeared, and along the line of its recent course the ico IS heaped up in blocks, tables, lumps, powder, and rubbish, often fifteen feet high. Snow covered the decks of the little vessel, and the disorder about it spoke sadly of desertion. Foot-prints of foxes were seen in every imaginable corner ; and near the little hatchway, where we had often sat in comfortable good-fellowship, the tracks of a large bear had broken the snow crust in his efforts to get below. " The Rescue has met the pressure upon her port- bow and fore-foot. Her bowsprit, already maimed by her adventure off Griffith's Island, is now completely forced up, broken short off at the gammoning. The ice, after nipping her severely, has piled up round her three feet above the bulwarks. We had looked to her as our first asylum of retreat ; but that is out of the question now ; she can not rise as we have done, and any action that would peril us again must bear her down or crush her laterally. " The ice immediately about the Advance is broken into small angular pieces, as if it had been dashed against a crag of granite. Our camp out on the floe, with its reserve of provisions and a hundred things be- sides, memorials of scenes we have gone through, or ap- pliances and means for hazards ahead of us, has been carried away bodily. My noble specimen of the Arc- tic bear is floating, with an escort of bread barrels, nearly half a mile off. " The thermometer records only - 17° ; but it blows at times so very fiercely that I have never felt it so cold : five men were frost-bitten in the attempt to save our stores. " 9 P.M. We have had no renewal of the pressure since half past six this morning. We are turning in ; \ I ICE COMMOTION. 281 )lows it so save Issure the wind blowing a fresh breeze, weather misty, ther- mometer at —23°." The night brought no further change ; but toward morning the cracks, that formed before this a sort of net- work all about the vessel, began to open. The cause was not apparent : the wind had lulled, and we saw no movement of the floes. We had again the same voices of complaint from the ship, but they were much feebler than yesterday ; and in about an hour the ice broke up all round her, leaving an open space of about a foot to port, indented with the mould of her form. The brig was loose once more at the sides ; but she remained suspended by the bows and stern from hummocks built up like trestles, and canted forward still five feet a,nd a quarter out of level. Every thing else was fairly afloat: even the India-rubber boat, which during our troubles had found a resting-place on a sound projection of the floe close by us, had to be taken in. This, I may say, was a fearful position ; but the thermometer, at a mean of — 23° and — 24°, soon brought back the solid character of our floating raft. In less than two days every thing about us was as firmly fixed as ever. But the whole topography of the ice was changed, and its new configuration attested the violence of the elements it had been exposed to. Nothing can be conceived more completely embodying inhospitable desolation. From mast-head the eye trav- eled wearily over a broad champaigne of undulating ice, crowned at its ridges with broken masses, like breakers frozen as they rolled toward the beach. Be- yond these, you lost by degrees the distinctions of sur- face. It was a great plain, blotched by dark, jagged sliadows, and relieved only here and there by a hill ^i m 282 ICE COMMOTION. i'. 'If? :i 'I ;; of upheaved rubbish. Still further in the distance came an unvarying uniformity of shade, cutting with saw-toothed edge against a desolate sky. Yet there needed no after-survey of the ice-field to prove to us what majestic forces had been at work upon it. At one time on the 13th, the hummock- ridge astern advanced with a steady march upon the vessel. Twice it rested, and advanced again — a dense wall of ice, thirty feet broad at the base and twelve feet high, tumbling huge fragments from its crest, yet increasing in mass at each new effort. We had ceased to hope ; when a merciful interposition arrested it, so close against our counter that there was scarcely room for a man to pass between. Half a minute of progress more, and it would have buried us ail. As we drifted along five months afterward, this stupendous memento of controlling power was still hanging over our stern. The sketch at the head of the next chapter represents its appearance at the close of the month. BIROOEO IL'E-l'LOC. ^^c^-^:::' t^'".--^:^f?ji > j3^^,i- :::^'i^|!#> ,i^i^^-,, '^:-^~,,V"/-^-^: ?l^i? THE ADVANCE, FEDRUAav, IbSl. CHAPTER XXXIII. We had lost all indications of a shore, and had ob- viously passed within the influences of Baffin's Bay. We were on the meridian of 75°; yet, though the re- cent commotions could be referred to nothing else but the conflict of the two currents, we had made very little southing, if any, and had seen no bergs. But on the 14th the wind edged round a little more to the northward, and at six o'clock in the morning of the 15th we could hear a squeezing noise among the ice- fields in that direction. By this time we had become learned interpreters of the ice- voices. Of course, we renewed our preparations for whatever might be com- ing. Every man arranged his knapsack and blanket- bag over again with the practiced discretion of an ex- pert. Our extra clothing sledge, carefully repacked, was made free on deck. The India-rubber boat, only useful in this solid waste for crossing occasional chasms, was launched out upon the ice for the third time. Our 2SJ Al'rUOACIlINU KAi'FIN S HAY. >: 1 n i fonrior depots on tho Hoc had fUrod so hadly tluvt we were reluctant to risk aiiotluM' ; but our stores were ready to he jj^ot out at tho inonient.* Mow hejnrau, with every one after his own lashion. the discussion what was hest to be done in ease of a wreck. SliouKl we try our fortunes for the while on board tlie Rescue i JSlie would probably bo tho first to «fo, and could hardly hope for a more protracted fate than her consort. Or should we try for tho shore, and what shore? Admiralty Jniet, or Pond's Bay, or the River Clyde ? AVe have no reason to suppose the Es- quimaux are accessible on tho coast in winter; and if they are, they can not have provisions for such a huufj^ry re-enforcenuMit as ours ; besides, the chance of reachiuir land from the drilt-field throu«?h tho broken ice betwcn them is slender at the best for men worn down anil sick ; much more if they should attempt to carry two mojiths' stores alonjjf with them. There was only one other resort, to camp out on the lloe, if it should kindly oiler us a foothold, and then move as best we mipfht from one failinjf homestead to .luother, like a baud of Arabs in tho desert. Happily, Captain Do Haven was spared the necessity of choosinjo^ be- tween tho alternatives : the ice-storm did not roach us. ''Januanj io. The moon is now nearly full. Her ligfht niinjjles so with the twilijjht of tho sun thatth*) stars are quite sobered down. Walking out at 4 P.M.. ♦ 1 have ;iV(Milt'(l spcakin!; of my brotlirr t>flii'(M"s. rmiu myself, a subordin- ate, only acoiilcutally rofonlinjj tlioir exortions, ii would bo out of jdai'o; yet I should siK-ak tho soutimetil of all on board were I to roeognizc how much we owed to tiiir cxoi'Utivo ollU'or, Mr. (iriHin. All our systeiuatizod preparation for tho oontiii^oiu'ios which throatcMU'd us, tho sledfjes, tho knapsacks, the daily training,', and the i)rovisii)n depots, were duo to him. Dur commander, Ihon so dl with scurvy that wo feared for his recovery, was compelled to delegate to his second in command many executive duties which he would otherwise have taken on himself. «it it: THE DRIFT. 285 ►M.. Iibordin- Icr; yet liuch we klion for lie daily Ithcn 80 tgate to ■so have with the thermometer at -24°, to find, if I oould, the cause of a sound a good deal like that of the surf, I was startled by a noise like a quarry blast, explosive and momentary, followed by a clatter like broken glass. Some ten minutes afterward, it was repeated, and a dark smoke-like vapor rose up in the moonlight from the same quarter. These things keep us on the qui vivc. ^^ J an nary IG. In the (bourse of a tramp to-day about noon, the thermometer standing at — 18^, I came across a wonderful instance of the yielding elasticity of ice under intense pressure. About two hundred yards from the brig, on her starboard quarter, was an un- broken plain of level ice, which before our recent break- up used to ibrm one of my daily walks. It measured one hundred and thirty paces in its longer diameter and eighty-five in its shorter, and its thickness I ascer- tained this morning was over five feet. I found in crossing it to-day that the surface presented a uniform curve, a segment whose versed sine could not have been less than eight feet, abutted on each side by a barricade of rubbish. It strikes me that the dehis- cence, lady's slipper or Rupert's drop fashion, of such tensely-compressed floes, must be the cause of the loud explosions we have heard lately. At —30^ or —40° the ice is as friable and brittle as glass itself; besides, one of those yesterday was followed by a ringing clatter. ^^ January IS. The extreme stillness, and the facil- ity with which sound travels over these Polar ice- plains, make us err a good deal in our estimates of dis- tance at night. I went out to-day with Dr. Vreeland in search of a violent disruption of the ice, which our look-outs declared they had heard at the very side of •!> ;■* 1 1! mm 1 Ett i' % ih'ii 280 THE DRIFT. .11 V ' ^1 ••"H h ) *3 tlie brifjc. AV^e liud some dilticulty in finding it : it was the closini^ of a fissure (5onsiderably more tlian half a mile oH". " As we were returninj^ we noticed some additional results of the ice action ol' the loth. Amonj^ them was a tabk^ of ice, ibur feet tliick, eigliteen lon^;, and fifteen broad, so curved without (k^stroying its integ- rity as to form a well-arched bridge acrross a water chasm. It had evidently reared up high in air, and then, toppling over, bent into its present form — a mark- ..1,-Xt^ ed instance of the semi-solid or viscous character whicli forms the basis of Professor Forbes's glacial theory. It is not, however, the first extreme change of form that I have noticed in apparently matured ice at a low temperature : its phisticity at +32° must be much greater. " Observations by meridian altitudes of Saturn and Aldebaran give us to-day a latitude of 73° 47^ north. Yesterday we were at 73° 5\ This progress to the south is shown also by the bearing of the Walter Bathurst coast in the neighborhood of Possession Bay. We are fully inside of Baffin's Bay, and with the wind at northwest. There are some signs of ice trouble ahead ; a crack has been gradually opening toward THE DRIFT. 287 ras fa nal lem and teg- ater and lark- rhioli lieory. If form a low much rn and north, to the iValter |n Bay. wind provihle toward our quarter, and has got within eight hundred yards of us." The day after this the crack approached us till it was only about three hundred yards ofl", and then be- gan closing again, with the usual accompanying phe- nomena. The ice between it and us was apparently quiescent; but our ship quivered and jumped under the transmitted pressure. Soon after, in the midst of a heavy snow-drift, and with a temperature of —30°, another crack showed itself close upon oui cut-water. The shocks which reached us during these commo- tions are noted in the log-book as " apparently lil'ting the vessel aft :" the feeling was, ind^^od, not unlike that which has been observed during an earthquake, immediately before and sometimes during a vibration. ^^ January 20. The ice sounded last night like some one hammering a nail against the ship's side, clicking at regular intervals. Another crack on the other side of the Rescue, now showing open water, was perhaps the cause. "We already hegin to experience the change in our axis of drift. The changes of the wind and the cur- rents of Baffin's Bay have impressed the great system which surrounds us with a marked progress to the south. "Throughout last night, and until nine o'clock this morning, a column of illumination depended from the moon. Viewing it obiw^uely, its penciled rays could be seen reaching nearly to the horizon; while in its direct aspect a manifest but intermitting interval was apparent. It struck me as an illustration, perhaps, of Sir John Herschell's remark when observing the Ple- iades, that the centre of the retina is not the seat of greatest sensibility. 288 EFFECTS OF NIGHT. ) M' , ■::/ ;i? m '\ )■ "Our snow-water has been infected for the past month by a very perceptible flavor and odor of musk, to such a degree sometimes that we could hardly drink it. After many attempts to find out its cause, and at least as many philosophical disquisitions to account for it without one, I accidentally saw to-day a group of foxes on the floes about our brig, who resolved our doubts by an illustration altogether simple and natural. ^^ January 22. On reaching the deck at half past eight this morning, after my usual sleepless night in the murky den below, I found the horizon free from cloud stratus, and the feeble foreshado wings of day bathing the snow with a neutral tint. By nine we could see to walk ; and as late as five in the afternoon, the refracted twilights hung about the western sky. How delicious is this sensation of coming day ! In less than a fortnight the great planet will be lifted by the bountiful refraction of the Arctic circle into clear eye presence. " I long for day. The anomalous host of evils which hang about this vegetation in darkness are showing themselves in all their forms. My scurvy patients, those I mean on the sick-list, with all the care that it is possible to give them, are perhaps no worse ; but pains in the joints, rheumatisms, coughs, loss of appe- tite, and general debility, extend over the whole com- pany. Fifteen pounds of food per diem are consumed reluctantly now, where thirty-two were taken with appetite on the 20 th of October. We are a ghastly set of pale faces, and none paler than myself I find it a labor to carry my carbine. My fingers cling to- gether in an ill-adjusted ^/ea;ws, like the toes in a tight boot, and my long beard is becoming as rough and rugged as Humphrey of Gloster's in the play. )wing tients, that it ; but appe- com- mmed with Lastly llfind [ng to- tight Ih and ICE-MASSES. 289 " 12 M. The thermometer keeps steadily at -20°, but to-day is the coldest I have ever felt. It blows a young gale. Brooks and myself have been flying kites. The wind was like prickling needles, and the snow smoked over the moving drifts. " I arn struck more and more with the evidences of gigantic force in the phases of our frozen pedragal. Returning from a chase after an imaginary bear, we came across, yesterday, a suspended hummock, so im- posing in its form, that, half frozen as we were, we stopped to measure it. It was a single table of mass- ive ice, supported upon a pile of rubbish, and inclined about 15° to the horizon. Its length was ninety-one feet six inches, its breadth fifty-one feet, and its aver- age solid thickness eight feet. At its lower end it was seven feet above the level of the adjacent floe; at its upper, twenty-seven. The weight of such a mass, allowing 113 lbs. to the cubic foot, would be 1883 tons. I almost begin to realize Baron Wrangell's account of the hummocks on the coast of Siberia. We have here, perhaps, some five hundred fathoms of water: the six, or twelve, or twenty fathoms of slimy mud, that he speaks of as forming the inclined plane of the shore, must facilitate very much the upheaval of ice-tables. "10 P.M. The wind has freshened to a gale of the first order, and it howls outside like the dog-chorus of outer Constantinople. But cheerless as these heavy winds are in all out-of-the-way, undefended places, it is only when they announce or accompany a change of direction that we fear them. So stable and so elas- tic withal is the cementing effect of the cold here, that the strongest gales do not break up the ice after it has been once set in the line of the wind. On the other hand, a trifling breeze, if it deviates a very few points T '■' i-a rw Hi Ml n: -ill ' '■"?^ 290 EFFECTS OF NIGHT. from the axis of the last set, puts every thing into com- motion. - ^^ January 23. The gale of last night subsided into the usual quiet but fresh westerly breeze, sometimes inclining to the W.N.W. To-day is very clear ; the stars, except one or two of the northern magnatcK^, in- visible at noonday ; and two or three well-marked crimson lines streaking the dawning zone above the sun. The hills around Walter Bathurst and Posses- sion Bay, the entering southern headlands of Lancas- ter Sound, have sunk in the distance. Two summits, bearing southwest by west, probably belonging to Pos- session Mount, are all that remains of the coast. We are more than fifty miles from land, and still drifting rapidly to the east. To the southwest, by compass (true S.E. i E.), little volumes of smoke have been ris- ing ; but after a tolerably long walk, I could not find any further signs of the open water. We are now in latitude 73° 10^ " The daylight is very sensibly longer : the noon was quite joyous with its little crimson flocculi ; and five, or even five and a half hours afterward, when we looked toward the day quarter, instead of a grim black- ness, or, as we had it more recently, a stain of Indian- red, we saw the pale bluish light, so gratefully famil- iar at home." The appearances which heralded the sun's return had a degree of interest for us which it is not easy to express in words. I have referred more than once al- ready to the effects of the long-continued night on the health of our crowded ship's company. It was even more painful to notice its influence on their temper and spirits. Among the officers this was less observable. Our mess seemed determined, come what might, to I EFFECTS OF NIGHT. 291 com- L into times ; the jc*, in- arked re the *osses- ancas- nmits, to Pos- . We Irifting ompass een ris- lot find now in le noon i; and [hen we hlack- ndian- famil- return [easy to l)nce al- on the IS even 3er and Jprvable. light, to maintain toward each other that honest courtesy of manner, which those who have sailed on long voyages together know to be the rarest and most difficult proof of mutual respect. There were of course seasons when each had his home thoughts, and revolved per- haps the growing probabilities that some other Arctic search party might seek in vain hereafter for a memo- rial of our own ; yet these were never topics of con- versation. I do not remember to have been saddened by a boding word during all the trials of our cruise. With the men, however, it was different. More de- ficient in the resources of education, and less restrained by conventional usages or the principle of honor from comniunicating to each other what they felt, all sym- pathized in the imaginary terrors which each one con- jured up. The wild voices of the ice and wind, the strange sounds that issued from the ship, the hum- mocks bursting up without an apparent cause through the darkness, the cracks and the dark rushing water that filled them, the distorted wonder-workings of re- fraction ; in a word, all that could stimulate, or sicken, or oppress the fancy, was a day and nightmare dream for the forecastle. We were called up one evening by the deck- watch to see for ourselves a " ball of fire floating up and down above the ice-field." It was there sure enough, a disk of reddish flame, varying a little in its outline, and fli*;kering in the horizon like a revolving light at a dis- tance. I was at first as much puzzled as the men; but glancing at Orion, I soon saw that it was nothing else than our old dog-star friend, bright Sirius, come back to us. Refraction had raised him above the hills, so as to bring him to view a little sooner than we ex- pected. His color was rather more lurid than when f .• i ( -it I P- 3' ,: \ ■« :t * •'"8f if !*' 1 1 292 APPROACH OF DAY. ho loft US, ami tho rorraction, bosidos distorting his out- lino, sooniod to havo jj^ivou him tho same ohlatonoss or hori/outai oxpansion which wo obsorvo in the disks of tho larj^or planets when nearin^ the horizon. For some days the sun-clouds at the south had been chan»i^in{jf their character. Their ed^es became better defined, their extremities dentated, their color deeper as well as warmer; and from the spaces between the lines of stratus burst out a bln/e of glory, typical of the lonjifod-for sun. He came at last : it was on the 2i)th. My journal nuist tell the story of his welcominjj, at the hazard of its seemiu}? extra vajifance : I am content that they shall criticise it who have drifted for uiore than twelve weeks under the niju^ht of a Polar sky. *\faufiari/ 29. Goinjj^ on deck after breakl'ast at oiji^ht this uiorning, 1 lound the dawning? far advanced. The whole vault was bedewed with the cominjr day ; and, except Capella, the stars were gone. The southern horizon was clear. We were certain to see the sun, after an absence of eighty-six days. It had been ar- ranged on board that all hands should give him three cheers for a greeting ; but 1 was in no mood to join the sallow-visagtul party. 1 took my gun, aiul walked over the ice about a mile away from the ship to a sol- itary spot, where a great big hummock almost hem- med me in, opening only to tho south. There, Par- see fashion, 1 drank in the rosy light, and watched the horns of the crescent extending themselves round to- ward the north. There was hardly a breath of wind, with the thermometer at only — 19 ■, and it was easy, therefore, to keep warm by walking gently up and down. 1 thought over and named aloud every one of our little circle, F. and M., T. and P., B. and J., and our dear, bright little W. ; wondered a while whether out- ssor iisks been etter 3eper I the )rthe 29th. i\g, at (uteiit more ;ky. t eight The ; aiul, uthern 10 sun, eu ar- 1 three to join alked > a sol- it heiu- •e, Par. iuhI the AwA to- f wiiul, s easy, [ip ami one ot* J., ami hether SUNIIISE, NOON, AND SUNSKT. 203 there were not some more to be remembered, and called up one friand or relative after another, but always came back to the circle 1 began with. My thoughts were torpid, not worth the writing dcwn ; but 1 was not strong, and they affected me. It was not good ' Polar practice.' " Very soon the deep orimson blush, lightening into a focus of incandescent white, showed me that the hour was close at hand. Mounting upon a crag, I saw the crews of our one ship formed in line upon the ice. My mind was still tracing the familiar chain of home affections, and the chances that this one or the other of its links might be broken already. I bethought me of the Sortes Virgil ianic of my school-boy days : I took a piece of candle pjiper pasteboard, cut it with my bowie-knife into a little carbine target, and on one side of this marked all our names in pencil, and on the other a little star. Presently the sun came: never, till the grave-sod or the ice covers me, may I forego this blessing of blessings again ! I looked at him thankfully with a great globus in my throat. Then came the shout from the ship — three shouts — cheering the sun. 1 fixed my little star-target to the floe, walk- ed backward till it became nearly invisible ; and then, just as the completed orb fluttered upon the horizon, fired my * stilut.^ I cut M in half, and knocked the T out of Tom. They shall draw lots for it if ever I get home ; for many, many years may come and go again before the shot of an American rifle signalizes in the winter of Baffin's Bay the conjunction of sunrise, noon- day, and sunset. " The first indicF ions of dawn to-day were at forty- five minutes past five. By seven the twilight was nearly sufficient to guide a walking party over the ■mm ;i 11 il '1 iSm 1 '■^i 294 THERMOMETERS. floes. I have described the phenomena at eight. At nine the deck-lantern was doused. By llh. 14m. or 15m. those on board had the first glimpses of the sun. At 5 P.M. we had the dim twilight of evening. " Our thermometric records on board ship can not be relied on. I mention the fact for the benefit of those who may hereafter consult them. My wooden- cased Pike thermometer, hung to a stanchion on the northern beam of the brig, gave at noonday - 19° ; ex- posed to the sun's rays on the southein, —14°. The observation repeated at 12h. 30m., gave —20° for the northern, and — 15° for the southern side ; the difler- ence in each case being five degrees. The same ther- mometer, carefully exposed about a hundred yards from the ship, gave at noon, on the north and wind- ward side, —21°; on the south, exposed to the sun, — 18° ; and at thirty minutes afterward (nearly), on the north, - 20° 5^ ; toward the sun, — 16°. The difference in these last observations of 3° in the fir^t and 4° 5Mn the second was owing unmistakably to the effect of the solar rays. The ship's record for th ^ same hours was simply —19° and —18°. The fact is, that there is al- ways a varying difference of two to five degrees of tem- perature between the lee and weather sides of the brig; the quarter of the wind and its intensity, the state of our fires, the open or shut hatches, and other minor circumstances, determining what the difference shall be at a particular time. ^^ January 30. The crew determined to celebrate * El regresado del sol,' which, according to old Costa, our Mahonese seaman, was a more holy day than Christ- mas or All-Saints. Mr. Bruce, the diversely talented, favored us with a new line of theatrical exhibition, a divertissement of domestic composition, * The Country- At m. or sun. 1 not fit of loden- >n the 3; ex- The br the differ- e their- yards wind- le sun, , on the ference lo 5' in t of the irs was e is al- oftem- lehrig; tate of minor e shall ate 'El ta, our Christ- "lented, tion, a untry- THE PLAY. 295 man's first Visit to Town ;' followed by a pantomime. I copy the play-bill from the original as it was tacked against the main-mast : ARCTIC THEATRE. To be perfci-med, on the night of Thursday, the 30th day of January, the Comic Play of the Countryman. After which, a Pantomime. To begin with A Song By R. Bruce. THE OOUNTRTmAN. Countryman R. Baggs. Landlady C. Berry. Servant T. Dunning. PANTOniUE. Harlequin James Johnson. Old Man R. Bruce. Rejected Lover A. Canot. Columbine James Smith. Doors to be opened at 8 o'clock. Curtain to rise a quarter past 8 punctually. No admittance to Children ; and no Ladies admitted without an escort. Stage Manaqer, S. BENJAMIN. The strictest order will be observed both inside and outside. We sat down as usual on the preserved-meat boxes, which were placed on deck, ready strapped and beck- eted (nautice for trunk-handled) for flinging out upon the ice. The affair was altogether creditable, how- ever, and every body enjoyed it. Here is an outline of the pantomime, after the manner of the newspapers. An old man (Mr. Bruce) possessed mysterious, semi- magical, and wholly comical influence over a rejected I' '?? II n .•'h mlBw [a ti II :*i r^i 296 •THE PLAY. lover (M. Auguste Canot, ship's cook), and Columbine (Mr. Smith) exercised the same over the old man. Harlequin (Mr. Johnson), however, by the aid of a split-shingle wand and the charms of his " motley wear," secures the affections of Columbine, cajoles the old man, persecutes the forlorn lover, and carries off the prize of love ; the fair Columbine, who had been industriously chewing tobacco, and twirling on the heel of her boot to keep herself warm, giving him a sentimental kiss as she left the stage. A still more sentimental song, sung in seal-skin breeks and a "wor- wester" and a potation all round of hot-spiced rum toddy, concluded the entertainments. The thermometer stood at —7°. THE RESCUE, IN LANCASTER SOUND. 1*1 'iM i!' *:!» i">' f CHAPTER XXXIV. On the 2d of February the sun rose up in full disk at a quarter before eleven. The atmosphere was clear, but filled with minute spiculae. The cold was becom- ing more intense: our ship thermometers stood at —32°, my spirit standard at —34°, and my mercurial at —38°. The ice that had formed between the floes since our break-up of January 12th was already twen- ty-seven inches thick, and was increasing at the rate of five inches in the twenty-four hours. The floes crackled under the intense frost, and we heard loud explosions around us, which one of our seamen, who had seen land service in Mexico, compared very aptly to the sound of a musket fired in an empty town. The 6th was still colder. At seven in the evening my spirit standard was at —40°. The day, however, had been graced with some hours of sunshine, and we worked and played foot-ball out on the ice till we were many of us in a profuse perspiration. The next morning my mercurial thermometer had frozen, leav- ing its parting record at — 42° ; and at half past eight one of the spirit standards indicated the same point. Up to this period, it was our lowest temperature. The frozen mercury resembled in appearance lead, re- cently chilled after melting. You could cut the thin- ner edges easily enough with a penknife ; but where it was heaped up, nearer the centre of the solid mass, it was tenacious and resisting. I wished to examine it under the microscope, but was unable to procure a fractured surface. 5 I.. rV'l P liiil 298 METEORS. REFRACTION. .■1' -..^f y^: Between six and eight o'clock in the evening of the 2d, we had a magnificent though nearly colorless ex- hibition of the aurora; and on the 7th, at lOh. 20m. A.M., the southern sky presented the appearance of a day aurora attending on the sun. The observations which I made of these two phenomena may be the subject of a distinct chapter ; I will only say here, that it was difficult to doubt their identity of character or cause. We had several displays of the paraselene, too, in the earlier days of the month, and an almost con- staat deposition of crystalline specks, which covered our decks with a sort of hoar-frost. The rate of this deposition on the vessel was about a quarter of an inch in six hours ; but in an ice-basin on the floes, surround- ed by humm.ocks, and thus protected from the wind, I found it nine inches deep. When accumulated in this manner, it might, on a hurried inspection, be confounded with snow ; but it differs as the dew does from rain. It is directly con- nected with radiation, and is most copious under a clear sky. Snow itself, the flaky snow of a clouded atmosphere, has not been noticed by us when the tem- perature was lower than —8° or at most —10°. Our last snow-fall was on the 1st of February and the day preceding. It began with the thermometer at — 1°, and continued after it had sunk to —9°; but it had ceased some time before it reached —13°. ^^ February 9. To-day we had a sky of serene purity, and all hands went out for a sanitary game of romps in the cold light. Presently three suns came to greet us — strange Arctic parhelia — and a great golden cross of yellow brightness uniting them in one system. Un- der the glare of these we played foot-ball. "At meridian we made a rough horizon of the ice, irity, )mps Igreet 1 cross Un- ice, REFRACTION. 299 and found ourselves in latitude about 72° 16^ At this time another marvel rose before us — Land. The mon- ster was to the W.S.W., in the shape of two round- topped hills, lifted up for the time into our field of view. An hour or two later, while the day was wan- ing, these hills became mountains, and then a line of truncated cones, the spectre of some distant coast. Looking a few minutes later out of the little door in our felt house, the port gangway of the log-book, to where for this last fortnight a bleak sameness of snow has been stretching to the far north, we saw a couple of icebergs standing alone in the sky, and at their shadowy tops their phantom repetitions inverted. By this time the mountains also had become twain, and the long line of resurrected coast was duplicated in the clouds. A stratum of false horizon separated the two sets of images. "We have been now for many months without see- ing the icebergs. They were beautiful objects, monu- ments of power, when we met them on the coast of Greenland, floating along on a liquid sea. Now they admonish us only of our helplessness and of perils before us. We should be glad to keep them in the clouds. "The sun begins to make himself felt, though as yet feebly enough. My large spirit thermometer, in thp shade of a hummock some hundred yards from the brig, gave us at noon —21° 5% and on the sunny side of the same hummock — 12°. The same thermometer, before a blackboard exposed to the sun, was at —7°. Twenty minutes later, the thermometer at the black- board rose to +2°, and twenty minutes later still it was at —2°. The ice formed within the twenty-lour hours in the fire-hole measured four and a quarter ^ii' ' I !•: (1 HI 1" I ii; ¥: |i«: 300 THE DRIFT. i i * *i i inches ; three quarters of an inch less than our meas< urements of it a week ago. A thermometer plunged two feet deep in a bank of light snow-drift indicated -12°. ^^ February 10. A hazy day ; with moonlight, and a drizzling fall of broken spiculae following it. Mr. Mur- daugh obtained observations for meridian altitude and time-sights of Aldebaran: our latitude is 72° 19^, our longitude 68° 55' . The winds have been unfavorable to the rapidity of our drift, which has been reduced in its rate since our observation on the 29th of January from five and a quarter to four miles a day. It may be that our approach to the narrower parts of the bay and the increased cold together have been disturbing causes in the movement of the great pack ; but the wind has been the most important in its influence. " To look at the completely unbroken area which shows itself from our mast-head, motion would be the last idea suggested. In Lancaster Sound the chang- ing phases of the coast gave us a feeling of progress, movement, drift — that sensation of change so pleasing to one's incomprehensible moral mashinery. But here, with this circle of impenetrable passive solidity every where around us, it is hard to realize that we move. But for the stars, my convictions of rest would be ab- solute. Yet we have thus traveled upward of three hundred miles. I shall not soon forget this inevitable march, with its alternations of gloomy silence and fierce disruptions. ^'■February 11, Wednesday. Day very hazy, and nothing to interrupt its monotony. It requires an ef- fort to bear up against this solemn transit of unvary- ing time. " I will show you how I spend one of these days — ROUTINE LIFE. 301 the and In ef- rary- that is, all of them. It is the only palliation I can offer for my meagreness of incident. As for the study we used to talk about— even you, terrible worker as you are, could not study in the Arctic regions. " Within a little area, whose cubic contents are less than father's library, yon have the entire abiding-place of thirty-three heavily-clad men. Of these I am one. Three stoves and a cooking galley, four Argand and three bear-fat lamps burn with the constancy of a vest- al shrine. Damp furs, soiled woolens, cast-oflf boots, sick men, cookery, tobacco-smoke, and digestion are compounding their effluvia around and within me. Hour by hour, and day after day, without even a bunk to retire to or a blanket-curtain to hide me, this and these make up the reality of my home. "Outside, grim death, in the shape of —40°, is try- ing — most foolishly, I think — to chill the energy of these his allies. My bedding lies upon the bare deck, right under the hatch. A thermometer, placed at the head of my cot, gives a mean temperature of 64° ; at my feet, under the hatchway, +16° to —4° — ice at my feet, vapor at my head. The sleeping-bunks aft range from 70° to 93° ; those forward, regulated by the med- ical officer, from 60° to 65°. " We rise, the crew at six bells, seven o'clock, and the officers at seven bells, half an hour later. Thus comports himself your brother. He sits up in the midst of his blankets, and drinks a glass of cold water; eyes, nose, and mouth chippy with lampblack and undue evaporation. Oh ! how comforting this water is ! That over, a tin-basin, in its turn, is brought round by Morton, mush-like with snow ; and in this mixt- ure, by the aid of a hard towel, with a daily regular- ity that knows no intermission, he goes over his entire skeleton, frictionizing. 