o *^*J^. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 1^128 |2.5 m — — ■■■ i la ■&£ 12.2 1.1 1 ^^ ■yuu 1— II '-"^ 1-'-^- Hiotograiiiic Sciences Corporalioii ^^^} 23 WIST MAIN STRHT wnSTIR,N.Y. 145M (71«)t72-4S03 6^ .^ CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microraproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques <\ Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Notes techniques et bibliographiques The institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may Im bibliographically unique, which may alter any of the imager in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming, are checked below. D m D D D Coloured covers/ Couverture de couleur I I Covers damaged/ Couverture endommagte □ Covers restored and/or laminated/ Couverture restaurAe et/ou pelHcul^e n Cover title missing/ Le titre de couverture manque I I Coloured maps/ Cartes gAographiques en couleur Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black)/ Encre de couleur (I.e. autre que bleue ou noire) I I Coloured plates and/or illustrations/ Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur Bound with other material/ Relii avec d'autres documents Tight bindinq may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin/ La re liure serrdd peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distortion le long de la marge intirieure Blank leaves added during restoration may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming/ II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajouties lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans le texte, mais, lorsque cela 6tait possible, ces pages n'ont pas 6t6 fiimies. rri Additional comments:/ ULJ Commentaires supptimentaires; Thai toth L'Institut a microf ilmA le meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a 4t6 possible de se procurer. Les details de cet exemplaire qui sont peut-Atre uniques du point de vue bibliographique, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une modification dans la mithode normale de filmage sont indiquts ci-dessous. I I Coloured pages/ D Pages de couleur Pages damaged/ Pages endommag6es Pages restored and/oi Pages restaurAes et/ou peiliculAes Pages discoloured, stained or foxei Pages dicolortes. tachet^es ou piquies I — I Pages damaged/ I I Pages restored and/or laminated/ rXTj Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ The poss of t^ film! Origj begi thai sion, othe first sion, or ill n Pages detached/ Pages d^tachies Showthrough/ I2v Transparence Quality in6gale de I'impression Includes supplementary materii Comprend du materiel supplAmentaire Only edition available/ Seule Edition disponible I I Quality of print varies/ I I Includes supplementary material/ I — I Only edition available/ The shall TINI whi< Map diffi entii begi righi requ met Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata slips, tissues, etc.. have been ref limed to ensure the best possible image/ Les pages totalement ou partiellement obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure, etc.. ont 6x6 fiimies A nouveau de fapon A obtenir la meilleure image possible. Various pagingt. This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/ Ce document est film* au taux de reduction indiquA ci-dessous. 10X 14X 18X 22X 28X 30X 7 12X 16X aox 24X 28X 32X a fttailt • du lodiffier r une Imago Tha copy fllmad hara hat baan raproducad thanks to tha ganaroaity of: MoriMt Library UnivmrtityofOttawi Tha imagas appaaring hara ara tha batt quality posaibia conaidaring tha condition and lagibility off tha original copy and in Icaaping with tha ffilming contract apacif icationa. L'axampiaira filmA ffut raproduit grica h la g^nAroaitA da: BibliotliAqiM Moritsat Unlveniti d'Ottmvi Las imagas suivantas ont At* raprodultas avac la plus grand soin, compta tanu da la condition at da la nattat* da l'axampiaira ffilmA, at an confformitA avac las conditions du contrat da ffilmaga. Original copias in printad papar covars ara fllmad baginning with tha front covar and anding on tha last paga with a printad or illustratad impras- sion. or tha bacic covar whan appropriata. All othar original copias ara fllmad baginning on tha first paga with a printad or illustratad impras- sion, and anding on tha last paga with a printad or illustratad imprassion. BS Las axamplairas originaux dont la couvartura an papiar ast imprimAa sont f ilmte an commandant par la pramiar plat at an tarminant soit par la darniAra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'imprassion ou d'iilustration, soit par la sacond plat, salon la cas. Tous las autras axamplairas originaux sont fiimte an commandant par la pramlAra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'imprassion ou d'iilustration at an tarminant par la darnlAra paga qui comporta una talla amprainta. Tha last racordad frama on aach microfficha shall contain tha symbol ^»> (moaning "CON- TINUED"), or tha symbol V (moaning "END "), whichavar applias. Un das symboias suivants apparaftra sur la darniira imaga da chaqua microfficha, salon la cas: la symbola — ► signiffia "A SUIVRE", la symbols V signiffia "FIN". Mapa, platas, charts, ate, may ba ffilmad at diffarant raduction ratios. Thosa too larga to ba antiraly includad in ona axposura ara fllmad baginning in tha uppar lafft hand cornar, laft to right and top to bottom, as many framas as raquirad. Tha ffollowing diagrams illustrata tha mathod: Las cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., pouvent Atre ffilmAs A des taux do reduction diffffAronts. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour Atre reproduit on un soul clichA, il est ffilmA A partir do I'angia supArieur gauche, do gauche A droite, ot do haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images nAcessairo. Las diagrammes suivants illustrent la mAthodo. errata I to t B pelure. on A n 32X 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 >- »- < Q. o Z Z 3 UJ UJ CO h < Q. O z z I UJ I H Z QC H U cc THE FAR NORTH: RXPLORATIONS IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS, BY ELISHA KENT KANE, M.D., COMMA .JDER, SECOND " GRINNELL" EXPEDITION IN' SEARCH QF SIR JOHN FRANKMN. EllINIUJRnH : WILLIAM P. NIMMO. i. I i i PREFACE. In May, 1845, Sir John Franklin sailed from England with the ships Erehua and IWror, on an expedition to attempt the discovery of a " North-West Passage," or water - communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, to the north of the American Con- tinent. No intelligence was received from him after the year following. Numerous expeditions were fitted out and despatched in search of Franklin and his brave crew, both from this country and from America. In 1854, Dr Rae returned with information that the Esquimaux had reported having seen the bodies of "forty white men," near Great Fish River, in the spring of 1850. This intelligence was not considered trustworthy, and Lady Franklin fitted out a private expedition, under the command of Captain M'Clintock, who sailed from Aberdeen in the steam-yacht Foos, July, 1857. He returned in 1859 with indisputable proofs of the death of Franklin, and the fate of the\expedition under his command, — ^fuU details of which he afterwards published.* * A Naxrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin and his Companions. By Captain F. L. M'Clintock, R.N., LL.D. 8yo. 1859. 6 PREFACE. The present volume is an epitome of "Arctic Explora- tions,"* an official account of the Second " Grinnell " Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, — the First Grinnell Expedition having been despatched in 1850 under Lieutenant De Haven, with Dr Kane as surgeon. These expeditions were fitted out at New York, at the expense of a wealthy and generous merchant of that city, named Grinnell, and Mr Peabody, the eminent American resident in London, whose mimificence and liberality are now so well known in this country. In the Second Expedition, the brig Advance was placed under the command of Dr Elisha Kent Kane, assistant-surgeon, U.S.N., a gentleman well qualified, from previous experience, to undertake such an important duty. Dr Kane was born at Philadelphia in 1822, and was educated at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. In 1843 he accompanied the U.S. embassy to China, and for some time travelled in the interior of India. He also explored the Nile as far as the frontiers of Nubia. Returning to America, he afterwards visited the slave-coasts of Africa. He served in the U.S. army for a short period, and underwent many hard- ships during the Mexican campaign. In 1853 he was appointed to the command of the Arctic Expedition, a detailed narrative of which is contained in the present volume. Dr Kane died at Havannah in 1857, at the early age of thirty-five. * Arctic Explorations : tbe Second Grinnell Expe^tion in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1863-55. By Elisha Kent Kane, M.D., U.S.N. 2 vols. 8vo. 1866. . • Org Tui Ou» Doi Oui An Thi AI Ai>^ CONTENTS. K I CHAPTER I. Orqanizatiom— New York to thb North Water, CHAPTER II. The North Water to the WiNTSRiMa Ground, CHAPTER III. Our First Walk Out— The DBPdi Partt, . CHAPTER IV. Domestic Troubles— Return of the DspdT Partt, Our First Winter, . An Anxious Search, . CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. The First Strange Faces — The Esquimaux, . CHAPTER VIII. A New Exploration — Return op Spring, CHAPTER IX. Al'VENT OP THE SkOOND YkAR, . . PAOB 9 18 34 43 50 60 74 83 93 8 COS TEX T^. CHAPTER X. Thk Norto-East Partt, .... CHAPTER XI. Attempt to Rbaoh Bbkohy Island, . • • CHAPTER XII. Thb Second Winter— Departure op Half or the Crew, CHAPTER XIII. Negotiations with the Esquimaux, . CHAPTER XIV. The Esquimaux Village — ^A Walrus Hunt, . CHAPTER XV. The Comino Winter, CHAPTER XVr. Preparation for LsAviNa the Brio, . CHAPTER XVII. Farewell to THE "Advanci!:," CHAPTER XVIII. The March and its Incidents, CHAPTER XIX. Our March oyer Land and Sea, CHAPTER XX. Starvation — Plenty— The Escape Welcome, CHAPTER XXI. COIICLUSION, , PAQC . 100 . 113 . 124 . 138 . 150 . 167 . 1G8 . 181 . 191 . 205 . 222 . 227 PAQI 100 113 124 188 150 157 108 181 191 205 222 227 THE FAR NORTH. CHAPTER I. ORGANIZATION — NEW YORK TO THE NORTH WATER. In the month of December 1852, I had the honour of receiving special orders from the Secretary of the Navy of the United States, to " conduct an expedition to the Arctic Seas in search of Sir John Franklin." I had been engaged, under Lieutenant De Haven, in the Grinnell Expedition, which sailed from the United States in 1850 on the same errand; and I had occupied myself for some months after our return in maturing the scheme of a renewed effort to rescue the missing party, or at least to resolve the mystery of its fate. Mr Grinnell, with a liberality altogether characteristic, had placed the .4 c/vawce, in which I sailed before, at my disposal for the cruise ; and Mr Peabody of London, the generous representative of many American sympathies, had proffered his aid largely toward her outfit. The Geographical Society of New York, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Philoso- phical Society, and a number of scientific associations :ind 10 Tm: FAR NOUTU. friends of science besides, had come forward to help me; and by their Aid I managed to secure a better outfit for purposes of observation than would otherwise have been possible to a party so limited in numbers, and absorbed in other objects. Ten of our little party belonged to the United States Navy, and wore attached to my command by orders from the Department; the others were shipped by me for the cruise, and at salaries entirely disproportioned to their services: all were volunteers. We did not sail under the rules that govern our national ships; but we had our own regulations, well considered and announced beforehand, and rigidly adhered to afterward through all the vicissi- tudes of the expedition. These included — first, absolute subordination to the oflicer in command, or his delegate; second, abstinence from all intoxicating liquors, except when dispensed by special order; third, the habitual disuse of profane language. Wo had no other laws. All hands counted, we were eighteen at the time of sailing. Another joined us a few days afterward; so that the party under my command, as it reached the coast of Greenland, consisted of — Elisha Kent Kane, Commander. Henry Brooks, First Of&cer. Isaac I. Hayes, M.D., Surgeon. John Wall Wilson. James M'Gary. Gborok Riley. William Morton. CORISTIAN OhLSBN. Henry Qoodfbllow. August Sontaq, Astronomer. Amos Bonsall. Geo ROB Stephenson. Georqb Whipplb. William Godfrey. John Blake. Jefferson Baker. Peter Schubert. Thomas Hiokey. Two of these, Brooks and Morton, had been my associates EQUIPMEST. 11 me; in the first expedition ; gallant and trustwoi-thy men, both of them, as ever shared the fortunes or claimed the grati* tude of a commander. The Advance had been thoroughly tried in many en- counters with tho Arctic ice. She was carefully inspected, and needed very little to make her all a seaman could wish. She was a brig of one hundred and forty four tons, intended originally for carrying heavy castings from an iron-foundry, but strengthened afterward with great skill and at large expense. She was a good sailor, and easily managed. We had five boats; one of them a metallic life-boat. Our equipment consisted of little else than a quantity of rough boards, to serve for housing over the vessel in winter, some tents of India-rubber and canvas, of the simplest description, and several carefully-built sledges, some of them on a model furnished me by the kindness of the British Admiralty, others of my own devising. Our store of provisions was chosen with little regard to luxury. We took with us some two thousand pounds of well-made pemmican,* a parcel of Borden's meat-biscuit, some packages of an exsiccated potato, resembling Edwards's, some pickled cabbage, and a liberal quantity of American dried fruits and vegetables ; besides these, we had the salt beef and pork of the navy ration, hard biscuit, and flour. A very moderate supply of liquors, with the ordinary et ceteras of an Arctic cruiser, made up the diet-list. I hoped to procure some fresh provisions in addition, before reach- ing the upper coast of Greenland; and I carried some barrels of malt, with a compact apparatus for brewing. We had a moderate wardrobe of woollens, a full supply * Pemmican^ cured meat, pulverized, mixed with fat and packed in hermetically sealed cai.es. 12 THE FAR NORTH, of knives, needles, and other articles for barter, a large, well-chosen library, and a valuable set of instruments for scientific observations. We left New York on the 30th of May 1853, escorted by several noble steamers; and, passing slowly on to the Narrows amid salutes and cheers of farewell, cast our brig off from the steam -tug and put to sea. It took us eighteen days to reach St John's, Newfound- land. The Governor, Mr Hamilton, a brother of the Secretary of the Admiralty, received us with a hearty English welcome ; and all the officials, indeed all the in- habitants, vied with each other in efforts to advance our views. I purchased here a stock of fresh beef, which, after removing the bones and tendons, we compressed into rolls by wrapping it closely with twine, according to the nautical process of marling, and hung it up in the rigging. After two days we left this thriving and hospitable city; and, with a noble team of Newfoundland dogs on board, the gift of Governor Hamilton, headed our brig for the coast of Greenland. We reached Baffin's Bay without incident. We took deep-sea-soundings as we approached its axis, and found a reliable depth of nineteen hundred fathoms : an interesting result, as it shows that the ridge, which is known to extend between Ireland and Newfoundland in the bed of the Atlantic, is depressed as it passes further to the north. A few days more found us off the coast of Greenland, making our way toward Fiskernaes, the harbour of which we entered on the 1st of July, amid the clamour of its entire population, assembled on the rocks to greet us. We found Mr Lassen, the superintending official of the Danish Company, a hearty single-minded man, fond of his. wife, his children, and his pipe. The visit of our brig I 9 HANS CHRISTIAN. id , was, of course, an incident to be marked in the simple annals of his colony; and, even before I had shown him my official letter from the Court of Denmark, he had most hospitably proflfered everything for our accommodation. We became his guests, and interchanged presents with him before our departure; this last transaction enabling me to say, with confidence, that the inner fiords* produce noble salmon-trout; and that the reindeer-tongue, a recognised delicacy in the old and new Arctic continents, is justly appreciated at Fiskernaes. Feeling that our dogs would require fresh provisions, which could hardly be spared from our supplies on ship- board, I availed myself of Mr Lassen's influence to obtain an Esquimaux hunter for our party. He recommended to me one Hans Christian, a boy of nineteen, as an expert with the kayak and javelin; and after Hans had given me a touch of his quality by spearing a bird on the wing, I engaged him. He was fat, good-natured, and, except under the excitements of the hunt, very stolid and unim- pressible. He stipulated that, in addition to his very moderate wages, I should leave a couple of barrels of bread and fifty- two pounds of pork with his mother; and I became munificent in his eyes when I added the gift of a rifle and a new kayak. We found him very useful; our dogs required his services as a caterer, and our own table was more than once dependent on his energies. Bidding good-bye to the governor, whose hospitality we had shared liberally, we put to sea on Saturday, the 1 0th, beating to the northward and westward in the teeth of a heavy gale. From the time we left Fiskernaes, we had the usual delays from fogs and adverse currents, and did not reach * Fiord, an abrupt inlet of the sea. 14 THE FAR NORTH. \ the neighbourhood of Wilcox Point, which defines Melville Bay, until the 27th of July. On the 16th we passed the promontory of Swarte-huk, and were welcomed the next day at Proven by my old friend Christiansen, the superintendent, and found his family much as I left them three years before. Frederick, his son, had married a native woman, and added a sum- mer tent, a half-breed boy, and a Danish rifle, to his stock of valuables. My former patient, Anna, had united for- tunes with a fat-faced Esquimaux, and was the mother of a chubby little girl. Madame Christiansen, who counted all these and so many others as her happy progeny, was hearty and warm-hearted as ever. She led the household in sewing up my skins into various serviceable garments; and I had the satisfaction, before I left, of completing my stock of furs for our sledge parties. Coasting along, we passed in succession the Esquimaux sett lenient of Kingatok, the Kettle — a mountain- top, so nnmed from the resemblances of its profile — and finally Yotlik, the furthest point of colonisation; beyond which, save tlie sparse headlands of the charts, the coast may be regarded as unknown. . Then, inclining more directly to- ward the north, we ran close to the Baffin Islands, siglited ^the landmark which is known as the Horse's Head, and passing the Duck Islands, bore away for Wilcox Point. We stood lazily along the coast, with alternations of per- fect calm and off-shore breezes, generally from the south or east; but on the morning of the 27th of July, as we neaied the entrance of Melville Bay, a heavy ice-fog settled around us. We could hardly see across the decks, and yet were sensible of the action of currents carrying us we knew not where. By the time the sun bad scattered the mist, Wilcox Point was to the south of us; and our (( THE BERGY HOLE:' 15 so little brig, now fairly in the bay, stood a fair chance of drifting over toward Devil's Thumb, which then bore east of north. The bergs which infest this region, and which have earned for it among the whalers the title of the " Bergy Hole," showed themselves all around us — we had come in among them in the fog. It was a whole day's work, towing with both boats; but toward evening we had succeeded in crawling off shore, and were doubly rewarded for our labour with a wind. I had observed with surprise, while we were float- ing near the coast, that the land-ice was already broken and decayed ; and I was aware, from what I had read, as well as what I had learned from whalers and observed myself of the peculiarities of this navigation, that the in- shore track was in consequence beset with difficulty and delays. I made up my mind at once. I would stand to the westward until arrested by the pack,* and endeavour to double Melville Bay by an outside passage, A chronicle of this transit, condensed from my log-book, will interest the reader : — " July 28. — Bore up to the northward and eastward, heading for Cape York in tolerably free water. " Juli/ 29. — Entered broken ice, intending to work to the northward and eastward, above or about Sabine Islands, in search of the north-eastern land-ice. The breeze freshened off-shore, breaking up and sending out the floes, the leads t rapidly closing. Fearing a besetment, I determined to fasten to an iceberg; and after eight hours of very heavy labour, warping, heaving, and planting ice-anchors, succeeded in effecting it. "We had hardly a breathing spell, before we were * Pack, a large area of broken floating ice. t Lead, a navigable opening in the ice. 16 THE FAR NORTH. startled by a set of loud, crackling sounds above us ; and small fragments of ice, not larger than a walnut, began to dot the water like the first drops of a summer shower. The indications were too plain ; we had barely time to cast oflf, before the face of the berg fell in ruins, crashing like artillery. ** Our position, in the mean time, had been critical, a gale blowing off the shore, and the floes closing and scudding rapidly. We lost some three hundred and sixty fathoms of whale-line, which were caught in the floes, and had to be cut away to release us from the drift. It was a hard night for boat-work, particularly with those of the party who were taking their first lessons in floe navigation. " July 30. — Again moored alongside of an iceberg. Holding on for clearer weather. Two lively bears seen about 2 A-M. The * Red Boat,' with Petersen and Hayes, got one j I took one of the quarter-boats, and shot the other. *^ August 1. — Beset thoroughly with drifting ice, small rotten floe-pieces. But for our berg, we would now be carried to the south ; as it is, we drift with it to the north and east. "About 10 P.M. the immediate danger was past; and, espying a lead to the north-east, we got under weigh, and pushed over in spite of the drifting trash. The men worked with a will, and we bored through the floes in ex- cellent style." On our road we were favoured with a gorgeous spectacle, which hardly any excitement of peril could have made us overlook. The midnight sun came out over the northern crest of the great berg, our late " fast friend," kindling variously-coloured fires on every part of its surface, and * Floe, a portion of ice detaclied from the maii: body. i \) IS ; and tegan to shower, time to ;rashing itical, a ng and id sixty es, and [t was a i of the dgation. iceberg, ars seen [ Hayes, fhot the e, small now be le north it; and, gh, and lie men IS in ex- )ectacle, nade us lorthern :indling ce, and THE NORTU WATER. 