302 ROUTINE LIFE. ■:'*if "This done, comes the dressing — the two pairs of stockings, the thre3 under-shirts, the fur outer rohing, and the seal-skin boots ; and then, with a hurried cough of disgust and semi-suffocation, he is on deck. There the air, pure and sharply cold, now about 26° or 30^, last week 40° below zero, braces you up like peach and honey in a Virginia fog, or a tass of mountain dew in the Highlands. Then to breakfast. Here are the mess, with the fresh smell of overnight undis- turbed, and on our table griddle cakes of Indian meal, hominy, and mackerel : with hot coffee and good ap- petites, we fall to manfully, " Breakfast over, on go the furs again ; and we es- cape from the accumulating fumes of ' servants' hall,' walking the floes, or climbing to the tops, till we are frozen enough to go below again. One hour spent now in an attempt at study — vainly enough, poor devil ! But he does try, and what little he does is done then. By half past ten our entire little band of officers are out upon the floes for a bout at anti-scorbutic exercise, a game of romps : first foot-ball, at which we kick till our legs ache ; next sliding, at which we slide until we can slide no more : then off, with carbine on shoul- der, and Henri as satellite, on an ice-tramp. "Coming back, dinner lags at two. Then for the afternoon — God spare the man who can with un- scathed nose stand the eflluvium. But night follows soon, and with it the saddening question, "What has the day achieved ? And then we stretch ourselves out under the hatches, and sleep to the music of our thirty odd room-mates. ^'February 14, Friday. A glorious day, with the sun from nine to half past two. Three bergs seen by re- fraction. The mercury rose to +2 over a black surface turned toward the sun. To-day the usual foot-ball. THE COLD. 303 the un- lOWB has out liity sun re- Iface III. " Our Arctic theatre gave us to-night ' The Myste- ries and Miseries of New York,' followed hy a panto- mime. The sitting temperature was —20° ; that out- side, -36° ; behind the scenes, -25°. A flat-iron used by the delicate Miss Jem Smith gave the novel the- atrical eflect of burning by cold. Poor Jem suffered so much in her bare sleeves and hands, that whenever the iron touched she winced. Cold merriment ; but it concluded with hotchpot and songs. ^^ February 15, Saturday. Another glorious day; the sun visible from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M., and embanked dur- ing the rv^maining time. Much to our surprise, at the moment of setting, a startling ridge of mountain peaks rose into sight to the westward. Their distance, as es- timated by the latest charts, was no less than 76 miles. ^''February 22, Saturday. ' Some things can be done as well as others :' so at least Sam Patch said, when he scrambled up after his jump at Niagara. I walked myself into a comfortable perspiration this morning, with the thermometer at —42°, seventy-four degrees below the freezing point. My walk was a long one. When about three miles from the brig, a breeze sprang up : it was very gentle ; but instantly the sensation came upon me of intense cold. My beard, coated be- fore with massive icicles, seemed to bristle with in- creased stiffness. Henri, who walked ahead, began to suffer : his nose was tallow white. Before we had rubbed it into circulation, my own was in the same condition ; and an unfortunate hole in the back of my mitten stung like a burning coal. We are so accus- tomed to cold that I did not suffer during our walk back, though it was more than an hour of hummock crossing. " The sensation most unendurable of these extreme- Ml ttM I' 'J ! M. ' I J 304 THE BIRTH-DAY. ly low temperatures is a pain between the eyes and over the forehead. This is quite severe. It remind- ed me of a feeling which I have had from over-large quantities of ice-cream or ice- water, held against the roof of the mouth. I reached the brig in a fine glow of warmth, having skated, slid, and made the most of my time in the open air. "An increased disposition to scurvy shows itself Last week twelve cases of scorbutic gums were not- ed at my daily inspections. In addition to these, I have two cases of swelled limbs and extravasated blotches, with others less severely marked, from the same obstinate disease. The officers too, the cap- tain, Mr. Lovell, and Mr. Murdaugh, complain of stiff and painful joints and limbs, with diarrhoea and impaired appetite: the doctor like the rest. At my recommendation, the captain has ordered an increased allowance of fresh food, to the amount of two com- plete extra daily ration, per man, with potatoes, saur- kraut, and stewed apples; and we have enjoined more active and continued daily exercise, more complete airing of bedding, &c. I have commenced the use of nitro-muriatic acid, as in syphilitic and mercurial cases, by external friction. " The state of health among us gives me great anx- iety, and not a little hard work. Quinine, the salts of iron, &c., &c., are in full requisition For the first time I am without a hospital steward. " It is Washington's birth-day, when ' hearts should be glad;' but we have no wine for the dinner-table, and are too sick for artificial merriment without it. Our crew, however, good patriotic wretches, got up a theatrical performance, ' The Irish Attorney ;' Pierce O'Hara taken by the admirable Bruce, our Crichton. THE COLD. 305 anx- salts first lould table, lut it. up a *ierce Ihton. The ship's thermometer outside was at —46°. Inside, among audience and actors, by aid of lungs, lamps, and housings, we got as high as 30° below zero, only sixty-two below the freezing point! ! probably the low- est atmospheric record of a theatrical representation. "It was a strange thing altogether. The conden- sation was so excessive that we could barely see the performers : they walked in a cloud of vapor. Any extra vehemence of delivery was accompanied by vol- umes of smoke. The hands steamed. When an excit- ed Thespian took off his hat, it smoked like a dish of potatoes. When he stood expectant, musing a reply, the vapor wreathed in little curls from his neck. This was thirty degrees lower than the lowest of Parry's North Georgian performances. ^''February 23, Sunday. Mist comes back to us. After our past week of glorious sunshine, this return to murkiness is far from pleasing. But it might be worse : one month ago, and a day like this would have made our winter-stricken hearts bound with gladness. "Caught a cold last night in attending the theatre. A cold here means a sudden malaise, with insufferable aches in back and joints, hot eyes, and fevered skin. We all have them, coming and going, short-lived and long-lived : they leave their mark too. This Arctic work brings extra years upon a man. A fresh wind makes the cold very unbearable. In walking to-day, my beard and riustache became one solid mass of ice. I inadvertently put out my tongue, and it instantly froze fast to my lip. This being nothing new, costing only a smart pull and a bleeding abrasion afterward, I put up my mittened hands to ' blow hot' and thaw the unruly member from its imprisonment. Instead of succeeding, my mitten was itself a mass of ice in a U !r. -fi: %\l ■i\ li V ^^ i' m •I ■■»l'' j .■ 1» ,' > ■■ '. ■^! i' ' I'- i 'y 306 SNOW-RUBBING. inoment : it fastened on the upper side of my tongue, and flattened it out like a batter-cake between the two disks of a hot griddle. It required all my care, with the bare hands, to release it, and that not without laceration. ^^ February 25. A murky day. Two hundred and forty-four fathoms of line gave no bottom at the air- hole. Scurvy getting ahead. Began using the rem- nant of our fetid bear's meat : nasty physic, but we will try it. It is colder to-day, with the wind and fog at —15°, than a few days ago at —46°. Wind south by east : sun not seen. ^^ February 26, Wednesday. The sun came back again with such vigor, that my spirit standard rose over black to -i 14° ; my glass — cased, to +35°. The difference between shade and sunshine is 30° : a ther- mometer freely suspended in shade and in sun gave — 32° and —2°. Black surfaces begin to scale off their snowy covering, not by thawing attended by moisture, but with a manifest diminution in the te- nacity and adhesiveness of the snow. We observe these indications of returning heat closely. " The scurvy has at last fairly extended to our own little body, the officers. Pains in the limbs, and deep- seated soreness of the bones, seem to be its most com- mon demonstration. The complaint is of * a sort of tired feeling,' or as if ' they had had a beating.' Our usual supper, the saur-krout, has become excessively popular. Even the abused bear is not quite as bad as it was. " The crew have been snow-rubbing their blankets. The snow is so fine and sand-like, that under these low Arctic temperatures it acts mechanically, and is an effectual cleanser. Withal, if you beat it M'ell out THE INSECT. 307 Lets, these id is llout of the tissue, it is not a damp application. The only trouble is that, on taking the bedding below, the con- densation covers it with dew-drops. With drying-lines on the lower decks, the resort would be excellent. " The setting sun, now fast approaching the home quarter of setting suns, the west, gave us again the spectral land about Cape Adair, eighty miles off. " Sirius is beautifully resplendent on the meridian. What a fine exhibition it is ! As it rises from the banked horizon, it gives us nightly freaks of terrestrial refraction. Its colors are blue, crimson, and white ; its shapes oval, hour-glass, rhomboid, and square. Some- times it is extinguished ; sometimes flashing into sud- den life : it looks very like a revolving light. " To-day, in putting my hand inside my reindeer hood, 1 felt a something move. The something had a crepitating, insectine wriggle. Now, at home and every where else, without being a nervous man as to insects — for I have eaten locusts in Sennaar and bats in Dahomey — I rather dislike the crawl of centipede or slime of snail. Here, with an emotion hard to de- scribe, surprise, pleasure, and a don't-know-why won- derment, I caught my bug gently between thumb and finger. "An air insect would be, in this dreary waste of cold, an impossibility greater than the diamond in the snow-drift. Save a seal and a fox, nothinjr sharing our principle of vitality has greeted us for months. The teeming myriads of life which characterize^^ the Arctic summer have gone. The anatidsB are clamor- ing in the great bays and water-courses of the middle south. The gulls have sought the regions of open water. The colymbi and Auks are lining the north- ern coasts of my own dear home. The croaking raven. |r, I 308 THE SCURVY. ). irf .if' il 1: dark bird of winter, clings to the in-shore deserts. The tern are far away, and so thank Heaven, are the musquitoes. There are no bugs in the blankets, no nits in the hair, no maggots in the cheese. No specks of life glitter in the sunshine, no sounds of it float upon the air. We are without a single sign, a single instinct of living thing. " If now, with the thermometer eighty degrees be- low the freezing point, and the new sun casting a cold gray sheen upon the snow, you leave the thirty- one, to whom you are the thirty-second, and walk out upon the ice away off — so far that no click of hammer nor drone of voice places you in relation with that little outside world — then you will know how I felt when I caught that 'creeping wonder' on my rein- deer hood. It was a frozen feather. "i^^irwary 27, Thursday. An aurora passing through the zenith, east and west, at 3h. 30m. this morning. What little wind we have is coming feebly from the west and southwest. The thermometer has traveled from —40° to —31°, and the sun is out again in benign lustre. A difference of 27°, due to his influence, was evident as early as lOh. 20m., viz. : Green's spirit standard gave, in shade, —33°; over black surface, in sunshine, —7° and —6°. At noonday, the same ther- mometer gave +2. My glass — cased, hot-house like, gave the pleasant deception of +40°. " Still the scurvy increases. I am down myself to- day with all the premonitories. It is strangely de- pressing : a concentrated * fresh cold ' pain extends searchingly from top to toe. I am so stift' that it is only by an effort that I can walk the deck, and that limpingly. Once out on the floes, my energies excited and my blood warmed by exercise, I can tramp away freely; back again, I stiffen. OUR COOKS. 309 "Walked with our other cook, Auguste Canot. Queer changes these Frenchmen see ! Canot's father, a captain in the French army, was shot while serving with Oudinot, beneath the infernal ' barricades ' oi' Rome — Canot the younger looking on. A few months after, the son had figured upon the list of condemned for the affair at Lyons, and was a fugitive emigre to the United States. The same sergeant-major, Canot, is now cooking al junk in Baffin's Bay. His con- frere, the modest but gifted Henri, although a worse soldier, is a better cook. He first saw ice among the glaciers of La Tour. He has scuUionized at the * Trois Freres,^ and played chef to a London club- house. He passed through this latter ordeal, strange to say, unscathed ; and, but for an amorous tempera- ment, might be now at Delmonico's, upon good wages and bad Bordeaux. Henri is a boy of talent, pen- sive by temperament, and withal ambitious. Were it not for the somewhat unequal distribution of two molars and an incisor, his entire stock of teeth, he would be an insufferable coxcomb. As it is, he treats his infirmity with amiable, if not philosophic con- tempt. He made me this morning an idea of white bear's liver, a la brochette. The idea was good, the liver hippuric and detestable. Henri prides himself upon that most difficult simplicity, the Jilet. He pre- pares thus a sea-gull a merveille. ^^Fehruary 28, Friday. The most wintery-looking day I have ever seen. The winds have been let loose, and the cheering novelty of a northwester breaks in on our calm. The drifting snow either rises like smoke from the levels, or whirls away in wreaths from the hummocks. The atmosphere has an opaline ashy look ; in the midst of which, like a huge girasole, flash- U'-^ .* i''-^ mM m t 310 EXERCISE. es the round sun. The clouds are of a sort seldom seen, except in the conceptions of adventurous artists, quite undefinable, and out of the line of nature, defy- ing Howard's nomenclature. They are blocked out in square, stormy masses, against a pearly, misty blue — harsh, abrupt, repulsive, quite out of keeping with the kindly lightness of things belonging to the sky." The lowest temperature we recorded during the cruise was on the 2 2d of this month, when the ship's thermometer gave us —46°; my offship spirit, —52°; and my own self-registering instruments, purchased from Green, placed on a hummock removed from the vessels, —53°, as the mean of two instruments. This may be taken as the true record of our lowest absolute temperature. Cold as it was, our mid-day exercise was never in- terrupted, unless by wind and drift storms. We felt the necessity of active exercise ; and although the ef- fort was accompanied with pains in the joints, some- times hardly bearable, we managed, both officers and crew, to obtain at least three hours a day. The ex- ercise consisted of foot-ball and sliding, followed by regular games of romps, leap-frog, and tumbling in the snow. By shoveling away near the vessel, we obtained a fine bare surface of fresh ice, extremely glib and durable. On this we constructed a skating- ground and admirable slides. I walked regularly over the floes, although the snows were nearly impassable. With all this, aided by hosts of hygienic resources, feeble certainly, but still the best at my command, scurvy advanced steadily. This fearful disease, so often warded off when in a direct attack, now exhib- ited itself in a cachexy, a depraved condition of sys- tem sad to encounter. Pains, diffuse, and non-loca- THE SCURVY. 311 table, were combined with an apathy and lassitude which resisted all attempts at healthy excitement. These, of course, were not confined to the crew alone : out of twenty-four men, but five were without ulcerated gums and blotched limbs ; and of these five, strange to say, four were cooks and stewards. All the officers were assailed. Old pains were renewed, old wounds opened ; even old bruises and sprains, received at barely-remembered periods back, came to us like dreams. Our commander, certainly the finest consti- tution among us, was assailed like the rest. In a few days purpuric extravasations appeared on his legs, and a dysentery enfeebled him to an extent far from safe. An old wound of my own became discolored, and, cu- rious to say, painful only at such points of old suppu- ration, three in number, as had been relieved by the knife. The seats of a couple of abscess-like openings were entirely unaffected and free from pain. The close of the month found this state of things on the increase, and the strength of the party still waning. 8' i %.l lilJMAI.Nil OF A Cma. *r-:i" I Mill • i„.L >! AURORA SEEK SOUTH OP CAPK KAHKWELL. T f CHAPTER XXXV. It might be supposed, at first view, that the acces- sion of solar light would he accompanied by increase of temperature. This, however, was far from being the case. Though February had brought back the sun, it was the first month throughout which the ice- fields remained frozen in their wintery rest. It was our coldest month. This effect was due to the great- ly increased evaporation ; a subject of frequent notice in my journal, confirming in this the experience of Ermann and other Siberian travelers. The renewed alternation of day and night, with their increased range of diurnal temperatures, gave us in full perfection those different forms of meteoric ex- hibition which affect peculiarly the Arctic zone. The aurora, with a host of phenomena dependent upon the modifications of light, halos, coronas, tangent circles, parhelia, anthelia, and paraselena3, came to us in rap- METEORS. 313 idly-varying succession; and refraction, with its pre- ternatural augmentation of the visual hemisphere, re- visited us under new and startling forms. The scintillation of the stars, that phenomenon so connected with alternating changes in the refractive media, was wonderfully apparent. The fixed stars, whose distance made the least displacement sensible to the eye, were especially influenced ; yet even the planets shared in the change, and twinkled like the stars at home. I have alluded to the gorgeous changes of Sirius and Aldebaran ; but these descriptions give a feeble index of their Protean varieties of shape and color, which, with every grade of intensity, greeted us nightly. The red coloring of the clouds reminded me of the rose-tints of the Alps. Cirro-cumuli of every imagin- able form began again to deck the horizon. The twi- light too, that long Arctic crepusculum, seemed, con- trary to theory, to be disproportionally increased in its duration. Eighteen degrees is certainly a very arbi- trary limit to its extent. How noble a field for re- search would, with intellectual capacity, adequate in- struments, and sympathizing co-operation, have been the ice-plain of Baffin's Bay ! The auroras to the north and northeast of the Amer- ican magnetic pole are not the brilliant displays de- scribed by Biot and Lottin in Northern Europe, or the English explorers in Canadian America. Those of Lancaster, Wellington, Prince Regent's, and the North Baffin waters, partake of the same general character ; and though somewhat modified perhaps, did not, as I observed them, differ materially from those described by Fisher and Parry. This last great navigator con- stantly expresses his disappointment at the feebleness ill .1 1 1 11 ' I '* ^ I i !?':^! / 1 1- U' i yii ^1^ i)''i HI- ■i SI 314 AURORAS. "• :i" ' r- " ■( ■ '<. ;,■'( of the auroral displays, as compared with those of the Northern Atlantic, on the European side. I had the same feeling. Their changes seemed to be dependent upon modi- fications rather of intensity than form. They were characterized by neither active movement nor varied coloring. My tabuhir observations will be published elsewhere, but I subjoin a rude attempt at analysis of their distinctive features. 1st. A mere illumination, apparently emerging from a dark cloud some five degrees above the horizon, more resembling a nebulous patch or a moonlight cir- rus than the auroral light. 2d. Detached bands of illumination, impressed against the sky, like a condensed nebulosity, uncon- nected with any visible central arc, and distributed near about the line of the magnetic axis between the horizon and the zenith. These were sometimes strat- iform, converging by perspective, and reminding one of the auroral plates, plaques auroraies of Lottin. 3d. A well-marked zone or band, or sometimes sev- eral concentric ones, either broken or continuous, un- accompanied by the ordinary segments of light or cloud, passing through or near the zenith in a direc- tion which, according to the mean of some fourteen observations, was sixteen degrees east of the magnetic meridian. These bands were constantly varying, not by active scintillation, but by changes of intensity — rapid flashing augmentation, sudden subsidence, or complete extinction — a wavy oscillation, resembling wind action. 4th. Bistre-colored clouds, assuming a segmentary or arch-like form, and tlirowing out rays of white light; these streaming toward the zenith, and some- AURORAS. 315 PS sev- [s, un- fht or direc- irteen jnetic |g, not >ity — Ice, or [ibling bntary (white Isoiiie- times across to the opposite horizon, with more of coruscating movement than any other form. It was somewhat remarkable, that of six such displays ob- served in October and February, every one was in the direction of the sun, then not more than eight degrees below the horizon, and in one instance above it — a true daylight aurora. These jets, although not col- ored, might be looked upon as rudimentary forms of those dependent rays, now recognized by observers as corresponding in direction with the local magnetic inclination. If we regard these forms as characterizing generally the auroras of this region, we can not help being struck with their departure from the indications observed by Lieut. Hood, in the Franklin Expedition of 1820. His observations may be referred to two general classes. The first commencing with arches, either to the east or west of the magnetic meridian, or coincident with it, .sometimes four or five in number, rising in concen- tric series, and never less than 5° in altitude: these, upon reaching the zenith, become broad, irregular streams, never crossing each other, but coruscating with a rapid interior motion, rich with chromatic dis- plays. Those of the second class propagate themselves from points of the compass between the north and west, toward the opposite quarters, or sometimes from the southeast, and extending themselves to the northwest: they are arch-like in form ; with beaming wreaths, flash- ing "merry dancers," and jets of pea-green, purple, and violet light, like the spark in an exhausted re- ceiver. But in both classes the arches are in a plane seldom deviating more than two points from the mag- netic meridian. Mr. Hood has not described a vibra- tory motion without colors. mi I ^ n^d' ^' "^ 1 I; fe#tl 316 THE AURORA. ■>'-■■ a' ::i3 u In the auroras seen by the American Expedition, a distinct scintillation was rare ; and I observed a pris- matic tinting in only a single instance. The move- ments of the anroral bands were so wave-like that they were at once suggestive of wind-action, although no correspondence was noted between them and the direction of the lower atmospheric currents. This ef- fect, which I had repeated occasion to observe, height- ened the resemblance of our Arctic aurora to illumin- ated cirro-stratus, and, I confess, always impressed me with its want of altitude. Let me condense from my Journal and Meteorolog- ical llecord a description of the aurora, as we some- times saw it. The 2d of February came to us with sunshine, the atmosphere in yellow light, and full of minute spicu- lae; our thermometers at 32°, my spirit standard at 34°, and Green's mercurial at 38°. Drawing the fin- ger through the mercury of our artificial horizon gave the sensation of scalding water. The evaporation and increased dryness were very perceptible: a brass cli- nometer, which was coated with hoar-frost, became perfectly clean on exposure to the solar ray. The haze disappeared from the southern horizon, and the sky became strikingly clear. As late as half past eight A.M., I saw the North Star in the zenith, the tail of the Bear, and stars of the third and fourth magnitude. By nine every one had gone, leaving Arcturus and Capella in possession of the field. Between the hours of six and eight P.M., we had an interesting display of the aurora. It was of a lu- minous white, not much more marked than any of the isolated nebulas seen through a telescope, which it indeed resembled. This white light stretched in THE AURORA. 317 cumulated masses from the northwest to the south- eastern horizon, forming to the northward an arch of some regularity. From the inner circumference of this great arch proceeded a series of scintillating proc- esses, at apparent right angles to the plane of the horizon, and constantly shifting their positions, so as to produce an effect nearly like that of the " merry dan- cers." To the south, however, the arch became irreg- ular and changing; its diameter varied from five to thirty degrees, the augmentation being by a broken series of parallel bands, no one exceeding six or eight degrees. At the period of its greatest intensity, 7h. 10m., it enveloped Procyon and the Pleiades, obscuring the larger portion of Taurus, and actually hiding Alde- baran. A process extended obliquely from about twelve degrees above the horizon to Castor and Pol- lux, whose brightness it sensibly dimmed. The zone then narrowed, passing about eleven degrees to the west of Polaris, and ascending in a regular arch to the northwest. It faded gradually, and by 9h. 20m. had disappeared. Neither a silk-suspended magnetic needle nor our rude electrometers detected any dis- turbance. The foggy segment which forms the characteristic feature of the incipient aurora, as observed by Biot, Mairan, Lottin, and others, was in a rudimentary form visible with us. The deep bistre-colored arc, which I have arbitrarily spoken of as No. 4, is in many of its features analogous to that of the Shetland and Bosse- kop OLservations. The well-known aurora of Mairan begins with a dark mist or foggy cloud to the northward, not unlike the "bistre-colored segment," taking gradually an arc- :;.«■' ''h^ ■■! ir -; i. : i!l t'm \\ mtdl !i: 318 THE AURORA. Mo -u 11 '\0. y '. r -.1 like form. The visible portion of this arc soon be- comes surrounded with a pale light, followed by the formation of other concentric arcs: next come jets and colored rays from the dark part of the segment, break- ing up its continuity, and indicating a general move- ment throughout its mass — " internal shocks," as Lard- ner calls them — which issue from it as flames from a conflagration. Lottin's observations at Bossekop, in Finland, lati- tude 70°, which embrace no less than a hundred and forty-five exhibitions, begin with a " tinting of the constantly prevailing sea-fog," the upper border of which was fringed with auroral light. If these, and the more familiar accounts of the au- rora in the middle United States, be taken as good types of this phenomenon, I would say that the ma- tured Arctic aurora resembled their incipient stages; but that the same law of correspondence, which marks the centre of the segment in or about the magnetic axis, gave to us, situated as we were in the immediate proximity of the magnetic pole of our earth, the strange spectacle of a complete arch passing through or near the zenith, and embracing an amplitude of nearly one hundred and eighty degrees. The zone or band- like character of this auroral arch was its pervading characteristic. It seldom exceeded thirty, and was generally within ten degrees in width, a floating, wav- ing band of nebulous illumination. The likeness between some of the auroral appear- ances and a lower range of meteorological phenomena has been repeatedly noticed. The bandes polaires of Humboldt, the plaques aurorales of Lottin, the cirro- cumulated resemblances of Hood and Richardson, are among these : and I have alluded more than once my- DAY AURORA. 319 self to the apparent wind-movements of our exhibi- tions in Lancaster Sound. I have quoted the "fog or cloud-like segment" as forming a prominent feature in the Continental descriptions, for the purpose of introducing from my journal two anomalous exhibitions of aurora in the same connection. One was in direct conjunction with the diffracted solar ray ; the other a true daylight au- rora. I give them verbatim from my notes. ^^ February 7. Cold and clear: thermometer, at 8h. 40m. A.M., at 38°, while on the vessel's stern; and at 42° when freely suspended by the bows outside: my Green's spirit standard, some fifty paces from the ves- sel, at —48°: one more illustration of the local influ- ences of ship-board, and of the irregularity of our sys- tem of registration. " The sun was completely visible at about ten A.M.; but his rays were subdued by a slight hazi- ness, caused by myriads of crystallized specks that filled the atmosphere. These, when examined by my traveling Frauenhofer at two hundred diameters, gave in some few cases regular hexagonal prisms, with well-defined terminations ; but this symmetry of form was generally obscured by groupings, and long oblique truncations,, I have now made eight careful examinations of these crystalline spiculae at varying temperatures, when they came to us accompanied by parhelia, halos, or anomalous columns proceeding from the sun. In every case there was a decided approach to the six-sided form. " The sun to-day exhibited an unusual phenomenon. At lOh. 20m., while very low, a column of light was observed stretching from the upper summit of its disk to an approximate height of 15°. This expanded, fan- r ,| U HI H ill ■ ' life- i : m- 320 DAY AURORA. fashion, as it rose, and was lost by its penciled radia- tions blending with the illuminated sky. Thus far it did not differ materially from the vertical or crepuscu- lar rays accompanying rudimentary forms of parhelia. But by eleven o'clock this fan-like column had en- larged to a cloudy shaft of bright yellow light, twen- ty to twenty-four degrees in height, and proceeding from a complete segment of illumination, which was thickly studded with cirrous clouds. The upper ter- minus of this column, unlike the parhelia which we had seen before, assumed a curvilinear wedge shape, not unlike the section of a pear, from whose sides rose tangentially a series of penciled illuminations termin- ating in streaks of cloud strata. " The feature about this phenomenon of greatest in- terest was a distinct play of light, a series of coruscat- ing changes resembling the scintillations of the auro- ra. The rays which shot out from the three-curved summit somedmes extended twelve or fifteen degrees, with a sudden movement of increased energy almost resembling ignition : then again they retired, until rep- resented by but a few feeble points. The cloud-like segment showed in a lesser degree the same move- ments ; and at the periods of most active display, the vertical or fan-like shaft flashed up into more intense illumination. The diameter of this shaft at its en- tering base could not have been less than eighty de- grees." This singular exhibition recalled irresistibly the an- alogous phenomena of the aurora, with those anomal- ous displays of coronae which have been referred to the diffraction of light by atmospheric vesicles or icy spiculse. I give it from my notes, as a simple detail of facts, without comment or opinion. Its en- de- le an- lomal- red to )r icy letail DAY AURORA. 321 A daylight aurora has been described by other ob- servers. I witnessed several, one of them interesting enough to be worth transcribing. "About ten o'clock, going out to exercise at foot- ball, I noticed that the usual cloud-bank of the hori- zon had nearly cleared away at the south. One or two feathery cirri hung about the zenith, and the north- em horizon retained its usual deep obscurity. This was in the course of my usual cursory examination for my weather record. Half an hour after, I observed one spot where the banking remained, attracting attention by its nearness to the sun and its well-defined seg- mentary character. Its margin was distinctly and reg- ularly arched ; its tinting a peculiar purple, slightly warmed or bronzed at its margins, but deepening into a heavy brown at the line of the horizon. The centre of the segment bore south twenty degrees west (mag- netic), its altitude eight degrees, nearly . Smoko and vapor from ship's fires, purple-tinted ; distant objects not very clearly visible; atmosphere filled with ice spiculae. " Soon from the circumference of this arch proceed- ed a fimbriated or fringy series of purple cirri, delicate- ly tinted at their edges, increasing with wonderful reg- ularity, and extending in long, ray-like processes of cloud to an altitude of some twenty degrees above the horizon. Before eleven o'clock these processes had become long, stratiform illuminated clouds, beautifully marked, of a breadth, measured roughly by the eye, of four or five degrees, interrupted where they crossed the illuminated region of the sun, but every where else extending over the heavens to the south and west (true) ; and although still diminishing in intensity, ex- tending nearly to the eastern quarter of the sky. By ,■ i > ihj' i I. 1 • P'tii I i SK , 'If;' ^*!r 322 DAY AURORA. coalescing at their bases, these radiating processes aug- mented the size of the central segment. The inter- vals between them appeared, by contrast, to be artifi- cially illuminated. " Till now there had been no movement ; but at llh. 20m. these cloud-like processes or radiations strik- ingly resembled the rays or beams of a coruscating auroral arch. Dr. Vreeland and myself witnessed re- peatedly interruptions of their continuity ; then sud- den shootings out, or increasings of their length ; and then a rapid and momentary formation, followed by a sudden and complete disappearance. "At this time, too, a strange wavy movement was seen about the shorter prolongations in the neighbor- hood of the vertex of the mass. These resembled the rising wreaths of 'frost-smoke' seen in Wellington Channel, and had an appearance almost of combus- tion. " During all these phases, the cloud-like character was singularly preserved : the rays appeared to modi- fy the processes, as light would behind our ordinary clouds. The whole exhibition was a daylight one, perfectly cloud-like, differing only in the elements of shape, movement, and radiated illumination. It was a day aurora. The appearance continued until twenty minutes of meridian. At llh. 10m., when it was at its maxi- mum, the rayed prolongations stretched nearly across the sky ; and the centre of the mass from which they emanated was fifteen degrees west from the south pole of the needle. At about the same deviation, viz., N. by E. i E., and at a rude altitude of about fifteen or twenty degrees, was an irregular cirro-cumulated cloud of the same purple tint, but not so much illu- DAY AURORA. 323 ininated. From its eastern margin, rays or processes were seen stretching as high as fifty degrees, and &» far as due east. " Before the sun had reached his meridian altitude, the prolongations had become faint, and passed into detached feathery clouds, which collected at the ze- nith and lost the radiated arrangement altogether. The mass of cloud stratus to the south (magnetic), also, had blended with the usual bank about the ho- rizon. vv ';;:^'ri-'i"i 1 ';- .n,.. fit *■ * 1- 4: It r, MI, ||^ 3 iff .',- |f 11 ' \ 328 METEORS. have never seen them so manifest and so numerous^ Our slide, a polished surface of clear ice, became clouded in a few minutes, and before five o'clock it was perfectly white. The microscope gave me the same broken hexagonal prisms, mixed with tables closely resembling the snow-crystal. A haze sur- rounded the horizon, rising for some six degrees in a bronzed, purple bank ; after which it gradually blend- ed with the sky, a clear blue, undisturbed by cirri. "Accompanying this redundancy of atmospheric spiculaB was a parhelion of remarkable intensity. There was no halo round the sun, and no vertical or horizontal column; but at the distance of 22° 04' from the sun's centre were three solar imager, one on each side, and the other immediately above the sun. This latter image was intensely luminous, but not prismatic; the others had the rudiments of an arc, highly colored, the red upon the inner margin. The haze rose as high as these horizontal images ; and the arc, which in so short a segment presented no visible curvature, expanded as it descended, so as to form an elongated pyramid or column, the prismatic tints in- creasing in intensity as they approached the horizon. The effect of this was that of two illuminated beacons or rainbow towers, the sun blazing between them. As we stood a little way off" on the ice, it was very beautiful to see the brig, with its spars and rigging cutting like ttacery against the central light, with these prismatic structures on each side, capped by a spectral sun." Two evenings later, the parhelia gave us another spectacle of interest. Two mock suns, which had ac- companied the sun below the horizon, sent up an il- luminated and colored arc some eight or ten degrees APOLOGY. 329 in height. Midway rose a brush-like column of crim- son (baryta) light. A series of flame-colored strata, alternating with an incomprehensible black cloud, was so completely eclipsed by the vertical column, that it seemed to cut its way without a diminution of its brightness. The whole atmosphere was as warmly tinted as in the evenings of Melville Bay. Indeed, from the beginning of the month, the skies had undergone a sensible change of aspect. Instead of the heavy-banked or linear stratus about the hori- zon, and the light, cold cirri above, we were getting back to something like the fall skies of our own cli- mate, the misty bands of morning becoming fleecy as the day wore on, and taking the marbled or mackerel character before they blended with the western skies. I am tempted to apologize, once for all, for the im- perfect character of these observations. Our stock of instruments on board was scanty at the best, and the routine observances of a ship of war do not favor the prosecution of merely scientific researches. We had no actinometer to mark the daily increments of solar radiation : our thermometers were generally of rude construction, and were not so placed as to give the highest value to their results ; and an entry which I find in my journal explains why my barometrical rec- ords were so few. " March 12. To-day, for the first time during the cruise, I had the pleasure of seeing our mountain ba- rometer released from its stowage, and an attempt made to compare it with* our aneroids. Before we be- gan our drift to the north, when we had no fires below to give us a constantly vibrating temperature, and the aneroid of the Rescue had not come into the over- crowded cabin of our vessel to divide the formalities m % ■iH '4 N ii fj I fe fcr I', 330 THE DRIFT. m*u i\ >-' :■ "^f Mm it; '• ^m Mii'M ' •' I -' V[ wii ' ^^m^vii lii'^l 1^*3 • ^^H^^^^HjHB 1 |l Kf ! ■IJRI BmB I j iK^aglf" '> J iH^H d^HSj : ) iHfBln):iiIi.: ,i 1 1^ Bij '"''ijlIlN-.]. ■1 k ■1151 ..in of registration with our own, it might have been well to make a careful comparison of the two with those of the British vessels, and with our mountain barometer also. The index error of this instrument on its zero point could have been adjusted then by reference to others that were just from Greenwich, and it would have been practicable, perhaps, to give something of in- creased value to our log-book records of the atmospher- ic pressure. Under all the circumstances, I have not thought it necessary to transfer them to my journal." As the middle of March approached, our drift be- came gradually slower, until we almost reached a state of rest. For several days we advanced at an average rate of scarcely half a mile a day. We were at this time some seventy miles east of Cape Adair, our near- est Greenland shore being somewhere between Upper Navik and Disco ; and the idea of encountering the final break-up among the closely-impacted masses that surrounded us, or of being carried back to the north by some inopportune counter-current, was far from pleasant. But our log-line, in an attempt at sound- ings, showed still a marked under-draught toward the south ; and in a few days more we were moving south- ward again with increased velocity. The 19th gave us a change of scene. I was aroused from my morning sleep by the familiar voice of Mr. Murdaugh, as he hurried along the half-deck : " Ice opening" — " Open leads off' our starboard quarter" — "Frost-smoke all around us!" Five minutes after- ward, Henri had been summoned from the galley; and, carbine in hand, I was tumbling over the hummocks. After a heavy walk of half a mile, sure enough there it was — the open lead — stretching with its film of forming ice far in a narrowing perspective to the east THE LEAD. 331 and west. Balboa himself never looked out upon an ocean with more grateful feelings than I did upon this open chasm, the first inbreak upon complete solidity which we had known since the 15th of January. It was a breach in our prison-walls. The undulatory movement of the mercury and the varied appearance of the clouds were now explained. Although only dis- covered this morning, the rupture must have been go- ing on for days, perhaps a week. Our winds had fa- vored the separation of cracks into wide channels ; but how such changes could have taken place puzzled me. rhe ice, as shown by my measurements, was from four to eight feet ; and even now, when I recall the fearful sounds which accompanied the Lancaster Sound commotions, I can hardly realize that such extensive chasms should have been formed almost in silence. We could only guess what had been the extent of our ice-field at this time. Baffin's Bay was nearly three hundred miles across, and the field may have been twice as long in the other direction. Perhaps the wave action of a heavy sea, great sub-glacial billows, unfelt at our fast-cemented little vessel, may have broken the tables without the crash and tumult of a collision. The lead where I first reached it, to the southeast of our brig, was nearly three hundred yards across ; not, however, three hundred yards of open water, but a separation between the two sides of the original floe of about that distance. The sides still showed their clean-edged fracture, diversified by drift and hummock, and rising above the intervening level, like the banks of a tideless river, margined by new ice and crusted with efflorescing snow. But at its further or sou. ':ern side, a long strip, narrow and very black, gave evi- » v J milt i 332 THE LEAD. dence of open water. In this, surrounded by exhal- ing mist and frost-smoke, were our old friends, the seal ; grave, hirsute-looking fellows, who rose out of the wa- ter breast-high, and gazed upon us with the curious faces of old times. Near them was a solitary dovekie, dressed in its gray winter plumage, the first bird I had seen for days ; here, too, had crossed the tracks of a* bear. All this was very cheering. To see something, no matter what, checkering the waste of white snow, was like a shady grove to men sun-tired in a prairie ; but to see life again — life, tenanting the desolate air and inhospitable sea — was a spring of water in the desert. My old hostility to gun-murder was forgotten. I wast- ed, of course, some small remnant of poetic sympathy with fellow-life thus springing up out of the wilder- ness ; but then, in the midst of my sympathies, came the destructive instinct which longed to make it sub- servient to my wants. The scurvy, the scurvy pa- tients, myself among the rest ! — but the seal and the dovekies kept themselves out of shot. At this lead we saw the recent frost-smoke within a few yards of us in pointed tongues of vapor : further off, the long, wreathy brown clouds were rising. I never before, not even in Wellington Channel, saw this phenomenon in greater perfection : in Wellington it was an interesting, sometimes a gloomy feature; here it was imposing. As far back as the twelfth, we had caught glimpses of brown vapor in this very di- rection : we now learned to look upon it in certain phases as an unerring indication of open water, and wondered that we did not so regard it earlier. The chasms were not limited to the long lead be- fore us. They extended to the east and west indefin- FROST-SMOKE. 333 itely; and were intersected by transverse fissures, which so met each other as completely to surround our vessels. From this circuit the frost-smoke was rising. The thermometer stood at —20°, fifty-two de- grees below the freezing point in the shade ; but the .sun was shining brilliantly, raising the mercury to + 10°. Under these circumstances, theoretically so favorable, this Arctic phenomenon became the most prominent feature in the scene. As I stood upon a tall knob of hummock, the en- tire horizon seemed to be sending up, exhaling a bronz- ine smoke — not the lambent, smoky wreaths which 1 have compared to burning turpentine, but a peculiar russet brown smoke, tongued and wreathy when near, but at a distance rolling in cumulated masses. These seemed to cling at their bases to the surface from which they rose, like the discharges of artillery over water, or a locomotive steaming over a cold, wet meadow. They were wafted by the wind, so as to drive them out in lines two or three hundred yards long ; but they clung tenaciously to the water and young ice, giving us a varying but always n-^irow horizon of smoke. The Resc'ie was enveloped with the heavy, sooty clouds of repeated broadsides. If I had seen the flash- ing of guns or the glimmer of burning prairie-grass, 1 should have been less impressed ; so strange, very strange, was this ordinary attendant on conflagration rolling in the midst of our winteriness. t 1 1 .! I !'■ -|.!^< ,H ! I |i ' \^MM 4- ^^^^^K Ik t ] 1 ».i* m il i i H 1 ■ ■ ■, N l<> ■'"' , 1' 1 ^^" ''^> , . ""'' 11 li i ,„,i.„.»;lJ.„,-. .. A mmt :i:-|i |. iL ^i''^ i i m^ • • ' ^'■' ■».-.; ■I fri- i w ' THE ICE-PACK OPEMNCI, MARCH 21. CHAPTER XXXVIL ''3Iarch 20. Thursday, the 20th of Miircli, opens with a gale, a regular gale. On reaching de{;k after breakfast, I found the wind froni the .southeast, the thermometer at zero, and rising. These southeast storms are looked upon as having an important influ- ence on the ice. They are always warm, and by the sea which they excite at the southern margin of the pack, have a great effect in breaking the floes. Mr. Olrik told me that they were anxiously looked for on the Greenland coast as precursors of open water. The date of the southeast gale last year, at Uppernavik, was April 25th. Our thermometer gave -\-5'^ at noon- day, + 7*^ at one, and +8° at three o'clock!! " This is the heaviest storm we have had since en- tering Lancaster Sound, exactly seven months and a day ago. The snow is whirled in such quantities, that our thick felt housing seems as if of gauze: it HiMaiii i l i qm A TRAMP. 335 >r on The lavik, lioon- le eii- liul a lities, te: it not only covers our decks, but drives into our clothes like fine dust or flour. A plated thermometer was in- visible fourteen feet from the eye: from the distance of ten paces off on our quarter, a white opacity cov- ers every thing, the compass-stand, fox-traps, and all beyond : the Rescue, of course, is completely hidden. This heavy snow-drift exceeds any thing that I had conceived, although many of my Arctic English friends had discoursed to me eloquently about their perils and discomforts. As to facing it in a stationary position, nothing human could; for a man would be buried in ten minutes. Even in reaching our little Tusculum, we tumble up to our middle, in places where a few minutes before the very ice was laid bare. The en- tire topography of our ice is changing constantly. " 7 P.M. ' The wind is howling.' Our mess begin to talk again of sleeping in boots, and the other lux- uries of Lancaster Sound. For my own part, better, far better this, with the spicy tingling of a crisis, than the corroding, scurvy-engendering sameness of the past two months. Every moment now is full of ex- pectation. ^^ March 21. The wind changed this morning to the westward, and by daylight was blowing freshly. After breakfast, Murdaugh and myself started on a tramp to the ' open water,' to see the effects of the gale. The drift was beyond conception; sufficient, in many places, to have covered up our whole ship's company. The wind made it as cold at —5° as I have s'^en it at —30°, and the fine snow pelted our faces; but the surface was frozen so hard that we walked over the crust, and in a little over half an hour we reached the lead. " Planting a signal pole, with a red silk handker- *.:.}■ H I If ■y .:U I ' *.:| "■ »i I mi. 1' !• ii ■ ]• i-l #r ^: M;^l,.l,.,; -*i- M ■ >•■•» J 1 ^'A :-^_ :|Wit;i! 'If 336 THE OPEN WATER. chief as a mark, and taking compass-bearings to guide us back again, we began to look around us. Our expectations of hummock action were agreeably dis- appointed. We thought that the storm would have driven the ice from the southward, and that the change of wind w^ould have marshaled opposing floes to meet it. But it was not so. Even the young, marginal ice, though warped, was unbroken. The pressure had evidently taken place, but with little effect. After the gigantic upheavings of Lancaster Sound, excited by winds much weaker, no wonder I was surprised. Upon thinking it over, I came to the conclusion that the absence of a point d^appui, either of land or land-ice, was the cause of these diminished actions. We were now in a great sea, surrounded by consolidated floes, and away from salient capes or shore-bound ice. The pressure was diffused through- out a greater mass, without points of special or even unequal resistance. If this reasoning hold, we will not experience the expected tumult until we ^rift into a region where forces are more in opposition; perhaps not until we reach the contraction of Davis' Straits. " The young ice margin of this open lead had the appearance of a beautiful wave-flattened sand beach. The lead itself had opened so far that its opposite shores were barely visible. The wind checked the immediate formation of new ice; and, to our inex- pressible joy, there, glittering in the cold sunlight, were little rippling waves. So long have we been pent up by this wretched circle of unchanging snow, that I make myself ridiculous by talking of trifles, with which you, milk-drinking, sun-basking, melted- water-seeing people at home can have no sympathy. Pi." r ICE-VOICES. 337 In spite of the winds and the snow-drift, I could hear the babbling of these waves as they laughed in their temporary freedom. ^^ March 22, Saturday. I started again for the ice- openings. There had evidently been a good deal of commotion in the night ; but nothing so violent as to negative my yesterday's conclusions. Still there were hummocks of young tables, and some ugly twists of the beach line ; and matters had not yet settled them- selves into rest. As the great floe on which I stood traveled, under the influence of the west wind, oblique- ly eastward, I heard once more the familiar sounds of our nodes Lancastrianee. The grating of nutmegs, the cork rubbing of old-fashioned tables, the young pup- pies, and the bee-hives; all these were back again; but we missed pleasantly the wailing, the howling, the clattering, the exploding din, which used to come to us through the darkness. The pulse-like interval was there too, like a breathing-time ; but the day- light modified every thing, my feelings most of all. They became almost pleasant, as I listened, after a lullaby fashion, to the bees and puppies; and some- thing very like gratitude came over me, as I thought of the uncertain gloom or palpable midnight which accompanied a few weeks ago the ' voices of the ice.' The thermometer was 21° below zero, and the wind blowing: naturally enough, my nose became a tallow nose in the midst of my reverie. So I rubbed the nose, blew the nose, buffeted my armpits until my fingers tingled, and then started off on a tramp. "Seal were seen, curious as usual, but indulging in the weakness afar off. Presently two poor winter- mated little divers met my meat-seeking senses. One of these I killed with my rifle, covetously regretting ill'. .'-i ^ i: '* ,.' \f n 'i li d .,' 'If I » !.i M f i I ''mm .. > 338 ICE COMMOTIONS. that my one ball could not align his mate. This was the first game we had obtained since the Ml: he was divided, poor fellow, between two of my scur- vy patients. In getting this bird out, I came very near getting myself in; and that, when a ducking means a freezing, is no fun. " 10 P.M. To-night finds me knocked up. Be it known, that after crawling on my belly, not like the wisest of animals, for two hours, I came nearly with- in shot of a week's fresh meat. The fresh meat dived, first shaking his whisker tentacles at my disconsolate beard, leaving me half frozen and wholly discontent- ed. Fool-like, after the long walk back, the warm- ing, the drying, and the feeding, I returned by the other long walk to the ice-openings, tramped for two hours, saw nothing but frost-smoke, and came back again, dinnerless, with legs quaking, and spirits wholly out of tune. "Our drift to-day, at meridian, was in the neigh- borhood of 9 miles; our latitude was 71° 9^ 18^^ "March 23, Sunday. After divine service, started for the ice-openings. We are now in the centre of an area, which we estimated roughly as four miles from north to south, and a little more east and west. On reaching what was yesterday's sea-beach, I was forced to recant in a measure my convictions as to the force of the opposing floes. Yesterday's beach existed no longer ; it was swallowed up, crushed, crumbled, submerged, or uplifted in long ridges of broken ice. " The actions were still in progress, and fa^!- in- truding upon the solid old ice which is our home- stead. The ice-tables now crumbling into hummocks were from eight to fourteen inches thick, generally BREAK-UP. 339 'his 'all: cur- irery ^ing Je it 5 the yvith- ived, 5olate itent- vrarm- ly the 3(1 for came spirits neigh- • started itre of miles west. 1 was as to beach lushed, res of : in- Ihome- Imocks lieraliy ten. Not even in Lancaster Sound did the destruction of surface go on more rapidly. The wind was a mod- erate breeze from the northwest, and the floes were advancing on each other at a rate of a knot and a half an hour, building up hummock tables along their line of collision. Several rose in a few minutes to a height of ten or twelve feet. I have become so ac- cnstoined to these glacial eruptions, that I mounted the upheaving ice, and rode upon the fragments — an amusement I could hardly have practiced safely before I had studied their changes. " The snow-covered level upon which Brooks and myself were walking was about thirty paces wide, between the older ice on one side and the encroach- ing hummock-line on the other. Upon our return, after a walk of a short half mile, we found our foot- steps obliterated, and the hummock-line within a few yards of this older ice. Things are changing rapidly. " A new crack was reported at one o'clock, about the third of a mile from our ship ; and the bearings of the sun showed that our brig had, for the first time since entering Baffin's Bay, rotated considerably to the northward. Here were two subjects for examin- ation. So, as soon as dinner was over, I started with Davis and Willie, two of my scurvy henchmen, on a walk to the openings. Reaching the recent crack, we found the ice five feet four inches thick, and the black water, in a clear streak a foot wide, running to the east and west.* I had often read of Esquimaux being carried off by the separation of these great floes ; but, knowing that our guns could call assistance from the brig, we jumped over and hurried on. AVe were well paid. * This direction, transverse to the long axis of Baffin's Bay, set s to be that of most of our fissures. .«.? ,r f X, ''; il! W it "i f; k I I U ;l i ^;f! Ill r^r-v •-^ ' *t/ I/' E 340 NARWHALS AT PLAY. "The hummockings of this morning had ceased; the wind so gentle as hardly to. he perceptible: the lead before me was an open river of water, and in it were narwhals {M. monoceros), in groups of five or six, rolling over and over, after the manner of the dolphin tribe. They were near me; so near that I could see their checkered backs, and enjoy the rich coSring that decorates them. The horn, that monodontal proc- ess which gives them their name of sea-unicorn, was perfectly examinable. Rising in a spirally indented cone, this beautiful appendage appeared sometimes eight and ten feet out of water ; one especially, whose tall curvetings astonished my body-guard. I never saw a more graceful, striking, and beautiful exhibi- tion than the unrestrained play of these narwhals.* In the same open water, almost in company with the narwhals, were white whales {Delphinoptervs albi- cans, or Beluga : these cetacea have so many names, they puzzle me), and seal besides. " I was tempted to stay too long. The wind sprang up suddenly. The floe began to move. I thought of the crack between me and the ship, and started off. The walking, however, was very heavy, and my sc: • vy patients stiff in the extensors. By the time I reached the crack, it had opened into a chasm, and a river as broad as the Wissahiccon ran between me and our ship. After some little anxiety — not much — I saw our captain ordering a party to our relief. The sledges soon appeared, dragged by a willing par- '11 1' IM w '< i m m i K^ «Ui m * I have seen many of these fish since, but never under sucli circumstances. I stood on a ledge of hummocii within short gunshot. The animals were en- tirely unapprehensive. The non-symmetrical character of the " horn " (an un- duly developed tooth, say the naturalists) was not seen; and as this long lance- like process played about at a constantly varying angle, it reminded me of the mast of some sunken boat swayed by the waves. STATE OF THE PACK. 341 ty; the India rubber boat was lowered into the lead, and the party ferried over. So ends this last trip to these ice-openings. " It is evident that these gradual crack-formings and chasm-openings, with the hummocking and other at- tendant actions, are but preludes to a complete break- ing up. Our previous observations show that the dis- ruption of these large areas can not be effected sud- denly. It is a gradual process ; so gradual, even in Lancaster Sound, as to allow time for personal escape, although the vessel be a victim. "From the 12th of January, the date of our last break-up, down to the present movement, is two months. The intense cold, with feeble winds and the absence of impact or collisions, have kept up the integ- rity of this great pack. I think it may reasonably be doubted whether it will now close again before our liberation or destruction. The excessive thickness of the tables, the wave and tidal actions, the mildening temperature, and the probable continuance of winds, all point to this. We have already a system of fis- sures within a third of a mile of us ; and a continued augmentation of their number must soon place us in a centre of commotion. It is pleasant by one's ice-ex- perience to anticipate the state of things : and now that the battle is coming on again, I make a record of these reasoned expectations, to show you hereafter how well I am reasoning. "One thing more : the days have stolen upon us — longer, and longer, and longer, until now the long twi- light lets me read on deck as late as eight P.M. In fact, the sun's greatest depression below the horizon is now 18°, the Unit of theoretical twilight. "March 26, Wednesday. The same peculiar crisp- if t J ill '. '11. li '"' ' j,' I- .i ■ 'M ;•: ¥ Si V m/ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) <« 4(a 1.0 ^1^ Ui ^^= itt Ui2 i2.2 III g la ■20 I.I *" Photographic Sciences Corporation ^ <^^ \ ;\ \ ^V'"'^ c\ 23 WIST MAIN STRUT WIRSTiR,N.Y. USM (716)172-4503 *ii Mi Si J 342 A WALK. ing or crackling sound, which I noted on the 2d of February, was heard this morning in every direction. This sound, as the * noise accompanying the aurora,' has been attributed by Wrangell and others, ourselves among the rest, to changes of atmospheric temperature acting upon the crust of the snow. We heard it most distinctly between seven and eight A.M., when the solar ray should begin to affect the snow. The mer- cury stood at -27° at five, rising to - 19° by nine A.M., and attaining a maximum of —2° by noonday. But this is not to be regarded as indicating the tempera- ture of the snow surface. The snow, when horizontal, according to all my observations, differs but little in temperature from the atmosphere, owing probably to its oblique reception of the solar ray ; while the snow- coverings of the hummocks and angular floe-tables, which receive the rays at right angles, show by re- peated trials a marked augmentation. I venture, therefore, to refer this peculiar crisping sound to the unequal contraction and dilatation of these unequally presenting surfaces, not to a sudden change of atmos- pheric temperature acting upon the snow. " To-day we saw a couple of icebergs looking up in the far south. "March 27, Thursday. The sun shone out, but not as yesterday. The little cirrous clouds interfere with its brightness, and affect very perceptibly its warmth. To the eye, however, the day is undimmed. "The wind, which we watch closely as the index of our ice-changes, our leading variety, came out at seven in the evening from the northward ; and with it came a rise of black frost-smoke to the south, showing that the old ice-opening had gaped again. I had start- ed before this at half past five, with old Blinn, my THE NARWHALS. 343 faithful satellite, for a bright plain, glittering in the low sunshine some three miles to the west, a new di- rection. We did not get back till eight. "Let me make a picture for you without a jot of fancy about it, and you may get H. to put it into col- ors if he can. The sun was low, very low ; and his long, slanting beams, of curious indescribable purple, fell upon old Blinn and myself as we sat on a crag of ice which overhung the sea. The chasm was per- haps a mile wide, and the opposite ice-shores were so painted by the glories of the sunshine, that they ap- peared like streaks of flame, licking continuous water. The place to which we had worked ourselves had been subjected to forces which no one could realize, so cha- otic, and enormous, and incomprehensible were they. A line of old floe, eight feet thick and four miles long, had been powdered into a pedragal of crushed sugar, rising up in great efllorescing knobs fifteen and twen- ty feet high ; and from amid these, like crystal rocks from the foam of a cataract, came transparent tables of blue ice, floating, as it were, on unsubstantial white- ness. Some of these blocks measured eight feet in thickness by twenty-two long, and of indeterminate depth, one side being obliquely buried in the mass. On one of these tables, that stretched out like a glass spear-point, directly over the water, were straddled your brother and his companion. Underneath us the narwhals were passing almost within pole-reach. As they rolled over, much after the fashion of our own porpoises, I could see the markings of their backs, and the great suction of their jaws throwing the water into eddies. Seal, breast-high, were treading water with their horizontal tails, and the white whale was blow- ing purple sprays into the palpable sunshine. fii & I i r> 344 RETURN TO VESSEL. ri ' "March 23, Friday. I visited the western opening of yesterday. The sea has dwindled to a narrow lane, flanked by the heavy hummocks, whose rupture formed the sides. Although the aperture was so distant yes- terday that I could barely see the further banks, here and there dotting the horizon, it has now closed with such nice adaptation of its line of fracture, that, but for a few yards of lateral deviation, this * yesternight sea' would be nothing but a crack in the ice-field. The area of filmy ice that was between the edges of the lead had been thrust under the floe, thus aiding the process of re-cementation. These ice-actions are very complicated and various. " Retracing my steps by a long circuit to the south- ward, I came to a spot where, without any apparent axis of fracture (chasm), the ice presented all the phe- nomena of table-hummocks. It was very old and thick, at least nine feet in solid depth. About a little circle of a hundred yards diameter, it had been thrown up into variously-presenting surfaces, with a marked bear- ing toward a focus of greatest energy and accumula- tion, presenting an appearance almost eruptive. The crushed fragments exuding and falling over, and roll- ing down toward the level ice, so as to cover it for feet in depth with powdery, granulated rubbish ! THE KLOE IN APBIL. CHAPTER XXXVIII. My journal for the closing days of March and the early ones of April is full of varying drifts and altern- ating temperatures. Still, it seemed as if, by some gradual though scarcely explicable process, the work of our extrication was going on. Sometimes the wind would come to us from the southeast — the breaking- up wind, as we called it, because as it subsided the reaction of the floes developed itself in fissures ; but more frequently from the north, expediting our course to a more genial latitude. The floes themselves were, however, much more massive and gnarled than any we had seen before : every party that left the vessel for an ice-tramp came back with exaggerated impres- sions of the mighty energies that had hurled them to- gether. We felt that it would have been impossible for any organized structure of wood and metal to re- sist such Maelstroms of solid ice as had left these me- morials around us, and looked forward with scarcely pleasurable anticipations to the equivalent forces that might be required to obliterate them. Some extracts from my journal may show how far other causes were in the mean time operating our release. 346 MEASURES OF HEAT. " f ; "April 7, Monday. For the last fortnight the ice has been perceptibly moist at the surface. The open crack near our brig to the south has now been closed for nearly a fortnight ; yet the snow which covers it is quite slushy. The trodden paths around our ship are in muddy pulp, adhering to the boots. All this can hardly be the direct influence of the sun upon the surface; for the thermometer seldom exceeds +16°, and is more generally below +10° at noonday. Yet this temperature has an evident influence upon the status of the ice, increasing its permeability, and per- mitting some changes analogous to thawing, but which I can not explain. May it be that the crystalline structure of the ice is undergoing some modiflcation, that increases its capilarity, or develops an action like the endosmose and exosmose ! " It is a mere puzzle, of course, for we have not data enough to make it a question. Yet there is an- other like it that I can not help setting down. Can it be that our thermometers, so notorious in this Po- lar region for their imperfect coincidence with ' sensa- tions of cold,' are equally fallacious as measures of absolute increments or decrements of sensible caloric? It will not do, I suppose, to admit such a supposition ; yet the marvels which come constantly before me may almost justify it. You know that I am no heat- maker. Well! my winter trials, as you may imagine, have not increased my vital energies. Suppose me, then, as you knew me when I left New York. For the past week I have almost lived in the open air — genial, soft, bland, and to sensation just cool enough to be pleasantly tonic. I walk moderately, and am in comfortable, glowing warmth. I walk over the hummocks or ice floes, and am oppressed with per- THERMOMETRICAL FALLACIES. 