17 1 muking the ice around us one great resplendency of gem work, blazing carbuncles, and rubies and molten gold. Our brig went crunching through all this jewellery ; and, after a tortuous progress of five miles, arrested here and there by tongues which required the saw and ice- chisels, fitted herself neatly between two floes. Here she rested till toward morning, when the leads opened again, and I was able, from the crow's-nest, to pick our way to a larger pool some distance ahead. In this we beat back- ward and forward, like gold-fish seeking an outlet from a glass jar, till the fog caught us again ; and so the day ended. Everything now depended upon practical ice knowledge; and, as I was not willing to trust any one else in selecting the leads for our course, I spent the whole day with M'Gary at the mast-head. At midnight we were clear of the bay and its myriads of discouragements. The North Water, our highway to Smith's Sound, was fairly ahead. We succeeded, not without some laborious boring and serious risks of entanglement among the broken icefields. But we managed, in every instance, to combat this last form of difficulty by attaching our vessel to large icebergs, which enabled us to hold our own, however swiftly the surface floes were pressing by us to the south. Four days of this scarcely varied yet exciting navigation brought us to the extended fields of the pack, and a fortunate north- wester opened a passage for us through them. We were now in the North Water. . • • 18 THE FAR NORTH. CHAPTER 11. TIIK NORTH WATER TO THE WINTERING GROUND. My diary continues : — " We passed the * Crimson Cliflfs ' of Sir John Boss in the forenoon of August dth. The patches of red snow, from which they derive their name, could be seen clearly at the distance of ten miles from the coast. It had a fine deep rose hue, and all the gorges and ravines in which the snows had lodged were deeply tinted with it. I had no difficulty now in justifying the somewhat poetical nomenclature which Sir John Franklin applied to this locality; for if the snowy surface were more diffused, as it is no doubt, earlier in the season, crimson would be the prevailing colour. "Late at night we passed Conical Rock, the most insulated and conspicuous landmark of this coast; and, still later, Wolstenholme and Saunder's Islands, and Oomenak, the place of the North Starts winter-quarters — an admirable day's run ; and so ends the 5th of August. We are standing along, with studding-sails set, and open water before us, fast nearing our scene of labour. We have already got to work, sewing up blanket bags and preparing sledges for our campaignings on the ice." We reached Hakluyt Island in the course of the next day. *^ August 6. — Cape Alexander and Cape Isabella, the headlands of Smith's Sound, are now in sight; and, in addition to these indications of our progress toward the field of search, a marked swell has set in after a short blow from the northward, just such as might be looked h "M *,V' TUE FIRST CAIRK. 10 for from the action of the wind upon an open water-space beyond. *^ August 7. — ^We have left Cape Alexander to the south ; and Littleton Island is before us, hiding Cape Hatherton, the latest positively-determined headland. We are fairly inside of Smith's Sound. "As we neared the west end of Littleton Island, after breakfast this morning, I ascended to the crow's-nest, and saw to my sorrow the ominous blink of ice ahead. The wind has been freshening for a couple of days from the northward, and if it continues, it will bring down the floes on us. " My mind has been made up from the first that we are to force our way to the north, as far as the elements will let us ; and I feel the importance, therefore, of securing a place of retreat, that in case of disaster we may not be altogether at large. Besides, we have now reached one of the points at which, if any one is to follow as, he might look for some trace to guide him." I determined to leave a cairn on Littleton Island, and to deposit a boat with a supply of stores in some con- venient place near it. One of our whale-boats had been crushed in Melville Bay, and the metallic life-boat was the only one I could spare. Its length did not exceed twenty feet, and our crew of twenty could hardly stow themselves in it, with even a few days' rations ; but it was air- chambered and buoyant. Selecting from our stock of provisions and field equipage such portions as we might by good luck be able to dispense with, and adding with reluctant liberality some blankets and a few yards of India-rubber cloth, we set out in search of a spot for our first depot. It was essential that it should be upon the mainland, for the rapid tides might 20 THE FAR NORTH. BO wear away tlie ice as to make an island inaccessible to a foot-party ; and yet it was desirable that, while secure against the action of sea and ice, it should be approachable by boats. We found such a place after some pretty cold rowing. It was off the north-east cape of Littleton, and bore S.S.E. from Cape Hatherton, which loomed in the distance above the fog. Here were buried our life-boat with her little cargo. We placed along her gunwale the heaviest rocks we could handle, and, filling up the inter- stices with smaller stones and sods of andromeda and moss, poured sand and water among the layers. This, frozen at once into a solid mass, might be hard enough, we hoped, to resist the claws of the polar bear. We found to our surprise that we were not the first human beings who had sought a shelter in this desolate spot. A few ruined walls here and there showed that it had once been the seat of a rude settlement ; and in the little knoll which we cleared away to cover in our store- house of valuables, we found the mortal remains of their former inhabitants. Nothing can be imagined more sad and homeless than these memorials of extinct life. Hardly a vestige of growth was traceable on the bare ice-rubbed rocks ; and the huts resembled so much the broken fragments that surrounded them, that at first sight it was hard to distin- guish one from the other. Walrus-bones lay about in all directions, showing that this animal had furnished the staple of subsistence. There were some remains, too, of the fox and the narwhal ;* but I found no signs of the seal or reindeer. These Esquimaux have no mother earth to receive their dead, but seat them as in the attitude of repose, the knees * NarwJial, the sea unicorn. rilE DOGS. 21 ;iblo to secure achable tty cold on, and in the ife-boat rale the e inter- da and , This, enough, ;he first desolate I that it i in the ir store- of their ess than itige of ^s; and its that } distin- iit in all bed the too, of the seal ve their Le knees ■■ drawn close to the body, and enclose them in a sack of skins. The implements used by the person while living are then grouped around him ; they are covered with a rude dome of stones, and a cairn is piled above. This simple cenotaph will remain intact for generation after generation. The Esquimaux never disturb a grave. Our stores deposited, it was our next office to erect a beacon, and intrust to it our tidings. We chose for this purpose the Western Cape of Littleton Island, as more conspicuous than Cape Hatherton ; built our cairn ; wedged a staff into the crevices of the rocks ; and, spreading the American flag, hailed its folds with three cheers as they expanded in the cold midjiight breeze. These important duties performed — the more lightly, let me say, for this little flicker of enthusiasm — we rejoined the brig aarly on the morning of the 7th, and forced on again towards the north, beating against wind and tide. ^^ August 8. — I had seen the ominous blink ahead of us from the Flagstaff Point of Littleton Island, and before two hours were over, we closed with ice to the westward. " In the evening I ventured out again with the change of tide, but it was only to renew a profitless conflict. The flood, encountering the southward movement of the floes, drove them in upon the shore, and with such rapidity and force as to carry the smaller bergs along with them. We were too happy, when, after a manful struggle of some hours, we found ourselves once more out of their range. " Our new position was rather nearer to the south than the one we had left. It was in a beautiful cove, land- locked from east to west, and accessible only from the north. Here we moored our vessel securely by hawsers to the rocks and a whale-line carried out to the narrow entrance. At M'Gary's suggestion, I called it Tog oo THE FAR NORTH. Inlet ;' but wo afterwards remembered it more thankfully as Refuge Harbour. " August 9. — It may be noted among our little miseries, that we have more than fifty dogs on board, the majority of which might rather be characterised as * ravening wolves.' To feed tbii'-family, upon whose strength our progress and success depend, is really a difficult matter. The absence of shore or land ice to the south in Baffin's Bay has prevented our rifles from contributing any mate- rial aid to our commissariat. Our two bears lasted the cormorants but eight days; and to feed them upon the meagre allowance of two pounds of raw flesh every other day, is an almost impossible necessity. Only yesterday they were ready to eat the caboose up, for I would not give them pemmican. Corn-meal or beans they disdain to touch, and salt junk would kill them. " Accordingly I started out this morning to hunt walrus, with which the Sound is teeming. We saw at least fifty of these dusky monsters, and approached many groups within twenty paces ; but our rifle balls reverberated from their hides like cork pellets from a pop-gun target, and we could not get within harpoon-distance of one. Later in the day, however, Ohlsen, climbing a neighbouring hill to scan the horizon, and see if the ice had slackened, found the dead carcase of a narwhal — a happy discovery, which has secured for us at least six hundred pounds of good whole- some flesh. The length of the narwhal was fourteen feet, and his process, or * horn,' from the tip to its bony encase- ment, four feet. We built a fire on the rocks, and melted down his blubber ; he will yield readily two barrels of oil.'* With the small hours of Wednesday morning came a breeze from the south-west, which was followed by such an apparent relaxation of the floes at the slack-water of ^ ill WARPING TUE ADVANCE:' 23 kfully [series, ajority veiling th our natter. Baffin's r mate- ;ed the lon the y other sterday aid not disdain walrus, ist fifty groups 3d from and we sr in the to scan md the iich has , whole- len feet, encase- melted of oil." came a by such mter of H flood-tide, that I resolved to attempt an escape fiom our little basin. • "August 12. — After careful consideration, I have deter- mined to try for a further northing, by following the coast- line. At certain stages of the tides — generally from three- quarters flood to the commencement of the ebb — the ice evidently relaxes enough to give a partial opening close along the land. The strength of our vessel we have tested pretty thoroughly; if she will bear the frequent groundings that we must look for, I am persuaded we may seek these openings, and warp along them from one lump of grounded ice to another. The water is too shallow for ice-masses to float in, that are heavy enough to make a nip very dan- gerous. I am preparing the little brig for this novel navigation, clearing her decks, securing things below with extra lashings, and getting out spars, to serve in case of necessity as shores to keep her on an even keel. ^^ August 14. — Change of weather yesterday tempted us to forsake our shelter and try another tussle with the ice. We met it as soon as we ventured out ; and the day closed with a northerly progress, by hard warping, of about three-quarters of a mile. The men were well tired, but the weather looked so threatening, that I had them up again at three o'clock this morning. My immediate aim is to attain a low rocky island which we see close into the shore, about a mile ahead of us. " Midnight. — ^We did reach it, and just in time. At 11.30 P.M., our first whale-line was made fast to the rocks. Ten minutes later, the breeze freshened, and so directly in our teeth that we could not have gained our mooring- ground. It is blowing a gale now, and the ice driving to the northward before it; but we can rely upon our hawsers. All behind us is now solid pack. 24 TUK FAR XOIiT/r. " A Uf/usl 1 C. — Fast still ; tho wind dying out, and tlio ico outside closing steadily. And here, for all I can see, wo must hang on for the winter, unless Providence shall send a smart ice-shattering breeze to open a road for us to the northward. " More bother with tliese wretched dogs ! worse than a street of Constantinople emptied upon our decks ; the un- ruly, thieving, wild-beast pack ! Not a bear's paw, ■(.. au Esquimaux cranium, or basket of mosses, or any spec ; ' whatever, can leave your hands for a moment, without their making a rush at it, and, after a yelping scramble, swallowing it at a gulp. I have seen them attempt a whole feather-bed ; and here, this very morning, one of my Karsuk brutes has eaten up two entire birds'-nests, which I had just before gathered from the rocks. ** Avffust 17. — In the afternoon came a gale from the southward. We had some rough rubbing from the floe- pieces, with three heavy hawsers out to the rocks of our little ice-breaker ; but we held on. Toward midnight, our six-inch line, the smulleg*' of the three, parted, but the other two held bravely. Feeling what good service this island has do«e us, what a Godsend it was to reach her, and how gallantly her broken rocks have protected us from the rolling masses of ice that grind by her, we have agreed to remember this anchorage as * Godsend Ledge.' ** The walrus are very numerous, approaching within , twenty feet of us, shaking their grim wet fronts, and mow- ing with their tusks the sea-ripples. " August 19. — The walrus gather around us in crowds. I have always heard that the close approach to land of these sphinx-faced monsters portends a storm. " August 20. — By Saturday morning it blew a perfect hurricane. We had seen it coming, and were ready with ' ? . ij by n 1 pilin ^ desp i with LO:SS OF THE CABLEii. three good hawnwrs out uhead, and all things snug on board. " Still it came 'm heavier and heavier, and the ice began to drive more wildly than I thought I had ever seen it. I had just turned in to warm and dry myself during a momentary lull, and was stretching myself out in my bunk, when I heard the sharp twanging snap of a cord. Our six -inch hawser had parted, and we were swinging by the two others, the gale roaring like a lion to the southward. "Half a minute more, and * twang, twang!' came a second report. I knew it was the whale-line by the shrill- ness of the ring. Our ten-inch cable still held on. I was hurrying my last sock into its seal-skin boot, when M'Gary came running down the companion-ladders : — * Captain Kane, she won't hold much longer; it's blowing the devil himself, and I am afraid to surge.' " The cable was proving its excellence when I reached the deck ; and the crew, as they gathered round me, were loud in its praises. We could hear its deep iEolian chant swelling through all the rattle of the running-gear and moaning of the shrouds. It was the death-song ! The strands gave way with the noise of a shotted gun ; and, in the smoke that followed their recoil, we were dragged out by the wild ice at its mercy. " We steadied and did some petty warping, and got the brig a good bed in the rushing drift; but it all came to nothing. There was now but one thing left for us — ^to keep in some sort the command of the helm, by going freely where we must otherwise be driven. "At seven in the morning we were close upon the piling masses. We dropped our heaviest anchor with the desperate hope of winding the brig; but there was no withstanding the ice-torrent that followed us. We had B 26 THE FAR NORTH. only time to fasten a spar as a buoy to the chain, and let her slip. So went our best bower ! " Down we wont upon the gale again, helplessly scraping along a lee of ice seldom less than thirty feet thick; one floe, measured by a line as we tried to fasten to it, more than forty. I had seen such ice only once before, but never in such rapid motion. One upturned mass rose above our gunwale, smashing in our bulwarks, and deposit- ing half a ton of ice in a lump upon our decks. Our staunch little brig bore herself through all this wild adven- ture as if she had a charmed life. " But a new enemy came in sight ahead. Directly in our way, just beyond the line of floe-ice against which we were alternately sliding and thumping, was a group of bergs. We had no power to avoid them; and the only question was, whether we were to be dashed in pieces against them, or whether they might not offer us some providential nook of ref age from the storm. But, as we neared them, we perceived that they were at some distance from the floe-edge, and separated from it by an interval of open water. Our hopes rose as the gale drove us toward this passage and into it ; and we were ready to exult, when, from some unexplained cause, — probably an eddy of the wind against the lofty ice -walls, — we lost our head- way. Almost at the same moment we saw that the bergs were not at rest; that with a momentum of their own they were bearing down upon the other ice, and that it must be our fate to be crushed between the two. " Just then a broad low water-washed berg came driving up from the southward. The thought flashed upon me of one of our escapes in Melville Bay; and as the sconce moved rapidly 'close alongside us, M'Gary managed to plant an anchor on its slope and hold on to it by a whale- I I f I? 11 , and let scraping Lck; one it, more 'ore, but lass rose deposit- is. Our d adven- irectly in ivhich we group of the only in pieces us some lit, as we J distance iterval of 15 toward to exult, an eddy our head- the bergs own they ; must be le driving (on me of 16 sconce ,naged to a whale- THE ESCAPE. 27 5 'a h I line. It was an anxious moment. Our noble tow-horse, whiter than the pale horse that seemed to be pursuing us, hauled us bravely on, the spray dashing over his windward flanks, and his forehead ploughing up the lesser ice as if in scorn. The bergs encroached upon us as we advanced; our channel narrowed to a width of perhaps forty feet ; we braced the yards to clear the impending ice-walls. "We passed clear; but it was a close shave, — so close that our port quarter-boat would have been crushed if we had not taken it in from the davits, — and found ourselves under the lee of a berg, in a comparatively open lead. Never did heart-tried men acknowledge with more gratitude their merciful deliverance from a wretched death. " The day had already its full share of trials ; but there were more to come. A flaw drove us from our shelter, and the gale soon carried us beyond the end of the lead. We were again in the ice, sometimes escaping its onset by warping, sometimes forced to rely on the strength and buoyancy of the brig to stand its pressure, sometimes scudding wildly through the half-open drift. Our jib- boom was snapped off; we carried away our barricade stanchions, and were forced to leave our little Eric^ — as our life-boat was called, — ^with three brave fellows and their warps, out upon the floes behind us. " A little pool of open water received us at last. It was just beyond a lofty cape that rose up like a wall, and under an iceberg that anchored itself between us and the gale. And here, close under the frowning shore of Green- land, ten miles nearer the Pole than our holding-ground of the morning, the men have turned in to rest. *' I was afraid to join them, for the gale was unbroken, and the floes kept pressing heavily upon our berg, — at one time so heavily as to sway it on its vertical axis toward 28 THE FAR NORTH. the shore, and make its pinnacle overhang our vessel My poor fellows had but a precarious sleep before our little harbour was broken up. They hardly reached the deck when we were driven astern, and our rudder splintered. ** Now began the nippings.