34/ sp.. 350 A BEAR. " April 16. To-day the salting continues. The men call it our spring-seed sowing. On board the Rescue, a party are at work preparing for the return to her. The ice-cutting machine proves a failure. " This afternoon a solitary snow-bunting was seen flitting around our vessel. The last time we saw this little animal was at Griffith's Island, in the midst of the terrible storm which we were sharing with our English brethren. Goodsir saw the same bird on the 13th, in latitude 54° ; but he was not at Winter Island till the 27th. Since then, the little family have made their migratory journey, and are now on their way again to these Polar seas. They breed seldom or never south of 62°, and linger late among the North- ern snows. This poor little wanderer was an estray from his fellows. He paused at the treasures which surrounded our ship, refreshed himself from our dirt pile, and then flew away again on his weary journey. ^^ April 17. A memorable day. We put out our cabin lamps, and are henceforward content with day- light, like the rest of the world. Our latitude is 69° 52' ; our longitude, 63° 03". "This afternoon, while walking deck, this endless deck, with Murdaugh, we discovered a bear walking tranquilly alongside, nearly within gunshot. We have lost so many opportunities by the bustle and ignorance of a universal chase, that I crawled out to attack him alone. To my sorrow, the brute, who had been gazing at the ship dog-fashion and curious, turned tail. He was out of range for my carbine, but I gave him the ball as he ran in his right hind-quarter. He fell at once, and I thought him secure ; but rising instantly, he turned upon his wounded haunch, and, very much as a dog does at a bee-sting, bit spasmodi- THE BEAR. 851 cally at the wound. For a little while he spun round, biting the bloody spot with a short, probing nip ; and then, before 1 could reload my piece, started off at a limping but rapid gait. I mention this movement on account of the very curious fact which follows. The animal had found the ball, seized it between the in> cisors, and extracted it. The bullet is now in my pos- session, distinctly marked by his teeth. " After a very tedious and harassing pursuit, I came up to him at the young ice. He stood upon the brink of the lead. I was within long shot, and about to make preparations for a more deliberate and certain aim, when he took to the water, and then to the oppo- site young ice, bleeding and dropping every few yards. " Joined by Daly, a bold bull-headed Irishman, 1 crossed by a circuitous channel, and then took to the young ice myself, and tried to run him down. It was very exciting; and I fear 1 was not as prudent as I ought to have been; for a dense fog had gathered around us, and the young floe, level as the sea which it covered, was but two nights old. The bear fell several times ; and at last, poor fellow, dragged him- self by his fore feet, trailing his hind quarters over the incrusted snow, so as to leave a long black imprint stained by blood. " The fog was getting more and more dense, and the frail ice — we were now walking, as it were, over the sea itself — bent under us so much, that I, like a prudent man, ordered a return. This chase cost us at least ten miles of journey, part of it at an Indian trot. We dripped like men in a steam bath. "April 20, Sunday. Daly started with a company of sailors after the wounded bear. They walked, by their own account, six miles before they found him. t •' !? 1 ''if- 3''Pl It! 1 1 352 THE BEAR. He was unable to retreat — stood at bay ; and the fools were so scared at his 'growlings' and his 'bloody tongue,' that they returned without daring to attack him. ''April 21, Monday. I have more than common cause for thankfulness. A mere accident kept me from starting last night to secure our bear. Had I done so, I would probably have spared you reading more of my journal. The ice over which we traveled so carelessly on Saturday has become, by a sudden movement, a mass of floating rubbish. An open river, broader than the Delaware, is now between the old ice and the nearest part of the new, over which I walked on the 19th more than three miles. " In the walk of this morning, which startled me (vith the change, I saw for the first time a seal upon the ice. This looks very summer-like. He was not accessible to our guns. To-day, for the first time too, the gulls were flying over the renovated water. Com- ing back we saw fresh bear tracks. How wonderful is the adaptation which enables a quadruped, to us associated inseparably with a land existence, thus to inhabit an ice-covered ocean. We are at least eighty miles from the nearest land. Cape Kater ; and chan- nels innumerable must intervene between us and terra firma. Yet this majestic animal, dependent upon his own predatory resources alone, and, defying cold as well as hunger, guided by a superb instinct, confides himself to these solitary, unstable ice-fields. " Parry, in his adventurous Polar effort, found these animals at the most northern limit of recorded observ- ation. Wrangell had them as companions on his first Asiatic journey over the Polar ocean. Navigators have found them also floating upon J)erg and floe far THE BEAR. 353 out in open sea ; and here we have them in a region some seventy miles from the nearest stahle ice. They have seldom, or, as far as my readings go, never — if we except Parry's Spitzhergen experience — heen seen so far from land. In the great majority of cases, they seem to have heen accidentally caught and carried adrift on disengaged ice-floes. In this way they travel to Iceland ; and it may have heen so perhaps with the Spitzhergen instances. Others have heen reported thirty miles from shore in this hay. I myself noticed them fifty miles from the Greenland coast last July. " There is something very grand ahout this tawny savage ; never leaving this utter destitution, this frigid inhospitahleness — coupling in May, and bringing forth in Christmas time — a gestation carried on all of it below zero, more than half of it in Arctic darkness — living in perpetual snow, and dependent for life upon a never-ending activity — using the frozen water as a raft to traverse the open seas, that the water un- frozen may yield him the means of life. No time for hibernation has this Polar tigei: his life is one great winter." Z far !• CHAPTER XXXIX. "April 22. The past week has been one of dis- mantling, rubbish-creating*, ship-cleaning torment. First, bull's-eyes were inserted in the deck ; and the black felt housing, so comfortable in the winter dark- ness, but that now shut out the sunlight like a great pall, was triced up fore and aft, remaining only amid- ships. Next, the Rescue, with her new bowsprit in, received her crew and officers. They slep^ on board last night for the first time, but still wal : over the ice to their meals. " When I saw the little brig through th« darkness, on the afternoon of the 13th of Janua /, moving slowly past us and losing herself in the r oom, while sounds like artillery mingled with i\ shrieking, howling, SbiA crashing of the ice, as the j^^^eat ridges rose and fell — and when the India-rubber boat was launched, and the men took their knapsacks, and old Brooks called out to us to get out of the way of the rigging, believing the brig about to topple over — I did not think there would be a spring-time for the Rescue. "We are now in the midst of those intestine changes which characterize the house-cleanings at home. The disgusting lamps have done smoking, the hatches are THAWING. 355 allowed to look out at the sun, and the galley, with its perpetual odors, is banished to the hurricane- house on deck. That peculiar interspace between the coal and the 'purser's slops,' so dark and full of head-bumping beams, exults in the full glare of day. What a wonderful hole we have been existing in! It, the half-deck, as it is called on board ship, is three feet six inches high, by fourteen feet long and seven- teen broad. On it, forgetful of precedence and rank, our bedding separated from the loose planking by a canvas cot frame, slept Murdaugh, Vreeland, Brooks, De Haven, two cooks, and Dr. Kane. The last-named came on board last, and found, though he is not a very large man, a sufficiently narrow kennel between the companion-ladder and the dinner-table. Our cloth- ing, as it now welcomed the sun, was black with lamp- soot; the beams above fringed, and festooned, and wreathed with the same. My bed-coverings, frozen over the feet in the winter, are bathed with inky wa- ter. But all this is to be removed to-day; and we go back to the luxuries of bunks, and daylight, and a long breath. " The day was bright and sunny. I walked out to the open water. Marks of commotion, hummock ridges, and chasms. A new feature was the thaw. Heretofore I could stand upon the brink of the cleanly- separated fissures, and look down upon the bleak water as securely as from a quartz rock. To-day every thing around (pshaw ! the snow and ice, I mean ; we have no things here) was wet and crumbling. The snow covered deceitfully some very dangerous cracks: in one of these I sunk neck deep. My carbine caught acrosa it, and Holmes pulled me out. " We are very anxious to obtain fresh meat for the Hit *A i'^'H ii< : ! ' 356 PROGRESS OF THE SEASON. «'.] hi^nm H Ml I •i|ra invalids. Indeed, our longing for something fresh is itself a disease. To-day a tantalizing seal kept me prostrate upon the slushy ice for an hour and a half. In spite of all my seal craft, the prime secret of which is patience, I could not draw him into gunshot. With the characteristic curiosity of his tribe, the poor animal would rise breast high to inspect my fur cap. Pres- ently a whale spouted, and off he went. " The decks are clear ! the barrels stowed away below, the fore-peak restored, the old bunks reoccu- pied, and my messmates snoozing away as in old times, a fire burning in the stove, and lard lamps flaming away vigorously upon my paper. Daylight still finds its way down the hatch, although it is eleven o'clock. "April 24, Thursday. The snow falls in loose, flaky, home feathers. The decks are wet, and the misty air has the peculiar ground-glass translucency which I noticed last summer. When I came up before break- fast to look around, the thermometer gave +32°, the familiar temperature of old times : to me it was warm and sultry. " The season of summer, if not now upon us, is close at hand. It seems but yesterday that we hailed the dawning day, and burned our fingers in the frozen mercury ; now we have a summer snow-storm at 32°. " This little table will show you how stealthily and how rapidly summer has trampled down winter : Mean temperaiuie .ir week ending Marcli 14th, — 23° 94'. « « a « .. u ai8t, —9° 07' ; gain, 14° 87'. " 28th, —16^- 90' ; loss 7° 83'. April 4th, —4° 31' ; gain, 12° 39'. " 1 1th, -f 8° 59'; gain, 12° 90'. " 18th, 4-8° 55' ; gain, 0° 55'. *t M M M servant fellow, who was with me, suddenly called out, ' Look here, sir — here !' "Each of these little cones was steaming like the salices or mud- volcanoes of Mexico, the broken ice on RETURNING LIGHT. 359 top vibrating, and every now and then tumbling, as if by some pulsatory movement below. Presently, in one concerted diapason, a group of narwhals, impris- oned by the congelation of the opening,* spouted their release, scattering spray and snow in every direction. I was not more than three yards from the nearest cone ; yet I could see nothing of the animal except this jet. " The noise was so great that I could hardly make the steward hear me. It had, moreover, more of voice mingled with its sibilant * blow' than I had ever heard — a distinct and somewhat metallic tone, thrown out impulsively, and yet with the crescendo and diminu- endo of an expiration. According to the views of some systematic naturalists, the cetacea have, strictly speak- ing, no voice. This opinion admits of much modifica- tion. The white whale in Wellington Sound whis- tled while submerged and swimming under our brig ; and, in the present singular case, the ejaculatory char- acter of the tone sounded like a gigantic bark.f " May 1, Thursday. A little before ten this morning, the sun showed almost half his disk above the snow ho- rizon, with his usual appanage of pearly opals and mel- lowed fire displayed about the southern heavens. At noon I walked out in the full glare, twenty-five degrees above the freezing-point on my face, and about as many below it on my back — a May-day frolic in the snow ! %■ i -' * I round afterward from the Danes that they assemble in this way when ex- tensive areas are frozen. Mr. Moldrup, of Godhaven, mentions fifty being killed at one of these congregations. t On this occasion, I heard the white whale singing under water — a peculiar note between the whistle and the Tyrolean yodel. Our men compared it to the Jews-harp. Once, off Cape James, it was so loud that we heard it in the cabin, as if proceeding from the cable-tier. I have often, in my walks over the ice-openings, been startled by the resemblancd between the sudden spout of a near narwhal and the bark of an animal. I 14 360 THE SCURVY. H'^ p;«,' M »"i 4h The crisp covering, over which I used to skim along a few weeks ago, broke through with me at every step. It was just strong enough to tantalize and deceive. Nev- er, in the warmest days of summer harvest-time, have I felt the heat so much as on this Arctic May-day ; and yet no life, no organization carried me back to the spring-time of reviving nature. Even the tinnitus of the idle ear, that inner droning that sings to you in the silent sunshine at home, was wanting. In fact, the si- lentness was so complete, and the reflection from the snow so excessive, though I had a green rag over my face, that when I got far away, and out of sight of ev- ery thing but the interminable ice, it made me feel as if the world I left you in and the world about me were not exactly parts of the same planet. " And so I traveled back to my sick men. God bless us ! here are old Blinn, and Carter, and Wilson, all on my list for fainting spells : the same scurvy syn- cope our officers complain of. Captain Griffin faint- ed dead away, and Lovell complains of strange feel- ings. We need fresh food sorely. I hardly think any organized expedition to these regions was ever so com- pletely deprived of anti-scorbutic diet as we are at this time. " Midnight. My old scurvy symptoms, it may be, that keep me from sleeping. But I write by the light of the sun ; and it really seems to me that there is a something about this persistent day antagonistic to sleep. The idea thrust itself upon me \.xst summer. Thinking the fact over afterward, I referred it to hab- it, acting unphilosophically, as it is apt to do ; and concluded that my sleeplessness was not connected directly with the augmented or continued light. But this is not so. I neither get to sleep so easily nor sleep SNOW BLINDNESS. 361 as long, nor, indeed, do I seem to need the same quan- tity of sleep as when we had the alternation of light and darkness. On the other hand, I think our long Arctic night solicited a more than common ration of the same restorative blessing, though my journal has shown you that our waking energies during that peri- od were not so heavily taxed as to require more than their usual intermission." The day after this entry superadded the visitation of snow blindness to our trials. Four of the party were attacked severely, myself among the rest; so severely, indeed, as to make it impossible for me to write, and, what was much more important in the es- timation of our scurvy patients, impossible for me to hunt. The brief notes which were made in my journal by thb i'ldness of a brother officer speak of our sensi- ble approach toward a final disengagement from the ice-field. Though the winds were generally from the southwest, our drift tended very plainly to the south : in one day, we reduced our latitude eighteen miles, passing at the same time nearly a degree of longitude, twenty-two miles to the ea£;t. The ice, too, was be- coming more infiltrated, and the heavy snow-banks that surrounded our vessel were saturated with water. Spring was doing its office. :? , * i 1 • J' 1! P ' \ &! 1 CUTTINO OUT, MAY, IbSl. CHAPTER XL. On the 11th, I was well enough, or imprudent enough, to attempt a seal hunt. Our mean temper- ature had sunk to 19° 5^, and the snow-crust was strong enough to hear. A gale had swept away the loose, fleecy drifts of the fortnight hefore, exposing the familiar surface of the older snow. I walked over it as I did in April. "Reaching the seat of the open water to the north- ward, I found it closed hy young ice, an extensive surface frail and unsafe. About a quarter of a mile from the edge of the old floe, almost in the centre of this recent lead, was a seal. The temptations of the flesh were too much for me : I ventured the ice, crawl- ed on my belly, and reached long-shot distance. The animal thus laboriously stalked was large; a hirsute, bearded fellow, with the true plantigrade countenance. All his senses were devoted to enjoy- CUTTING OUT. 363 ment: he wallowed in the sludge, stretched out in the sunshine, played with his flippers, lying on his hack, much as a heavy horse does in a skin-loosening roll. I rose to fire — and down he went. An unseen hole had received hiin: a lesson for future occasions. This hole was critically circular, heveled from the under surface, and symmetrically emhanked round with the pulpacious material which he had excava- ted from the ice. " Crawling back less actively than I had approach- ed, my carbine arm broke through, carrying my gun and it up to the shoulder. It was very well, all things considered, that my body did not follow; for I was on a very rotten shell, and nearly two miles from the brigs, alone. " Wednesday 12. For the last fortnight, our ice-saw, under Murdaugh's supervision, has been hard at work. To-day we have a trench opened to our gangway. "The ice shows the advancing season. It is no longer splintery and quartz-like, spawling off under the axe in dangerous little chips; but sodden, infil- trated ice, such as we see in our ice-houses. The water has got into its centre, and the crow-bars, after the sawing out, break it readily up for hauling upon the field. The process is this : First, we cut two par- allel tracks, four feet asunder, through six and five feet ice, with a ten-foot saw ; then lozenged diagonals ; then straps (ropes) are passed around the fragments, and a block and line, nautice jigger, or watch tackle, made fast to the bowsprit, hauls the lumps upon the floe, where they are broken up by the ice bars. A formi- dable barricade of dirty ice, about the size and shape of gneiss building stones, is already inclosing our ves- sel. Many a poor fellow has had an involuntary slide- if \ 1 f^ it'' 364 SCURVY. bath into the freezing mixture alongside ; but in most cases without unpleasant consequences." I remember only one serious exception. It was that of our heroine of the Thespian corps, Jim Smith. The immediate result for him was an attack of scurvy, so marked, yet so blended with the active symptoms belonging to arthritic disease, as to incline me to an opinion for the time that there may be such a thing as acute scurvy, or a sudden inflammatory sthenic action, whose characteristics are scorbutic. He had immediately stitch, dyspnoea, pains in the back and joints, and in the alveolar and extensor muscles, just as in his previous attacks of scurvy, but without fever. The day after, he was so distressed by his stitch, that I feared pleuritis. On looking at his shins, I found large purpuric blotches, which were not there a week before. I commenced the anti-scorbutic tyranny at once ; and the next morning his gums bled freely, his pains left him, and he took his place again at the ice- saw. " Several laridsB flew about us : I heard them to-day for the second time — pleasant tones, with all their dis- cord. Do you remember the skylark's song, * a drop- ping from the sky,' in the 'Ancient Mariner?' I thouglxt of it this morning when the gulls screeched over our motionless brig. ^^May 18, Sunday. First, of late, in my daily records is this glorious wind, still from the northwest, fresh and steady. It is, as is every thing else for that mat- ter, a Godsend. To-day's observation places us but thirty-two miles from Cape Searle, and seventy from Cape Walsingham, the abutting gate of Davis's Straits, where the channel is at its narrowest, and where our imprisonment ought to end. COSTUMK. 365 " This welcome wind-visitor is still freshening : it is not perpetrating, I hope, an extra brilliancy before its conge. " I found to-day a rough caricature drawing by one of the men : some of the mess call it a portrait of my- self. By-the-way, suppose I tell you of my latest rig t Here it is. A long musket on shoulder ; a bear knife in the leg of the left boot ; a rim of wolf- skin around my head, leaving the bare scalp with its ^hairs' open to the breeze ; rough Guernsey frock, overlined by a red flannel shirt, in honor of the day on which thou shalt do no labor; legs in sailor pants of pilot cloth, slop-shop cut ; feet in seal-hide socks or bus- kins, of Esquimaux fabric and Es- quimaux smell ; a pair of crimson woolen mittens, which commenced their career as a neck comforter; and a little green rag, the snow veil, fluttering over a weather-beaten face : place all this, for want of a bet- ter lay figure, on your brother of the Arctic squadron. " With a delicacy which may possibly do me dis- credit, I have never before alluded to the garniture of my outer man. I may as well tell the truth at once. We are an uncouth, snobby, and withal, shabby-look ing set of varlets. L'illustre Bertrand would be a very Beau Brummel alongside of us. We are shabby, because we have worn out all our flimsy wardrobes, and have of late resorted to domestic tailorization. We are snobby, because our advance in the new art does not yet extend to the picturesque or well-fitting. i:'3 i I til V h ^ P t 366 COSTUME. l;^' >>w i..k ¥(' I wish some of my soda-water-in-the-morning club friends could see me perspiring over a pair of pants, dorcassing a defunct sock. We do our own sewing, clothing ourselves cap-a-pie ; and it astonishes me, looking back upon my dark period of previous igno- rance, to feel how much I have learned. I wonder whether your friend the Philadelphia D'Orsay knows how to adjust with a ruler and a lump of soap the seat of a pair of breeches ? " Why, I have even made discoveries in — I forget the Greek word for it — the art which made George the Fourth so famous. Thus a method, adopted by our mess, of cutting five pair of stockings out of one hammock blanket — a thing hitherto deemed impossi- ble — is altogether my own. In the abstract or specu- lative part of the profession, I claim to be the first who has reduced all vestiture to a primitive form — an in- tegral particle, as it were. I can't dwell on this mat- ter here : it might, perhaps, be out of place ; perhaps, too, attributed in some degree to that personal vanity almost inseparable from invention. I will tell you, however, that this discovered type, this radical nucleus, is the 'bag.' Thus a bag, or a couple of parallelo- gramic planes sewed together, makes the covering of the trunk. Similar bags of scarcely varied proportion cover the arms ; ditto the legs ; ditto the hands ; ditto the head : thus going on, bags, bags, bags, even to the lingers ; a cytoblastic operation, having interesting an- alogies with the mycelium of the fungus or the sac- cine vegetation of the confervas. " All this is a digression, perhaps ; yet I am not the first traveler whose breeches have figured in his diary of wonders : you remember the geometrical artist of Laputa who re-enforced the wardrobe of Mr. Gulliver. LAND. 367 But to return to less ambitious topics. The birds, in spite of the increasing wind, fly over in numbers, all seeking the mysterious north. What is there at this unreached pole to attract and sustain such hordes of migratory life ? Since the day before yesterday, the 16th, we can not be on deck at any hour, night or day — they are one now — without seeing small bodies, rather groups than flocks, on their way to the unknown feeding or breeding grounds. Toward the west the field of a telescope is constantly crossed by these de- tachments. The ducks are now scarce : in fact, they have been few from the beginning. Geese are seen only in the forenoon and early morning. The guille- mots, also, are not so numerous as they were two days ago ; but from to-day we date the reappearance of the little Auk. This delicious little pilgrim is now on his way to his far north breeding grounds. Toward the open lead the groups fly low, sometimes doubtless pausing to refresh. At the water's edge I shot five, the first game of the season ; and most valuable they were to our scurvy men. If this snow blindness per- mits me, I hope to-morrow to prove myself a more lucky sportsman. ^^May 19, Monday. Jim Smith, little Jim Smith, reported ' Land.' We have become so accustomed to this great sameness of snow, that it was hard to real- ize at first the magnitude of our drift. Our last land was the spectral elevation upreared in the sunset sky of the 9tli of February. The land itself must have been eighty miles off". Our drift, although now not absolutely fixed by observation, has probably carried us to within forty miles, perhaps thirty, of Cape Searle. Land it certainly is, shadowy, high, snow-covered, and strange. It is ninety-nine days since we looked at the 1 ! I..: \ f^rJ Ir >f :?■■■ 1) '' 368 CUTTING OUT. refracted tops of the Lancaster Bay headlands, our last land. "Mat/ 20, Tuesday. So snow-blind that I can bare- ly see to write. A gau7,y film floats between me and every thing else. I have been walking twelve miles upon the ice. No sun, but a peculiar misty, opalescent glare. I bagged thirty-three Auks ; but my snow- blindness avenges them." For some days after this entry my snow-blindness unfitted me for active duty. Several of the oflScers and men shared the visitation. Captain De Haven more severely than any of us. My next quotation from my journal dates of the 24th. "May 24, Saturday. The ship shows signs of change, grating a little in her icy cradle, and rising at least nine inches forward. The work of removing the ice goes on painfully, but constantly. The blocks are now hoisted with winch and capstan by a purchase from the fore-yard ; fhe saw, of course, pioneering. The blocks when taken out resemble great break-water stones, measuring sometimes eight by six feet. " Thus far, by peryevering labor, we have cut a four- feet wide trench to our starboard gangway, a little vacant pool of six yards by three in our bows, and a second trench now reaching amidships of our fore- chains. " The difference of level between the deck at our bows and stern is still five feet three inches. It is proposed to launch the brig, as it were, from her ice- ways. To this purpose a screw jack is to be applied aft, and strong purchases on the ice ahead. The ex- periment will take place this afternoon. We have now been five months and a half, since the seventh of December, living on an inclined plane of about one foot in sixteen. ARCTIC VOYAGERS. 369 "10 P.M. The effort failed, as no doubt it ought to have done : we must wait for the great break-up to give us an even keel. From the mast-head we can see encroachments all around. The plains, over which I chased bear and shot at Auks, are now wa- ter. The floe is reduced to its old winter dimensions, three miles in one diameter, five in the other. We have not yet reached the narrow passage; and the wind, now from the southward, seems to be holding us back. Strange as it sounds, wo are in hopes of a break-up at Cape Walsingham. ^^May 25, Sunday. Howling a perfect gale ; drift impenetrable. By some providential interference the wind returned last night to its old quarter, the north- west, a direction corresponding with the trend of the shore. It is undoubtedly driving us fast to the south- ward, and is, of all quarters, that most favorable to a passage without disruption. Once past Cape Walsing- ham, the expansion of the bay is sudden and extensive. If, then, our floe maintains its integrity through the strait, the relief from pressure may allow us to con- tinue our drifting journey. So at least we argue. " And just so, it may be, others have argued before us about chances of escape that never came : there is a cycle even in the history of adventure. It makes me sad sometimes when I think of the fruitless la- bors of the men who in the very olden times har- assed themselves with these perplexing seas. There have been Sir John Franklins before, and searchers too, who in searching shared the fate of those they sought after. It is good food for thought here, while I am of and among them, to recall the heart-burnings and the failures, the famishings and the freezings, the silent, unrecorded transits of * y^ Arctic voyageres.' Aa ',1 1« ij I ':! W'\ 370 ARCTIC VOYAGERS. " Mount Raleigh, named by sturdy old John Davis * a brave mount, the cliffes whereof were as orient as golde,' shows itself still, not so glittering as he saw it two hundred and sixty-five years ago, but a * brave mount' notwithstanding. No Christian eyes have ever gazed in May time on its ice-defended slope, ex- cept our own. Yet there it stands, as imperishable as the name it bears. " I could fill my journal with the little histories of this very shore. The Cape of God's Mercy is ahead of us to the west, as it was ahead of the man who named it. The meta incognita, further on, is still as unknown as in the days of Frobisher. We have passed, by the inevitable coercion of ice, from the highest regions of Arctic exploration, the lands of Parry, and Ross, and Franklin, to the lowest, the seats of the early search for Cathay, the lands of Cabot, and Davis, and Baffin, the graves of Cortereal, and Gilbert, and Hudson — all seekers after shadows. Men still seek Cathay." lih SEALS AT PLAY. IP s i;j CHAPTER XLI. " The storm broke in the early morning hours. We have drifted more than sixteen miles since Saturday. The true bearing of the prominent cape we supposed to be Cape Walsingham was found by solar distance to be S. 63° W. ; while our observed position, by me- ridian altitude and chronometers, placed us but four miles north of Exeter Bay. Either, then, the protrud- ing cape is not Walsingham, or our chronometers are at fault. This latter is probably the case ; for if the coast line be correctly laid down on the charts, the true bearing cited above, projected from one present parallel of latitude, would place us thirty-six miles from the cape. More likely this than so near Exeter. "Our latitude is about 66° 5V, a very few miles north of the projecting headland, the western Gades of our strait. The character of the land is rugged and inhospitable. Ridges, offsetting from the higher range, project in spurs laterally, creviced and water- worn, but to seaward escarped and bluff. Some of these are mural and precipitous, of commanding height. The main range does not retire very far from the sea ; it seems to follow the trend of the peninsula, and most probably on the Greenland shore is but the abutment of a plateau. Its culminating points are not numer- ous : the highest, Mount Raleigh, is, by my vague es- timate, about fifteen hundred feet high. ij m « ft I a. y it' A 372 DRIFT. 1 %^'m 1 ^m 1 " May 27. The land is very near to the eye ; but in these regions we have learned to distrust ocular meas- urements of distance. Though we see every wrinkle, even to the crows' feet, on the cheeks of Mount Ra- leigh, I remember last year, on the west coast of Green- land, we saw almost under our nose land that was thirty-five miles off. A party from the Rescue meas- ured a base upon the ice to-day, and attempted trig- onometrical measurements with sextant angles. They make Cape Walsingham seven miles distant, and the height of the peak at the cape fifteen hundred feet. Our observation places us in latitude 66° 42^ 40'^; our longitude by time sights, at 5h. 43m. P.M., was 60° 54\ According to the Admiralty chart, this plants us high and dry among the mountains of Cape Walsing- ham. "It is evident that our rate of drift has increased. The northwest winds carried us forward eight miles a day while near the strait — a speed only equaled in a few of the early days of our escape from Lancaster Sound. What has become of all the ice that used to be intervening between us and the shore ? At one time we had a distance of ninety miles : we are now close upon the coast. What has become of it ? If it moves at the same rate as we do, why hr^ive we no squeezing and commotion at this narrow strait ? Can it be that the ice to the westward of us has been more or less fixed to the land floe, and that \/e have been drifting down in a race-course, as it were, an ice-river whose banks were this same shore ice ? Or is it, as Murdaugli suggests, that the in-shore currents, more rapid, have carried down the in-shore ice before us, thus widening the pathway for us ? It is certainly very puzzling to find ourselves, at the narrowest REFRACTION. 373 passage, close into the land ; and no commotion, no disturbance. On the contrary, from the mast-head abundant open water meets the eye; and could we escape from our imprisoning, but — thankfully I say it — protecting floe, we might soon be moving in open seas. " May 28, Wednesday. The fact of the day is the rotation of our floe. In spite of its irregular shape, it has rotated a complete circle within the past twenty- four hours. It is still turning at the same rate, wheel- ing us down along the in-shore fields. The Rescue, early this morning, was between us and the land: tho evening before, the same land was astern of us. Strange that no rupture takes place ! ^^ May 29, Thursday. I have just been witnessing one of the oddest of Arctic freaks. We were all of us engaged in tracing out the rugged indentations on Mount Raleigh, as the floe was rolling our vessels slowly along past Cape Walsingham, when, at live o'clock in the afternoon — the thermometer at 27°, the barometer at 30.31, and the atmosphere of the usual pearly opalescence — the captain, sweeping shoreward with his glass, saw a large pyramidal hummock, with a well-defined figure projecting in front of it, evident- ly animated and moving. Murdaugh, looking after- ward, declared it ' a man.' I saw it next, a large human figure, covered with a cloak, and motionless. Murdaugh took the glass again, and holding it to his eye, suddenly exclaimed, ' It moves :' * it spreads out its arms :' ' it is a gigantic bird !' " The hummock was within a nolle of us. The words were hardly uttered before the object had dis- appeared, and the white snow was without a speck. A discussion followed. The size made us at once re- i I i J f I i H ^= i i I i c|! 374 A BEAR KILLED. r^ > r irnxK S ject the bird idea: the shape, too, was that of a cloak- covered man; the motion, as if he had opened his mantle-covered arms. Convinced that it was a hu- man being, an Esquimaux astray upon the ice, Mur- daugh and myself started oflf, nearing the hummock with hearts full of expectation. The traces on the soft snow would soon solve the mystery, and remove our only doubt, whether the Rescues might not be playing us a trick. " Whatever it was, it either did not perceive us ap- proaching, or was willing to avoid us ; for it kept it- self hidden behind a crag. Reaching, however, the spot where it had stood, we found traces, coprolitic and recent, of a bird ; footprints, as a learned professor would have said, of certain familiar animal processes, exaggerated and dignified by those of refraction. "On returning to the brig, the watchers told us that we had been ourselves curiously distorted ; and that, when perched on the little icy crag we had gone to scrutinize, we lengthened vertically into gigantic forms. The position of the bird, probably a glaucous gull, had been breast toward the brig : a vertical en- largement, with the white body and moving wings, explained the phenomenon. "The 'Rescues' had a very large bear hovering around them all this morning. At one P.M. he came within reach of a carefully-prepared ambush, receiv- ing four out of a half dozen balls, a number soon in- creased to nine. You may have some idea of the su- perb tenacity of life of this beast, when I tell you that he ran, thus perforated, with his skull broken and his shoulder shivered. He even attempted a charge, ut- tering a hissing sound, ejaculated by sudden impuli;G, like the * blowing of a whale,' to use Captain Griffin's ' / ,|N ' ! HABITS OF A SEAL. 375 comparison. He measured eight feet five inches, only three inches less than my own big trophy, which, with one exception, is the largest recorded in the stories of the Polar American hunt. What a glorious feed for the scurvy-stricken ships ! " To-day, for the first time, we had a Tide, made ev- ident by the changing phases of the shore. We made southing in the forenoon : now, at half past eight P.M., the alignment of the hills shows a northward drift. The ice is unchanged : our floe is rotating from west to south, against the sun, but not equably. We crossed the Arctic circle at some unknown hour this forenoon. To the eye every thing is as before ; yet it cheats one into pleasant thoughts. I do not wish to see a mid- night sun again. ^^May 30. The seal are out upon the ice, one of the most certain of the signs of summer. They are few in number, and very cautious. We notice that they invariably select an open floe for their hole, and that they never leave it more than a few lengths. Their alertness is probably due to their vigilant enemy, the bear. Sometimes you will see them frolicking togeth- er like a parcel of swimming school-boys ; sometimes they are solitary, but keenly alive always to the en- joyment of the sunshine. I have often crawled with- in fair eye-shot, and, seated behind a concealing lump of ice, watched their movements. " The first act of a seal, after emerging, is a careful survey of his limited horizon. For this purpose he rises on his fore flippers, and stretches his neck in a manner almost dog-like. This maneuver, even during apparently complete silence, is repeated every few minutes. He next commences with his hind or hori- zontal flippers and tail a most singular movement, ,1 ^< l!i 0: t,. 4 ; i' 4 ■ ■ '• Si 6 ill H i ni ,rM-:\ i' ^^m 376 SEAL HUNTING. allied to sweeping ; brushing nervously, as if either to rub something from himself or from beneath him. Then comes a complete series of attitudes, stretching, collapsing, curling, wagging ; then a luxurious, bask- ing rest, with his face toward the sun and his tail to his hole. Presently he waddles oflf about two of his own awkward lengths from his retreat, and begins to roll over and over, pawing in the most ludicrous man- ner into the empty air, stretching and rubbing his glossy hide like a horse. He then recommences his vigil, basking in the sun with uneasy alertness for hours. At the slightest advance, up goes the prying head. One searching glance ; and, wheeling on his tail as on a pivot, he is at his hole, and descends head foremost. " I have watched so many without success, that to- night I determined to try the Esquimaux plan — pa- tience and a snow-screen. This latter, the easier por- tion of the fonnula, I have just returned from complet- ing ; it was a mile's walk and an hour's snow-shovel- ing. The other, the patience, I attempt to-morrow, * squat like a toad' on the ice for an unknown series of hours, with the sun blistering my nose, and blink- ing my eyes the while ; a sort of sport so much like fishing, that it ought to be reserved for the Piscators of our Schuylkill Club. " The walk over the snow to-night was very delight- ful. The opalescence, so painful to the eyes, had giv- en place to a clear atmosphere ; and the low sun was full of rich coloring. Land, too, that pleasing repre- sentative of the world we are cut off from, was refract- ed into grotesque knolls and long spires. " The surface of the floes shows more and more the thawing influence of our sun, now half as high at me- INFILTRATION OF SALT WATER. 377 ridian as in the torrid zone ! Tlie immediate surface to-day was often entire, though we plunged almost knee-deep in water below it. This you will easily un- derstand when I tell you that the thermometer in the sun gave, for four successive hours to-day, a mean of nearly 80° The surface thaw percolates through the loosely-compacted snow, and, forming a pasty sub- stratum, is protected from re-freezing by the very snow through which it has descended. Our mean temper- ature of late has varied but little between 25° and 27° for any twenty-four hours. " The infiltration of saline water through the ice as- sists the process of disintegration. The water formed by surface or sun thaw is, by the peculiar endosmic action which I believe I have mentioned elsewhere, at once rendered salt, as was evident from Baume's hydrometers and the test of the nitrate of silver. The surface crust bore me readily this evening at a tem- perature of 21° and 19°, giving no evidences of thaw. Beneath, for two inches, it was crisp and fresh. As I tried it lower, cutting carefully with my bear-knife, it became spongy and brackish ; at eight inches mark- edly so ; and at and below twelve, salt-water paste. On the other hand, all my observations, and I have made a great many, prove to me that cold, if intense enough, will, by its unaided action, independent of percolation, solar heat, depending position, or even depth of ice, produce from salt water a fresh, pure, and drinkable element. ''''May ^1, Saturday. Walked to-night to the south- ward in search of seal : found the ice in motion, and had some difficulty in getting back. Wind from south- ward, and freshening, after a day of nearly perfect calm. The drift is somewhat to the eastward. The II i 111 1| m Pi II n ^' i \i ■,.,i 378 SUMMARY. i^H tables were heaping up actively, and the chewing process of demolition was in full energy among them. I have some hope that the action may extend itself to the core of our veteran floe-circle ; but for the present it is confined to those peripheral adjuncts that have grown up around it in more recent freezings. A bird's- eye view from the mast-head, corrected by my walks, enables me to map out its present shape with consid- erable accuracy." The " month of roses" closed on us without ad- venture ; but its last ten days were full of monitory changes. The increased temperature had been visibly acting upon the ice, softening down its rough angles, and reducing bowlders to mere knobs on the surface ; its weary monotony becoming every day only more disgusting. From the 1st to the 19th we had drifted almost a hundred miles, and had been expecting daily to make the eastern shore, when land was reported ahead. It proved to be the Highlands around Cape Searle, about thirty-five miles off. It was the first inbreak upon our descjfjte circle of ice and water that we had experienced in ninety-nine days. The hundredth gave us a complete range of dreary, snow-covered hills ; but to men whose last rec- ollections of terra firma were connected with the re- fracted spectres that followed us eighty milep from shore, just one hundred days since, the solid certainty of mountain ridges was inexpressibly grateful. We studied their phases, as we drew nearer to them, with an intentness which would have been ludicrous under different circumstances : every cranny, every wrinkle spoke to us of movement, of a relation with the shut- out world. Our drift which brought us this blessed variety was favored by an unusual prevalence of north- SUMMARY. 379 westerly winds. We made in the thirty-one days of May one hundred and ninety odd miles to the south- ward and eastward. For the last four days of the month we were at the margin of the Arctic circle, alternating within and without it. We passed to the south of it on the 30th, to recross it on the 31st with an accidental drift to the northward. We were experiencing at this time the rapid transition of seasons which characterizes this cli- mate. The mean of the preceding month, April, had been +7° 96' ; that of May was 20° 22'— a difference of nearly twelve degrees. At the same time, there was a chilliness about the weather, an uncomfortable raw- ness, both in April and May, which we had not known under the deep, perpetual frosts of winter. Cold there seemed a tangible, palpable something, which we could guard against or control by clothing and exercise; while warmth, as an opposite condition, was realiza- ble and apparent. But here, in temperatures which at some hours were really oppressing, 60° to 80° in the sun, and with a Polar altitude of 45°, one half the equatorial maximum, we had the anomaly of absolute discomfort from cold. I know that hygrometric con- ditions and extreme daily fluctuations of the thermom- eter explain much of this ; but it was impossible for me to avoid thinking at the time that there must also be a physiological cause more powerful than either. I have alluded in my journal to the return of the birds. They were most welcome visitors. Crowds of little snow-birds (Emhyriza and Plectrophanes), with white breasts and jetty coverts, were attracted by the garbage which the thaw had reproduced around us, and twittered from pile to pile, chirping sweet music over their unexpected store-house. Some of the larger • '■ 'I HJ ijil ■•i ! til 11- t. '^ I if ■: ! 1 ,» ' ■ %■• "Si J 380 SUMMARY. birds, too, were with us, returning to the mysterious North ; the anatinse, represented by the eiders (Soma- teria), followed by two of the uria genus, the grylle and the alke. We recognized the latter as our little fat friend of last summer, and gave him treatment ac- cordingly. I shot thirty-three in one day, which my mess-mates made up to sixty. The characteristic disease of May was the snow- blindness, severe and acute, leaving with some of us a disturbed, uncertain state of vision far from pleasing. The remedy most effective was darkness. A disk of hard wood, with a simple slit, admitting a narrow pen- cil of light, we found a better protection than the gog- gle or colored lens ; the increased sensibility of the ret- ina seeming to require a diminution of the quantity rather than a modification of the character of the ray. The slightest automatic movement varied, of course, the sentient surface affected by the impression. '•'X. HUMMOCK FOnMKO MARCH ia, 1651. CHAPTER XLII. As we neared the narrow Straits of Davis, our ex- pectations of disruption and liberation underwent many changes. All our reasonings seemed to be negatived by the results. We were the illustration of powerless ignorance ; what we hoped for one day, we congratu- lated ourselves that we had escaped the next. We were rotating on the disk of a great wheel, with a rag- ged and constantly changing periphery. Our position on this was eccentric, and our rate of motion variable, as the obstruftions which our ice-field encountered made it revolv*» on one or another axis. We felt that our prison could not retain its integrity much longer against the diversified agencies that were assailing it : beyond this we scarcely framed a conjecture. It was evident that other changes more constant, and probably more effective than those of disruption, were taking place in the great plain around us. The snowy crust began to yield under our feet, and the M* • ^5 'f •' •• . (^ ,1 'li 1^ 1 1 I Jill i Si !;" : A' 4 I k. , 'f r u .> '-if I 382 REVIEW. hummock ridges, which had so long hristled in every direction, were losing their sharpness or bending before the sunshine. We had seen this great field grow up from the bosom of the ocean ; and, traveling back in memory, it seemed but a few days since our sails swelled useless against the mast, as this ominous and unyielding barrier closed us in. What better type can we have of the universal prin- ciple of change than this solid immensity of varied ice, only three months ago a quiet liquid sea, and now resolving itself, under the resistless action of natural causes, into its normal element! The destructive and conservative energies, those great powers of displace- ment and renewal which sustain the equilibrium of the globe, may be seen, in an humble yet impressive scale, in the formation, growth, increase, degradation, and departure of this icy terra firma. The geological analogies exhibited by the changes in the configura- tion of this pack — changes involving the noblest dy- namic forces, as well as those slower actions now oper- ating upon the crust of our earth — would form a vol- ume for the comprehensive record of Von Buch or Mur- chison. Instead of sea and land, the two great reciprocat- ing agents and subjects of geological change, if for a moment you read sea and ice, hosts of analogies come crowding upon you, which, even to an unedu- cated observer like myself, assimilate the theoretical genesis of the one to the practical eye-seen growth ol' the other. The conversion of sea into ice, and of ice to sea, the excavation of valleys, the degradation of hills, the transfer of material to other unkindred sur- faces, the transition from dry ice-fields to marshes im- pregnated with salt, the anomalous influences of cur- TORMING ICE. 383 rents and winds, and the final depravation of crystal- line structure, are marshaled with forces of upheaval and depression, the synclinal and anticlinal axes which characterize the splendid dynamics of ice in motion. I intended, when I began to arrange this narra- tive, to offer my ice-notes as a contribution to the Smithsonian publications. But a new duty is before me in the same field ; and it may perhaps be as well that I should hold them back, till the experience of a northern winter or two shall have enabled me to cest the conclusions which they point to. For the present I content myself with a mere resume. My immedi- ate subject is the growth of the pack. On the twelfth of September, while attempting with a free top-gallant breeze to make our way to the east, the thermometer indicating a mean daily tem- perature of +14° or 18° below the freezing point, the sea was observed to gradually thicken around us. A pasty sludge, formed of crystals broken up by the ac- tion of the waves, began to resolve itself into those polyhedral plates described by Scoresby under the name of pancake ice. SLUDGE. PANCAKE. As the wind increased, these were rolled into act- ual spheroids; their forces being regulated by the laws which control equally compressed spheres, giv- ! % If f 1 I I s. 'i !*; • I- !". ' 1\ I 384 REVIEW. ing rise to a rudely pentagonal arrangement not un- like a tesselated pavement. To such an extent had this increased by the night of the 13th, that we lost all power of progress. When morning opened around us, we found our- selves in the midst of a great area of five-sided tiles, marked at their lines of junction by a slightly uplift- ed ridge : this would already bear a man. From this moment until the date of our escape, nine months after, our sails were without use ; and our move- ments, as well as our destinies, w^ere regulated by our ice-jailer. By the 20th of October, the floe im- mediately about us was twenty inches thick ; and it had so interlocked itself with other ice-fields of differ- ent diameters, that to the eye it became a part of a great plain, terminated only by the headlands of the shores, and a narrow water-channel which separated us from them. HUMMOCKING. 385 As long as we continued in ''Vellington Channel, our ice had not acquired its full firmness and tenac- ity: its structure was granular and almost spongy, its mass infiltrated with salt water, and its plasticity such that it crumbled and moulded itself to our form under pressures which would otherwise have destroy, ed us. By the time we had reached the middle of Barrow's Straits, and the winter's midnight of December had darkened around us, our thermometers indicating a mean of 15° and 20° below zero, the ice attained a thickness of three feet, with an almost flinty hard- ness, and a splintery fracture at right angles to its horizontal plane. Such ice was at its surface com- pletely fresh, and, when tested with nitrate of silver, gave not the slightest discoloration. It was here, while drifting at a mean rate of twelve miles a day, through a channel compressed by the salient projection of the shore, that the most fearful of our ice-disruptions occurred. They seemed to com- bine the horrors of tempest, explosion, and earth- quake. Our floe was severed to its centre. Dark rivers, exhaling that curious meteor, the frost-smoke, reticulated the entire surface ; and our vessel, thrown alternately upon her beams, or plunged bows down into the ice, impressed us with a sense of immediate destruction. This convulsion gave me an opportunity of witness- ing, upon a scale which perhaps exceeded that of any previous experience, the operation called hummocking. Imagine the flat, snow-covered floe surface, caught between two forces of great intensity, or two moving bodies several feet in thickness and miles in diame- ter, meeting at their marginal lines. The pure white Bb 'I ■'», ^m 386 REVIEW. '|||t:|!| surface of the snow remains unchanged. Presently, within some particular zone, determined by causes not to be entered into here, you see a slight crimping, followed by a dotted or Petersham-cloth appearance on the ice. This is followed again very rapidly by a multitude of transverse ridges or waves ; and now for the first time you become conscious of a sharp, hum- ming, grinding murmur. Cast your eyes now over the level floe — level of a minute ago — and you will see that on each side of you there is a descent, and that the descending sur- face is curved. The snow is in motion, and small fissures fly over it in every direction, but principally parallel to the lines of pressure. The noises now be- come mingled with reports, not loud, but prolonged, like breaking the crust of a giant loaf of bread. Sud- denly the lines of snow-fissures open into wedge-like chasms. Now run for it, without stopping to ques- tion; you have been standing all this time in the very centre of a forming hummock. As you run, loud explosions, accompanied by a whirring as of spinning-jennies, and a whining as of young puppies, bring you up ; and turning, you see HUMMOCKING. 387 the floe slowly part in the middle. The lines of pre- viously marked fissures rise up into gigantic tables. Tables of one side oppose those of the other, and the margins of the floes from which they have arisen are pressing on with renewed energies to fill up the par- tial vacancy. Tables become more and more perpen- dicular; the edges beneath meet again, grind, fight, rear themselves into fresh tables, thrusting over those first formed. New cracks rend the level ice. New curves fall into tabular masses; and thus in a few minutes the tranquil surface of frozen snow is cover- ed by fragmentary barriers, grander and more massive than the Pharaonic rubbish of the Ramesium. Differences of resistance along the margin of the floes, owing to irregularities in their lines of junction, give, of course, every irregularity conceivable to this action;* and it is only after it has continued suffi- ciently long to break all protruding edges, that the axis of the hummock approximates to a right line. My sections exhibit great diversity in this ; but we learned, by the direction of the forces and the charac- * The thickness of the icp, which the wood-cut on the folio .ving page is in- tended to represent, was hctween eight and nine feet. The height of one ob- liquely-fractured table was sixteen feet. The whole mass was thrown up from a previously solid floe in less than fifteen minutes. It was one of those on which Brooks and I practiced balancing during the commotion of the 23d of March. !':■ i '•»i| w li '**i mn' ■M ti It ']'"{ mm 388 ter of our floes, to determine pretty accurately before- hand the type of the approaching hummock. Sometimes a hummock is as complete a jumble of confused tables as if Titans had been emptying rub- bish carts of marble upon the floes. Sometimes they are so crumbled by the excessive action, that they look like crushed sugar ; and, again, I have seen neatly- squared blocks piled regularly one above the other in a Cyclopean wall. These pressures sometimes develop grotesque and singular forms. One of the most simple, an arch of ice four feet in thickness, bridging a fissure, is pictured literally in a former chapter. My friend, Mr. Mur- daugh, pointed out to me two narrow tables forming ''tt«I/^i ATMOSPHERIC DEPOSITS. 389 the gable-end and the roof of a house. I am sorry 1 have lost the sketch I made of them. Once, well on in November, while walking toward Barlow's Inlet with old Blinn, we came to a cross perched on a rounded dune, and sonorous when struck ; and I remember, long after day had returned to us, during some of my walks upon the floes, coming to a little grave-yard of ice-tablets. They needed no in- scription to record that winter had been. The two sketches that follow are of one of these monuments ; the second drawing shows the action of gravity on the block after sone weeks of exposure. It was more than fifty feet long. It will readily be seen that these actions, renew- ed at intervals throughout many months, would es- sentially change the topography of our ice-country. In fact, although I have compared the primary and elemental forms of each floe to parts of a tesselated pavement, our great ice-field was one vast, broken, and confused mosaic- work, composed of ice-fields of different ages and thicknesses, and marked at their lines of junction by uplifted ridges of equally- varying dimensions. Except that atmospheric deposit or hoar-frost, which seems in these Arctic regions to take the place of a more direct precipitation, we had no snow until late in November. Then we had those fine, dust-like M ll 4't -\.ti^^ mm ^H jm^'B I PI 1 1^ i mil fO^^I^B ^af Kfi 9 ^ bi t**^^ '■:M\ "If Si 390 REVIEW. snows, which, at low temperatures and in times of high wind, were hardly distinguishable from the driftings of former snow-fields. It was not until our closing month, with one exception, that the snow fell in the familiar flakes of home. All these tended to modify the aspect of our surface, rounding off" edges, and fill- ing up interstitial cavities ; while those frozen vesicles, with modifications of the hexagon form, which I have alluded to as accompanying our parheliac and coronal phenomena, also contributed their share. Thus, then, we continued drifting toward the south, sharing the movements of the icy system of which we were the centre, and only conscious of motion by the observation of that greater system which shone out above us. With March came a renewal of the ice- openings, and animal life, so long suspended, came back to us. The first bird seen was a diver ( C. Sep- tentrionalis), still in his winter plumage. On the same day we saw several sccil. As the openings increased to rivers, and began to permeate the great pack more thoroughly, the narwhal and beluga, and, in two in- stances, the mysticetus, or right whale of the whalers, began to resort to them. The Laridae, represented by the ivory, kittiwake, and the Burgomaster gulls, screamed over the floes. Our old friends, the molle- mokes, fed once more upon the garbage around the vessels. The predatory jager (Lestris parasitica) soon joined them. Bears stalked about in numbers, accom- panied by their satellites, the white foxes. I have spoken of the first renewal of migratory life, as seen in that familiar little fringillide, the snow- bird. In company with the Plectrophanes, they crowd- ed around our ships at a very early day ; but it was only in the second week of May that the great Arc- INFILTRATION OF SALT. 391 tic migration really began. The air was checkered now with moving columns of birds : the families Uria and Somateria, the auks and the eiders, flew over us in continuous crowds. It was at this time that the floe, which had so long been our homestead, began to show symptoms of de- cay. The mean thickness of our pack — the mean of many measurements — might be regarded as eight feet ; although the ice-tables were in some cases so thrust one under the other, as to increase it to twenty and even thirty feet. Our great pack probably extended in a contiguous line from Lancaster Sound to Cape Walsingham, with a breadth of not less than two hund- red miles. It was interesting to observe the compensations by which Nature got rid of this vast accumulation. The simple effects of solar heat, whether from the atmos- phere above or the heated currents below, do not sat- isfactorily explain the dissolution of this ice. Changes in its mechanical structure evidently took place, pre- paring the way for the subsequent actions of thaw. My attention was first called to this fact by hearing, through my friend, Lieutenant Brown, that the observ- atory of Sir James Ross at Leopold Island was moist and saggy, while the outside ice remained dry and firm. In the month of May, while our mean temper- ature was still below the freezing point, I noticed, dur- ing my walks over the ice, that certain surface-floes, which had been during the winter hard and fresh, began to yield under me as I walked, and gave a decidedly brackish taste to the palate. The ice, too, in many cases lost its tenacity and resistance. Our coal, which had been thrown out loosely on it, so de- pressed the little area around it, as to be surrounded ii'i :iiil Hi Ik '^ f li ^^ 392 REVIEW. PI-.., l^h;. i!| niii* i ii' '■■' )'. H ■■'If m 394 AEVIEW. whether by the action of currents and winds, or of pro- truding headlands, must present throughout its entire area a varying momentum and resistance. This, in connection with the fact of the hummock ridges or lines of junction being the soonest to give way, will explain the facility with which this great pack yields to assailing forces from without. I believe I have adverted already to another most interesting and beautiful provision of nature to prevent the reconsolidation of the ice after it has been once broken up during the seasons of thaw. Fragmentary masses, which were fast cemented during the winter to the under surface of the floe, now rise through the water, interposing themselves between the opening tables, and acting as checks or wedges to prevent their reapposition and cementation. By such impressive compensations does nature ef- feet the equilibrium of the year. In a short and irreg- ularly-graduated season, this great ice-raft, the growth of nine months of congelation, is returned to water by means almost independent of thaw, and resumes its office of tempering the climates of the distant south. As the views I have detailed in this chapter of the causes which effect the final disintegration of the pack may perhaps be novel, I venture to recite them in the form of a summary. First. Changes in the molecular condition of the ice at temperatures below the freezing point, giving rise to infiltration of salt water and rapid decomposi- tion of the ice in consequence. Second. A greater intensity of this action, owing to the infraposition and superposition of two fluids of diflering densities, inducing a rapid circulation allied to endosmosis. SUMMARY. 395 Third. The facile disruption induced by transmit- ted forces throughout a plain of varying diameter and resistance. Fourth. The softening down of hummock ridges, the lines of previous junction. Fifth. The interposition of floating fragments or calves, preventing their reconsolidation. ERODED BEno. f : ' '111! •i 11! 1. « 1 1\ \ k i J TOPOGRAPHY OF THE FLOE, MAY 31. A. Advance. B B. Shorter diameter, 3.J miles. R. Rescue. C C. Longer diameter, SJ miles. Distance between ttio vessels, 500 yards. CHAPTER XLIII. "June 1. June opens on us warm. Our mean tem- perature to-day has been above the freezing point, 34° ; our lowest only 29° ; and at 11 this morning it rose to 40°. The snow-birds increase in numbers and in confidence. It is delightful to hear their sweet jar- gon. They alight on the decks, and come unhesitat- ingly to our very feet. These dear little Fringillides have evidently never visited Christian lands. "June 3. The day misty and obscure: no land in sight from aloft ; and no change apparent in the floe. But we notice a distinct undulation in the ice trench- es alongside, caused probably by some propagated swell. " I walked out at night between 9 and 11 o'clock in THE BREAK-UP. 397 search of open water. We had the full light of day, but without its oppressive glare. The thawed condi- tion of the marginal ice made the walk difficult, and forced us at last to give it up. But, climbing to the top of a hummock, we could see the bay rolling its al- most summer waves close under our view. It was a grand sight, but more saddening than grand. It seems like our cup of Tantalus ; we are never to reach it. And while we are floating close upon it, the season is advancing; and if we are ever to aid our broth- ers in the search, we should even now be hurrying baf*-k. ''''June 4. Yesterday over again. But the water is coming nearer us. As we stand on deck, we can see the black and open channel- way on every side of us, except off our port quarter : it is useless to talk of points of the compass ; our floe rotates so constantly from right to left, as to make them useless in de- scription. To port, the extent of ice baffles the eye, even from aloft; it must, however, be a mere isth- mus. '■^June 5, Thursday. We notice again this morn- ing the movement in the trench alongside. The float- ing scum of rubbish advances and recedes with a reg- ularity that can only be due to some equable undula- tion from without to the north. We continue perch- ed up, just as we were after our great lift of last De- cember. A more careful measurement than we had made before, gave us yesterday, between our height aft and depression forward, a difference of level of 6 feet 4 inches. This inclination tells in a length of 83 feet — about one in thirteen. " P.M. The BREAK-UP AT LAST ! A little after five this afternoon, Mr. Griffin left us for the Rescue, after , 4 1 - i L ^r 398 THE RESCUE FREE. making a short visit. He had hardly gone hefore I heard a hail and its answer, hoth of them in a tone of more excitement than we had been used to for some time past ; and the next moment, the cry, * Ice crack- ing ahead !' " Murdaugh and myself reached the deck just in time to see De Haven crossing our gangway. We fol- lowed. Imagine our feelings when, midway between the two vessels, we saw Griffin with the ice separat- ing before him, and at the same instant found a crack tracing its way between us, and the water spinning up to the surface. * Stick by the floe. Good-by ! What news for home?' said he. One jump across the chasm, a hearty God - bless - you shake of the hand, a long jump back, and a little river divided our party. " Griffin made his way along one fissure and over another. We followed a lead that was open to our starboard beam, each man for himself. In half a minute or less came the outcry, ' She's breaking out : all hands aboard !' and within ten minutes from Grif- fin's first hail, while we were yet scrambling into our little Ark of Refuge, the whole area about us Was di- vided by irregular chasms in every direction. " All this was at half past five. At six I took a bird's-eye sketch from aloft. Many of the fissures were already some twenty paces across. Conflicting forces were at work every where ; one round-house moving here, another in an opposite direction, the two vessels parting company. Since the night of our Lancaster Sound commotion, months ago, the Rescue had not changed her bearing : she was already on our port- beam. Every thing was change. "Our brig, however, had not yet found an even keel. 399 bird's-eye view of floe, JUNE 5. A. Advance. D. Floe adhering to tlie Advance. R. Rescue. C. Path between brigs before break-up. 11 II. Hummocks. The enormous masses of ice, thrust under her st n hy the action of repeated pressures, had ghied themt jlves together so completely, that we remained cradled in a mass of ice exceeding twenty-five feet in solid depth. Many cf these tables were liberated by the swell, and rose majv^stically from their recesses, striking the ship, and then escaping above the surface for a moment, with a sudden vault. " To add to the novelty of our situation, two cracks coming together obliquely, met a few yards astern of us, cleaving through the heavy ice, and leaving us at- i " 1 Ml! i i i ■'! I ; i M 400 ROLLING ICE. tached to a triangular fragment of 14 by 22 paces. This berg-like fragment, reduced as it was, continued its close adhesion. Its buoyancy was so great, that it acted like a camel, retaining the brig's stern high in the air, her bows thrown down toward the water. We are so at this moment, 10 P.M." All hands were in the mean time actively at work. The floe had been to us terra firma so long that we had applied it to all the purposes of land. Clothes and clothes' lines, sledges, preserved meats, kindling wood and planking, were now all bundled on board. The artificial horizon, which had stood for eight months upon a little ice-pedestal, was barely saved ; and I had to work hard to get one of my few remain- ing thermometers from a neighboring hummock. The cause of this sudden disruption — I mean the immediate cause, for the summer influences had pre- pared the floe for disintegration — was evidently the sea-swell setting from the southeast. This swell had given us minor manifestations of its existence as far back as the 1st of June. Whether it was increased without, or our floe made more accessible to it by the drifting away of other and protecting floes, I can not say. This, however, was clear, that the great undula- tions propagated by wave action caused our disruption. The proof of this I shall not forget. Standing on our little deck, and looking out on the floe, we had the strange spectacle of an undulating so- lidity, a propagated wave borne in swell-like ridges, as if our ice was a carpet shaken by Titans. I can not convey the effect of this sublime spectacle. The ice, broken into polyhedric masses, gave ai a few hund- red yards no indications to the eye of the lines of sep- aration ; besides which, the infiltration of salt water We THE CALVES. 