* The first shock took us on our port-quarter, the brig bearing it well, and, after a moment of the old-fashioned suspense, rising by jerks handsomely. The next was from a veteran floe, tongued and honeycombed, but floating in a single table over twenty feet in thickness. Of course, no wood or iron could stand this; but the shore-ward face of our iceberg happened to present an inclined plane, descending deep into the water; and up this the brig was driven, as if some great power was forcing her into a dry dock. " At one time I expected to see her carried bodily up its face and tumbled over on her side. But one of those mysterious relaxations, which I have elsewhere called the pulses of the ice, lowered us quite gradually down again into the rubbish, and we were forced out of the line of pressure toward the shore. Here we succeeded in carrying out a warp, and making fast. We grounded as the tide fell, and would have heeled over to seaward, but for a mass of detached land-ice that grounded alongside of us, and, although it stove our bulwarks as we rolled over it, shored us up." • - I could hardly get to my bunk, as I went down into our littered cabin on the Sunday morning after our hard- working vigil of thirty-six hours. Bags of clothing, food, tents, India-rubber blankets, and the hundred little personal matters which every man likes to save in a time of trouble, were scattered around in places where the owners thought they might have them at hand. The pemmican had been • Nipf the pressing in of ice round the vessel. BRAVERY OF THE CREW 29 iseL My our little the deck itered. )ok us on I, after a by jerks tongued [ible over Ton could happened into the »me great lily up its of those called the wn again le line of I carrying i the tide 3ut for a de of us, d over it, own into )ur hard- ng, food, personal f trouble, } thought had been on deck, the boats equipped, and everything of real im- portance ready for a march, many hours before. ) I During the whole of the scenes I have been trying to describe, I could not help being struck by the composed and manly demeanour of my comrades. The turmoil of ice under a heavy sea often conveys the impression of danger when the reality is absent; but in this fearful passage, the parting of our hawsers, the loss of our anchors, the abrupt crushing of our stoven bulwarks, and the actual deposit of ice upon our decks, would have tried the nerves of the most experienced ice-men. All — officers and men — ^worked alike. Upon each occasion of collision with the ice which formed our lee coast, eflforts were made to carry out lines 5 and some narrow escapes were incurred by the zeal of the parties leading them into positions of danger. Mr Bonsall avoided being crushed by leaping to a floating fragment ; and no less than four of our men at one time were carried do\vn by the drift, and could only be recovered by a relief party after the gale had subsided. It was not until the 2 2d that the storm abated, and our absent men were once more gathered back into their mess. During the interval of forced inaction, the little brig was fast to the ice-belt which lined the bottom of the cliffs, and all hands rested; but as soon as it was over, we took advantage of the flood-tide to pass our tow-lines to the ice- beach, and, harnessing ourselves in like mules on a canal, made a good three miles by tracking along the coast. A^ ^^ August 23. — We tracked along the ice-belt for about one mile, when the tide fell, and the brig grounded, heeling over until she reached her bearings. She rose again at 10 P.M., and the crew turned out upon the ice-belt. " August 24. — We have kept at it, tracking along, grounding at low water, but working like horses when the 30 THE FAR NORTH. tides allowed us to move. We are now almost at the bottom of this indentation. " We are sufficiently surrounded by ice to make our chances of escape next year uncertain, and yet not as far as I could wish for our spring journeys by the sledge. " August 26. — My officers and crew are staunch and firm men; but the depressing influences of want of rest, the rapid advance of winter, and, above all, our slow progress, make them sympathize but little with this continued effort to force a way to the north. One of them, an excellent member of the party, volunteered an expression of opinion this morning in favour of returning to the south and giving up the attempt to winter." It is unjust for a commander to measure his subordinates in such exigencies by his own standard. The interest which they feel in an undertaking is of a different nature from his own. With him there are always personal mo- tives, apart from official duty, to stimulate effort. He receives, if successful, too large a share of the credit, and he justly bears all the odium of failure. An apprehension — I hope a charitable one — of this fact leads me to consider the opinions of my officers with much respect. I called them together at once in a formal council, and listened to their views in full. With but one excep- tion, Mr Henry Brooks, they were convinced that a further progress to the north was impossible, and were in favour of returning southward to winter. Not being able conscientiously to take the same view, I explained to them the importance of securing a position which might expedite our sledge journeys in the future ; and, after assuring them that such a position could only be attained by continuing our efforts, announced my intention of warping toward the northern headland of the bay. st at the make our it as far as ;e. b and firm rest, the progress, lued effort excellent of opinion south and bordinates le interest ent nature rsonal mo- >ffort. He credit, and )f this fact with much lal council, one excep- it a further J in favour me view, I a position he future; lid only be y intention the bay. t MORE WARPING. 31 **Once there, I shall be able to determine from actual inspection the best point for setting out on the operations of the spring ; and at the nearest possible shelter to that point I will put the brig into winter harbour." My comrades received this decision in a manner that was most gratifying, and entered zealously upon the hard and cheer- less duty it involved. The warping began again, each man, myself included, taking his turn at the capstan. The ice seemed less heavy as we penetrated into the recess of the bay; our track- lines and shoulder-belts replaced the warps. Hot coffee was served out ; and, in the midst of cheering songs, our little brig moved off briskly. Our success, however, was not complete. At the very period of high- water she took the ground while close under the walls of the ice-foot. It would have been madness to attempt shoring her up. I could only fasten heavy tackle to the rocks which lined the base of the cliffs, and trust to thie noble little craft's unassisted strength. ** August 27. — We failed, in spite of our efforts, to get the brig off with last night's tide ; and, as our night-tides are generally the highest, I have some apprehensions as to her liberation. " We have landed everything we could get upon the rocks, put out all our boats and filled them with portables along- side, sunk our rudder astern, and lowered our remaining heavy anchor into one of our quarter-boats. Heavy hawsers are out to a grounded lump of berg-ice, ready for instant heaving. " Last night she heeled over again so abruptly that we were all tumbled out of our berths. At the same time the cabin stove, with a full charge of glowing anthracite,* was * Anthracite^ a hard coal found in America, which burns without smoke. 82 THE FAR NORTH. thrown down. The deck blazed smartly for a while ; but, by sacrificing Mr Sontag's heavy pilot-cloth coat to the public good, I choked it down till water could be passed from above to extinguish it. It was fortunate we had water near at hand, for the powder was not far off. " 5 P.M. — She floats again, and our track-lines are manned. The men work with a will, and the brig moves along bravely. "10 P.M. — Aground again; and the men, after a hot supper, have turned in to take a spell of sleep. The brig has a hard time of it with the rocks. She has been high and dry for each of the two last tides, and within three days has grounded no less than five times. I feel that this is hazardous navigation, but am convinced it is my duty to keep on. Except the loss of a portion of our false keel, we have sustained no real injury. The brig is still water- tight, and her broken rudder and one shattered spar can be easily repaired. " August 28. — By a complication of purchases, jumpers, and shores, we started the brig at 4 a.m.; and Mr Ohlsen having temporarily secured the rudder, I determined to enter the floe, and trust to the calm of the morning for a chance of penetrating to the northern land-ice ahead." We had now a breathing spell, and I could find time to look out again upon the future. The broken and dis- torted area around us gave little promise of successful sledge-travel. But all this might change its aspect under the action of a single gale, and it was by no means certain that the ice-fields further north woul i have the same rugged and dispiriting character. Besides, the ice-belt was still before us, broken sometimes and difficult to traverse, but practicable for a party on foot, apparently for miles ahead ; and I felt sure that a resolute boat's crew might \ THE BOAT-CREW. 33 le; but, b to the $ passed we had nes are g moves T a hot rhe brig ligh and ree days this is duty to Ise keel, 1 water- ipar can ampers, Ohlsen ined to ig for a d." time to nd dis- [jcessful t under certain e same elt was 'averse, miles might N 'i J i push and track their way for some distance along it. I re- solved to make the trial, and to judge what ought to be our wintering-ground from a personal inspection of the coast. I had been quietly preparing for such an expedition for sometime. Our best and lightest whale-boat hud been fitted with a canvas cover, that gave it all the comfort of a tent. "We had a supply of pemmican ready packed in small cases, and a sledge taken to pieces was stowed away imder the thwarts. In the morning of the 29th, Brooks, M'Gary, and myself, walked fourteen miles along the mar- ginal ice ; it was heavy and complicated with drift, but there was nothing about it to make me change my purpose. My boat-crew consisted of seven, all of them volunteers and reliable : — Brooks, Bonsall, M'Gary, Sontag, Riley, Blake, and Morton. We had buffalo-robes for our sleep- ing-gear, and a single extra day suit was put on board as common property. Each man carried his girdle full of woollen socks, so as to dry them by the warmth of his body, and a tin cup, with a sheath-knife, at the belt ; a soup-pot and lamp for the mess completed our outfit. In less than three hours from my first order, the For- lorn Hope was ready for her work, covered with tin to l)revent her being cut through by the bay-ice ; and at half- past three in the afternoon she was freighted, launched, and on her way. I placed Mr Ohlsen in command of the Advance^ and Dr Hayes in charge of her log ; Mr Ohlsen with orders to haul the brig to the southward and eastward into a safe berth, and there to await my return. Many a warm shake of the hand from the men we left on board showed me that our good-bye was not a mere formality. Three hearty cheers from all hands followed us, — a Godspeed as we pushed off. 34 THE FAR N on TIL CHAPTER III. OUR FIRST WALK OUT — THE DEPOT PARTY. In the first portions of our journey, we found a narrow but obstructed passage between the ice-belt and the outside pack. It was but a few yards in width, and the young ico upon it was nearly thick enough to bear our weight. By breaking it up we were able with effort to make about seven miles a day. After such work, — wet, cold, and hungry, — the night's rest was very welcome. A couple of stanchions were rigged fore and aft, a sail tightly spread over the canvas cover of our boat, the cooking-lamp lit, and the buffalo-robes spread out. Dry socks replaced the wet, hot tea and pemmicau followed, and very soon we forgot the discomforts of the day, — the smokers musing over their pipes, and the sleepers snoring in dreamless forgetfulness. We had been out something less than twenty-four hours when we came to the end of our boating. In front and on one side was the pack, and on the other a wall some ten feet above our heads, the impracticable ice-belt. By waiting for high 1"de, and taking advantage of a chasm which a water-stream had worn in the ice, we managed to haul up our boat on its surface ; but it was apparent that we must leave her there. She was stowed away snugly under the shelter of a large hummock;* and we pushed forward in our sledge, laden with a few articles of absolute necessity. We had to pass our sledge carefully down large gorges in our path, winding occasionally and generally steep« * Hummochf a ridge of broken ice. A WA r FnOM HOME. 35 a narrow le outside jroung ico ght. By ke about le night's ire rigged cover of is spread emmicaii ts of the ) sleepers ur hours t and on ome ten It. By a chasm aaged to that we y under :ward in 3essity. ! gorges r steep - sided, and bear it upon our shoulders, wading, of course, through water of an extremely low temperature. Our night halts were upon knolls of snow under the rocks. At one of these the tide overflowed our tent, atid forced us to save our buffalo sleeping-gear by holding it up until the water subsided. This exercise, as it turned out, was more of a trial to our patience than to our health. The circula- tion was assisted perhaps by a perception of the ludicrous. Eight Yankee Caryatides, up to their knees in water, and an entablature sustaining such of their household gods as could not bear immersion ! On the 1st of September, still following the ice-belt, we found that we were entering the recesses of another bay but little smaller than that in which we had left our brig. After an absence of five days, during which we made many scientific observations of great value, we found that we were but forty miles from the brig. Besides our small daily progress, we had lost much by the tortuous windings of the coast. The ice outside did not invite a change of plan in that direction ; but I determined to leave the sledge and proceed overland on foot. With the exception of our instruments, we carried no weight but pemmican and one buffalo-robe. The weather, as yet not far below the freezing-point, did not male a tent essential to the bivouac; and, with this light equipment, we could travel readily two miles to one with our entire outfit. On the 4th of September we made twenty-four miles with comparative ease, and were refreshed by a comfortable sleep after the toils of the day. The only drawback to this new method of advance was the inability to carry a sufficient quantity of food. Each man at starting had a fixed allowance of pemmican, which, with his other load, made an average weight of thirty-fivo 30 THE FAR NORTH, M. pounds. It proved excessive; and we found — although we had good walkers in our party — that a very few pounds' overweight broke us down. Our progress on the 6th was arrested by another bay, much larger than any we had seen since entering Smith's Straits. It was a noble sheet of water, perfectly open, and thus in strange contrast to the ice outside. The cause of this, at the time inexplicable phenomenon, was found in a roaring and tumultuous river, which, issuing from a fiord at the inner sweep of the bay, rolled with the violence of a snow-torrent over a broken bed of rocks. This river, the largest probably yet known in North Greenland, was about three-quarters of a mile wide at its mouth, and admitted the tides for about three miles, when its bed rapidly ascended, and could be traced by the configuration of the hills as far as a large inner fiord. I called it Mary Minturn River, after the sister of Mrs Hoary Grinnell. Its course was afterwards pursued to an interior glacier, from the base of which it was found to issue in numerous streams, that united into a single trunk about forty miles above its mouth. By the banks of this stream we encamped, lulled by the unusual music of running waters. We forded our way across this river in the morning, carrying our pemmican as well as we could out of water, but submitting ourselves to a succession of plunge baths as often as we trusted our weight on the ice-capped stones above the surface. The average depth was not over our hips ; but the crossing cost us so much labour, that we were willing to halt half a day to rest. Leaving four of my party to recruit at this station, I started the next morning, with three volunteers, to cross the ice to the north-eastern headland, and thus save tlie almost impossible circuit by the shores of the bay. OUR WINTER HARBOUR. 17 vni, We reached the headland after sixteen miles of vtralk, and found the ice-foot in good condition, evidently better fitted for sledge-travel than it was to the south. This point I named Cape "William Makepeace Thackeray. I now determined to seek some high headland beyond the cape, and make it my final point of reconnaissance. I anxiously looked for, but could see no place combining so many of the requisites of a good winter harbour as the bay in which we left the Advance. Near its south-western corner the wide streams and the water-courses on the shore promised the earliest chances of liberation in the coming summer. It was secure against the moving ice: lofty headLtnds walled it in beautifully to seaward, enclos- ing an anchorage with a moderate depth of water ; yet it \(as open to the meridian sunlight, and guarded from winds, eddies, and drift. The space enclosed was only occupied by a few rocky islets and our brig. We soon came in sight of her on our return march, as she lay at anchor in its southern sweep, with her masts cutting sharply against the white glacier; and, hurrying on through a gale, we were taken on board without accident. My comrades gathered anxiously around me, waiting for the news. I told them in a few words of the results of our journey, and why I had determined upon remaining, and gave at once the order to warp 'in between the islands. We found seven-fathom soundings and a perfect shelter from the outside ice ; and thus laid our little brig in the harbour, which we were fated never to leave together, — a long rest- ing-place to her indeed, for the same ice is around her still. The winter was now approaching rapidly. The thermo- meter had fallen by the 10th of September to 14®, and the young ice had cemented the fioes so that we could walk and sledge round the brig. About sixty paces north of us 88 THE FAR SOUTir. an iceberg had been caught, and was frozen in ; it was onr neighbour wliilo we roniaincd in harbour. The rocky islets around us were fringed with Immmocks; and, as tlie lido fell, their sides were coated with opaque crystals of bright white. The birds had gone. *^ September 10. — We have plenty of responsible work before us. The long night * when no man can work' is close at hand : in another month we shall lose the sun. " First and foremost, we have to unstow the hold and deposit its contents in the storehouse on the shore. Brooks and a party are now briskly engaged in this double labour, ruiniing loaded boats along a canal that has to be recut every morning. *' Next comes the catering for winter diet. We have little or no game as yet in Smith's Sound; and, though the traces of deer that we have observed may be followed by the animals themselves, I cannot calculate upon them as a resource. Steaks of salt junk, artistically cut, are strung on lines and soaked in festoons under the ice. The salmon-trout and salt cod-fish which we bought at Fisker- naes are placed in barrels, perforated to permit a constant circulation of fresh water through them. Our pickled cabbage is similarly treated, after a little potash has been used to neutralize the acid. All these are submitted to twelve hours of alternate soaking and freezing, the crust of ice being removed from them before each immersion. This is the steward's province, and a most important one it is. " Every one else is well employed, — M'Gary arranging and Bonsall making the inventory of our stores; Ohlsen and Petersen building our deck-house; while I am devising the plan of an architectural interior, which is to combine, of course, the utmost ventilation, room, dryness, warmth, FKILW HOCK. 39 it was our general accommodation, comfort, — in a word, all the appli- arK*es of health. ' • We have made a comfortable dog house on the island ; but they cannot bo persuaded to sleep away from the vessel. They prefer the bare snow, where they can couch within the sound of our voices, to a warm kennel upon the rocks. *^ September 11. — To-day came to us the first quiet Sunday of harbour life. We changed our log registration from sea-time to the familiar home series that begins at midnight. It is not only that the season has given us once more a local habitation ; but there is something in the return of varying day and night that makes