401 had no doubt increased the plasticity of the material. Imagine, then, this apparently solid surface, by long association as unyielding to us as the shore, taking suddenly upon itself the functions of fluidity, another condition of matter. It absolutely produced some- thing like the nausea of sea-sickness to see the swell of the ice, rising, and falling, and bending, transmit- ting with pliant facility the advancing wave. A hummock hill, about midway between us and the Rescue, gave me an opportunity of measuring rudely the height of the swell. It rose till it covered her quarter boat; sinking again till I could see the side of the brig down to her water-line, an interval of five feet at least. " As we walk along the edge of the open fissures, we see a wonderful variety in the thickness of the ice. Our apparently level surface is, in fact, a mo- saic work of ices, frozen at separate periods, and tes- selated by the several changes or disruptions which we have undergone. Thus I can see the tables un- der our stern extending down at least twenty-five feet: adjoining this is ice of four feet: next comes a field of six feet; and then hummock ridges, with ta- bles choked below, so as to give an apparent depth of twenty. " The ' calves ' also, of which a great many have now risen to the surface, are worthy of note. These singular masses are evidently fragments of tables, of every degree of thickness, which have bci forced down by pressure, and afterward, by some change in the temperature of the water, or by wave and tidal actions, have been liberated again from the floe, and find their way upward wherever an opening permits. We saw them honey-combed and cellular, water-sod- C c !! .,, "• 402 STATE OF THE ICE. f''u (ft i ■>?• den and in rounded bowlders, rising from the depths of the sea. Their density, so near that of the liquid in which they were submerged, made this rise slow and impressive. We could see them many fathoms below, voyaging again to the upper world. Once be- tween the gaping edges of the lead, they effectually prevent the closing. They are about us in every di- rection, interposed between the fields. "The appendage which sustains our brig has a good deal of this character. I will try to make an exact drawing of it as a curiosity, if it hangs on to us much longer. Its buoyancy indicates great sub- merged mass. A strong cable and ice anchor have been carried to a floe on our starboard bow, and the swell drives it upon us like a great battel ing-ram. This ingenious method of poundinjr us out of our te- nacious cradle subjects us to a regular succession of Iieavy shocks, which would startle a man not used to ice navigation. At the time I write, 11 P.M., we have been nearly three hours subjected to this bang- ing without any apparent impression. To-morrow we will, if not liberated, apply the saw; and then again to the warps ! "11 20 P.M. In the midst of fragments, few more than a hundred yards in length, nearly all much smaller. Between them are zigzag leads of open water. Astern of us is an expansion of some fifty yards across ; ahead, a winding creek, wider than our brig. Thus closes the day. "One thing more: a thought of gratitude before I turn in. This journal shows that I have been in the daily habit of taking long, solitary walks upon the ice, miles from the ship. Suppose this rupture to have come entirely without forewarning! I had 3TATE OF THE ICE. 403 greased iny boots for a walk a few hours before the change, and only postponed it because I happened to ffet absorbed in a book. ^|||!l:ii:|'1*ll|||||jiijp I'.!'' Ii|pil!;1r:';i!i !'::'■'■::,:■::':.' ''■^' IIP ; TOPOORAPHY OF FLOE, JUNE 5. m m ' ' -'f' ( * ■ if fllOFILE OF t'LOE ; rOUT SIDU. PBOFILE OF FLOE ; STARBOAKD. CHAPTER XLIV. ^^June 6. Our bumping continued all night, with- out any apparent effect upon our sticking-plaster. Acting, as this impact does, at the long end of a lev- er, our sterii being immovably fixed, it must be hard upon the rudder post, a beam that is now protruding from the least strengthened part of our brig into a transparent glue of tenacious ice. The twelve-feet saw, suspended from a tripod of spars, is at work, try- ing to cut a line across the mass to our keel. But for this appendage, we would be now warping through the fissures. OUR DRAG. 405 " 7 P.M. The position of things continues un- changed. Our ice-saw with great lahor buried its length in the floe, reaching nearly to our stern ; but the submerged material is so thick that it has little or no effect. Wedging, by billets of wood between her sides and the mounding ice, was equally ineffect- ual. Gunpowder would perhaps release us; but that we can not spare. " I tried to measure the depth of this inveterate companion of ours. Standing at our port gangway, I lowered the pump-rod twenty-four feet to a shelf projecting from the mass : beneath this, a prolonga- tion or tongue stretched to a depth which I could not determine. On the other side, to starboard, the ice descends in solid mass some twenty feet. Adopting twenty-four feet as a mean depth, and ninety by fifty feet as the mean of dimensions at the surface, the solid contents of this troublesome winter relic would be 108,000 cubic feet. No wonder it lifts up our little craft bodily. I have made my drawings of it with all topographical accuracy. " The wind has been hauling round from the south to the west, and by afternoon blew quite freshly. We made all sail, even to studding-sails, in hopes of for- cing the cracks ahead, and tearing ourselves, as it were, from oui impediment. Thus far all has failed. "10 P.M. The ship is covered with canvas : she stands motionless amid the ice, although her wings are spread and tense. The wind is fresh and steady from the northwest. Our swell ceases with this wind, and the floes seem disposed to come together again ; but the days of winter have passed by, and the inter- posing calves prevent the apposition of the edges. " The effects of a constant force, slight as it seems, it I'h'i ii 'ii 406 REMEMBRANCERS. m^ "I'lr ;, have been beautifully shown by our brig. Pressing as we do, under full canvas, against heavy yet qui- escent masses, we gradually force ahead, breasting aside the floes, and leaving behind us a pool of open water. Our rate is ten feet per hour! Remember that the old man of Sinbad still clings to us, and that we carry the burden in this slow progress. I hope that the Sinbad comparison will end here ; for I can readily, without much imagination, carry it further. "12 Midnight. Still advancing, dragging behind us this pertinacious mass. We have butted several times rudely against projecting floes, but it is as unmoved as solid rock. Very foggy: Rescue not visible. Ther- mometer at 29°. " We recognize, among the floe fragments around us, old play-fellows. Here we played foot-ball ; there we skated ; by this hummock crag stood my thermom- eters ; and here I shot a bear. We are passing slowly from them, or they from us. Now and then a rubbish pile will show itself, cresting the pure ice. Even an old Champagne basket, full of nothing but sadly-pleas- ant associations, is recognized upon a distant floe. This breaking up of a curtilage is not without its re- grets. I wish that our 'old man' would loosen his griping knees : three hours would put us into compar- atively open water. "June 7, Saturday. The captain says that the shocks of the night of the fifth were the hardest our brig has experienced yet. " This morning we made our incubus fast to one end of a passing floe, and ourselves fast to the other : double hawsers were used, blocks and tackle rigged, and all hands placed at our patent winch, the slack being controlled by a windlass. We parted our stern STATE OF THE ADVANCE. 407 hawser, and that was all. Our resort now is to the fourteen-feet saw. With this, before the day closes, we shall cut a skerf as far as our fore-foot, and then try the efficacy of wedges. " Toward evening the Rescue made sail, and forced her way slowly through the fragments. By eight P.M. she was snugly secured to the other side of our own floe. A beautiful sight it was to see once more, even in this labyrinth of rubbish, a moving sail-spread ves- sel. Once a momentary opening showed us the dark water, and beneath it the shadow of the brig. " 10 40. A crash! a low, grinding sound, followed by loud exclamations of 'Back,' 'back!' 'Hold on,' ' hold on !' I ran upon deck in time to add one cheer more to three which came from the ice. A large frag- ment, extending from her saw-crack along the bottom on the port side, had broken off, cutting the triangle in half, and leaving the crew behind floating and sep- arated from the ship. All that now confined us was the mass (a) which remained on her starboard quarter. This descended some twenty or more feet, embracing our keel, and by its size sustaining us in our perched condition. We had settled but nine inches in conse- quence of our partial disengagement. " Looking from the taffrail down the stern-post, we can now see the position of this portion of our brig distinctly. A strip of her false keel has been forced from its attachments, drawing the heavy bolts, and tearing away some of our sheathing. How far the in- jury extends, whether the entire length of the brig, or through some few yards, we can not tell. It must have occurred during the great ice commotion of De- cember 7th and 8th. The disruption of January no doubt added to the thickness of the underlying tables ;. 'til iiii i St ■ . J^; H*t n % j 408 UNDER WEIGH. wTtm caped wonderfully ^'evation. We have es- «oa^rA2S, f;rir T- ■• •' Once „ore ween twelve and ^ne :> Sk tt""™*- ^' ""^ ''- daugh went down upon ft., f '' """"'"g- Mur- adhering to o„r ira^fTel' IT^'^ "^^ ^«" his weight upon it, when w7f h ^ ^^"^ '""•''^3^ --^sted 'y premonitory gr„X";TtrT- '*"'"«''' ^'"^f««- barely time to scfaS;!?"'? '*««"■• He had nails in the effort, before Cfth^'^r"'' *^"""? ^is tumbled up to the sur fee', l! LT^h '"^ *»"'"'"' " nto clear water. When Tr. if ., ,''""'" """^ more hardly realise the level horirnff'' *'!f. ''^*' ^ "»"" we have been accustomedtoth ''"'''*'"" "^ *'"§«. work so long. *° *'"^ "P and down hill * wSatl! tntSl'm'lke lall^"-!^^^^^^^^ from renewed the old times pr^ss ofK ^'"'"''^ and regularly among the frag^ert' to J^""^' t"'""^ «" eastward. We received some h! *\^°"*''^ard and under weigh until 6 P M X^ ^^ ''"'"P^' '"'* ^^ept tog caused us to haul up C L" '" ''"P«»«*™hle ice- are now fast by three anchl w! ''^ *° ^W«'' ^e ress at six miles. Tb » r!!1!; • ^'*""ate our prog. "From the heavy L to "h-'l""*^'"'"''"- obtained fresh M« Jj t^ fhi"' T. ^'"'««'' -« «mce the 15th of September ihalth " *■' "'^^ *™« hquefied without iire EiX !,.''''* '^'""'^ water days : think of that deaf gLT"*^ ''"'' twenty.four family ! ' "*" strawberry and cream eating col'^orihe'"uprefror!& "'''''' l^ ^^^ntly - PP r northern regions of Wellington, MAONIFICENT FLOE. 40<» or i!"'^ North Baffin's Straits. Tliis ice, tfiougli puro and beautiful, could never have been created in any- single winter. It has made me understand for the first time the startling stories of Wrangell. This floe is now more than two hundred and fifty yards long by four hundred wide ; a size too large for infraposition of tables, while its purity precludes the idea of ground ice. It. depth, ascertained from its mean line of flo- tation, exceeds forty feet. Its surface is level, and the appearance, looking down into its pure depths, beau- tiful beyond description. It forms part of a great field, miles in circumference, as similar coaptating fragments are seen in every direction ; the great swell of the 5th having no doubt destroyed its integrity. From what great winter basin comes this colossal ice f r,! AFFKOACHINO DISCO. iit '\ i Rill ■ilrK-* 1-1:1 2l*' i It . iih-^i" ; ' 'fif t it,:^ 't i .•^l^^%f! CHAPTER XLV. We continued our progress through a labyrinth ol' ice, sometimes running into a berg, or grazing against its edge so close as to carry away a spar or stave a quarter-boat, but still making our way across to the Greenland shore. The sea was studded with low bergs and water- washed floes, wearing the fantastic forms which had surprised us the year before. Some were both complicated and graceful, supported gener- ally by peduncular bases, which gave them a curi- ous aspect of fra- j^^r^Ki i' gility. This was evidently due to the action of the waves at the wa- ter-line, aided by the warmth of the atmosphere. Some of these forms 1 have already giv- en at the foot of chapters; others I group in the margin. If we suppose a near- ly symmetrical lump ol ice, floating with that stable equilibrium which belongs to its excessive submergence, the atmosphere, which has now a tem- '^h,& I i> .,>£ :i!%^ ^^^ :^* I u t i It if giv- '...«««.-' .>ft.. '■^ ■'*^'- •W i.^\' i/ff^ m^ 'i:^ vf^ t .!f> I «A rHAi-n-.i! XI. >'^%1 We couiinutHl out prv^iir*??"< thrt'.*i:: vif :-*'tk e4' icf>, someciiaes ruiniiii«»' *i»i> ?♦. liorg. «>i -^iAtf^ti^ u^ tjtiil iis edge s<> cio:^«* m Ut i'arfy away a .*[).tj- (i* *:tavt* a q:'arter«lwat, but •siill U'-xking our vvjiy acro.-> to tbr (.irf^eniaud sliore. The sea wa.s studded with low berg.s and water- was ht>d iloos, weariiiL'" the iantastlc rorins wdiH'h had 00 m o CD r: O d c o — m - 33 O o > > o m cn t . -kl Mfc '«« i ll < 'ii^ 1 IP p r 1 4- ■. . Iff:: f'"'-'^.-, -^,,;^ PREPARATIONS TO RETURN. 411 perature as high as 64° in the sunshine, will gradu- ally round off and crease the edges, and at the same time will melt the portions of the mass which are above water. Its buoyancy increasing as its weight is reduced, the berg will now rise slowly, presenting a succession of new surfaces to the abrasion of the waves ; and thus we shall have the familiar mushroom or fun- goid appearance which is shown in many of the plates. The process continuing under all the modifications of wave action, while the opposing face of the berg varies with every change of its gravitating centre, we may have ec- centric resemblances to animated things sculptured in the ice, and at other times forms of classic symme- try, or the frets and garniture of iiiedioBval art. Our sail through this fanciful archipelago was a most uncomfortable one. Our stoves had been taken down ; and the scurvy, exaggerated by the increased exposure to damp, began again to bear hard upon us. We devoured eagerly the seal, of which, by good for- tune, we had several re-enforcements ; but as the ex- citements of peril declined, the energies of the men seemed to relax more and more ; and I had reason to fear that we should not be able to resume our search effectively, until the health of our party had under- gone a tedious renovation. It had been determined by our commander that we should refresh at Whale Fish Islands, and then hast- en back to Melville Bay, the North Water, Lancaster Sound, and AVellington Channel ; and certainly there was no one on board who did not enter heart and soul "til 412 KRONPRINSEN. into the scheme. It was in pursuance of it that we were now bending our course to the east. The circumstances that surrounded us, the daily in- cidents, our destination and purpose, were the same as when approaching the Sukkertoppen a year before. There were the same majestic fleets of bergs, the same legions of birds of the same varieties, the same anx- ious look-out, and rapid conning, and fearless encoun- ter of ice-fields. Every thing was unchanged, except the glowing confidence of young health at the outset of adventure. We had taken our seasoning : the ex- perience of a winter's drift had quieted some of our en- thusiasm. But we felt, as veterans at the close of a campaign, that with recruited strength we should be better fitted for the service than ever. All, therefore, looked at the well-remembered cliffs, that hung over Kronprinsen, with the sentiment of men approaching home for the time, and its needed welcomes. We reached them on the 16th. Mr. Murdaugh, and myself, and four men, and three bottles of rum, were dispatched to communicate with the shore. As we rowed in to the landing-place, the great dikes of in- jected syenite stood out red and warm against the cold gray gneiss, and the moss gullies met us like fa- miliar grass-plots. Esquimaux crowded the rocks, and dogs barked, and children yelled. A few lusty pulls, and after nine months of drift, and toil, and scurvy, we were once more on terra firma. God forgive me the revulsion of unthankfulness ! I ought to have dilated with gratitude for my lot. Winter had been severe. The season lagged. The birds had not yet begun to breed. Faces were worn, and forms bent. Every body was coughing. In one hut, a summer lodge of reindeer and seal skins, was I AT GODHAVEN. 413 a dead child. It was many months since I had look- ed at a corpse. The poor little thing had heen foi once washed clean, and looked cheerfully. The fa- ther leaned over it weeping, for it was a boy; and two little sisters were making lamentation in a most natural and savage way. I gave the corpse a string of blue beads, and bought a pair of seal-skin boots for twenty-five cents ; and we rowed back to the brig. In a very little while we were under sail for Godhaven. We were but five days recruiting at Godhaven. It was a shorter stay than we had expected ; but we were all of us too anxious to regain the searching ground to complain. We made the most of it, of course. We ate inordinately of eider, and codfish, and seal, to say nothing of a hideous-looking toad fish, a Lepodogaster, that insisted on patronizing our pork-baited lines; chewed bitter herbs, too, of every sort we could get; drank largely of the smallest of small-beer; and danced with the natives, teaching them the polka, and learning the pee-oo-too-ka in re- turn. But on the 2 2d, by six o'clock in the morning, we were working our way again to the north. We passed the hills of Disco in review, with their terraced summits, simulating the Ghauts of Hindos- tan ; the green-stone clifts round Omenak's Fiord, the great dockyard of bergs ; and Cape Cranstoun, around which they were clustered like a fleet waiting for con- voy. They were of majestic proportions; and as we wound our way tortuously among them, one after an- other would come into the field of view, like a tem- ple set to be the terminus of a vista. At one time we had the whole Acropolis looking down upon us in silver ; at another, our Philadelpia copy of the Par- I I I I Hi ' ( ^^i^'i 414 BERGS. theiion, the monumental Bank of the United States, stood out alone. Then, again, some venerable Cathe- — -T .-■ i^«^ dral, vrith its deep vaults and hoary belfries, would spread itself across the sky; or perhaps some wild combination of architectural impossibilities. We moved so slowly that I had time to sketch sev- eral of these dreamy fabrics. The one which is en- graved on the opposite page was an irregular quad- rangle, projected at the extremity of a series of ice- structures, like the promontory that ends an isthmus : it was crowned with ramparts turreted by fractures ; and at the water-line a great barreled arch went back into a cavern, that might have Aibled as the haunt of sea-kings or smugglers. Another*, much smaller, but still of magnificent size, had been excavated by the waves into a deep grotto ; and the light reflected from the bay against its transparent sides and roofs colored them with a blue too superb for imitation by the brush or pencil. tsmmmmoKm - il ' -i*^'!?' '^■ktSh' ' '^'p:i^.::'ti^f^^_ ■■-'•.f- • l| I ' i III - Il :r fl ■in.?':r ?fr -m-f^i''': i 414 BE JtUS. thvfi.ni, tUe im)iui)ri»»)ifiti I.Uni^ oj' the TTnitixl Sttit^s;. •^ooil out aloiio, Th«n,a.jfain, M>iiv*> vyimrableC-.ithe Jf ^: *_ •i;^:'* r^ '^1 I i-f ■ ,;f .' ^.'.''T-V-' <■'■' '*.^ ':'■ ■* >fn-»>a*1 itr^^l^' ^m»V' t^^ ^y . ar ^i*»dlA5;>^ f^.tw- «-.Ul <'0(n hi nation (:»f ^rjf.%^<\v*^M k 4J*«v.'^/^*?5^feJ*^*l era! ol' tl;ese tlretimy tabrics. 1'lie ono which is t-n- graved on the opposite pajre was an iriee-ular ack JL'to i\ e;i,yeni, that nui(ht have fahled a.s the haunt of v.«•rt-kuit^■^ or sniug:fr]ers. Auo*-hpr, inucli smaller, hm uiil of niagnifieent size, had he»'n exeavated hv fh' \vjivp-' 'vU^ ade< p L'rotto ; and th»^ Hirht reflected from the ba\ ^*iminst its traUvsparent sides and rodf^ eoionvi theni v(y',u .-i. ^^'m- too sup.O! h ibr imitation by the brw*^- .01 penei' m ■^ *&!».; *»i.:?s?i!||;» ■ii/ c 3D 2- " o CO I o ..\. .:,-■-.■.-■ • ■ v^MW^Ti*.- ■.■■ :.<■ It I '■l^ 1.^-: ■ 4 f.iii m ii it ■•'Jl OFF STOROE. 41. In the morning of the 24th we made the pack; more to the south, therefore, than hist year. It ap- peared at first like a firm neck, extendin*r out amoii«]f heavy hergs well into Ilaroo Island ; and romemher- mg our last year's experience, we moved cautiously. But after a while, our captain, now perhaps the best ice-master afloat, determined on boring. The dolphin- striker was triced up, the boats were taken on board, and the old sounds of conning the helm began again. This time we were lucky. In four hours we were through the tongue of the pack, and out in nearly an open sea. We did not move long, however, before the navi- gation became embarrassed. The ice between Cape Lawson and Storoe was too compact to be wedged aside ; and after some rude encounters with the floes, and a narrow escape from a reef of rocks which Ctip- tain Graah's charts do not mention, we found our- selves, on the 25th, nearly embayed by the noble head- lands off Ovinde Oernie. The ice, in a horseshoe l){ ie Ifir - ''■^^' «;. ' I Jl. ,*t EiisM. ') 416 HABITS OF THK SEAL. curve, completely shut us in to the north, and the tongue of the pack we had come through lay between us and the sea. The wind had left us. We were drifting listlessly in a glassy sea that reflected the green-stone terraces and strange pyramidal masses of its romantic shores. We amused ourselves killing seals. There must have been hundreds of them of all varieties playing about us. Generally they were to be seen paddling about alone, but sometimes in groups, like a party of school-boys frolicking in the Schuylkill. One of their favorite sports was " treading water," rising breast- high, keeping up a boisterous, indefatigable splashing, and stretching out their necks, as if to pry into the condition of things aboard ship. We compared their behavior to that of the timorous but curious natives, when the Europeans first met them in the waters of America ; and in our intercourse with them, conformed accurately to the Spanish precedent. Occasionally only we obeyed our " manifest des- tiny" with reluctance. Some of the younger of these poor sea-dogs had overmuch of the honest expression of tlieir land brethren : the truncation of the muzzle in others, with no external ear showing behind it, set their faces in almost perfect and human-like oval. When one of these would come up out of the water near us, and, raising his head and shoulders, that stoop- ed like those of a hooded Esquimaux, gaze steadily at us with his liquid eye, then diving, come up a little linearer and stare again ; so drawing nearer and nearer, diving and rising alternately, till he came within nms- ket range ; it sometimes went hard to salute him with a bullet. We shot, among others, a very large beast (P.har- j,v|tt«i, "ine »J? :ession :zle in it, set oval, water stoop- ily at little ':^ 'M SB iX'-l ti'jv.;"" '? .r^i- ":ri. ■ ' V &> ^ > V |l ,» . bar ■%rr 'V- r» .■ ;4*^ III' 416 TT \ r> T T' ^ u. ^l:;AL. i •'i;.'. :. K'.:v.\pU'Xi^\) ib'it us ii. 10 tltt; >iorth, find ilio -■•ngufj'of the ptokwe had como tbruiigii lay beiw.jHii, iu and flu) s«?^ Thewmd. IhkI ) oft- us. We \vi>re driltifjg iiwtle.ssly »n a j[f|n,>.vv- sea iltftt reflected th(' ((reon-stone terraces and .-»<.- ''.j^^e pyniitiidi^l ruus.seis o; its romantic sliores. We aiaused ourselves k/'" ai4>^'*'. I*" i: "J! >t tJjg?'^ ;;; ^■' behavior lu vJ.at ..■} Mu) v.:''i ;'-i.i( lu/ior >"''>ju»' iif i;,iUt* )'*iin*^!fr 0^ ri^-n' po<..r sea-do^rs iuui overiniurlj •>] th« houest expiessiou of their find brr < hxou : tliAj truncation ofthe muzzle it. others, with no «'xtejaal ear sliowiufr behind it, ,s<" their faces in Hiniosl perfect- and hnmandik(- oviv When oiic el tinv-ie Wdn].! criMW) up out oj* the wal* iurar ns, ajid. niisin*- od like rJiose <.>f a h'V)d'^l IvsiHr-jA'xux, gaze »tcadily .' Hi With hi- fiquid o\<\, thori ; vinf», come nj> a ii:olo rv^Mver aiid stare aj^ain ; so (!••.• wirn^ nearer and r-viruM-, -it vvttjer f)nd rivhiir ulternatel) , fi!! he «• ime withi. :iO> k"? -*? ,i^. • . if ;5(!;nel!faes went hunl to .salute hub vi;,. .i. hiaf • VV<3 *^hri. ■ >T otherK» a Vf-ry iar-je lH-M.,>t ('/ 'xv- ■\ i i^ 'V1.V 'f/ .' - •4 -;C%^ .■•.■■*:^ f.^3i 1. ' i!'»i f .■■£ ;'i ^iifil' ^^t >'/ vm m I'l.jf n '? 1 r< I ^IK SEAL HUNTS. 417 bata), lying upon a floating piece of ice. The captain's ball went through his heart; and my own, equally deadly, within a few inches of it ; hut the unwieldy creature continued struggling to reach the water, until a shot from Mr. Lovell, close upon him, drove a mus- ket-hall through his head. He measured eight feet from tip to tip, five feet eleven inches in his greatest circumference, and five feet six inches in girth behind the fore-flippers. His carcass was a shapeless cylin- der, terminating in an awkward knob to represent the head. We lost two seals by sinking. Hitherto, when kill- ed on the instant by perforation of the brain or spinal marrow, they had invariably floated. But the rule does not hold always. I wounded one so as to carry away the crown of his skull, and Captain De Haven gave him a second shot from within a few yards di- rectly through the head, and yet we lost him. As the balls struck, he discharf:;ed, almost explosively, a quan- tity of air, and went down like a loon. The whalers say, wound your seals ; but my own experience is, that, if they are fat, it is best to kill them at once. A Dan- ish boy, who had joined us by stealth at Disco, told us that the animal's sinking was a proof that he had no blubber. He was probably right : we certainly did not secure any that were in good condition. The next day gave us excitement of a different sort. We had been lying in the young ice-field, close under the southeast shore of Storoe, with the current setting strong toward it, ai?d a grim array of bergs to the west of us. It was an ugly position ; but we were fairly entangled, and there was no escape. Early in the morning, the wind freshened, and blew in toward the island ; the ice piling against the rocky precipice under Dd i 11 i m M k m; 'if! Si M^ -^ ■..,"1, 'rm ■f! »! |l i ) ' i 418 A RAMBLE ON A BERG. our lee, and opening in broken masses to windward. The Rescue managed to make fast to a crag between us and the shore, but our ice-anchors missed. At four in the afternoon we were within rifle-shot of the land, and still drifting ; the wind a gale, and the sea-swell coming in heavily. We stopped, of course, or there would have been an end of my journal. But for some hours things looked squally enough. Our soundings had become small by degrees and beautifully less, till they were down to thirtaen feet ; and the black wall looked so near that you could have hit it with a filbert. It could not have been fifty yards off, when we brought up on some grounded floe-pieces. By eleven, our warps had head- ed us to windward, and our bow was off" shore. For once, at least, we owed our safety to the ice. The Rescue followed a few hours after; and we took the direction of the pack together to the N.N.W. By the next day at noon we were within twenty-three miles of Uppernavik, but a belt of ice hi^ between. We anchored to a berg, and for two days waited pa- tiently for an opening. My messmates in the mean time went off on a hunt to a flat, rocky ledge, that showed itself inshore, and I amused myself with a tramp on the ice-island to which we were fast. I had for company a noble Esquimaux slut, that Governor Moldrup had enabled me to get at Disco, and a dog of the same breed belonging to Mr. Lovell. I do not know what has become of Plosky, as Mr. Lovell named his favorite ; but my poor Disco fell a martyr to our Philadelphia climate and his Arc- tic costume together, some three days after we got home. I had a quiet day's walk. My companions rambled '*«;. f?l " ■•!»■ Lward. tween it four } land, i-swell eeii an looked Qall by )\vn to ar that lid not n some d head- 3. For ive took V. By iy-three jtween. ted pa- a hunt , and I which limaux get at to Mr. Hosky, r Disco lis Arc- we got ambled EXPLANATION. 419 with evident glee over the peaks and ravines of their familiar element. It was a magnificent pile of frost- work. But these crystal palaces of the ice, like every thing else under this northern sky, deceive one strange- ly in their apparent size. We thought, when we an- chored, that the berg was a small one ; yet we coursed more than the tliird of a mile in almost a direct line before we reached its further edge. The pure surfaces which we traveled over were stud- ded with irregular blocks of ice, evidently once de- tached and cemented on again. They varied in size and shape from a boy's playing-marble to a haystack ; ::^jfj^0}0ii^^^^^' ;. S^ and by their interesting distribution suggested most obtrusively the question of almost every Arctic trav- eler, how such fragments find their place on the pla- teau surfaces of the icebergs. I had answered the question for myself before ; but I was glad to be con- firmed by the observations I made in the course of this m '■ -'i. fl!i -*ii 420 VISIT OF ESQUIMAUX. excursion. When first the mass separates from the land-berg or glacier, it is accompanied by a large quan- tity of disengaged fragments, with all varieties of de- tritus ; and during the alternate risings and sinkings that follow the fall into the sea, a great deal of this is caught by the emerging surface of the berg, and ad- heres to it. I noticed valleys, where the subsequent roll had rounded the masses, and grouped them into something resembling bowlder-drift. I had seen sim- ilar valleys in some of the large bergs of Duneira Bay, supplying a bed for temporary water-streams, in which the bowlders were beautifully rounded, and arranged in true moraine fashion. I have given a sketch of one of these : it faces this chapter. Off Storoe, a white fox (C. lagopus) came to us on the loose ice: his legs and the tip of his tail were black. He was the first we had seen on the Green- land coast. He was followed the next day by a party of Esqui- maux, who visited us from Proven, dragging their ka- yacks and themselves over seven miles of the pack, and then paddling merrily on board. For two glasses of rum and a sorry ration of salt-pork, they kept turn- ing somersets by the dozen, making their egg-shell skiffs revolve sideways by a touch of the paddle, and hardly disappearing under the water before they were heads up again, and at the gangway to swallow their reward. The inshore ice opened on the thirtieth, and toward evening we left the hospitable moorage of our iceberg, and made for the low, rounded rocks, which the Hosky pointed out to us as the seat of the settlement. The boats were out to tow us clear of the floating rubbish, as the light and variable winds made their help nee- ESQUIMAUX GUESTS. 42J essiiry, and we were slowly approaching our anchor- ago, when a rough yawl boarded us. She brought a pleasant company, Unas the schoolmaster and parish priest, Louisa his sister, the gentle Amalia, Louisa's cousin, and some others of humbler note. The baptismal waters had but superficially regen- erated these savages: their deportment, at least, did not conlorm to our nicest canons. For the first five minutes, to be sure, the ladies kept their faces close covered with their hands, only withdrawing them to blow their noses, which they did in the most primi- tive and picturesque manner. But their modesty thus assured, they felt that it needed no further illustration. They volunteered a dance, avowed to us confidential- ly that they had educated tastes — Amalia that she smoked, Louisa that she tolerated the more enliven- ing liquids, and both that their exercise in the open air had made a slight refection altogether acceptable. Hospitality is the virtue of these wild regions: our hard tack, and cranberries, and rum were in requisi- tion at once. It is not for the host to tell tales of his after-dinner company. But the truth of history may be satisfied without an intimation that our guests paid niggard II •'JifS^ ly ■' ■\ iA^l'} 1 i 7 ' ir. .. Ifcsr 422 PROVEN. honors to the jolly god of a milder clime. The veri- est prince, of bottle memories, would not have quar- reled with their heel-taps. * '^ * We were inside the rocky islands of Pre uii harbor as our watches told us that another day had begun. The time was come for parting. The ladies shed a few kindly tears as we handed them to the stern- seats: their learned kinsman took a recumDent posi- tion below the thwarts, which favored a continuance of his nap ; and the rest of the party were bestowed with seaman-like address — all but one unfortunate gentleman, who, having protracted his festive devo- tions longer than usual, had resolved not to " go home till morning." The case was a difficult one ; but there was no help for it. As the sailors passed him to the bottom of the boat, and again out upon the beach, he made the air vocal with his indignant outcries. The dogs — I have told you of the dogs of these settlements, how they welcomed our first arrival — joined their music with his. The Provenese came chattering out into the cold, like chickens startled from their roost. The gov- ernor was roused by the uproar. And in i\ midst of it all, our little weather-beaten flotilla ran up the first American flag that had been seen in the port of Proven. OOMIAK. ® ■rl«y PROVEN HILLS. CHAPTER XL VI. The port of Proven is securely sheltered by its mon- ster hills. But they can not be said to smile a wel- come upon the navigator. A smiling country, like a smiling face, needs some provision of fleshly integu- ments; and no earthly covering masks the grinning rocks of Pr()ven. They look as if the process of crum- bling, and wrinkling, and splitting, and splintering had been at work on theni since the first Arctic frost succeeded the last metamorphic fire ; and even now great ledges are wedged off from the hillsides by the ice, and roll clattering down the slopes into the very midst of the settlement. Summer comes slowly upon Proven. When we arrived, the slopes of the hills were heavily patched with snow, and the surface, where it showed itself, was frozen dry. The water-line was toothed with fangs of broken ice, which scraped against the beach IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) V. '^M 4l ^ 1.0 ■tt Uii 122 I.! l.