it grateful to reinstate this domestic observance. The long staring day, which has clung to us for more than two months, to the exclusion of the stars, has begun to intermit its brightness. " We had our accustomed morning and evening prayers ; and the day went by, full of sober thought, and, I trust, wise resolve. *^ September 12. — Still going on with Saturday's opera- tions, amid the thousand discomforts of house-cleaning and moving combined. I escaped them for an hour this morn- ing, to fix with Mr Sontag upon a site for our observntory ; and the men are already at work hauling the stone for it over the ice on sledges. It is to occupy a rocky islet, about a hundred yards off, that I have named after a little spot that I long to see again, ' Fern Rock.' This is to be for me the centre of familiar localities. As the classic Mivins breakfasted lightly on a cigo.r, and took it out in sleep, so I have dined on salt pork and made my dessert of dreams. " September 13. — Besides preparing our winter quarters, I am engaged in the preliminary arrangements for my pro- m 40 THE FAR NORTH. vision-dep6ts along the Greenland coast. I purpose arranging three of them at intervals, — pushing them as far forward as I can, — to contain in all some twelve hundred pounds of provision, of which eight hundred will be pem- mican." My plans of future search were directly dependent upon the success of these operations of the autumn. With a chain of provision-dep6ts along the coast of Greenland, I could readily extend my travel by dogs. These noble animals formed the basis of my future plans: the only drawback to their efficiency as a means of travel was their inability to carry the heavy loads of provender essential for their support. A badly-fed or heavily-loaded dog is useless for a long journey ; but with relays of provision, I could start empty, and fill up at our final station. My dogs were both Esquimaux and Newfoundlanders. Of these last I had ten : they were to be carefully broken, to travel by voice without the whip, and were expected to be very useful for heavy draught, as their tractability would allow the driver to regulate their pace. I was already training them in a light sledge to drive, unlike the Esqui- maux, two abreast, with a regular harness, a breast-collar of flat leather, and a pair of traces. Six of them made a powerful travelling-team ; and four could carry me and my instruments, for short journeys around the brig, with great ease. The sledge I used for them was built, with the care of cabinet-work, of American hickory, thoroughly seasoned. The runners were shod with annealed steel, and fastened by copper rivets, which could be renewed at pleasure. Except this, no metal entered into its construction. All its parts were held together by seal-skin lashings, so that it yielded to inequalities of surface and to sudden shock. «:. THE ^'FAITHr 41 [ purpose hem as far e hundred ill be pem- ident upon ,. With a reenland, I hese noble : the only d was their jr essential ded dog is provision, I andlanders. ^Uy broken, expected to ►ility would ras already the Esqui- >reast-collar em made a ne and my with great the care of seasoned. d fastened t pleasure. jtion. All so that it ien shock. The three paramount considerations of lightness, strength, and diminished friction, were well combined in it. This beautiful, and, as we afterwards found, efficient and endur- able sledge was named the Little Willie. The Esquimaux dogs were reserved for the great tug of the actual journeys of search. They were now in the semi-savage condition which marks their close approach to the wolf ; and, according to Mr Petersen, under whose care they were placed, were totally useless for journeys over such ice as was now before us. A hard expoience had not then opened my eyes to the inestimable value of these dogs: I had yet to learn their power and speed, their patient, enduring fortitude, their sagacity in tracking these icy morasses, among which they had been born and bred. ' The men appointed to establish the depot were furnished with a sledge. Its model — which had been previously [tested by the adventurous journeys of M'Clintock in Lan- jcaster Sound — was to lessen the height and somewhat [increase the breadth of the runner ; both of which, I think, jcrQ improvements, giving increased strength. I named ler the Faith. Her length was thirteen feet, and breadth J'four. She could readily carry fourteen hundred pounds of L jnixed stores. This noble old sledge, which is now endeared to me by '^very pleasant association, bore the brunt of the heaviest )arties, and came back, after the descent of the coast, [omparatively sound. The men were attached in her in ich a way as to make the line of draught or traction as lear as possible in the axis of the weight. Each man had [is own shoulder-belt, or " rue-raddy," as we used to call ^, and his own track-line, which, for want of horse-hair, ras made of Manilla rope ; it traversed freely by a ring on r 42 THE FA I? X 01? TIT. i I a loop or bridle, that extended from runner to runner in front of the sledge. The cargo for this journey, without including the provi- sions of the party, was almost exclusively pemmican. Some of this was put up in cylinders of tinned iron with conical terminations, so as to resist the assaults of the white bear ; but the larger quantity was in strong wooden cases or kegs, well hooped with iron, holding about seventy pounds each. Surmounting this load was a light India- rubber boat, made quite portable by a frame of basket- willow, which I hoped to launch on reaching the open water. The personal equipment of the men was a buffalo-robe for the party to lie upon, and a bag of Mackinaw blanket for each man to crawl into at night. India-rubber cloth was to be the protection from the snow beneath. The tent was of canvas, made after the plan of our English predecessors. We afterward learned to modify and reduce our travelling gear, and found that in direct proportion to its simplicity and our ajpparent privation of articles of sui)posed necessity, were our actual comfort and practical efficiency. Step by step, as long as our Arctic service continued, we went on reducing our sledging outfit, until at last we came to the Esquimaux ultimatum of simplicity — raw meat and a fur bag. *' September 20. — I was unwilling to delay my depot party any longer. MGary and Bonsall, with five men, left the brig at half-past one to-da3^ We gave them three cheers, and I accompanied them with my dogs, as a fare- well escort, for some miles. " Our crew proper is now reduced to three men ; but all the officers, the doctor among the rest, are hard at work upon the observatory and its arrangements." SMOKING OUT TEE EATS. 43 runner in the provi- lemmican. . iron witli ilts of the narrel, he incontinently became lame. Strange to say, he las been lame ever since, except when the team is away ivithout him. *' Cold disagrees with Grim; but by a system of patient patchings at the door of our deck-house, accompanied by discriminating use of his tail, he became at last the one privileged intruder. My seal-skin coat has been his ivourite bed for weeks together. Whatever love for an idividual Grim expwssed by his tail, he could never be iduced to follow hm on the ice after the cold darkness of 54 THE FAR NORTU. the winter set in; yet the dear, good old sinner would wriggle after you to the very threshold of the gangway, and bid you good-bye with a deprecatory wag of the tail which disarmed resentment. "His appearance was quite characteristic: his muzzle roofed like the old-fashioned gable of a Dutch garret- window; his forehead indicating the most meagre capacity of brains that could consist with his sanity as a dog; his eyes small, his mouth curtained by long black dewlaps, and his hide a mangy russet studded with chestnut-burrs; if he has gone indeed, we * ne'er shall look upon his like again.' So much for old Grim ! "When yesterday's party started to take soundings, I thought the exercise would benefit Grim, whose time- serving sojourn on our warm deck had begun to render him over-corpulent. A rope was fastened round him, for at such critical periods he was obstinate, and even fero- cious; and, thus fastened to the sledge, he commenced his reluctant journey. Reaching a stopping-place after a while, he jerked upon his line, parted it a foot or two from its knot, and, dragging the remnant behind him, started off through the darkness in the direction of our brig. He has not been seen since. " December 23. — Our anxieties for old Grim might have interfered with almost anything else; but they could not arrest our celebration of yesterday. Dr Hayes made us a w^ell-studied oration, and Morton a capital punch; add to these a dinner of marled beef, — we have two pieces left, for the sun's return and the 4th of July, — and a bumper of champagne all round; and the elements of our frolic are all registered. " We tracked old Grim to-day through the snow to within six hundred yards of the brig, and thence to that ».! ijiWii IIETUENING LIGHT. 55 Liner would e gangway, 5 of the tail his muzzle itch garret- gre capacity 5 a dog; his ,ck dewlaps, jstnut-burrs; pon his like soundings, I whose time- in to render and him, for id even fero- mmenced his after a while, two from its n, started off >rig. He has n might have ley could not '^es made us a )unch; add to ^o i^ieces left, d a bumper of our frolic are the snow to thence to that ass of snow-packed sterility which we call the shore. is not rejoining the ship is a mystery quite in keeping ith his character." My journal for the first two months of 1854 is so de- oid of interest, that I spare the reader the task of follow- g me through it. In the darkness and consequent Inaction, as it was almost in vain that we sought to create ,|opics of thought, and by a forced excitement to ward off ^e encroachments of disease. Our observatory and the lOgs gave us our only regular occupations. The first traces of returning light were observed at noon in the 21st of January, when the southern horizon had for ' short time a distinct orange tint. Though the sun had erhaps given us a band of illumination before, it was not istinguishable from the cold light of the planets. The influence of this long, intense darkness was most pressing. Even our dogs, although the greater part of em were natives of the Arctic Circle, were unable to ithstand it. Most of them died from an anomalous form 0l disease, to which, I am satisfied, the absence of light contributed as much as the extreme cold. I give a little fl^ttract from my journal of January 20 : — ^ " This morning at five o'clock — for I am so afflicted with the insomnium of this eternal night, that I rise at any time Ijetween midnight and noon— I v;ent upon deck. It was absolutely dark; the cold not permitting a swinging lamp, here was not a glimmer came to me through the ice- usted window-panes of the cabin. While 1 was feeling y way, half puzzled as to the best method of steering ear of whatever might be before me, two of my New- undland dogs put their cold noses against my hand, and stantly commenced the most exuberant antics of satis- ction. It then occurred to me how very dreary and for- r 50 THE FAR NORTn. i ^ lorn must these poor animals be, at atmospheres 10** in- doors and 50" without, — living in darkness, howling at an accidental light, as if it reminded them of the moon, — and with nothing, either of instinct or sensation, to tell them of the passing hours, or to explain the long-lost day- light. They shall see the lanterns more frequently. ^^ January 25. — The mouse-coloured dogs, the leaders of my Newfoundland team, have for the past fortnight been nursed like babies. No one can tell how anxiously I watch them. They are kept below, tended, fed, cleansed, caressed, and doctored^ to the infinite discomfort of all hands. To-day I give up the last hope of saving them. Their disease is as clearly mental as in the case of any human being. The more material functions of the pori brutes go on without interruption : they eat voracioush , retain their strength, and sleep well. But all the indica- tions beyond this go to prove that the original epilepsy, which was the first manifestation of brain disease among them, has been followed by a true lunacy. They bark frenziedly at nothing, and walk in straight and curved lines with anxious and unwearying perseverance." On the 22d, I took my first walk on the great floe, which had been so long a time a crude, black labyrinth. I give the appearance of things in the words of my journal : — "The floe has changed wonderfully. T remember it sixty-four days ago, when our twilight was as it now is, a partially snow-patched plain, chequered with ridges of sharp hummocks, or a series of long icy levels, over which I coursed with my Newfoundlanders. All this has gone. A lead-coloured expanse stretches its ' rounding grey ' in every direction, and the old angular hummocks are so softened down as to blend in rolling dunes with distant obscurity. The snow upon the levels shows the same bui mill STATE OF THE CREW. 57 res 10* in- howling at he moon, — tion, to tell ng-lost day- Dtly. the leaders st fortnight .w anxiously ed, cleansed, [nfort of all saving them, case of any of the pori voraciousl; , 1 the indica- nal epilepsy, isease among They bark and curved tee." lat floe, which inth. I give journal : — remember it is it now is, a ith ridges of s, over which his has gone, ling grey' in mocks are so with distant )ws the same remarkable evaporation. It is now in crisp layers, hardly six inches thick, quite undisturbed by drift. I could hardly recognise any of the old localities." I close my notice of these dreary months with a single extract more. The date of it is February 21st. " We have had the sun for some days silvering the ice between the headlands of the bay; and to-day, toward noon, I started out to be the first of my party to welcome him back. It was the longest walk and toughest climb that I have had since our imprisonment ; and scurvy and general debility have made me * short o' wind.* But I managed to attain my object. I saw him once more ; and upon a projecting crag nestled in the sunshine. It was like bathing in perfumed water." The month of March brought back to us the perpetual day. The sunshine had reached our deck on the last day of February; we needed it to cheer us. We were not as pale as my experience in Lancaster Sound had foretold; [but the scurvy-spots that mottled our faces gave sore proof )f the trials we had undergone. It was plain that we were dl of us unfit for arduous travel on foot at the intense tem- )eratures of the nominal spring; and the return of the sun, )y increasing the evaporation from the floes, threatened us dth a recurrence of still severer weather. But I felt that our work was unfinished. The great |bject of the expedition challenged us to a more northward [xploration. My dogs, that I had counted on so largely, le nine splendid Newfoundlanders and thirty-five Esqui- laux of six months before, had perished ; there were only [x survivors of the v liole pack, and one of these was unfit )r draught. Still, ':hey formed my principal reliance, and busied myself from the very beginning of the month in gaining them to run together. The carpenter was set to D 58 THE FAR NOIiTJI. ■.' work upon a small sledge, on an improved model, and adapted to the reduced force of our team ; and, as we had exhausted our stock of small cord to lash its parts together, Mr Brooks rigged up a miniature rope -walk, and was pre- paring a new supply from part of the material of our deep- sea lines. The operations of shipboard, however, went on regularly; Hans, and occasionally Petersen, going out on the hunt, though rarely returning successful. The reader may be disposed to wonder how we got through our long dark night. It was certainly very dull; and the following account of one day will convey a very good idea of the whole season : — " At six in the morning M'Gary is called, with all hands who have slept in. The decks are cleaned, the ice-hole opened, the refreshing beef-nets examined, the ice-tables measured, and things aboard put to rights. At half-past seven all hands rise, wash on deck, open the doors for ventilation, and come below for breakfast. We are short of fuel and therefore cook in the cabin. Our breakfast, for all fare alike, is hard tack, pork, stewed apples frozen like molasses-candy, tea and coffee, with a delicate portion of raw potato After breakfast the smokers take their pipe till nine ; then all hands turn to, idlers to idle and workers to work ; Ohlsen to his bench, Brooks to his * pre- parations ' in canvas, M'Gary to play tailor, Whipple to make shoes, Bonsall to tinker. Baker to skin birds, and the rest to the * Office ! ' Take a look into the Arctic bureau ! One table, one salt-pork lamp with rusty chlorinated flame, three stools, and as many waxen-faced men with their legs drawn up under them, the deck at zero being too cold for the feet. Each has his department : Kane is writing, sketching, and projecting maps; Hayes copying logs and meteorologicals; Sontag reducing his work at Fern Rock. 1 THE RAW POTATO. 59 A fourth, as one of the working members of the hive, has long been defunct ; you will find him in bed. At twelve a business round of inspection, and orders enough to fill up the day with work. Next, the drill of the Esquimaux dogs — my own peculiar recreation — a dog-trot specially refresh- ing to legs that creak with every kick, and rheumatic shoulders that chronicle every descent of the whip. And so we get on to dinner-time — the occasion of another gathering, which misses the tea and coffee of break- fast, but rejoices in pickled cabbage and dried peaches instead. " At dinner, as at breakfast, the raw potato comes in, our hygienic luxury. Like doctor-stuff generally, it is not as appetising as desirable. Grating it down nicely, leaving out the ugly red spots liberally, and adding the utmost oil as a lubricant, it is as much as I can do to persuade the mess to shut their eyes and bolt it, like Mrs Squeers' molasses and brimstone at Dotheboys Hall. Two ab- solutely refuse to taste it. I tell them of the Silesians using its leaves as spinach, of the whalers in the South Seas getting drunk on the molasses which had preserved the large potatoes of the Azores — I point to this gum, so fungoid and angry the day before yesterday, and so flat and amiable to-day — all by a potato poultice ; my eloquence is wasted ; they persevere in rejecting the admirable com- pound. *' Sleep, exercise, amusement, and work at will, carry on the day till our six o'clock sunper, a meal something like breakfast and something like dinner, only a little more scant; and the officers come in with the reports of the day. Dr Hayes shows me the log, I sign it ; Sontag the weather, I sign the weather; Mr Bonsall the tides and thermometers. Thereupon comes in mine ancient, Brooks; and I enter in 60 THE FAR NORTH. ■ \ his journal all the work done under his charge, and discuss his labours for the morrow. " M'Gary comes next, with the cleaning-up arrangement, inside, outside, and on decks; and Mr Wilson follows with ice-measurements. And last of all comes my own record of the day gone by; every line, as I look back upon its pages, giving evidence of a weakened body and harassed mind." Meanwhile we talked encouragingly of spring hopes and summer prospects, and managed sometimes to force an occasion for mirth out of the very discomforts of our un- yielding winter life. This may explain the tone of my diary. CHAPTER VI. AN ANXIOUS SEARCH. " Not a man now, except Pierre and Morton, is exempt from scurvy; and, as I look around upon the pale faces and haggard looks of my comrades, I feel that we are fighting the battle of life at disadvantage, and that an Arctic night and an Arctic day age a man more rapidly and harshly than a year anywhere else in all this weary world. ^* March 1 3. — Since January, we have been working at the sledges and other preparations for travel. The death of my dogs, the rugged obstacles of the ice, and the intense cold, have obliged me to reorganise our whole equipment. We have had to discard all our India-rubber fancy-work ; STAnr OF THE DEPOT PAliTY, 61 canvas shoe-making, fur-socking, sewing, carpentering, are all going on; and the cabin, our only fire- warmed apartment, is the workshop, kitchen, parlour, and hall. Pemmican cases are thawing on the lockers; buffalo-robes are drying around the stove ; camp equipments occupy the corners ; and our "woe-begone French cook, with an infinitude of useless saucepans, insists o^-" nonopolising the stove. ^^ March 17. — It is nine o'clock p.m., and the thermo- meter outside at — 46°. I am anxious to have my dep6t party off; but I must wait until there is a promise of milder weather. It must come soon. The sun is almost at the equator. On deck, I can see to the northward all the bright glare of sunset, streaming out in long bands of orange through the vapours of the ice-foot, and the frost- smoke exhaling in wreaths like those from the house- chimneys a man sees in the valleys as he comes down a mountain side. ^^ March 18. — To-day our spring-tides gave to the mas- sive ice which sustains our little vessel a rise and fall of seventeen feet. The crunching and grinding, the dashing of the water, the gurgling of the eddies, and the toppling over of the nicely-poised ice-tables, were unlike the more brisk dynamics of hummock action, but conveyed a more striking expression of power and dimension. " The thermometer at four o'clock in the morj^ing was — 49°; too cold still, I fear, for our sledgemen to set out. But we packed the sledge and strapped on the boat, and determined to see how she would drag. Eight men attached themselves to the lines, but were scarcely able to move her. This may be due in part to an increase of friction produced by the excessive cold, according to\ the experience of the Siberian travellers ; but I have no doubt it is principally caused by the very thin runners I 62 THE FAR X OH Til. sledge cutting through the snow- ■ i t of our Esquimaux crust. " The excessive refraction this evening, which entirely lifted up the northern coast as well as the icebergs, seems to give the promise of milder weather. In the hope that it may be so, I have fixed on to-morrow for the departure of the sledge, after very reluctantly dispensing with more than two hundred pounds of her cargo, besides the boat. The party think they can get along with it now. " March 20. — I saw the dep6t party off yesterday. They gave the usual three cheers, with three for myself. I gave them the whole of my brother's great wedding-cake and my last two bottles of Port, and thay pulled the sledge they were harnessed to famously. But I was not satisfied. I could see it was hard work; and, besides, they were without the boat, or enough extra pemmican to make their deposit of importance. I followed them, therefore, and found that they encamped at 8 r.M. only five miles from the brig. " When I overtook them I said nothing to discourage them, and gave no new orders for the morning ; but after laughing at good Ohlsen's rueful face, and listening to all Petersen's assurances that the cold and nothing but the cold retarded his Greenland sledge, and that no sledge of any other construction could have been moved at all through — 40° snow, I quietly bade them good-night, leav- ing all hands under their buffaloes. " Once returned to the brig, all my tired remainder-men were summoned; a large sled with broad runners, which I had built somewhat after the neat Admiralty model sent me by Sir Francis Beaufort, was taken down, scraped, polished, lashed, and fitted with track-ropes and rue-raddies — the lines arranged to draw as near as possible in a line THE liEiSCUR 63 le snow- w'ith the centre of gravity. We made an entire cover of canvas, with snugly-adjusted fastenings; and by one in the morning we had our discarded excess of pemmiccn and tho boat once more in stowage. " Off wo went for the camp of the sleepers. It was very cold, but a thoroughly Arctic night — the snow just tinged with the crimson stratus above the sun, which, equinoctial as it was, glared beneath the northern horizon like a smelting-fnrnace. We found the tent of the party by the bearings of the stranded bergs. Quietly and stealthily we hauled away their Esquimaux sledge, and placed her cargo upon the Faith. Five men were then ' rue-raddicd ' to the track-lines, and with the whispered word, * Now, boys, when Mr Brooks gives his third snore, off with you ! ' off they went, and the Faith after them, as free and nimble as a volunteer. The trial was a triumph. We awakened the sleepers with three cheers; and, giving them a second good-bye, returned to the brig, carrying the dishonoured vehicle along with us. And now, barring mishaps past anticipation, I shall have a depot for my long trip. " The party were seen by M'Gary from aloft, at noon to- day, movhig easily, and about twelve miles from the brig. The temperature too is rising, or rather unmistakably about to rise. Our lowest was — 43°, but our highest reached — 22°; this extreme range, with the excessive refraction and a gentle misty air from about the south-east, makes me hope that we are going to have a warm spell. Tlie party is well off. Now for my own to follow them. ^^ March 21. — All hands at work house-cleaning. Ther- mometer — 48°. Visited the fox-traps with Hans in the afternoon, and found one poor animal frozen dead. A hard thing about his fate was that he had succeeded in effecting ^is escape from the trap, but, while working his C4 TiiK FAU Noirrir. way unJcrnGath, liad been frozen fast to a smooth stone by the moisture of his own brcatli. Ho was not probably aware of it before the moment when he sought to avail him- self of his hard-gained liberty. These saddening thoughts did not impair my appetite at supper, where the little crea- ture looked handsomer than ever. " March 22, — We took down the forward bulkhead to- day, and moved the men aft, to save fuel. All hands are still at work clearing up the decks, the scrapers sounding overhead, and the hickory-brooms crackling against the frozen woodwork. Afternoon comes, and M'Qary brings from the traps two foxes, a blue and a white. Afternoon passes, and we skin them. Evening passes, and we eat them. Never were foxes more welcome visitors, or treated more like domestic animals. " March 27. — We have been for some davs in all the flurry of preparation for our exploration trip:, buffalo-hides, leather, and tailoring utensils everywhere. Every particle of fur comes in play for mits, and muflfs, and wrappers. Poor Flora is turned into a pair of socks, and looks almost as pretty as when she was heading the team. " The wind to-day made it intensely cold. In riding but four miles to inspect a fox-trap, the movement froze my cheeks twice. We avoid masks with great care, re- serving them for the severer weather; the jaw when pro- tected recovers very soon the sensibility which exposure has subdued. "March 31. — I was within an ace to-day of fosjng my dogs, every one of them. When I reached the ice-foot, they balked ; — who would not 1 — the tide was low, the ice rampant, and a jump of four feet necessary to reach the crest. The howling of the wind and the whirl of the snow-drift confused the poor creatures; but it was valuable HAD MJU'S. 05 training for them, and I strove to force them over. Of course 1 was on foot, and they liad a light load behind them. * Now, Stumpy ! Now, Whitey !' * Good dogs !' * Tu-lee-ce ee ! Tuh !' They went at it like good stauncli brutes, and the next minute the whole team was rolling in a lump, some sixteen feet below me, in the chasm of the ice-foot. The drift was such that at first I could not see them. The roaring of the tide, and the subdued wail of the dogs, made me fear for the worst. I had to walk through the broken ice, which rose in toppling spires over my head, for nearly fifty yards, before I found an opening to the ice-face, by which 1 was able to climb down to them. A few cuts of a sheath-knife released them, although the caresses of the dear brutes had like to have been fatal to me, for I had to straddle with one foot on the fast ice and the other on loose jailed rubbish. But I got a line attached to the cross-pieces of the sledge-runners, flung it up on the ice-foot, and then piloted my dogs out of their slough. In about ten minutes we were sweating along at eight miles an hour." Everything looked promising, and we were only waiting for intelligence that our advance party had deposited its provisions in safety to begin our transit of the bay. Except a few sledge-lashings and some trifling accoutrements to finish, all was ready. We were at work cheerfully, sewing away at the skins of some moccasins by the blaze of our lamps, w^hen, toward midnight, w^e heard the noise of steps above, and the next minute Sontag, Ohlsen, and Petersen, came down into the cabin. Their manner startled me even more than their unexpected appearance on board. They were swollen and haggard, and hardly able to speak. Their story was a fearful one. They had left thtir CG THE FAR XOliTJl. companions in the ice, risking their own lives to bring us the news; Brooks, Baker, Wilson, and Pierre, were all lying frozen and disabled. Where 1 They could not tell ; somewhere in among the hummocks to the north and east; it was drifting heavily round them when they parted. Irish Tom had stayed by to feed and care for the others; but the chances were sorely against them. It was in vain to question them further. They had evidently travelled a great distance, for they were sinking with fatigue and hunger, and could hardly be rallied enough to tell us the direction in which they had come. My firrt impulse was to move on the instant with an unencumbered party; a rescue, to be effective or even hopeful, could not be loo prompt. W'lat pressed on my mind most was where the sufferers were to be looked for among the drifts. Ohlsen seemed to have his faculties rather more at command than his associates, and I thought that he miglit assist us as a guide ; but he was sinking with exhaustion, and if ho went with us we must carry him. There was not a moment to be lost. While some were still busy with the new-comers and getting ready a hasty meal, others were rigging out the Little Willie with a buffalo-cover, a small tent, and a package of pemmican; and, as soon as we could hurry through our arrangements, Ohlsen was strapped on in a fur bag, his legs wrapped in dog-skins and eider down, and we were off upon the ice. Our party consisted of nine men and myself. We carried only the clothes on our backs. The thermometer stood at 46°, seventy-eight below the freezing point. A well known peculiar tower of ice, called by the men the " Pinnacly Berg," served as our first landmark; other icebergs of colossal size, which stretched in long beaded EFFECT OF THE COLD. 07 bring us were all not tell ; and east ; parted. le others; IS in vain avelled a igue and ell U3 the t with an or even ed on my looked for , faculties I thought as sinking nust carry some were dy a hasty lie with a pemmican ; angements, wrapped in an the ice. We carried er stood at )y the men lark; other 3ng beaded lines across the bay, helped to guide ua afterward; and it was not until we had travelled for sixteen hours that we began to lose our way. We knew that cur lost companions must be somewhere in the area before us, within a radius of forty miles. Ohlsen, who had been for fifty hours without rest, fell asleep as soon as we began to move, and awoke now with unequivocal signs of mental disturbance Tr becama evi- dent that he had lost the bearing of th'.' icel <':gs which in form and colour endlessly reponlid tl'Hin'Hel7«ii; and the uniformity of the vast field of snow attcrlj forbade the hope of local landmarks. Pushing ahead of the party, ai^d <-ii;Ar"'oeiing ovf r Br.me rugged ice-piles, I came to a lopg ii^vel iloe, wiuct;. 1 thought might probably have attracted i1j<.; eyes of iveavy rnon va circumstances like our own. It was a light c(:'.njei',ttue; but it was enough to turn the seal .., for there waj no other to balance it. I gave orders to abandon the biedge, and disperse in search of footmarks. Ti'e raised mr tent, placed our pemmican in cache, except a Rni,.\ll allovvaace lor each man to carry on his person; and poor Ohlsen, now just able to keep his legs, was liberated from his bag. It was indispensable that we should move on, locking out for traces as we went. Yet when tlie men were ordered to spread themselves, so as to luuldply the chances, though they all obeyed heiirtily, some painful impress of solitary danger, or perhaps ic may have been the varying configuration of the ice-held, kept them closing up con- tinually into 1 aingle group. The strange manner in which sone of us were affected I now attribute as much to shattered nerves as to the direct influence oLj;he cold. Men like M^Gary and Bonsall, who had stood-^ut our severest marches, were seized with trembling fits-and short m 68 THE FAR NORTH. |( J breath; and, in spite of all my efforts to keep up an example of sound bearing, I fainted twice on the snow. We had been nearly eighteen hours out, without water or food, when a new hope cheered us. I think it was Hans, our Esquimaux hunter, who thought he saw a broad sledge- track. The drift had nearly effaced it, and we were some of us doubtful at first whether it was not one of those accidental rifts which the gales make in the surface-snow. But, as we traced it on to the deep snow among the hum- mocks, we were led to footsteps ; and, following these with religious care, we at last came in sight of a small American flag fluttering from a hummock, and lower down a little masonic banner hanging from a tent-pole hardly above the drift. It was the camp of our disabled comrades; we reached it after an unbroken march of twent} one hours. The little tent was nearly covered. I was not among the first to come up; but, when I reached the tent-curtain, the men were standing in silent file on each side of it. With more kindness and delicacy of feeling than is often supposed to belong to sai^.ors, but which is almost charac- teristic, they intimated their wish that I should go in alone. As I crawled in, and, coming upon tlie darkness, heard before me the burst of welcome gladness that came from the four poor fellows stretched on their backs, and then for the first time the cheer outside, my weakness and my gratitude together almost overcame me. " They had ex- pected me : they were sure I would come ! " We were now fifteen souls ; the thermometer 75° below the freezing point; and our sole accommodation a tent barely able to contain eight persons : more than half our party were obliged to keep from freezing by walking out- side while the others slept. We could not halt long. i THE RETREAT. 60 sep up an 3 snow, it water or was Hans, )ad sledge- were some e of those :face-snow. y the hum- these with 1 American «vn a little rdly above comrades ; twent) one not among 3nt-curtain, side of it. m is often lost cliarac- zo in alone. ness, heard came from , and then 5SS and my ley had ex- r 75** below tion a tent m half our alking out- halt long. Each of us took a turn of two hours' sleep, and we pre- pared for our homeward march. We took with us nothing but the tent, furs to protect the rescued party, aad food for a journey of fifty hours. Everything else was abandoned. Two large buffalo-bags, each made of four skins, were doubled up, so as to form a sort of sack, lined on each side by fur, closed at the bottom, but opened at the top. This was laid on the sledge ; the tent, smoothly folded, serving as a floor. The sick, with their limbs sewed up carefully in reindeer-skins, were placed upon the bed of buffalo-robes, in a half-reclining posture; other skins and blanket-bags were thrown above them; and the whole litter was lashed together so as to allow but a single opening opposite the mouth for breathing. This necessary work cost us a great deal of time and effort; but it was essential to the lives of the sufferers. It took us no less than four hours to strip and refresh them, and then to embale them in the manner I have described. Few of us escaped without frost-bitten fingers. It was completed at last, however; all hands stood round, and after repeating a short prayer, we set out on our retreat. It was fortunate indeed that we were not inexperienced in sledging over the ice. A great part of our track lay among a succession of biuiimocks, some of them extending in long lines, fifteen or twenty feet high, and so uniformly steep that we had to turn them b}'' a coii- . siderable deviation from our direct course ; others that we forced our way through, far above our heads in height, lying in parallel ridges, with the space between too narrow for the sledge to be lowered into it safely, and yet not wide enough for the runners to cross without the aid of ropes to stay them. These spaces, too, were generally choked with light snow, hiding the openings between the 70 THE FAR NORTH. ice-fragments. TLey were fearful tr«ips to disengage a limb from, for every man knew that a fracture, or a sprain even, would cost him his life. Besides all this, the sledge was top-heavy with its load: the maimed men could not bear to be lashed down tight enough to secure them against falling off. Notwithstanding our caution in rejecting every superfluous burden, the weight, including bags and tent, was eleven hundred pounds. And yet our march for the first six hours was very cheer- ing. "VVe made, by vigorous pulls and lifts, nearly a mile an hour, and reached the new floes before we were abso- lutely weary. Our sledge sustained the trial admirably. Ohlsen, restored by hope, walked steadily at the leading belt of the sledge lines; and I began to feel certain of reaching our half-way station of the day before, where we had left our tent. But we w^ere still nine miles from it, when, almost without premonition, we all became aware of an alarming failure of our energies. Bonsall and Morton, two of our stoutest men, came to me, begging permission to sleep. " They were not cold, the wind did not enter them now, — a little sleep was all they w\anted." Presently Hans was found nearly stiff under a drift; and Thomas, bolt upright, had his eyes closed, and could hardly articulate. At last John Blake threw himself on the snow, and refused to rise. They did not complain of feeling cold; but it was in vain that I wrestled, boxed, ran, argued, jeered, or reprimanded : an immediate halt could not be avoided. We pitched our tent with much difficulty. Our hands were too powerless to strike a fire; we were obliged to do without water or food. Even the spirits (whisky) had frozen at the men's feet, under all the coverings. We put Bonsall, Ohlsen, Thomas, and Hans, witli the other sick us, us, mg ] for sengage a >r a sprain the sledge could not 3m against jting every and tent, v-ery cheer- irly a mile were abso- admirably. eading belt 3f reaching NQ had left I it, when, ;vare of an same to me, )t cold, the ^-as all they tiff under a closed, and [•cw himself 3t complain tied, boxed, lediate halt Our hands bliged to do irhisky) had ;s. We put 5 other sick A BEAR FROLIC. 71 men, well inside the tent, and crowded in as many others as ;ve could. Then, leaving the party in charge of Mr M'Gary, with orders to cohij) on after four hours' rest, I pushed ahead with William Godfrey, who volunteered to be my companion. My aim was to reach the half-way tent, and thaw some ice and pemmican before the others arrived. The floe was of level ice, and the walking excellent. I cannot tell how long it took us to make the nine miles, for we were in a strange sort of stupor, and had little appre- hension of time. It was probably about four hours. We kept ourselves awake by imposing on each other a con- tinued articulation of words ; they must have been inco- herent enough. I recall these hours as among the most wretched I have ever gone through : we were neither of us in our right senses, and retained a very confused recollec- tion of what preceded our arrival at the tent. We both of us, however, remember a bear, who walked leisurely before us, and tore up as he went a jumper that Mr M'Gary had improvidently thrown off the day before. He tore it into shreds and rolled it into a ball, but never offered to inter- fere with our progress. I remember this, and with it a confused sentiment that our tent and buffalo-robes might probably share the same fate. Godfrey, with whom the memory of this day's work may atone for many faults of a later time, had a better eye than myself ; and, looking some miles ahead, he could see that our tent was under- going the same unceremonious treatment. I thought I saw it too, but we were so drunken with cold that we strode on steadily, and, for aught 1 know, without quicken- ing our pace. Probably our approach saved the contents of the tent; for when we reached it the tent was uninjured, though the \-4. 72 THE FAR NORTH. bear had overturned it, tossing the bufftdo-robes and pem- niican into the snow; we missed only a couple of blanket- bags. What we recollect, however, — and perhaps all we recollect, — is, that we had great difficulty in raising it. We crawled into our reindeer sleeping-bags without speaking, and for the next three hours slept on in a dreamy but intense slumber. When I awoke, my long beard was f\r mass of ice, frozen fast to the buffiilo-skin ; Godfrey had to cut me out with his jack-knife. Four days after our escape, I found my woollen comfortable with a goodly share of my beard still adhering to it. We were able to melt water and get some soup cooked before the rest of our party arrived : it took them but five hours to walk the nine miles. They were doing well, and, considering the circumstances, in wonderful spirits. The day was almost providentially windless, with a clear sun. All enjoyed the refreshment we had got ready : the crippled were repacked in their robes; and we sped briskly toward the hummock-ridges which lay between us and the Pinnacly Berg. It required desperate efforts to work our way over it — literally desperate, for our strength failed us anew, and we began to lose our self-control. We could not abstain any longer from eating snow ; our mouths swelled, and some of us became speechless. Our halts multiplied, and we fell half-sleeping on the snow.- I could not prevent it. Strange to say, it refreshed us. I ventured upon the experiment myself, making Riley wake me at the end of three minutes ; and I felt so much benefited by it that I timed the men in the same way. They sat on the runners of the sledge, fell asleep instantly, and were forced to wakefulness when their three minutes were out. MENTAL FAILUnE. 