-^Kfi Photograf^c Sciences Corporation 4 \ V \ ^ ;\ 33 WIST MAIN STRUT WnS7IR,N.Y. 14SS0 (716) •73-4503 '^ 424 THE HOUSE OF PROVEN. ' ■] as the tides rose and fell; and an iceberg somehow or other had found its way into the little port. It was a harmless lump, too deep sunk to float into dan- gerous nearness; and its spire rose pleasantly, like a village church. "July 3. I am writing in the *Hosky' House of Cristiansen. Cristiansen is the Danish governor of Proven, and this house of Cristiansen is the House of Proven. Its owner is a simple and shrewd old Dane, hale and vigorous, thirty-one of whose sixty-four win- ters have been spent within th« Arctic circle, north of 70° N. Lord in his lonely region — his four sons and five subordinates, oilmen, the only white faces about him, except when he visits Uppernavik — the good old man has the satisfaction of knowing no superior. His habits are three fourths Esquimaux, one eighth Dan- ish, and the remainder Provenish, or peculiarly his own. His wife is a half-breed, and his family, in lan- guage and aspect, completely Esquimaux. " When the long, dark winter comes, he exchanges books with his friend the priest of Uppernavik. * The Dantz Penning Magazin,' and ' The History of the Uni- tas Fratrum,' take the place of certain well-thumbed, ancient, sentimental novels ; and sometimes the priest comes in person to tenant the * spare room,' which makes it very pleasant, ' for we talk Danish.' " Except this spare room, which elsewhere would be called the loft of the house, its only apartment is the one in which I am. And here eat, and drink, and cook, and sleep, and live, not only Cristiansen and all his descendants, but his wife's mother, and her chil- dren, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who are growing up about her. It is fifteen feet broad by six- teen long, with just height enough for a grenadier, THE FAMILY. 42^ without his cap, to stand erect, and not touch the beams. The frame of the house is of Norway pine, coated with tar, with its interspaces caulked with moss and small window-panes inserted in a deep casing oi wood. " The most striking decorative feature is a ledge or shelf of pine plank, of varying width, which runs round three of its sides. Its capacity is wonderful. It is the sofa and bed, on which the entire united family find room to loll and sleep ; and upon it now are hud* died, besides a navy doctor and his writing board, one ink-bottle, sundry articles of food and refreshment, one sleeping child, one lot of babies not in the least asleep, one canary-bird cage with its exotic and most sorrow- ful little prisoner, and an infinite variety of other ar- ticles too tedious to mention, comprising seal-skins, boots, bottles, jumpers, glasses, crockery both of kitch- en and nursery, coffee-pots, dog-skin socks, canvas pil- lows, an eider-down comforter, and a sick bitch with a youthful family of whining puppies. " Una, the second daughter, has been sick and un- der treatment ; and she is now hard at work with her sisters, Anna, Sara, and Cristina, on a tribute of grati- tude to her doctor. They have been busy all the morning whipping and stitching the seal-skins with reindeer tendon thread. My present is to be a com- plete suit of ladies' apparel, made of the richest seal- skin, according to the standard mode of Proven, which may always be presumed to be the * latest winter fash- ion.' It is a really elegant dress. To some the unmen- tionables might savor of mascularity ; but having seen something of a more polite society, my feminine asso- ciations are not restricted to petticoats. Extremes meet in the Esquimaux of Greenland and Amazons of Paris. f I 426 ESQUIMAUX LIFE. " The large family is a happy one: so small a home could not tolerate a quarrelsome mess. The ^ sons, the men Cristiansens, brave and stalwart fellows, practiced in the kayack, and the sledge, and the whale-net, adroit with the harpoon and expert with the rifle, are constant at the chase, and bring home their spoil, with the honest pride becoming good providers of their household. And the women, in their nursing, cooking, tailoring, and housekeeping, are, I suppose, faithful enough. But what favorable impression that the mind gets through other channels can contend against the information of the nose ! Or- gan of the aristocracy, critic and magister morum of all civilization, censor that heeds neither argument nor remonstrance — the nose, alas ! it bids me record, that to all their possible godliness cleanliness is not super- added. " During the short summer of daylight — it is one of the many apparent vestiges, among this people, of ancient nomadic habits — the whole family gather joy- ESQUIMAUX LIFE. 427 ously in the summer's lodge, a tent of seal or reindeer skin, pitched out of doors. Then the room has its an- nual ventilation, and its cooking and chamber furni- ture are less liable to be confounded. For the winter the arrangement is this : un three sides of the room, close by the ledge I have spoken of, stand as many large pans of porous steatite or serpentine, elevated on slight wooden tripods. These, filled with seal-blub- her, and garnished with moss round the edge to serve as a wick, unite the functions of chandelier and stove. They who quarrel with an ill-trimmed lamp at home should be disciplined by one of them. Each boils its half-gallon kettle of coffee in twenty minutes, and smokes— like a small chimney on fire ; and the three burn together. There is no flue, or fire-place, or open- ing of escape. " On the remaining side of the room stand a valued table and three chairs ; and with these, like a buhl cabinet or fancy etagere, conspicuous in its modest corner, a tub. It is the steeping-tub for curing skins. Its contents require active fermentation to fit them for their office ; and, to judge from the odor, the process had been going on successfully." We warped out to sea again on the afternoon of the third, with our friend the cooper for pilot ; the entire settlement turning out upon the rocks to wish us good- by, and remaining there till they looked in the dis- tance like a herd of seal. But we found no opening in the pack, and came back again to Proven on the fourth, not sorry, as the weather was thickening, to pass our festival inside the little port. Our celebration was of the primitive order. We saluted the town with one of the largest balanced stones, which we rolled down from the cliff" above ; 428 A NIGHT SCENE. .v> t^J '-'V- '•! .iit and made an egg-nogg of eider eggs ; and the men had a Hosky ball ; and, in a word, we all did our best to make the day differ from other days — which at- tempt failed. Still, God ever bless the fourth ! The sixth was Sunday, and we attended church in the morning at the schoolmaster's. The service con- sisted of a long-winded hymn, and a longer winded sermon, in the Esquimaux — surely the longest of long- winded languages. The congregation were some two dozen men and women, not counting our party. We put to sea in the afternoon. The weather was soft and warm on shore ; but outside it was perfectly delightful : no wind — the streams of ice beyond en- forcing a most perfect calm upon the water ; the ther- mometer in the sunshine frequently as high as 76°, and never sinking below 30° in the shade. I basked on deck all night, sleeping in the sun. « And such a night! I saw the moon at midnight, while the sun was slanting along the tinted horizon, and duplicated by reflection from the water below it : the dark bergs to seaward had outlines of silver ; and two wild cataracts on the shore-side were falling from icebacked cliffs twelve hundred feet into the sea. BRITISH WHALERS. 429 July 7. I was awakened from my dreamy sleep to receive the visits of a couple of boats that were work- ing slowly to us through the floes. An English face — two English faces — twelve English faces : what a hap- py sight ! We had had no one but ourselves to speak our own tongue to for three hundred days, and were as glad to listen to it as if we had been serving out the time in the penitentiary of silence at Auburn or Sing-Sing. Their broad North Briton was music. It was not the offensive dialect of the provincial English- man, with the affectation of speaking his language correctly ; but a strong and manly home-brew of the best language in the world for words of sincere and hearty good-will. They had to turn up their noses at our seal's-liver breakfast ; but, when they heard of our winter trials, they stuffed down the seal without tasting it. I felt sorry after they were off, that I had not taken their names down every one. The whaling vessels to which they returned were in the freer water outside the shore stream, the Jane O'Boness, Captain John Walker; and the Pacific, Cap- tain Patterson. These gentlemen boarded us as soon as we got through the ice to them. They thought our escape miraculous; and it was some time before they found words to congratulate us. " Augh !" and " Won- derful !" with a peculiar interchange of looks, was all they said. These burned children dread the fire; and their conversation opened our eyes to dangers we had gone through half unconsciously. Few masters in the whaling trade but have at some time suffered wreck. Two seasons ago, this veteran Patterson saw his ship thrust bodily through another, and then the transfix- ed and transfixing vessels were both eaten up together ii If '*,. 430 BRITISH WHALERS. by the greedy floes. He stepped from the last rem- nant of his buried sail on to the hummocks : " And that's a' that e'e ha' seen o' her !" They left us newspapers, potatoes, turnips, eggs, and fresh beef enough to eat out every taint of scurvy ! They took letters from us for home, and cheered ship when we parted. I must not soon forget the Pacific and Jane O'Boness. WHALERS NEAB THE PACK. INTLRIOR OF A NATIVK liUT, UPHERNAVIK. CHAPTER XLVII. The next day, beating hard to windward, we made Uppernavik again. The scenery n- jund it was very striking, exhibiting some magnific « mural sections of gneiss and slates. The entering headland was some fifteen hundred feet high. We found all the hills patched with snow to the water's edge, where their bases are abraded by the moving floes from one year's end to another. Mr. Murdaugh and myself visited the town ; that is to say, the priest's house, the governor's house, the oil house, the school-church house, and sundry native huts. The wood-cut at the head of the chapter gives r 432 UPPER NAVIK. the interior of one of them, in which we superintend- ed the manufacture of a dish of coffee. We were received by the governor, accompanied by an old friend of ours from Proven, a sort of secretary there, " plenty-scribe-'em" as he styled himself. The old gentleman had arrived at two that morning, in a whale-boat, with his stalwart sons, after thirty-two miles of pulling through the ice against the wind. " Keesey ver bod," he said ; " the ice was very bad." The governor, superior in tone to Cristiansen, who is a self-made man, welcomed us with fine Danish good-breeding, and there is no good-breeding better. We found him out to be a desperate conservative, fear- ful of nothing but change. His house was after the fashion of Mr. Moldrop's, of Godhaven, and scrupu- lously clean. Coffee was served ; and we had the honor of being introduced to three young ladies of the half-breed, absolutely with frocks on. I thought I could see that one of them had pantalettes of seal-skin peeping out from under her skirt, and a wiser critic than myself might have said that all their dre*sses were somewhat antique of fashion. But they met us, on the other hand, with a lady-like disregard of our own outlandish costume; and though our language was somewhat composite in its idiom, for I understand nei- ther the Danish nor the Hosky, and they understood very little English, we managed to keep up quite an animated conversation. It was very pleasant to re- lapse in their company for a while, into the manners of society at home. We saw also the family of Petersen, Penny's dog and Esquimaux manager, all neat and pleasing per- sons; the sons, frank, manly fellows, and the eldest daughter really quite refined and pretty. But we did BAFFIN S ISLANDS. 433 not remain long. Our Aberdeen friends had transfer- red to us a full supply of newspapers which they had brought for Penny ; so, after prescribing for the gov- ernor's child, and receiving a dog-skin jumper for my fee, we returned on board to review the annals of the outer world for the past year. We now pursued our way very smoothly. We had delightful weather ; not the best, indeed, for men whose errand lay ahead, but still very welcome to those who had roughed it of late so severely. Summer was con- centrating all its strength and beauty in the long, sun- encircled day, and the sky looked as if its blue and gold sunshine could never cloud over or end. It was surprising how beautifully the sea revived the colors of the atmosphere. Wherever we looked down into it, it showed deep, like an inverted sky. It was of the most pellucid clearness too. We could see the perfect jungle of sea- weed that was growing under us. Actinia, painted with gaudy colors, went stream- ing by on the tides; Entomostraca and Limacinae grouped themselves among the branches ; and Clios, the ideals of zoophytic otium cum dignitate, were flashing colored light in shady places from their ciliary vibrions, or lazily turning their crimsoned disks to the sunshine. Every now and then some exploring crab would rise from the tree-tops, and waddle down again , into the protecting umbrage. As we went on the bergs became numerous. We sailed through a town of them, grouped together as if on purpose for stage effect. There were two hundred and five, all in view at a time. The whalers call Baffin's Islands the Duck Islands, on account of the number of these birds that breed there, and many of their precipitous headlands Loon- Ee 434 THE EIDER. m 7*«» v.. ■CENE AT Baffin's iilandji. \\'\, heads, for a similar reason. It was fine sport for all hands to gather eggs from the rocky crevices in which they build. The birds, when disturbed by our preda- tory visits, literally darkened the air ; and their quick, sharp cries, the hum of their wings flapping around us, and the surging noise of the sea as it broke against the base of their fortress below, all together might have startled a novice in the trade of plunder. It was something like " gathering samphire." AVe found the eider also very numerous. In the selection of their nests, I remarked that these birds avoid the soft and apparently wind-protected slopes ; a wise instinct, as the drip from the melted snows would expose them to wet there. They choose gener- ally the knobbed face of some summit, where coarse sedges and mosses grow against the stone. Some- times the nest is a mere depression in the moss, sparse- ly lined with down; but more generally it is con- THE EIDER. 435 structed with considerable skill in the tussocks of a coarse grass, whose straw lasts from season to season. The duck and drake build it in company. They free the roots from mould, net the fibres together, cement them firmly by a glutinous excretion, and pad the whole of the interior with their own fine down, felt- ing it well against the sides. The eider is an awkward bird on the wing, and hardly graceful in the water. Its square and block- like head, set clumsily upon the neck, reminds one disagreeably of the Ptero-dactyls of fossil history. On the edges of the floes, while congregated together, quacking and feeding on the helpless Actinia, they seem another animal. The position of their legs, set very far back, throws the body, penguin-like, nearly upright ; and they move about erect, but easily and animated. When in numbers and at rest, they are wary and hard to approach ; but, like most of the An- atina3, are not easily diverted from their line of flight. Their apparent stupidity in sweeping over certain headlands, after our repeated slaughter of their fellows, was like that of our own canvas-backs at home. Wo killed numbers by station shooting. But the greatest enemies of the eider here are the whalers, who, whether from New York, New England, or Old England, are, like my friends the Van Nests in the veracious history of Mr. Knickerbocker, desperate robbers of birds' nests. We gathered two hundred ei- der eggs in one morning before breakfast; but this was gleaning a reaped field. The whaler, Jane O'Bo- ness, had four hundred and fifty dozen on board : she sent us a market-basketful. Parker's vessel, the Pa- cific, had nearly as many. And in the good old days of the fleet, when from sixty to ninety sail dared this IT 111 I n r I' 436 THE PRINCE ALBERT. Melville Bay in a season, they would take from a couple of hundred thousand to half a million. On the ninth we overtook a vessel, which proved to be the M'Lellan of New London, the hearer to us of letters and papers from home. My seals, thank God, were all in red wax ; and I missed my count of twen- ty-four hours, by sitting up through the whole day- light night, reading them till it was breakfast-time. The tenth, we came up with the whaling fleet ly- ing at the Barrier; and before midnight had seven north country whaling captains from them, " holding clack" in our little cabin. The sturdy good fellows were overrunning with sympathy for dangers which they appreciated better than ourselves, but did not limit its expression to words of advice and warning. I must be excused for saying that our countryman. Quail, the master of the M'Lellan, made us pay freely for a few stores we obtained from l:"m, lest the liber- ality of these good Britons should b esteemed a mat- ter of course. Money could hardl have paid them for the luxuries which they insiste on giving up to us. Their malt, and brandy, an vegetables, and quarters of fresh beef, and hauncl s of venison shot on the islands, covered our decks. On the twelfth, from the highc r, point of one of the Duck Islands, we descried with our object-glass a top- sail schooner to the southward, which proved to be the Prince Albert, bound on the same errand as ourselves. Her commander, Mr. William Kennedy, boarded us at midnight between the sixteenth and seventeenth. He had more home letters for us, but he brought his own welcome with him besides. His demeanor announced his character at once. He had with him Dr. Cowrie, Hepburn — the Hepburn of poor Franklin's Copper- MR. KENNEDY AND M. BELLOT. 437 mine River sufferings — and an excellent ice-master, aamed Leask. We saw also, in the course of the day, his second in command, M. Bellot, a volunteer from the French navy, an accomplished and gallant officer. [ regret that the relations of confirmed friendship I have established with these gentlemen make it indeli- cate on my part to speak of them here as I could wish. I have no means of knowing if Mr. Kennedy is appre- ciated at home — his self-denying, philanthropic devo- tion, and unostentatious energy ; but it has given me great pleasure to hear that M. Bellot has recently re- ceived from his government a deserved promotion. We communicated our plans to each other, and agreed, as far as practicable, to pursue our course to- gether. This companionship became a source of great satisfaction to us. We could not feel solitary while our three little vessels sailed in one fleet. We fol- lowed each other's leads, warped, tracked, and bored, and had all our conflicts with the ice together. When we wero beset and at a stand-still, we enjoyed each other's company, ate pemmican and loon, went out hunting, and took long walks with each other. One evening I remember enjoying a delightful tramp, with both M. Bellot and Mr. Kennedy. We began it by chasing a small specimen of the Polar bear. They made signals to guide us from the Al- bert, where they could see his course ; and after puz- zling through the floes, we reached a large berg, be- hind which he lay ensconced. Mr. Kennedy, and his follower, Gideon, took one side; M. Bellot and my- self the other — it being our task to turn him toward them. We got within about one hundred and twen- ty yards of him before he galloped off. M. Bellot, in his excitement, tumbled down twice, and fired once. Iff ' s?: .'>,! 438 PICTURESQUE BERUS. Mr. Kennedy hallooed also repeatedly, and discharged his piece. I am perhaps warranted in believing that the bear heard both reports before leaving us to our- selves, which he did shortly after without further no- tice. This failure put us in the mood for a long straight- forward march. We proceeded due north to a region completely encumbered with bergs, thrown off from a great glacier hard by. About four miles from our brig they assumed a picturesque variety of shape, rarely seen in those found floating out at sea. It was not so much their size that impressed us — though they were very large, several measuring a third of a mile along the base — as the sharpness and boldness of the lines where they were caverned and cloven down. We attributed some of this effect to their freshness and recent origin. They were in some cases so stain- ed by earthy matter as to show plainly the different colors of the cliff-side they had rested on, some dyed with a burned umber, others with the black of an augite formation. One was a conglomerate of great ice-bowlders, stained of a dark tint, but cemented to- gether by ice that was perfectly clear. Another had the shape and the melancholy coloring of a half-torn-down old mansion-house. Some dusky earths, and ash-looking silt from the ground-up gneiss- es, streaked the gable-end, like the sooty chimney- flues ; other ash-colored patches stood for old plaster and darlic*i,^d whitewash ; and the base was choked up with piles of building stone. There are few things to me more suggestive of sentimental moralizing, even ashore, than these zigzag smoke-passages and cham- bers torn open to the day. But I had not seen a real house for full fifteen months ; and this dreamy profile ^ n »l 1 . i S^^^bUb^I ' i '; ] ill^^M^^I 4 W^-W»»'"'T'V -.J?«!::^-ft-'.^-3ti=3T^%'^~*~s^"'«»fW^«*^'' itt! I- T I ti*i 5 |lF.ftU«. !;5od us — thonph tlH'y ■wen> very large, several incaf^ming a third ol' a niile along- the base — as the sharpness and boldness of the col<>ri of ' . •with ii-fetwrji«*d mm^ft-^.' * augito formation. (Me vfm » «N^;ft«wid-Hn gnei^s- m, itreakfed the gftM#^«M^, lik» tte swiTy c.few«uey. fl»iv-'' ; other Bsh-coiored patch**® iit«*^ im »M plaster mv'A darkened whitewash; and th« Imr*!!*- mm eiiokwl % " \#i piles of liaildinj^ stone. Hhm^ nm fcw thiiif** Pifii >:ngffestive of sentimental = ttlizing', ev^ ash' ^.M5»«> iigzm ^moke-p^^-^^ien and chifeE%« hers* ff ;x> |fa#*tfty JHut 1 hM not seen a u^-^^- hoiise ' ' ' . ■>■; f-:^'5l ■ 'f ^#^ .*■?;» '.'k-^.v- ^f] ' v; V ■<■ - ;^tjfi. , •w •II 1 *■ (V\^.. ■•!//. '■ i'- ^fli ■V^;v ;#..:-:^: 1^;: :'■,■■■,■ ^ ij-'.f ;.-- ■■. ,■ p^'i •■ ''-'. ': . -il'v" ".; ■'■' Pj$f v^v^.,- gj ^R^^^ ";S^: '*J\ ^^^^<\ ' 1 .\ ■■ "".-'-■ ; Ift' m^' . ' . ' ■ MByT.J ..'■ . *- ; JPWXf'" ■' «■' . ■ .■•■■* ■ -,» r'' /I , . ■ '• ■' li'' -■^' •■' ■' ' w?'; :•/«• ■ .■-■' . , -i fci.^v-V ,"' /"'.'. ,: [ , ■ m-- ■.■■..';'j.v ■ ' ' ' ' . WHf-;-- ';,; i'-. '■*'•." ^^f?:::': : p. .'* *-- (' ' A'' ECHOES. 439 of a deserted home called me back to firesides with blazing back-logs, and family circlings, and hallow- eves, and childish laughter, and all the rest : a whole year's mean temperature of six degrees (5° 92^) above zero makes the flesh tingle for a hearth-stone. Some of the bergs were worn in deep, vault-like chasms, through which a way was practicable to broader caverns within. In these crystal solitudes the echoes were startling. A whistle, your own whis- tle — you could hardly recognize it for the length and clearness of the ring; the clang of a ramrod was heard running down the ranks of a whole army in review; and when you spoke, your words were repeated through the motionless and elastic atmosphere in syllables al- most as long as your breath would hold out to make them. I tried a hexameter we used to quote at home, and it came back to me, in slow and distinct utter- ance, word for word. There is a certain cousin of mine, whom I remember envying in our school-boy days, for the dispatch with which he could say his prayers of a frosty night before jumping into bed. He may think, when he reads these pages, how odd it would have been to hear his devotional effort repeated at length by such a chorus of echoes in succession. I have spoken of the rich lazulite blue that was re- flected from the bergs. It combined curiously some- times wdth the atmospheric tints. About two o'clock in the afternoon the sun shone out above a bank of mist with that metallic, yellow light which we some- times see when it clears up of an evening after falling weather. Striking on a berg that we had just been remarking for the purity and depth of its color, it was reflected over us in a flood of unearthly green, that opaque, abominable green that the scene-painters are ■l I I! I 440 ADVENTURE IN THE SLUDGE. 1' I V ''III 80 fond of for their scenes of diablerie, without one ray in sympathy with the cheering verdure of vegetation. I have never witnessed the same effect in nature. '^ They were pleasant things these rambles on the ice with our new colleagues, and I should he sorry to for- get them ; but they were sometimes less poetical than the one I have been speaking of There was a part of the ice-field that extended between the two vessels, which we had nicknamed the Albert Floe. A part of this had been broken up by the swell, and a space of some hundreds of yards close by us was filled up for the time with skreed, forming a floating platform of tesselated structure, but without a cement. Mr. Ken- nedy and M. Bellot were on their way to visit us, and had just reached this uncertain pathway. Know- ing the difficulties they might encounter in the tran- sit, and somewhat vain, I fear, of my own ice-craft, I took a boat-hook and started off to meet them. The ice happened not to be conveniently arranged for my progress in a direct line; and at the best of times it requires the composure of a well-balanced mind to make long leaps from one slippery fragment to anoth- er, especially when the dark water between is some- what cold and deep. I was in a hurry, I suppose ; for in one of my jumps I damaged the garniture of my nether limbs, and was constrained to halt long enough to administer some temporary repairs. It lost me a little time; but I jumped along for some hundred yards more, and was soon near enough to see M. Bellot up to his neck, and Mr. Kennedy trying to fish him out with a boat-hook. When I got up to them, which I did by a process of ferriage, using little blocks of floe for a raft, M. Bellot's Arctic attire presented an ap- pearance strikingly aquatic and uncomfortable, With ESQUIMAUX DOaS. 441 the unpretending pride that hecomes a conscious su- periority, I engaged to pilot him hack safely to our little world of dry clothes. Of my success I am not constrained to speak ; hut should this hook ever recall to him the adventures of the day, he shall he welcome to his laugh at my expense. I confess, when he was a second time swimming ahout in the sludge, I really feared his dip would be a deep one. I admit also, on the evidence of my shipmates, that, treated as a group, the effect is unique of a couple of human heings slip- ping heels up on an ice-margin while they are hold- ing up a third hy the strap of his shot-pouch. Both our vessels were carrying home Esquimaux dogs. By continued kindness and over-feeding, I suc- ceeded in quite changing the nature of ours : both Disco and Hosky were on the high road to civilization. But those on hoard the Rescue and the Albert were still as wild as jackals : let loose upon the ice, it was almost impossible to catch them again. One after- noon, a little below the Devil's Thumb, when the dogs of the Albert were out on the floe for exercise, a sud- den breeze allowed her to work to windward through an open lead. One poor dog was left behind. Boats were sent out to recover him, and we all tried by voice and gesture to coax him toward us. But the half savage, though he stood gazing at us wildly when we were at a distance, ran skulking and wolf-like as soon as we were near. We were forced at last to abandon him to his fate. We could see him for hours, a dark speck upon the white floe ; and afterward, as far off as the spy-glass served, still with his head raised and his body thrown back on his haunches. Worse than this ; such was the quiet expanse of ice and water, that we heard the poor creature's howling, waxing y y m 442 ESQUIMAUX DOGS. fainter and fainter, for eight hours after we left the ice. The training of these animals by the natives is of the most ungracious sort. I never heard a kind ac- cent from an Esquimaux to his dog. The driver's whip of walrus hide, some twenty feet long, a stone or a lump of ice skillfully directed, an imprecation loud and sharp, made emphatic by the fist or foot, and a grudged ration of seal's meat, make up the winter's entertainment of an Esquimaux team. In the sum- mer the dogs run at large and cater for themselves. I remarked that there were comparatively few of them at Holsteinberg, and was told a melancholy sto- ry to account for it. It seems that the governor, and priest, and fisherman keep goats, veritable goats, housed in a fire- warmed apartment in winter, and al- lowed the rest of the year to crop the grasses of the snow valleys. Now the half-tutored, unfed Esqui- maux dog would eat a goat, bones, skin, and, for aught I know, horns. The diet was too expensive. It be- came a grave question, therefore, how to reconcile the incompatibilities of dog and goat. The matter was settled very summarily. When the green season of sunshine and plenty came, the dogs were sent to a rocky islet, a sort of St. Helena establishment, about a mile from the main, with permission to live by their wits ; and the goats remained to browse and grow fat at large. The results were tragical. The dogs were afflicted with sore famine. Great life battles began ; the strong keeping themselves alive by eating the weak. By this terrible process of gradual reduction, the colony was resolved into some four or five scarred veterans, whose nightly combats disturbed even the milk drinkers at the settlement, until the remnant at ESQUIMAUX DOOS. 443 last took to the water in desperation, and succeeded in reaching the shore. From these came the " parvum pecus" that we saw. At Holsteinberg, however, the sledge is less neces- sary than further to the north. It is only when the winters are both long and close, for the state of the ice depends on the winds as well as temperature, that the Holsteinberger can make a run as far as Disco. In other seasons his dogs are used only for inner trav- el, along the peculiarly formed valleys, which stretch back like the fiords to interior lakes. But there is a constant intercourse kept up by means of them between Omenak, Rittenbank, Cristian- shaab, Egedesminde, and Disco ; and for some three months, including January and February, they are able to follow the land-floe as far as Proven and Up- pernavik. At these last settlements the dogs are ex- ceedingly numerous. Our friend, the cooper at Pro- ven, had twenty-seven, and each of the stalwart sons of Cristiansen had a team ^^f twelve. Large numbers besides thronged the outskirts, like their pariah breth- ren of Constantinople and the Nile. They do not bark : I distinguish between the bark and the howl ; and they have not the intelligent movement of the tail, which, like the fan of a Spanish seiiorita, I hold to be the most expressive and graceful of all the sub- stitutes for voice. I succeeded, after a while, in mak- ing my poor Disco greet me with her tail erect ; but she died before she had learned to wag it. For the purposes of draught, the dogs are fastened by a simple breast-strap, eight, twelve, or even four- teen abreast — a single trace passing from each to a foot-board on the sledge. The long whip is the sub- stitute for reins: a sharp hiss, accompanied by the ~\ ' .1.. 444 CHANGE OP WEATHER. lash, if need be, is the signal for greater speed ; and a loud "Aief" calls the halt. Harnessed in this man- ner, they will travel from Uppernavik to Disco in two days and a half, resting at night; and for shorter stages, as, for instance, between Proven and Upper- navik, thirty-two miles of actual route, they have made fourteen miles an hour. The recent explorations of Mr. Kennedy have shown how valuable their services can be made to an exploring party. The weather underwent a striking change on the thirteenth. The ice-studded sea, so indefinitely ex- tended by refraction that a poet might have likened it to a turkois set with pearls, took a new charac- ter. A strange, palpable obscurity, wreathing up in long strata to the northward, gradually wrapped itself over every thing. The water grew intensely black beneath us, and vague and smoky as it receded. The ice-floes that used to cut so sharply against it were now lumps of whiteness without margin, and the bergs, always massive and monumental, flared up in distorted magnitude like white shadows. Every thing, in short, grew blurred and uncertain. The wild fowl seemed to leave a streak behind them as they cleaved the misty atmosphere ; and from the little circle of water, still visible around us, the wake of our brig was prolonged like a tongue. These appearances an- nounced the southeaster, the wind, of all others, the most fruitful, at this time of the year, of meteorological changes. It was, besides, a leading wind for our re- turn to the North Water. ■ ' ■ CHAPTER XLVIII. I OUGHT perhaps, as a book-maker, to go on with a diary of our second progress toward the north. But my work is almost done. New excitements, more kindred to my habits than those of authorship, are urging me while I arrange these pages for the press; and I feel that my readers, like myself, must be tired of eftbrts that had no result. From the 13th of July to the 13th of August we loitered along, impatient at the delays which every day forced on us. In the whole month we made but thirty-seven miles. Yet we had no lack of incidents, some of them novel, and some not without more stir- ring interest. But the scenery of the bergs, majestic and varied as it was, began to weary us. Even the hazards of our narrow, and tortuous, and almost criti- cal navigation became things of use ; and when we found ourselves at rest, as we did sometimes, safe and motionless in the surface of an ice-field, we were wast- ed with ennui. After a while, the leads opened close into the shore, and we followed them almost to the base of the cliffs. From this position the indentations and occasional de- pressions of the coast enabled us to see into the coun- try to a considerable distance. That singular ejected rock, the Devil's Thumb, of which I have given several sketches, stands in the re- cess of a curve, of which Wilcox Point forms a head- land. The shore in its immediate neighborhood is not lofty, but dotted here and there with hills jutting out i%7: ■„■. f. \iM m a- nrr' ( I %M 446 ARCTIC glaciers: through massive glaciers. At the northern sweep of the indentation this ice- wall becomes more imposing; and in front of it we found a progeny of bergs, crowd- ed together so close that we could not count them. These glaciers, though differing widely in form from their pinnacled brethren of the Alps, have an impos- ing character of their own. So far as dimensions go, the entire mer de glace might repose on the slope of this single ice-hill, and Aletsch in one of its ravines. Indeed, the whole country between the two abutting head hinds, and extending back as far as the eye could reach, was filled up with one grand frozen mass, so that the sea and its open fiords seemed scarcely gate- ways enough lor the mighty reservoir to pour forth its bergs. The length of this curve was estimated by Mr. Murdaugh at eighteen miles; but the ice extended many miles further along the coast without change. We could not wonder, after this, at the enormous quantities of bergs which lay before us. At the es- carped base of the glacier they were jammed and jum- bled together in every variety of confusion ; some of the mountain character with which we were familiar, others a congeries of rubbish, and illustrating every possible condition of libration. All three vessels were in a cul de sac of floe-cemented bergs, and were obliged to tie up and wait upon their movements. The Alpine glaciers have engrossed, it seems to me, the field of scientific dissertation somewhat unduly. Those which crowd the western coast of Greenland have perhaps a higher interest; growing up, as they do, in a climate which is independent of altitude, be- sides being altogether superior in magnitude of scale. The southernmost cape of this so-called peninsula is nearly in the latitude of 59°, some 500 miles south of weep of iposing; , crowd- :hem. rm from I impos- ;ions go, slope of ravines, ibatting re could nass, so ly gate- forth its 1 by Mr. xtended liange. lormous the es- iid jum- 3ome of Limiliar, ^ every sis were obliged j:*w €• . r w 1 .'M'i I'r. ■V r . ■ - 1' "•;f: vli - ^•' .