73 md pem- blanket- ps all we g it. We speaking, eamy but ,rd was jv dfrey had after our idly share ip cooked 11 but five well, and, its. The ilear sun. e crippled ly toward Pinnacly over it — V, and we ►stain any d some of ig on the refreshed ing Riley b so much [vme way. instantly, 3 minutes By eight in the evening we emerged from the floes. The sight of Pinnacly Berg revived us. Brandy, an invaluable resource in emergency, had already been served out in table-spoonful doses. We now took a longer rest, and a last but stouter dram, and reached the brig at 1 p.m., we believe without a halt. I say tve believe; and here perhaps is the most decided proof of our sufferings; we were quite delirious, and had ceased to entertain a sane apprehension of the circumstances about us. We moved on like men in a dream. Our foot- marks seen afterward showed that we had steered a straight line for the brig. It must have been by a sort of instinct, for it left no impress on the memory. Bonsall was sent staggering ahead, and reached the brig, God knows how, for he had fallen repeatedly at the track-lines; but he delivered with punctilious accuracy the messages I had sent by him to Dr Hayes. I thought myself the soundest of all, foi* I went through .. } the formula of sanity, and can recall the muttering delirium of my com- rades when we got back into the cabin of our brig. Yet I have been told since of some speeches and some orders too of mine, which I should have remembered for their ab- surdity, if my mind had retained its balance. Petersen and Whipple came out to meet us about two miles from the brig. They brouglit my dog-team, with the restoratives I had sent for by Bonsall. I do not remember their coming. Dr Hayes entered with judicious energy upon the treatment our condition called for, ad- ministering morphine freely, after the usual frictions. He reported none of our brain- symptoms as serious, referring them properly to the class of those indications of exhausted power which yield to generous diet and rest. Mr Ohlsen Buffered some time from strabismus and blindness; two 74 THE FAR SOllTIL others underwent amputation of parts of the foot without uni)leasaiit consequences, and two died in spite of all our efforts. This rescue-party had been out for seventy- two hours. We had halted in all eight hours, half of our num- ber sleeping at a time. We travelled between eighty and ninety miles, most of the way dragging a heavy sledge. The mean temperature of the whole time, including the warmest hours of three days, was at — 41°-2. We had no water except at our halts, and were at no time able to intermit vigorous exercise without freezing. " April 4. — Four days have passed, and I am again at my record of failures, sound, but aching still in every joint. The rescued men are not out of danger, but their gratitude is very touching. Pray God that they may live!" CHAPTER VII. THE FIRST STRANGE FACES — THE ESQUIMAUX. The week that followed has left me nothing to remember but anxieties and sorrow. Nearly all our party, as well the rescuers as the rescued, were tossing in their sick- bunks, some frozen, others undergoing amputations, several with dreadful premonitions of tetanus. JE was myself among the first to be about ; the necessities of the others claimed it of me. Early in the morning of the 7th I was awakened by a sound from Baker's throat, one of those the most frightful and ominous that ever startle a physician's ear. The lock- .J t without )f all our '^enty-two onr num- ighty and y sledge, iding the Ve had no e able to again at 'ery joint. gratitude » [JX. remember y, as well ;heir sick- ns, several as myself the others :ened by a t frightful The lock- TllE ESQUIMAUX. 75 |. \\ jaw had seized him — that dark visitant whose foreshadow- ings were on so many of us. His symptoms marched raidilly to their result; he died the next day. On the 9th we placed him in his coffin, and, forming a rude, but heart- full procession, bore him over the broken ice and up the steep side of the ice-foot to Butler Island; then, passing along the snow-level to Fern Rock, and climbing the slope of the Observatory, we deposited his corpse upon the pedestals which had served to support our instruments. "We read the service for the burial of the dead, sprinkling over him snow for dust, and repeated the Lord's Prayer; and then icing up again the opening in the walls we had made to admit the coffin, left him in his narrow house. We were watching in the morning at Baker's death-bed, when one of our deck-watch, who had been cutting ice for the melter, came hurrying down into the cabin with the report, " People holloaing ashore!" I went up, followed by as many as could mount the gangway; and there they were, on all sides of our rocky harbour, dotting the snow- shores and emerging from the blackness of the cliffs, — wild and uncouth, but evidently human beings. As we gathered on the deck, they rose upon the more elevated fragments of the land-ice, and distributing them- selves around almost in a half -circle. They were vociferat- ing as if to attract our attention, or perhaps only to give vent to their surprise; but I could make nothing out of their cries, except "Hoah, ha, ha !" and " Ka, kaah ! ka, kaah ! " repeated over and over again. There was light enough for me to see that they brandished no weapons, and were only tossing their heads and arms about in violent gesticulations. A more unexcited inspec- tion showed us, too, that their numbers were not as great nor their size as large as some of us had been disposed to f) > " J -,* 7G THE FAR N on TIT, \i\ fancy at first. In a word, I was satisfied that they were natives of the country; and, calling Pclersen from his bunk to be my interpreter, I proceeded unarmed, and waving my open hands, toward a stout figure who made himself conspicuous, and seemed to have a greater number near him than the rest. He evidently understood the move?- ment, for he at once, like a brave fellow, leaped down upon the floe and advanced to meet me fully half-way. He was nearly a head taller than myself, extremely powerful and well-built, with swarthy complexion and ])iercing black eyes. His dress was a hooded capdte or jumper of mixed white and blue fox-pelts, arranged with something of fancy, and bo*oted trousers of white bear-skin, which at the end of the foot were made to terminate with the claws of the animal. I soon came to an understanding with this gallant diplo- matist. Almost as soon as we commenced our parley, his companions, probably receiving signals from him, flocked in and surrounded us ; but we had no difficulty in making them know positively that they must remain where they were, while Metek went with me on board the ship. This gave me the advantage of negotiating with an important hostage. Although this was the first time he had ever seen a white man, he went with me fearlessly; his companions staying behind on the ice. Hickey took them out what he esteemed our greatest delicacies, — slices of good wheat bread and corned pork, with exorbitant lumps of white sugar; but they refused to touch them. They had evi- dently no apprehension of open violence from us. I found afterward that several among them were singly a match for the white bear and the walrus, and that they thought us a very pale-faced crew. h runn hey were his bunk i waving e himself iber near be move'- own upon extremely xion and capCte or Qged with bear-skin, in ate with ant diplo- pa'rley, his n, flocked in making 'here they lip. This important er seen a )mpanions out what ood wheat of white had evi- I found match for )ught us a OUTFIT OF THE ESQUIMAUX. 77 ;i ' u Being satisfied with my interview in the cabin, I sent out word that the rest might be admitted to the ship ; and, although they, of course, could not know how their chief had been dealt with, some nine or ten of them followed with boisterous readiness upon the bidding. Others in the meantime, as if disposed to give us their company for the full time of a visit, brought up from behind the land-ice as many as fifty-six fine dogs, with their sledges, and secured them within two hundred feet of the brig, driving their lances into the ice, and picketing the dogs to them by the seal-skin traces. The animals understood the opera- tion perfectly, and lay down as soon as it commenced. The sledges were made up of small fragments of porous bone, admirably knit together by thongs of hide; the runners, which glistened like burnished steel, were of highly-polished ivory, obtained from the tusks of the walrus. The only arms th6y carried were knives, concealed in their boots; but their lances, which were lashed to the sledges, were quite a formidable weapon. The staff was of the horn of the narwhal, or else of the thigh-bones of the bear, two lashed together, or sometimes the mirabilis of the walrus, three or four of them united. This last was a favourite material also for the cross-bars of their sledgts. They had no wood. A single rusty hoop from a current- drifted cask mitjjht have furnished all the knives of the party; but the fleam-shaped tips of their lances were of unmistakable steel, and were ri vetted to the tapering bony point with no mean skill. I learned afterward that the metal was obtained in traffic from the more southern tribes. They were clad much as I have described Metek, in jumpers, boots, and white bear-skin breeches, with their feet decorated like his, en griffe. A strip of knotted THE FAU yon TIL leather worn round tlio neck, very greasy and dirty-look- ing, which no one could be persuaded to part vith for an instant, was mistaken at first for an ornament by the crew: it was not until niutual hardslii[)S had made us better acquainted that we learned its mysterious uses. When they were first allowed to come v^n board, they were very rude and difficult to manage. They spoke three or four at a time, to each other and to us, laughing heartily at our ignorance in not understanding them, and then talk- ing away as before. They were incessantly in motion, going everywhere, trying doors, and squeezing themselves through dark passages, round casks and boxes, and out into the light again, anxious to touch and handle every- thing they saw, and asking for, or else endeavouring to steal, everything they touched. It was the more difficult to restrain them, as I did not wish them to suppose that we were at all intimidated. But there were some signs of our disabled condition which it was important they should not see ; it was especially necessary to keep them out of the forecastle, where the dead body of poor Baker was lying; and, as it was in vain to reason or persuade, we had at last to employ the " gentle laying-on of hands," which, I believe, the laws of all countries tolerate, to keep them in order. Our whole force was mustered and kept constantly on the alert; but though there may have been something of discourtesy in the occasional shoulderings and bustlings that enforced the police of the ship, things went on good- humouredly. Our guests continued running in and out and about the vessel, bringing in provisions, and carrying them out again to their dogs on the ice, — in fact, stealing all the time until the afternoon, when, like tired children, they threw themselves down to sleep. I ordered them to 1 I 1 EA TIXG II ADITS. 79 dirty-look- 'ith for ail ' the crew: us better oard, they poke three ig heartily then talk- n motion, themselves I, and out idle every- ^ouring to re difficult ppose that ome signs rtant they ceep them ►cor Baker persuade, )f hands," ;e, to keep stantly on nething of hustlings t on good- and out carrying t, stealing 1 children, d them to be made comfortable in the hold; and Morton spread a large buffalo-robe for them, not far from a coal-firo in the galley- stove. They were lost in barbarous amaze at the new fuel, — too hard for blubber, too soft for firestone, — but they were content to believe it might cook as well as seals' fat. They borrowed from us an iron pot and some melted water, and parboiled a couple of pieces of walrus-meat ; but the real piece de resistance, some five pounds a head, they preferred to eat raw. Yet there was something of the gourmet in their mode of assorting their mouthf uls of beef and blubber. Alices of each, or rather strips, passed between the lips, either together or in strict alternation, and with a regu- larity of sequence that kept the molars well to their work. They did not eat all at once, but each man when and as often as the impulse prompted. Each slept after eating, his raw meat lying beside him on the buffalo-skin ; and as he woke, the first act was to eat, and the next to sleep again. They did not lie down, but slumbered away in a sitting posture, with the head declined upon the breast, some of them snoring famously. In the morning they were anxious to go; but I had given orders to detain them for a parting interview with myself. It resulted in a treaty, brief in its terms, that it might be certainly remembered, and mutually beneficial, that it night possibly be kept. I tried to make them understand what a powerful Prospero they had had for a host, and how beneficent he would prove himself so long as they did his bidding. And, as an earnest of my favour, I bought all the walrus-meat they had to spare, and four of their dogs, enriching them in return with needles and beads, and a treasure of old cask-staves. In the fulness of their gratitude, they pledged then> 80 THE FAR NORTH. selves empLatically to return in a few clays with more meat, and to allow me to use their dogs and sledges for my excursions to the north. I then gave them leave to go. They yoked in their dogs in less than two uiinuteH, got on their sledges, cracked their two-fathom-and-a-lialf-long seal- skin wliips, and were off down the ice to the south-west at a rate of seven knots an hour. They did not return. I had read enough of treaty- makings not to expect them too ccmfidently. But the next df.y came a party of five, on foot — two old men, one of middle age, and a couple of gawky boys. We had missed a number of articles soon after the first party left us, an axe, a saw, and some knives. We found afterward that our storehouse at Butler Island had been entered ; we were too short-handed to guard it by a special watch. Besides all this, reconnoitring stealthily beyond Sylvia Head, we dis- covered a train of sledges drawn up behind the hummocks. There was cause for apprehension in all this; but I felt that I could not afford to break'with the rogues. They had it in their power to molest us seriously in our sledge- travel; they could make our hunts around the harbour dangerous; and my best chance of obtaining an abundant supply of. fresh meat, our great desideratum, was by their agency. I treated the new party with marked kindness, and gave them many presents; but took care to make them aware that, until all the missing articles were re- stored, no member of the tribe would be admitted again as a guest on board the brig. They went off with many pantomimic protestations of innocence; but M'Gary, never- theless, caught the incorrigible scamps stealing a coal- barrel as they passed Butler Island, and expedited their journey homeward by firing among them a charge of small shot. n MVOUKr 81 Still, one peculiar wortby — wo thought it must havo been the veneniblo of the party, whom I kuew afterwards as a staunch friend, old Shang-huh — managed to work round in a westerly direction, and to cut to jjieces my Iiidia-rultber boat, which had been left on the floe since ^Ir Brook's disaster, and to carry oflf every particle of the wood. A few days after this, an agile, elfin youth drove up to our floe in open day. He was sprightly and good-looking, and had quite a neat turn-out of sledge and dogs. He told his name with frankness, — " Myouk^ I am," — and where he lived. We asked him about the boat ; but he denied all knowledge of it, and refused either to confess or repent. He was surprised when I ordered him to be confined to the hold. At first he refused to eat, and sat down in the deepest grief; but after a while he began to sing, and then to talk and cry, and then to sing again ; and he kept cry- ing, singing, and talking by turns, till a late hour of the night. When I turned in, he was still noisily disconsolate. There was a simplicity and honhommie about this boy that interested me much ; and T confess that when I made ray appearance next morning — I could hardly conceal it from the gentleman on duty, whom I affected to censure — I was glad my bird had flown. Some time during the morning-watch he had succeeded in throwing off the hatch and escaping. We suspected that he had confederates ashore, for his dogs had escaped with as much address as himself. I was convinced, however, that I had the truth from him, where he lived, and how many lived with him — my cross-examination on these points having been very complete and satisfactory. It was a sad business for some time after these Esqui- maux left us, to go on making and registering our observa- 82 THE FAR NOIITU. tions at Fern Rock. Baker's corpse still lay in the vestibule, and it was not long before another was placed by the. side of it. We had to pass the bodies as often as we went in or out; but the men, grown feeble and nervous, disliked going near them in the night-time. When the summer thaw came, and we could gather stones enough, we built up a grave on a depression of the rocks, and raised a substantial cairn above it. " April 19. — I have been out on the floe again, breaking in my dogs. My reinforcement from the Esquimaux makes a noble team for me. For the last five days I have been striving with them, just as often and as long as my strength allowed me ; and to-day I have my victory. The Society for Preventing Cruelty to Animals would have put me in custody if they had been near enough; but, thanks to a merciless whip freely administered, I have been dash- ing along twelve miles in the last hour, and am back again; harness, sledge, and bones all unbroken. I am ready for another journey. " April 22. — Schubert has increasing symptoms of ery- sipelas around his amputated stump; and. every one on board is depressed and silent eYcept himself. He is sing- ing in his bunk, as joyously as ever. Poor fellow ! I am alarmed about him : it is a hard duty which compels me to take the field, while my presence might cheer his last moments." DETAILS OF THE OUTFIT, ua in tlie placed ften as ervons, en the nongh, Ls, and reaking iiimaux I have as my . The ave put thanks n dash- na back I am of ery- one on is sing- ! I am s me to his last CHAPTER VIII. A NEW EXPLORATION — RETURN OP SPRING. The month of April was about to close, and the short season available for Arctic search was upon us. The con- dition of things on board the brig was not such as I could have wished for ; but there was nothing to exact my pre- sence, and it seemed to me clear that the time had come for pressing on the work of the expedition. The arrange- ments for our renewed exploration had not been intermitted, and were soon complete. I leave to my journal its own story. "April "r. — A journey on the carpet, and the crew busy with the little details of their outfit : the officers the same. * ** April 2(j. — These Esquimaux must be watched care- fully; at the same time they are to be dealt with kindly, though with a strict enforcement of our police regulations, and some caution as to the freedom with which they may come on board. No punishments must be permitted, either of them or in their presence, and no resort to fire-arms unless to repel a serious attack. I have given orders, however, that if the contingency does occur, there shall be no firing over head. The prestige of the gun with a savage is in his notion of its infallibility. You may spare blood- shed by killing a dog, or even wounding him; but in no event should you throw away your ball. It is neither politic nor humane. " Our stowage precautions are all arranged, to meet the chance of the ice breaking up while I am away; and a boat 84 THE FAR NORTH. is placed asliore with stores, as the brig may be forced from her moorings. " The worst thought I have now in setting out is, that of the entire crew I can leave but two behind in able con- dition, and the doctor and Bonsall are the only two officers who can help Ohlsen. This is our force, four able-bodied, and six disabled, to ker^p the brig; the commander and seven men, scarcely better upon the average, out upon the ice. Eighteen souls, thank God ! certainly not eighteen bodies ! " I am going this time to follow the ice-belt to the Great Glacier of Humboldt, and there load up with pem- mican from our cache of last October. From this point I expect to stretch along the face of the glacier inclining to the west of north, and make an attempt to cross the ice to the American side. Once on smooth ice, near tliis shore, I may pass to the west, and enter the large indentation whose existence I can infer with nearly positive certainty. In this I may find an outlet, and determine the state of things beyond the ice- clogged area of this bay. " I take with me peiumican, bread, and tea, a canvas tent, five feet by six, and two sleeping bags of reindeer- skin. The sledge has been built on board by Mr Ohlsen. It is very light, of hickory, and but nine feet long. Our kitchen is a soup-kettle for melting snow and making tea, arranged so as to boil with either lard or spirits. " M'Gary has taken the Faith. He carries few stores, intending to replenish at the cache of Bonsall Point, and to lay in pemmican at M'Gary Island. Most of his cargo consists of bread, which we find it hard to dispense with in eating cooked food. It has a good effect in absorbing the fat of the pemmican, which is apt to disagree with the stomach." tl A NEW START. 85 Godfrey and myself followed on the 27th, as I had intended. The journey was an arduous one to be under- taken, even under the most favouring circumstances, and by unbroken men. It was to be the crowning expedition of the campaign, to attain the Ultima Thule of the Green- land shore, measure the waste that lay between it and the unknown West, and seek round the farthest circle of the ice for an outlet to the mysterious channels beyond. The scheme could not be carried out in its details ; yet it was prosecuted far enough to indicate what must be our future fields of labour, and to determine many points of geogra- phical interest. Our observations were in general confir- matory of those which had been made by Mr Bonsall; and they accorded so well with our subsequent surveys as to trace for us the outline of the coast with great certainty. " It is now the 20th of May, and for the first time I am able, propped up by pillows and surrounded by sick mess- mates, to note the fact that we have failed again to force the passage to the north. " Godfrey and myself overtook the advance party under M'Gary two days after leaving the brig. Our dogs were in fair travelling condition, and, except snow-blindness, there seemed to be no drawback to our efficiency. In crossing Marshall Bay we found the snow so accumulated in drifts that, with all our eff'orts to pick out a track, w^o became involved; we could not force our sledges thnnigh. We were forced to unload, and carry forward the cargo on our backs, beating a path for the dogs to follow in. In this way we plodded on to the opposite headland. Capo ^Villiam Wood, where the waters of iMary Minturn River, which had delayed the freezing of the ice, gave us a long reach of level travel. We then made a better rate : and 8G THE FAR KOnTH. our days' marches were such as to carry us by the 4tli of May nearly to the glacier. *' This progress, however, was dearly earned. As early as the 3d of May the winter's scurvy re-appeared painfully among our party. As we struggled through the snow along the Greenland coast we sank up to our middle ; and the dogs, floundering about, were so buried as to preclude any attempts at hauling. Here three of the party were taken with snow-blindness, and Geoige Stephenson had to be condemned as unfit for travel altogether, on account of chest-symptoms accompanying his scorbutic troubles. On the 4th Thomas Hickey also gave in, although not quite disabled for labour at tlie track-lines. " Perhaps we would still have got on; but, to crown all, we found that the bears had effected an entrance into our pemmican casks, and destroyed our chances of reinforcing our provisions at the several caches. This great calamity was certainly inevitable; for it is simple justice to the officers under whose charge the provision depots were con- structed, to say that no means in their power could have prevented the result. The pemmican was covered with blocks of stone, which it had required the labour of three men to adjust; but the extraordinary strength of the bear had enabled him to force aside the heaviest rocks, and his pawing had broken the iron casks which held our pemmican literally into chips. Our alcohol cask, which it had cost me a separate and special journey in the late fall to deposit, was so completely destroyed that we could not find a stave of it. ' " Off Cape James Kent, about eight miles from * Sunny Gorge,' while taking an observation for latitude, I was myself seized with a sudden p^in, and fainted. My limbs became rigid, and certain obscure tetanoid symptoms of MORE MISFOIiTLWES. 87 tth of early 11 fully snow ; and sclude f were bad to unt of i. On b quite wn all, ito our forcing ilamity to the ire con- d have d with f three lie bear and his nmican ad cost ieposit, a stave ' Sunny I was y limbs oms of our late winter's enemy disclosed themselves. In this condition I was unable to make more than nine miles a day. I was strapped upon the sledge, and the march continued as usual; but my powers diminished so rapidly that I could not resist even the otherwise comfortable temperament of 5* below zero. My left foot becoming frozen, caused a vexatious delay ; and the same night it became evident that the immovability of my limbs was due to dropsical effusion. " On the 5th, bec{^ ning delirious, and fainting every time that I was taken from the tent to the sledge, I suc- cumbed entirely. " The scurvy had already broken out among the men, with symptoms like my own; and Morton, our strongest man, was beginning to give way. It is the reverse of comfort to me that they shared my weakness. All that I should remember with pleasurable feeling is, that to five brave men, — Morton, Riley, Hickey, Stephenson, and Hans, themselves scarcely able to travel, — I owe my preservation. They carried me back by forced marches, and I was taken into the brig on the 1-1 th. Since then, fluctuating between life and death, I have by the blessing of God reached the present date, and see feebly in prospect my recovery. Dr Hayes regards my attack as one of scurvy, complicated by typhoid fever. George Stephenson is similarly affected. Our worst symptoms are dropsical effusion and night-sweats. "Mai/ 22. — Let me, if I can, make up my record for the time I have been away, or on my back. '* Poor Schubert is gone. Our gallant, merry-hearted companion left us some ten days ago, for, I trust, a more genial world. It is sad, in this dreary little homestead of onrs, to miss his contented face and the joyous troll of his ballads. 88 THE FAR NORTH, " The health of the rest has, if anything, improved. Their complexions show the influence of sunlight, and I think several have a firmer and more elastic step. Stephen- son and Thomas are the only two beside myself who are likely to suffer permanently from the effects of our break- down. Bad scurvy both: symptoms still serious. " I left Hans as hunter. I gave him a regular exemption from all other labour, and a promised present to his lady- love on reaching Fiskernaes. He signalised his promotion by shooting two deer, Tuhkuh, the first yet shot. We have now on hand one hundred and forty-five pounds of venison, a very gift of grace to our diseased crew. But, indeed, we are not likely to want for wholesome food, now that the night is gone, which made our need of it so press- ing. On the first of May those charming little migrants, the snow-birds, ultima ccelicolum, which only left us on the 4th of November, returned to our ice-crusted rocks, whence they seem to * fill the sea and air with their sweet jargoning.' Seal literally abound, too. I have learned to prefer this flesh to the reindeer's, at least that of the female seal, which has not the fetor of her mate's. " By the 12th, the sides of the Advance were free from snow, and her rigging clean and dry. The floe is rapidly undergoing its wonderful processes of decay, and the level ice measures but six feet in thickness. To-day they report a burgomaster - gull seen, one of the en,rliest but surest indications of returning open water. It is not strange, ice- leaguered exiles as we are, that We observe and exult in these things. They are the pledges of renewed life, the olive-branch of this dreary waste : we feel the spring in all our pulses. " The first thing I did after my return was to send M'Gary to the Life-boat Cove, to see that our boat and its (( MOEJi: DIFFICULTIES. 89 proved. , and I tepTien- svho are : break- emption lis lady- omotion ot. We ounda of V. But, ood, now so press- nfti grants, jft us on ed rocks, eir sweet earned to it of the i. free from LS rapidly the level bey report 3ut surest rarige, ice- l exult in a life, the >ring in all IB to send oat and its ' buried provisions were secure. He made the journey by dog-sledge in four days, and has returned reporting that all is safe — an important help for us, should this heavy ice of our more northern prison refuse to release us. " But the pleasantest feature of liis journey \vas the dis- closure of open water, extending up in a sort of tongue, with a trend of north by east to within two miles of Refuge Harbour, and there widening as it expanded to the south and west. " As soon as I had recovered enough to be aware of my failure, I began to devise means for remedying it. But I found the resources of the party shattered. Pierre had died but a week before, and his death exerted an unfavour- able influence. There were only three men able to do duty. Of the officers, Wilson, Brooks, Sontag, and Petersen, were knocked up. There was no one except Sontag, Hayes, or myself who was qualified to conduct a survey; and, of us three, Dr Hayes was the only one on his feet. " The quarter to which our remaining observations were to be directed lay to the north and east of the Cape Sabine of Captain Inglefield. The interruption our progress along the coast of Greenland had met from the Great Glacier, and destruction of our provision-caches by the bears, left a blank for us of the entire northern coast-line. It was necessary to ascertain whether the farthermost expansion of Smith's Strait did not find an outlet in still more remote channels. * " I determined to trust almost entirely to the dogs for our travel in the future, and to send our parties of explora- tion, one after the other, as rapidly as the strength and refreshing of our team would permit. " Dr Hayes was selected for that purpose ; and I satis- [fied myself that, with a little assistance from my comrades, F 90 THE FAR NORTH. I could be carried round to the cots of the sick, and so avail myself of his services in the field. " He was a perfectly fresli man, not having yet under- taken a journey. I gave him a team and my best driver, William Godfrey. He is to cross Smith's Straits above the inlet, and make as near as may be a straight course for Cape Sabine. My opinion is, that by keeping v<^ell south he will find the ice less clogged and easier sledging. Our experience proves, T think, that the transit of this broken area must be most impeded as we approach the glacier. The immense discharge of icebergs cannot fail to break it up seriously for travel. • " I gave him the small sledge which was built by Ohlsen. The snow was sufficiently thawed to make it almost unne- cessary to use fire as a means of obtaining water; they could therefore dispense with tallow or alcohol, and were able to carry pemmican in larger quantities. Their sleeping- bags were a very neat article of a light reindeer-skin. The dogs were in excellent condition too — no longer foot-sore, but well rested and completely broken, including the four from the Esquimaux:, animals of great power and size. Two of these, the stylish leaders of the team, a span of thoroughly wolfish iron-greys, have the most powerful and wild-beast-like bound that I have seen in animals of their kind. ■ - "I made up the orders of the party on the 19th, the first day that I was able to mature a plan; and with com- mendable zeal they left the brig on the 20th. " Afa(/ 23. — They have had superb weather, thank heaven ! — a profusion of the most genial sunshine, bring- ing out the seals in crowds to bask around their breathing- holes. Winter has gone ! ^^ May 2G. — I get little done; but T have too much to i\ w , and so t under- it driver, ts above ourse for ell south ag. Our 3 broken e glacier. ) break it )y Oblsen. (lost unne- ater; they , and vrere r sleeping- kin. The • foot-sore, g the four and size. a span of werful and lis of their 19th, the . with com- her, thank line, bring- breathing- 00 much to PIERRE SCHUBERT. 01 attend to in my weak state to journaliso. Thermometer above freezing-point, without the sun to-day. '•'•May 27. — Everything showing that the summer-changes have commenced. The ice is rapidly losing its integrity, and a melting snow has fallen for the last two days, — one of those comforting home snows that we have not seen for so long. " May 28. — Our day of rest and devotion. It was a fort- night ago last Friday since our poor friend Pierre died. For nearly two months he had been struggling against the enemy with a resolute will and mirthful spirit, that seemed sure of victory ; but he sunk in spite of them. " The last offices were rendered to him with the same careful ceremonial that we observed at Baker's funeral. There were fewer to walk in the procession ; but the body was encased in a decent pine coffin, and carried to Obser- vatory Island, where it was placed side by side with that of his messmate. Neither could yet be buried; but it is hardly necessary to sa}'" that the frost has embalmed their remains. Dr Hayes read the chapter from Job which has consigned so many to their last resting-place, and a little snow was sprinkled upon the face of the coffin. Pierre was a volunteer not only of our general expedition, but of the party with which he met his death-blow. He was a gallant man, a universal favourite on board, always singing some B6ranger ballad or other, and so elastic in his merri- ment, that even in his last sickness he cheered all that were about him. " May 30. — We are gleaning fresh water from the rocks, and the icebergs begin to show commencing streamlets. The great floe is no longer a Sahara, if still a desert. The floes are wet, and their snow dissolve readily under the warmth of the foot, and the old floe begins to shed fresh 92 THE FAR NORTH. I Puddles of salt water collect is now hardly recognisable, — water into its hollows, around the ice-foot. It rounded, sunken, broken up with water-pools overflowing its base. Its diminished crusts are so percolated by the saline tides, tha'^ neither tables nor broken fragments unite any longer by freezing. It is lessening so rapidly that we do not fear it any longer as an enemy to the brig. The berg indeed vanished long before tlie sun-thermometers indicated a noon temperature above 32°. Seal grow still more numerous on the level floes, lying cautiously in the sun beside their breathing-holes. By means of the Esquimaux stratagem of a white screen pushed forward on a sledge until the concealed hunter comes within range, Hans has shot four of them. We have more fresh meat than we can eat. For the past three weeks we have been living on ptarmigan, rabbits, two reindeer, and seal. " They are fast curing our scurvy. With all these re- sources, coming to our relief so suddenly too, how can my thoughts turn despairingly to poor Franklin and his crew? " Can they have survived 1 No man can answer with certainty ; but no man without presumption can answer in the negative. - " If, four months ago, — surrounded by darkness and bowed down by disease, — I had been asked the question, I would have turned toward the black hills and the frozen sea, and responded in sympathy with them, * No.' But with the return of light a savage people come down upon us, destitute of any but the rudest appliances of the chase, who were fattening on the most wholesome diet of the region, only forty miles from our anchorage, while I was denouncing its scarcity." THE DOGS. n lollect ble,— owing 3y the ; uidto lat we The meters , iyi"g 3. By screen hunter ''e have ? week3 jindeer, lese re- can my crew? er with swer in ess and sstion, I zen sea, vith the estitute 10 were on, only ouncing CHAPTER IX. ADVENT OF THE SECOND YEAR. II May 30, 1854. — It is a year ago to-day since we loft New York. I am not as sanguine as I was then : time and experience have chastened me. There is everything about me to check enthusiasm and moderate hope. I am here in forced inaction, a broken-down man, oppressed by cares, with many dangers before me, and still under the shadow of a hard wearing winter, which has crushed two of my best associates. Here, on the spot, after two unavailing expeditions of search, I hold my opinions un- changed; and I record them as a matter of duty upon a manuscript which may speak the truth when I can do so no longer. ^^ June 1. — At ten o'clock this morning the wail of the dogs outside announced the return of Dr Hayes and William Godfrey. Both of them were completely snow- blind, and the doctor had to be led to my bedside to make his report. In fact, so exhausted was he, that in spite of my anxiety I forbore to question him until he had rested. I venture to say, that both he and his com- panion well remeiiiber theii' astonishing performance over stewed-apples and seal-meat. " The dogs were not so foot-sore as might have been ex- pected; but two of them, including poor little Jenny, were completely knocked up. All attention was bestowed on these indispensable essentials of Arctic search, and soon they were more happy than their masters." Dr Hayes had made a due north line on leaving the ^.'^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) S St M^ 1.0 nil 1.1 II 11^ 1^128 |2.5 m |2i2 12.2 Hi 2.0 lis 1 '•'' 1 '-^ IJ^ - < — 4/' ► Photographic Sciences Corporation ^. 23 WBT MAIN STRilT WltSTIR.N.Y. I4SM (71*)t72-4S03 94 THE FAR NOETH. brig; but, encountering the "squeezed ices" of my own party in March, he wisely worked to the eastward. On the 22d he encountered a wall of hummocks, exceed- ing twenty feet in height, and extending in a long line to the north-east. After vain attempts to force them, becoming embarrassed in fragmentary ice, — worn, to use his own words, into " deep pits and valleys," — he was obliged to camp, sur- rounded by masses of the wildest character, some of them thirty feet in height. The next three days were spent in struggles through this broken plain; fogs sometimes embarrassed them, but at intervals laud could be seen to the north-west. On the 27th they reached the north side of the bay, passing over but few miles of new and unbroken floe. Dr Hayes told me, that in many places they could not have advanced a step but for the dogs. Deep cavities filled with snow intervened between lines of ice-barricades, making their travel as slow and tedious as the same ob- structions had done to the party of poor Brooks before their eventful rescue last March. His journal entry, referring to the 23d, while tangled in the ice, says, " I was so snow-blind that I could not see ; and as riding, owing to the jaded condition of the dogs, was seldom possible, we were obliged to lay-to." It was not until the 25th that their eyesight was sufS- ciently restored to enable them to push on. In these de- vious and untrodden ice-fields, even the instinct of the dogs would have been of little avail to direct their course. It was well for the party that during this compulsory halt the temperatures were mild and endurable. On the 26th, disasters accumulated. William Godfrey, one of the sturdiest travellers, broke down; and the dogs, ^ SLEDGE TRAPPINGS. 05 the indispensable reliance of the party, were in bad work- ing trim. The rude harness, always apt to become tangled and broken, had been mended so often, and with such im- perfect means, as to be scarcely serviceable. This evil would seem the annoyance of an hour to the travellers in a stage-coach, but to a sledge-party on the ice- waste it is the gravest that can be conceived. The Esqui- maux dog is driven by a single trace, a long thin thong of seal or walrus hide, which passes from his chest over his haunches to the sledge. The team is always driven abreast, and the traces are of course tangling and twisting them- selves up incessantly, as the half-wild or terrified brutes bound right or left from their prescribed positions. The consequence is, that the seven or nine or fourteen lines have a marvellous aptitude at knotting themselves up be- yond the reach of skill and patience. If the weather is warm enough to thaw the snow, they become utterly soft and flaccid, and the naked hand, if applied ingeniously, may dispense with a resort to the Gordian process; but in the severe cold, such as I experienced in my winter journeys of 1854, the knife is often the only appliance, — an unsafe one if invoked too often, for every new attach- ment shortens your harness, and you may end by drawing your dogs so close that they cannot pull. I have been obliged to halt and camp on the open flee, till I could re^" new enough of warmth and energy and patience to disen-' tangle the knots of my harness. It was only after appropriating an undue share of his seal-skin breeches that the leader of the party succeeded in patching up his mutilated dog-lines. He was rewarded, however, for he shortly after found an old floe, over which his sledge passed happily to the north coast. It was the first time that any of our parties had succeeded in pene- 96 THE FAR NORTH. \\ t rating the area to the north. The ice had baffled three organized foot-parties. It would certainly never have been traversed without the aid of dogs; but it is equally certain that the eflfort must again have failed, even with their aid, but for the energy and determination of Dr Hayes, and the endurance of his partner, William Godfrey. The party spent the 28th in mending the sledge, which was completely broken, and fieeding up their dogs for a renewal of the journey. But, their provisions being limited, Dr Hayes did not deem himself justified in continuing to the north. He determined to follow and survey the coast toward Cape Saoine. His pemmican was reduced to eighteen pounds; there was apparently no hope of deriving resources from the hunt ; and the coasts were even more covered with snow than those he had left on the southern side. His return was a thing of necessity. Most providentially they found the passage home free from bergs; but their provisions were nearly gone, and their dogs were exhausted. They threw away their sleep- ing-bags, which were of reindeer-skin and weighed about twelve pounds each, and abandoned, besides, clothing enough to make up a reduction in weight of nearly fifty pounds. With their load so lightened, they were enabled to make good the crossing of the bay. They landed at Peter Force Bay, and reached the brig on the 1st of June. This journey connected the northern coast with the former surveys ; but it disclosed no channel or any form of exit from this bay. It convinced me, however, that such a channel must exist; for this great curve could be no cul-de-sac. Even were my observations since my first fall-journey of Sep- tember 1853, nut decisive on this head, the general move- THE N0RTU-EA8T PARTY. 