^V--4^,^ ■^ * iiV. ' .^■*-?C'^:'^ *■■■''' "^.yt i. .. .• i'^^ ■■■■; :^..' . '::,}^:Jh- to me, imduly. ;enland :is they ide, be- scale. isula is )uth of -m^ mm^ m/j<^ h(:.rh,/ r ■. 1 446 41:; ( no >ii KCU'^a^i tt*»ou>>h irtfis.sivo gktvicrs. At. tluj u.i'thern sweop of tJ.e iiidfiiUitioii ih- • ■c-wai) becomes uiote iinpoising'; ajid in i'rout of it u> ..juuI a progeuv <.>} h'M<,^H, crowd- t*tl together so clo;. ;» >i we could not coiiiit vlu^m. 'Vhcar glaciers, ri-. yj^h diireriuf? widely iii form from tlieir }jiiiiia«;ied breitjren of tho Alpa, iia.v<> aii inipos- mg clmraotor of th>.Hf i»w ji. fto iitr as 4i^,. :^t^ fo, the entiro tmr He ghee im^ht repo»4« «*tt iu* -i«-^>a oi this single icp-iiiil. -iiid Aiftjich m aii« of its ravimie. Itidcod, th« whoio couritrs t..iiwot?n the two ubutunsr h*^adl;.inds, and oxttM»d;;,e|* ?.t.*r,k «.s far as the e^'-e could reach, wiis fiJicd vi|. v.it!; oi«> grajid fi-o;<:en mass, so th.ut the 8ea aihi ii-s o]u;ii !i.ord.s &;eenitjd scarcely gate- ways cnouirh tor t lio mighty reservoir to pour forth itis liw*rj:s. 'j'he h^n/th >^( thix eurvf^ wty^ estimated by Mr. MiifilMii^li u. T'sj/iiW't, **uii'«*, r- xi tb« ic« exten«ted «'a,rped K-Mf ,i| ,;;'»• ^'^^v^?.*-* ;^f...;_^ v.«».s--:- j*:umei; bwA jum- bled togctf.'.-r 'n HViiry vufV:H of confusion ; .Miwae of the mountain churaeter with whicit w^^ wer*'^ familiar, otiiers H. coiitT.M-ie.s of rubbish, and illustrating every po.siible condition ol ■sbrHtlou. All three vessels were in a cnl do sac of lJoc-<< ii;'^'m4 ^verj^-, and wc-e obliged lo tie up ;i,nd wait up^"*)* ^Li'?" v^-. • The Alpine gb.rto- Ikw*' ♦^i4f»fiB. , , .<:'i';in.'s lo nje, ti'r ^ idd of sei'^'iui.)- ili^-sertaUi..-;* )H4yrj;»nvho.t miduly, Ttio.se Uiich orov/.[ ihe we;v<«trn %?iY'\^i of Greenland i:.''! petriiap.-s a higher interest; ^r*jv:\i,^ np, us tbey tU:. ■-- y>, climate winch is iiidopeiitb )it < \' altitude, bo- fiidf ■ v;i,'?»|i allogotber jaiperior in imnifutudo of scale. Tb . ,'i ■'/ »j lU' ^^t cap<' '..i this so-called peninsula js nearly .. t »;.i'!i- oi'.*0 ,!jnme oOO miles south of i f^woop of iriposing; s, crowd- liwin. (»rm froTn it» iiupos- abutting ?ye could mass, so ;i'.ly gaie- r Jortii its ?d by BJr. extejuled .somQ of la miliar, |ii;.r every i.iirs wore ^ uljliii^ed uhily. rectiJarid ;is thoy ;!t{<3, be- li' scaltt. iMsiiia it« outh >t" V- '^ I THEIR SITE. 447 the Arctic circle. This termination, which, like Good Hope and Comorin, illustrates Foster's law of South- trending peninsulas, is abrupt and precipitous. The influences of the surrounding sea give to its climate an insular character, and seem to prevent any great glacier accumulation. As we travel, however, to the north, those great in- de.itations known as the Fiords, which penetrate the metamorphic ridges at right angles to their long axes, serve as conduits to the interior ice. The settlements at Baal's River and Godhaab, the earliest inhabited upon the coast, and near the region of the ancient Ice- landic colonists, are the seats of large glaciers. These do not abut directly upon the sea; but, as far as my inquiries extended, issue in troughs that enter the fiords from the north and south, and are connected with those great reservoirs, or mers de glace, which, like vast table-lands, occupy the unknown interior. The North and South Strornfiords, about Holsteinberg, receive similar glaciers; and the annual hunts for the reindeer, which seem to have carried the Esquimaux back from the coast, have disclosed great masses of ice, at whose bases the animals escaping from the musquitoes fall an easy prey to the hunter. When we reach the latitude of 69°, where the green- stone dikes begin to modify the gneissoid character of the ranges, the glaciers approach more nearly to the actual coast. The crystalline schists, however, con- tinue with lofty headlands as far as Wilcox Point; and it was only here, where the mean level of the coast seemed to be reduced, that the great glacier, properly speaking, began. Taking a headland near Wilcox Point, which was known to be fifteen hundred feet above the level of the 448 glaciers: k [f* '. ii W sea, and sweeping round to another headland of simi- lar elevation, we made a rude approximation to the height of the glacier l)et ween : it was about seven hund- red feet at the coast-line. Following it back from the sea with an excellent Fraunhofer telescope, we could see it rising slowly by a gradual talus till it was lost in the distance. Its undulations over the buried coun- try, which it overlaid like a great tombstone, were marked by considerable diversity of surface. They were occasionally furrowed by ravines, indicating wa- ter action ; and in these, wherever the cliffs protruded, a long earthen stain, garnished probably with detrited rubbish, extended down like the lines of a moraine. Sometimes the surface was smooth and unmarred ; but more commonly, and especially on the faces of more abrupt descent, I recognized the crevasse character which I have noted in the bergs. I also observed es- carpments of ice in some instances, great mural faces, beyond which the glacier was continued again; but these were rare. The general color of the glacier, like that of the berg, was a dead white, varied only a little by alterna- tions of light and shadow; and through this the higher land peaks rose like dark knobs. In two places I no- ticed a land spur, extending at right angles to the axis of the chain until it reached the sea, and thrust- ing itself boldly through the ice to the water-line, flanked on each side by the glacier face. I thought too, though my observations with the glass were too rude to assure me of their correctness, that I could trace, in the general configuration of this great ice-surface, delta-like divisions, such rs might be induced by surface streams expanding and divari- cating as they approached the sea. In fact, hosts of THEIR SUBSTANCE. 449 geological analogies suggested themselves, which I do not venture to enlarge upon. It was evident that the accumulations had less variety of general configura- tion as they neared the coast, that their slopes became less sudden, their horizontalism more diffused, and that the water gorges were more ramiform. Reaching the sea, the solid ice-mass terminated ab- ruptly, presenting an escarped face with nearly verti- cal fracture, and varying in perpendicular height ac- cording to the profile of the protruding mass. The margin which defined this line of escarpment was clear and decided ; the only departure from its regular con- tinuity being at the gorges I have just referred to, or at cleanly-cut chasms, referable apparently to disrup- tion. I do not think the substance of the Greenland gla- cier differs materially from that of the Alpine. A frag- ment, examined by the microscope, exhibits the same vesicular structure ; and it breaks into numerous pieces, whose separation is determined by their capillary struc- ture. This fragmentary composition of the glacier ice enables you to walk on it without slipping. Its color is barely translucent, and at a distance as opaque as matte silver. It is only where cracks or chasms have been filled by waters and frozen up afterward, that we have a truly transparent ice. I have examined the neve, which forms so interest- ing a feature in the study of glaciers, only once in situ. This was at the small glacier north of 76°, where this substance occupied the upper portion of its trough. But for the partial cementation of its particles, and a grain-like character which could be detected on close examination, I should have regarded it as a mere ac- cumulation of snow-drift. Ff 450 GLACIERS. H\ The change of the Arctic snows into n6v6 or firn might he the suhj ect of interesting examination. Even the surface drifts of our winter ice-floes underwent this granular transformation rapidly. After tossing ahout as a dry and almost impalpahle powder during the long Polar winter, the returning sun, with its alterna- tions of thaw and congelation, developed a grain-like or almost headed structure. I have seen these crys- talline pellets as large as a cherry-stone, diminishing down to the size of shot or mustard-seed. The Polar glacier, as may he seen clearly when it has taken the berg form, is commonly coated over with this modified snow, and its valleys and minor depressions are often filled with it by drift-action. I have noted by sections strata of fifteen and twenty feet, whose composi'^ion was entirely analogous to the firn of the Alps. It may have been by observing por- tions of the berg like this, that Professor Forbes was led to the assertion that the iceberg is composed not of true ice, but of neve. That the Polar glaciers obey the same law of move- ment as their Alpine brethren, I have seen no reason to doubt. The advance of the glacial faces at Jacobs' Harbor, of which Mr. Olrik informed me, is the only direct fact which I can add to those already noted on this subject. But the very circumstance of their ofi"- casts, the bergs, being so numerous, seems to indicate a continuously protruding influence. It may be that in the more southern settlements of Greenland this advance is limited by atmospheric causes ; but I am strongly inclined to believe that in those further north, the debacle or berg disgorgement is the most powerful countervailing agent. It would be presumptuous, with my very meagre m^:^ BENDING ICE. 451 data, to theorize as to the causes of this progression, or to become the advocate of any one view to the ex- clusion of others. But I confess that my observations of the bergs, and of the ice-fields of our winter-pack, point to the viscous or gelid flow of Professor Forbes. The definition of a solid is at best comparative; and I have had abundant proofs that ice, even at very low temperatures, undergoes molecular changes which modify its external configuration very largely. On the 20th of March, while we were imbedded in the floe, with a temperature many degrees below zero, one of those great convulsions called hummocking had thrown up a table eight feet in thickness by twenty odd in width, and in such a position that it was only sustained by masses of ice at its two extremities. In the month of May, the thermometer never having risen in the interval to within many degrees of the freezing- point, I saw the same ice-table completely bent down, its centre depressed five feet, until arrested in its de- scent by a new support.* This beautiful illustration of the semi-solid charac- ter of the ice during the depths of a Polar winter, when • See the dravings of this ice-table on page 389. 452 GLACIERS. P :_%i5^*- its tenacity more resembled glass or granite than the familiar ice at home, was not a solitary one. The pre- ceding sketch will exhibit an equally marked curva- ture in a larger mass, where the gravitating pressure was applied at the two extremities. Contorted ices, natural bridges, and, as the season advanced, nodding, pen- dulous, stalactitic hum- mocks, were not unfre- quent. These had a dou- ble interest, as bearing not only on the plastici- ty of ice, but on the in- fluence which temperature exerts upon its condition at points below that of congelation, 32°. I have already described the only glacier which I had an opportunity of surveying. It reminded me of La Brenva ; and although I overlooked the ribboned structure, not having seen then the detailed work of Professor Forbes, I recollect tbpt it had the peculiar scalloped shell summit, which he has regarded as il- lustrative of mechanical advance. It was from the icebergs, however, that formed so characteristic a feature of the scene before us, that we derived our best idea of the glaciers from which they had come. To the eye they presented almost infinite diversity ; but it required very little generalization to reduce them ail to a few simple primary forms. Thus the vertical fracture of the glacier, which would indicate the formation of a berg by debacle, would divide the mass into parallelopipedons or other rudely symmetrical solids ; and where the surface of the original plateau was parallel to its base, the de- tached mass would float evenly upon the waters, a FORMS OF BERGS. 453 great table-land with perpendicular sides. This was the most frequent form of the bergs, and the most im- pressive. I have measured some that were thirteen hundred yards on a single face. But the adjustment of the glacier to the country on which it is built generally prevents such a symmet- rical equilibrium. One or another of its great sides will be inclined toward the water, destroying the vert- ical character of the rest, and giving the effect of a sloping hill rising from the sea. Over bergs of this form, and they also were very numerous, you walked as over a terrestrial surface, met by every diversity of configuration, valleys, gorges, hills, plains, and preci- pices. A third form, so abnormal as to characterize a class, but at the same time comparatively rare, was that of a mass, which, probably by continued avalanche mo- tion, had acquired such an irregular form, such a dis- proportion, perhaps, between its width and depth, that its centre of gravity, as it fell, was not within the sub- merged mass. Its equilibrium was therefore uncer- tain, and its side sometimes what had been at first its surface. With some exceptions, the different forms of the berg could be derived from these ; their subsequent changes being dependent on atmospheric or aqueous erosion, or both, or on accidental fractures, and on changes of equilibrium consequent on the others. These last were productive of the most eccentric diver- sities. Great tongues, which had become cavernous under the action of the waves, would rise bristling into the upper air; and gnarled peaks, stained with the silt through which they had plowed, cut in darkened pinnacles against the sky. 434 DUIIOS. •'ri Wi •\" I i'.: I f i ..'.ii _«^^aEi; ^Of'ft There was one great monster, that we called the Tower of Babel, nearly three hundred feet high, with a spiral stair-case as unsatisfactory as some of Martin's imaginings of infraterrene architecture. Another was an enormous honey-combed mass, studded all over with bowlders, and stained with syenitic detritus. JH^^^BEfi^:-' ^«*'^ But curious among all the rest was the berg, of which a sketch is given on the opposite page. It was but partially overturned, and the exposed sur- face was marked all over by circular depressions, ten inches deep and a foot in diameter, so close together as nearly to touch at their upper edges. A small- er berg was so covered with these spot-like exca- »TUI>DLD BERGS. 455 vations, and had withal so strik- ing a form, that it could have no other nickname hut the Giraffe. In my efforts to arrive at the cause of this strange leprosy, I once only found the hottoin of the cavities filled with slimy diotoma- ceous life. It is possible that a vital action had determined this local thawing ; but its symmet- rical character still remains a puzzle. It was very interesting to follow these secondary forms in their changes. Nothing can be more impos- ing than the rotation of a berg. I have often watched one, rocking its earth-stained sides in steadily-deepen- ing curves, as if to gather energy for some desperate gymnastic feat ; and then turning itself slowly over in a monster somerset, and vibrating as its head rose into the new element, like a leviathan shaking the water from its crest. It was impossible not to have sugges- tions thrust upon me of their agency in modifying the geological disposition of the earth's surface. We were in an archipelago of stranded and of mov- ing bergs. In some that had undergone this change of equilibrium, the valleys were studded with irregu- larly angular and rounded rocks, and a detrital paste 456 IMBEDDED BERGS. ,) ' ^ resembling till. In such cases, the deeply imtedded position of the larger fragments spoke of their having been there from the original structure of the berg, while che paste seemed to have been upturned after- ward from the bottom through which the berg had furrowed its way ; the occasional excess of both being due, in a greater or less degree, to atmospheric action. The preceding sketch shows the disposition of these fragments sufficiently well. They consisted of syen- ites, gneisses, rounded quartzes, green-stones, and clay slates ; in fact, of all the character! tic rocks of our Plutonic coast-line. In a single instance, I found a piece of well-marked actinolite, eight inches in diam- eter, surrounded by crumbled chlorites and serpentines. In the primary forms of berg, the disposition of the .transported material did not seem to be determined by any law. Sometimes, but rarely, I could follow moraine traces, or rather lines indicating deposits from contiguous cliffs ; but generally the fragment seemed to be cemented / ' CRYSTALLODROMES. 457 i I I into the glacier from the talus of some descending slope. I can not recall a case in which such fragments had the strictly angular character that belongs to a recent fracture. They were either complete bowlders, or par- tially rounded, as in the two preceding sketches. The influences of the berg as a raft in the translation of masses of rock, with their accompanying paste, may be inferred to some extent from the facts I have thus hastily thrown together. Of near- ly five thousand bergs which I have seen, there was, per- haps, not one that did not contain fragmentary rock. A walk over the berg would disclose them, either clinging partially imbed- ded in their slopes, or in the form of pebbles and still smaller fragments, penetrating in cylindrical cavities deep into the substance of the berg. /'' This form of deposit was even more marked than it seems to have been in the glaciers of the Alps. The - ^«^ -— -^y-^——--— constant daylight, without in- «"»__,^ "^ terruption of solar influence, '~~~ and the absence of radiation during the night, will explain this. I have seen the surface of a berg completely covered, for perhaps a 1 1 i ft ! • il' if III I 458 BERGS. .'"iK coupl« of acres, with the orifices of these perforating crystallodromes. We did not often meet with the pinna- cled character, which is so frequent in the Alps ; a fact which may be due, perhaps, to the absence of the alternate freezing and thawing which attend the alternation of day and night. When the berg was nearly melted down to the wa- ter's edge, the accumulation was more apparent, and the arrangement of drift upon its surface resembled that which the sketches I subjoin were intended to indicate. \ ?.;■ '. \ The berg is beyond all doubt a most important agent in modifying the soundings upon the coast. The grounded bergs off Disco are known to leave troughs, plowed by their projecting tongues, as they float and ground with the rise and fall of the tides. Where the bottom is of mud and till, as is the case on the west coast generally, this action must be very marked ; for on a berg I surveyed trigonometrically in July, which had grounded in soundings of five hundred and twen- ty feet, the great tap-root that anchored it to the bot- tom admitted of an easy rotation, and the berg swung upon its axis with each change of the tide. That such great tongues, though irregular in their shape, do in fact rock and rotate with the movements of the berg, might be inferred, indeed, from the facettes that are worn on the imbedded material ; many of THEIR GEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES. 459 which are disposed about a convexity of uniform curv- ature. We are to remember besides, in considering the ge- ological eccentricities which are to be referred to the action of icebergs, the immense quantities of foreign material which I have spoken of as discoloring or stain- ing so many of the bergs of Omenak, Ovinde, and Melville Bay. These ice-masses are of many millions of tons, all of them bearing the elements of gneissoid rocks, to be deposited in distant localities. A refer- ence to my current chart will show that they pass, in the first instance, toward the north, and, descending along the western coast, perform the entire circuit of the bay. The extensive reaches of shoals, which are so marked a feature of this coast from Pond Bay to Cape Kater, may be due to this character of bergdrift. The islands and shallows about the mouth of Jones's Sound must, I suppose, be referred to it also. V/, i. /•■-, ^ BOWLCEHS IN ICEBERO. my AMO.no the BERQS, MELVILLE BAY. CHAPTER XLIX. I I RETURN from this long digression to my narrative. In the night of the 15th of July a mist cleared away that had inclosed us for some days, and the atmosphere had the pellucid clearness of the Tropics after a rain. We then saw how completely surrounded we were by bergs. We had made fast, on the shore side, to one of magisterial proportions, that had anchored itself in the floe. As we looked coastward, others still closer in were so piled up against the land that it was im- possible to separate them: a jagged wall of ice con- trasting with the hills beyond was all that could be seen. To seaward, I counted seventy- three within the visual angle. As the tide ebbed, the same phenomena of drift whicli had startled us last year in Melville Bay were renew- ed. The floes were choked in around us, so as to pre- vent the possibility of warping from our position ; and ;" I MARCH OF THE BERGS. 461 pre- aiid the kingly bergs began their impressive march. Our anchorage seemed to be a fixed centre, influencing the general tidal streams. The set of the surface ice was rapid to the south ; but where it struck against our island safeguard, the counter-stream worked its way toward the shore. In the midst of this combination of floe-movements, the tide changed, and the inshore bergs began to bear down upon us, moving steadily against the surface current, and nearly against the wind. One of these, of quadrangular form, with a back like a table-land, and in bulk more than equal to two such as our own, advanced from the recesses of the land at the rate of a knot an hour, crumbling all opposing floes before it. Mr. Murdaugh and myself had accomplished a some- what arduous journey over the ice to the Prince Al- bert. We returned just in time to see the two bergs meet, and our little vessels crushed to atoms in their embrace. It was a sight to make " the bravest hold his breath ;" more fearful by much than any whose peril we had shared. But we doubled a projecting crag ; and it was past. Just as the drifting berg was about impinging on the other, it yielded a very little to some inexplicable counter-drift ; moved slowly round on its axis to the northward ; and, passing within fifty yards of the brigs, continued its majestic progress di- rectly in the wind's eye. It was a narrow escape : the Rescue was heeled over considerably by the floes which were forced in upon her, driving in her port bulwarks and demolishing her monkey-rail. The same fearful scene was renewed the next day. A second quadrangle stood out from the shore at the same rate as the other, and had approached within short biscuit-cast, when a deep, protruding tongue, al- i igii >ttiifWBi«MiliMlj^ m li :' ill :i ; I s| i i'i »! 11 'ft 1 r 462 THE SEASON GOING. together invisible to us, opposed itself against our ad- vancing enemy, and with a shock that vibrated to our very centre brought him up. Why does not the at- traction of these masses bring and retain them in ap- position ? Collisions between bergs are certainly rare ; and my own experience, corroborated by the results of much inquiry among the Greenlanders and the fisher- men, seems to say that a union between two bergs, except when one is aground — an exception on which I lay some stress — is almost unknown. A few days after the scene I have described, we neared our hated landmark of last season, the Devil's Thumb. But here the leads closed ; and our labyrinth of bergs attended us still, clogging our way, and wea- rying us with their monotony. Our commander had but one thought, and we all sympathized in it — how could our little squadron regain its position at the searching grounds? We had otherwise no lack of incidents. There were parhelia, intricate ones, with six solar images and ercentric circles of light, one of which had its circumference passing through the sun. And we had bear hunts now and then of mothers and cubs together ; and sometimes we shot r.t a flock of birds. But the spirit of the hunt had left us. We were close upon the middle of August. Less than four weeks remained for us to get rid of this vexatious en- tanglement, press on through Lancaster Sound, com- plete our explorations in Wellington Channel, and re- turn to the open water of the bay. It was before the middle of September that we had been frozen in last year. And here we were in a perfect ice-trap, unable to win an inch of progress. We were without the Albert too. As long ago as GOOD-BY TO THE ALBERT. 463 ro as the fifth, her good folks had determined to make south, despairing of success in a northward effort ; and on the eleventh, while we were yet attached to the old land- floe, she found her way to an open lead, and disap- peared on the thirteenth. We could hardly talk of the regrets we all felt at losing them. It seemed to me that for days after I could hear their broken- hearted little hand-organ grinding " The Garb of Old Gael ;" and their gifts to me, Mr. Kennedy's pocket Bible, Bellot's French treatises. Cowrie's Shetland woolens, and Hepburn's gloves — it quite dispirited me to look at them. aoOD-BY TO THE PRINCE ALBERT, MELVILLE BAY. We perhaps thought of their departure the more, because it implied something of uncertainty as to our own fate. They had avowedly left us, fearless and enterprising as they were, to escape from hazards that we were continuing to brave. Mr. Leask, their vet- m I'l w ,■■> -f i' 464 CRISIS APPROACHING. eran ice-master, thought, when he left us, that if we followed the northern leads there was almost a cer- tainty of our heing caught, like the Swan, and the York, and a host of others before us. A pleasant neigh- borhood, truly ! Here perished the ships of '47. Here the North Star was beset in '48 ; hereabout, the year before last, the Lady Jane, and the Superior, and the Prince of Wales ; and, coming to our own experience of last year, here it was, in this very devil's hole, that we wore out our three weeks' imprisonment. Moreover, the season was more advanced than last year's had been. The thermometer, which stood at noon in the shade at 54°, sunk in the evening hours to 30°. At such a temperature the ice forms rapidly on the deeply chilled water, and the day sun barely melts it. We began to observe too flocks of the little Auk streaming south, as if to harbinger a change of season. It was evident that a very few days must decide where we should pass the approaching winter. The crisis came soon enough. My journal is prolix throughout this period ; but I venture to give it as it stands. I begin with the eleventh of the month. "August 11, Monday. The wind has been nearly all day more or less from the northward. Now, though almost calm, it is from the eastern or shore side, ac- companied by weather sunny and beautiful. " We are still attached to the old land-floe. This so-called land-ice is rather a huge field, hentjmed in by bergs, so as to be immovable. It is, however, young and frail, not exceeding eighteen inches in thickness, and perforated with water-pools, cracks, and seal-holes. It is so rotten that marginal pieces are continually breaking off, and carried into the chaos of floating drift outside. Were we to share the same chance, we THE BERGS MOVING. 465 as it rly all lough le, ac- This [ed in roung :ness, loles. dually [ating be, we must be involved helplessly in floating skreed, adrift, and at the mercy of the winds and currents. As our protecting floe gives way, therefore, men walk over the liberated tables, and plant our ice-hooks further off" in the part that remains solid. This process is go- ing on without intermission ; so that now (12 o'clock M.) we have a hundred yards of cable out ahead and astern. We are surrounded by floes, and the channel outside is a compacted surface of floating rubbish. " As far as the eye can reach, the sea, and, by refrac- tion, the air, is studded with bergs, apparently concen- tering about our anchorage. Astern of us, stretching to the westward, are five, so nearly abreast as to re- semble one ragged mountain precipice. There is not one of these smaller than our Washington Capitol.; and one of them would fill the Capitol square. Di- rectly ahead, only a hundred and fifteen yards off", is a huge one, black, gnarled, water- worn, and serrated with deep chasms ; and streams of melted snow are pouring down in noisy cascades along its gullies. This berg is fast in the anchoring ice ; but eery now and then it breaks off" in great masses with a report like artillery. Between it and the nearest astern of us the distance is about three hundred yards. On one side we have the equivalent of a rock-bound mountain coast : every where else a phalanx of serried bergs. " 2 P.M. The bergs are in motion again, and bear- ing for us. ^'August 12, Tuesday. The berg ahead still holds its anchorage. It is an amorphous mass, so worn that it must have been sorely wrought before its release from the glacier. Its summit is a rolling country, stained with earth and rocks: you can walk up and down hill over it for nearly a mile in a single line. . Gg 'i'*!%.'^^ 466 A DRIFTING ICE-Br.VCH. "About one o'clock to-day, a fragment about as large as Independence Hall fell from it into the ice- sea below. The noise had not the usual sharp, reverb- erating character of these disruptions ; but the effects of the avalanche upon the field into which it fell were very striking. At first, from the centre of turmoil came a circling series of large undulations clothed in foam. Next the floating rubbish began to roll in prop- agated waves ; and these, passing our brig, extended themselves under the margin of the fast floe, breaking it up, and still expanding in one ridge beyond another till they disappeared in the distance. We counted at least five wave circles in the ice-field at one time. It reminded me of our scene in the pack on the fifth of June. ^^ August 15, Friday. The floe we have been fasten- ed to so long still holds together, though traversed by innumerable cracks. The margin is constantly break- ing away ; but our whale lines are laid far out, and as one comes away we warp closer in by the others. " This has kept us from drifting, but it has sur- rounded us with the off-shed fragments of the floes. These are already recemented about us, though con- stantly cracking and breaking away by the varying pressures; and outside of them the loose floes are drift- ing by, morning, noon, and night, like the foam-cov- ered surface of a millrace when the ice gives way in a spring freshet. We may be said to be moored to an uncertain shore, a drifting beach of ice ; while on every side, striving to tear us from this faithless anch- orage, are the unquiet, grinding floes. But the bergs ! it seems almost profanity to speak of them: where are they? " I have compared the outside drift to the foam of _.... '-■w -*; * '^ ■ -'■ > : * , . ...1 , 'f**-' m- 'jr-l-V c i C I u> I lil t^l iiS 'ii,' jH )i|| ^ .!• Lu ■in aI J*-' !■ H H' 1 11 1 » '111 III ^«' i; ii>'»^ % f4l.\. 11' t I >i i . ii :. 1.) \ ■*■■ : III i* ^b • ii'' !*' ifli I; it: i)H I; i'i ll 166 ^ M«iF1:^^« iCK-ii«*t; **- '*At«)at on© o'fjlock ta.day, a iiii^'^*w»t about as ItJi^u n.i liideptiiKl'Juc.o lltfcU. leii iVoui i iiiiu tlie ice« ma balow. The ii*i,>-o hsul rxot iUe usuaj. 4iii.*is reverb- '^rating character of iu^Kw dUrupti\>Ui5 ; but liie wfl'ecU of the avalanche !'j»'>u iu« iieid iutv wimauit i"<^U vvore very strikutg. \% fir^t, iVom t!--^ .-nftiT rri' turinoil came a circUiii^ s^nea t*! larj^e «;. • la ibaiM. Next tho il-jau» r^U tu pft/|>« agated wave?j ; aiid thv if our bri>(, H.xieu»iT fc'a^kij. 1^ i* •'. *•!? i*'**'*? hmn fanten- Mjo 11*5 ii»x^g »«':5ii tt*^» t«.»g»>».i»t«i» tlwHigk travfei*5^l fif one con*«!»i ♦*'i»^' V-- ■ t^**^ »!W'*tsMi«ifc> " Thife bus kept it^ inai** »i;*#i»nj(. oiH ii i'j*fi HitP rounded u.s wjth the ofl-shed trai^nieats of the floe«. These are alrea.dy receineiittd about as, tiiou|yrh con- stantly cracking aud breakjDg avvav by the varyin*? pre.iJjUK^^; and (.tutside *A ^htua. tlie Itio^e ii(i(>j< are driiV- ing ]>y» morning, noon, and night, like ih^^ ilam-cov- vvtj^ mnim:^ of a tndiis«ww« 'wiw,.i,.. ikt^. t^^^p^m way in ■': ttiitiiKg umhift, V» *; B?») H^ >s*t»«t !> K^ ittoored to in it.<^i«iTMMU sh«>r«», 4t driJting bti&iU; 4*1 i> laiihless auch- f'V'i^»,.$j>,'. Ui* uiA<|uiet, {i^rindiiig does. Itut tiie berifs ! it isewt^j4?*l^!i4|P*h*iUV V^ Sh|.»eak of them: wiieie are they-t ' I hiivH Mi*^^^^**^^ \Xka siUiaido diift to tlie ibaui of itouv ay tiie ico- revftcb- i4i wore rurmoil Hi pxt/|>- >reaki)ig uuotliei" uiiLod tit IlU»!!. it liflli of it iaateu- 10 l)o«s. i^4i con- vary in «r aiB driiV- v/ay ill oore