07 ment of the icebergs, the character of the tides, and the equally sure analogies of i)hysical geography, would point unmistakably to such a conclusion. To verify it, I at once commenced the organization of a double party. This, which is called in my Report the North-east Party, was to be assisted by dogs, but was to be subsisted as far as the Great Glacier by provisions carried by a foot-party in advance. For the continuation of my plans I again refer to my journal. " Jane 2. — There is still this hundred miles wanting to the north-west to complete our entire circuit of this frozen water. This is to be the field for our next party. I am at some loss how to organize it. For myself, I am down with scurvy. *Dr Hayes is just from the field, worn-out and snow-blind, and the health-roll of the crew makes a sorry parade. ^^ June 3. — M*Gary, Bonsall, Hickey, and Riley were detailed for the first section of the new parties ; they will be accompanied by Morton, who has orders to keep himself as fresh as possible, so as to enter on his own line of search to the greatest possible advantage. I keep Hans a while to recruit the dogs, and do the hunting and locomotion generally for the rest of us ; but I shall soon let him follow, unless things grow so much worse on board as to make it impossible. " I am intensely anxious that this party should succeed ; it is my last throw. They have all my views, and I believe they will carry them out unless overruled by a higher power. " Their orders are, to carry the sledge forward as far as the base of the Great Glacier, and fill up their provisions from the cachf of my own party of last May. Hans will ■If 03 THE FAR NORTH. then join them with the dogs; and, while M'Gtary and three men attempt to scale and survey the glacier, Morton and Hans will push to the north across the bay with the dog-sledge, and advance along the more distant coast. Both divisions are provided with clampers, to steady them and their sledges on the irregular ice-surfaces; but I am not without apprehensions that, with all their efforts, the glacier cannot be surmounted. " In this event, the main reliance must be on Mr Morton. He takes with him a sextant, artificial horizon, and pocket chronometer, and has intelligence, courage, and the spirit of endurance in full measure. He is withal a long-tried and trustworthy follower. " June 5. — The last party are off; they left yesterday at 2 P.M. I can do nothing more but await the ice ch angles that are to determine for us our liberation or continued imprisonment. ^^ June 6. — We are a parcel of sick men, affecting to keep ship till our comrades get back. Except Mr Olilsen and George Whipple, there is not a sound man among us. Thus wearily in our Castle of Indolence, for * labour dire it was, and weary woe,' we have been watching the changing days, and noting bird, insect, and vegetable, as it tells us of the coming summer. One fly buzzed around William Godfrey's head to day, — ^he could not tell what the species was; and Mr Petersen brought in a cocoon from which the grub had eaten its way to liberty. Hans gives us a seal almost daily, and for a passing luxury we have ptarmigan and hare. The little snow-birds have crowded to Butler Island, and. their songs penetrate the cracks of our rude housing. Another snipe, too, was mercilessly shot the very day of his arrival. " June 10. — Hans was ordered yesterday to hunt in the ■ .*W*^*itii.m^ ARCTIC BIRDS. 99 direction of the Esquimaux liuta, in the hope of deter- mining the position of the open water. He did not return last night; but Dr Hayes and Mr Ohlsen, who were sent after him this morning with the d(>g-sledge, found the hardy savage fast asleep not five miles from the brig. Alongside of him was a large usuk or bearded seal, shot, as usual, in the head. He had dragged it for seven hours over the ice-foot. The dogs having now recruited, he started light to join Morton at the glacier. " June 1 6. — Two long-tailed ducks visited us, evidently seeking their breeding-grounds. They are beautiful birds, either at rest or on the wing. We now have the snow- birds, the snipe, the burgomaster-gull, and the long-tailed duck, enlivening our solitude; but the snow-birds are the only ones in numbers, crowding our rocky islands, and making our sunny night-time musical with home-remem- bered songs. Of each of the others we have but a solitary pair, who seem to have left their fellows for this far northern mating-ground in order to live unmolested. I long for specimens; but they shall not be fired at. "June 18. — Mr Ohlsen and Dr Hayes are off on an overland tramp. I sent them to inspect the open water to the southward. The immovable state of the ice-foot gives me anxiety. Last year, a large bay above us was closed all summer; and the land-ice, as we find it here, is as perennial as the glacier. "June 21. — A snow, moist and flaky, melting upon or^r decks, and cleaning up the dingy surface of the great ice- plain with a new garment. We are at the summer solstice, the day of greatest solar light ! Would that the tradi- tionally-verified but meteorologically-disproved equinoctial storm could break upon us, to destroy the tenacious floes ! " June 22. — The ice changes slowly, but the progress of 100 THE FAR NORTH. vegetation is excessively rapid. The growth on the rocky group near our brig is surprising. "June 23. — The eiders have come back: a pair were seen in the morning, soon followed by four ducks and drakes. The poor things seemed to be seeking breeding- grounds, but the ice must have scared them. They wero flying southward. " June 25. — Walked on shore and watched the changes : andromeda in flower, poppy and ranunculus the same : saw two snipe and some tern. "Mr Ohlsen returned from a walk with Mr Petersen. They saw reindeer, and brought back a noble specimen of the king duck. It was a solitary male, resplendent with the orange, black, and green of his head and neck. " Stephenson is better; and I think thlended baffled 1 it the lot get eyond; ed off started CHAPTER XL ATTEMPT TO EEACH BEECHY ISLAND. All the sledge-parties were now once more aboard ship, and the season of Arctic travel had ended. For more than two months we had been imprisoned in ice, and through- out all that period, except during the enforced holiday of the midwinter darkness, or while repairing from actual disaster, had been constantly in the field. The summer was wearing on, but still the ice did not break up as it should. As far as we could see, it remained inflexibly solid between us and the North Water of Baffin's Bay. The questions and speculations of those around me began to show that they too had anxious thoughts for the coming year. There was reason for all our apprehensions, as some of my notes may show. " Jult/ 8. — Penny saw water to the southward in Bar- row's Straits as early as June ; and by the first of July the leads were within a mile of his harbour in Wellington Channel. Dr Sutherland says he could have cut his way out by the 15th. Austin was not liberated till the 10th of August; but the water had worked up to within three miles and a half of him as early as the 1st, having advanced twenty miles in the preceding month. If, now, we might assume that the ice between us and the nearest water would give way as rapidly as it did in these two cases, — an assumption, by the way, which the difference of the localities is all against, the mouth of our harbour should be reached in fifty days, or by the last day of August; and after th^t, several days, or perhaps weeks, must go by before the inlide ice yields around our brig. 114 THE FAR NORTH. " I know by experience how soon the ice breaks up after it once begins to go, and I hardly think that it can con- tinue advancing so slowly much longer. Indeed, I look for it to open, if it opens at all, about the beginning of September at furthest, somewhere near the date of Sir James Ross's liberation at Leopold. But then I have to remember that I am much further to the north than my predecessors, and that by the 28th of last August I had already, after twenty days of unremitting labour, forced the brig nearly forty miles through the pack, and that the pack began to close on us only six days later, and that on the 7th of September we were fairly frozen in. Yet last summer was a most favourable one for ice-melting. Put- ting all this together, it looks as if the winter must catch us before we can get half-way through the pack, even though we should begin warping to the south at the earliest moment that we can hope for water. " It is not a pleasant conclusion of the argument; for there never was, and I trust never will be, a party worse armed for the encounter of a second Arctic winter. We have neither health, fuel, nor provisions. Dr Hayes, and indeed all I have consulted about it indirectly, despond at the thought; and when I look round upon our diseased and disabled men, and think of the fearful work of the last long night, I am tempted to feel as they do. " The alternative of abandoning the vessel at this early stage of our absence, even were it possible, would, I feel, be dishonouring; but, revolving the question as one of practicability alone, I would not undertake it. In the first place, how are we to get along with our sick and newly- amputated men ? It is a dreary distance at the best to Upernavik or Beechy Island, our only seats of refuge, and a precarious traverse if we were all of us fit for moving; RETURN TO THE BRIG. 115 ip after an con- I look ning of of Sir tiave to han my tt I bad :ced the lie pack on the ^et last ;. Put- Lst catch jk, even . at the tent; for ty worse ier. We lyes, and spond at diseased k of the ;his early d, I feel, ,s one of I the first d newly- e best to fuge, and moving; but we are hardly one-half in efficiency of what we count in number. Besides, how can I desert the brig while there is still a chance of saving her 1 There is no use of noting pros and cons : my mind is made up ; I will not do it. " But I must examine this ice-field for myself. I have been maturing through the last fortnight a scheme of re- lief, based upon a communication with the English squad- ron to the south, and to-morrow I set out to reconnoitre. Hans will go with me. We will fit out our poor travel- worn dogs with canvas shoes, and cross the floes to the true water edge, or at least be satisfied that it is impos- sible. * He sees best who uses his own eyes.' "Juli/ 11. — We got back last night: a sixty miles' journey, — comfortless enough, with only three hours' sleep on the ice. For thirty-five miles south, the straits are absolutely tight. Off Refuge Inlet and Esquimaux Point we found driving leads; but between these points and the brig not a crack. I pushed the dogs over the drift-ice, and, after a fair number of mischances, found the North Water. It was flowing and free; but since M'Gary saw it last May it has not advanced more than four miles. It would be absurd at this season of the year to attempt escaping in open boats with this ice between us and water. All that can be done is to reinforce our energies as we may, and look the worst in the face. " In view of these contingencies, I have determined to attempt in person to communicate with Beechy Island, or at least make the effort. If I can reach Sir Edward Belcher's squadron, I am sure of all I want. I will take a light whale-boat, and pick my companions for a journey to the south and west. I may find perhaps the stores of the North Star at the Wostenholm Islands, or by great good UG THE FAR NORTU. luck come across some passing vessel of the squadron, and make known our whereabouts and wants; or, failing these, we will try and coast it along to Wellington Channel. "A depdt of provisions, and a seaworthy craft largo enough to carry us — if I had these, everything would be right. Even Sir John Ross's launch, the Little Mary^ that he left at Union Bay, would serve our purpose. If I had her I could make a southern passage after the fall- tides. The great enemy of that season is the young shore- ice, that would cut through our frail boats like a saw. Or, if we can only renew our stock of provisions for the winter, we may await the chances of next year. " As a prelude to this solemn undertaking, I met my officers in the evening, and showed them my ice-charts; explaining, what I found needed little explanation, the prospect immediately before us. I then discussed the pro- bable changes, and, giving them my personal opinion that the brig might after all be liberated at a later date, I announced my project. I will not say how gratified I was with the manner in which they received it. It struck me that there was a sense of personal relief experienced every- where. I told them that I did not choose to call a council or connect any of them with the responsibilities of the measure, for it involved only the personal safety of those who chose to share the risk. Full instructions were then left for their guidance during my absence. " It was the pleasantest interview I ever had with my associates. I believe every man on board would have volunteered, but I confined myself to five active men: James M*Gary, William Morton, George Riley, Hans Chris- tian, and Thomas Hickey, made up my party." Our equipment had been getting ready for some time, though without its object being understood or announced. 3n, and ; these, el. t large 3uld be Mary, B. If I the fall- g shore- a saw. for the met my B-charts; ion, the the pro- ion that date, I Bd I was ;ruck me id every- i council 5 of the of those ere then with my lid have e men: IS Chris- le time, lounced. THE START 117 The boat was our old Forlorn Hope, mended up arid re- vised for her new destinies. Morton, who was in my confidence from the first, had all our stores ready. We had no game, and no meat but pork, of which we took some hundred and fifty pounds. X wanted pemmican, and sent* the men out in search of the cases which were left on the floe by the frozen depot- party during the rescue of last March; but they could not find a trace of them, or indeed of anything else we abandoned at that time — a proof, if we wanted one, how blurred all our faculties must have been by suff'ering, for we marked them, as we thought, with marvellous care. We lifted our boat over the side in the afternoon, and floated her to the crack at the Observatory Island ; mounted her there on our large sledge The Faith, by an arrange- ment of cradles of Mr Ohlsen's devising; stowed in every- thing but the provisions, and carried her on to the bluff of Sylvia Headland ; and the next morning a party, consist- ing of all but the sick, was detailed to transport her to open water; while M'Qary, Hans, and myself, followed with our St JohrCs sledge, carrying our stores. In four days more we had carried the boat across twenty miles of heavy ice-floe, and launched her in open water. The straits were much clogged with drift, but I followed the coast southward without difficulty. We travelled at night, resting when the sun was hottest. I had every reason to be pleased with the performance of the whale- boat, and the men kept up their spirits well. We landed at the point where we left our life-boat a year ago, and to our great joy found it untouched : the cove and inlet were still fast in ice. We now neared Littleton Island, where a piece of good fortune awaited us. We saw a number of ducks, both 118 THE FAR NORTH, ciders and lieraldas ; nnd it occurred to mo that by tracking their fliglit wo should reach their breedinu'-gronnds. There was no trouble in doing so, for they flew in a stniiglit lino to a group of rocky ishits, above which the whole horizon was studded with birds. A ru<.fged little ledge, which I named Eider Island, was so thickly colonised that we could hardly walk without treading on a nest. We killed with guns and stones over two hundred birds in a few hours. We camped at this nursery of wild fowl, and laid in four large India rubber bags full, cleaned and rudely boned. Our boat was hauled up and refitted ; and, the trial having shown us that she was too heavily laden for safety, I made a general reduction of our stores, and cached the surplus under the rocks. On the 19th we left Flagstaff Point, where we fixed our beacon last year; and stood west 10° south under full canvas. My aim was to take the channel obliquely at Littleton Island ; and, making the drift-ice or the land to the south-west in the neighbourhood of Cape Combermere, push on for Kent Island and leave a cairn there. Toward night the wind freshened from the northward, and we passed beyond the protection of the straits into the open sea-way. My journal gives no picture of the life wo now entered on. The oldest sailor who treads the deck of his ship with the familiar confidence of a man at home, has a distrust of open-boat navigation which a landsman hardly shares. The feeling grew upon us as wo lost the land. M*r iry was an old Behring's Straits whaler, and there is no better boatman in the world than he; but I know that he shared my doubts, as the boat buried herself again and again in the trough of a short chopping sea, which it taxed all his dexterity in steering to meet. A STORM. 119 Baffin passed around this giilf in 1616 with two small vessels ; but they weic -'ianta beside ours. I thought of them as wo crossed his track Bteering for Cape Coniberniere, then about sixty miles distant, with every prospect of a heavy gale. We were in the centre of this large area of open water when the gale broke upon us from the north. We were near foundering. Our false bow of India rubber cloth was beaten in, and our frail weather-boarding soon fol- lowed it. With the utmost exertion we could hardly keep our boat from broaching to : a broken oar or an accidental twitch would have been fatal to us at any time. But M*Gary handled that whaler's marvel, the long steering- oar, with admirable skill. None of us could pretend to take his place. For twenty-two unbroken hours he stuck to his post without relaxing his attention or his efforts. I was not prepared for such a storm. I do not think I have seen a worse sea raised by the northern wihd of the Gulf of Mexico. At last the wind hauled to the eastward, and we were glad to drive before it for the in-shore floes. We had passed several bergs ; but the sea dashed against their sides so furiously as to negative all hope of protection at their base ; the pack or floe, so much feared before, was now looked to for a refuge. I remember well our anxiety as we entered the loose streams of drift after four hours' scudding, and our relief when we felt their influence upon the sea. We fastened to an old floe, not fifty yards in diameter, and, with the weather surf breaking over our heads, rode out the storm under a warp and grapnel. The obstacle we had now to encounter was the pack that stretched between us and the south. When the storm abated we commenced boring into it, 120 THE FAR NORTH. — slow work at the best of tiroeo; but my companions encountered it with a persevering activity quite as admir- able as their fortitude in danger. It had its own hazards too ; and more than once it looked as if we were per- manently beset. I myself knew that we might rely on the southerly wind to liberate us from such an imprison- ment ; but I saw that the men thought otherwise, as the ice-fields closed around us and the horizon showed an unchanging circle of ice. A slackening of the ice to the east enabled us after a while to lay our course for Haklujrt Island. We spread our canvas again, and reached the in-shore fields by one in the afternoon. We made our camp, dried our buffalo-skins, and sunned and slept away our fatigue. We renewed our labours in tho morning. Keeping inside the pack, we coasted along for the Gary Islands, encountering now and then a projecting floe, and either boring or passing around it, but making a satisfactory progress on the whole toward Lancaster Sound. For the next three days we worked painfully through the half-open leads, making in all some fifteen miles to the south. We had very seldom room enough to row; but, as we tracked along, it was not difficult to escape nippings, by hauling up the boat on the ice. Still she received some hard knocks, and a twist or two that did not help her sea- worthiness, for she began to leak ; and this, with the rain which fell heavily, forced us to bale her out every other hour. Of course we could not sleep, and one of our little party fell sick with the unmitigated fatigue. On the 29th it came on to blow, the wind still keeping from the south-west, but cold and almost rising to a gale. We ht.d had another wet and sleepless night, for the floes 'd A GALE. 121 Lpanions i admir- hazards rere per- rely on laprison- 3e, as the owed an IS after a ^e spread by one in Jalo-skins, Keeping y Islands, and either atisfactory ly throngh liles to the row; but, e nippings, lo received d not help . this, with le her out sleep, and jnmitigated still baffled us by their capricious movements. But at three in the afternoon we had the sun again, and the ice opened just enough to tempt us. It was uncomfortable toil. We pushed forward our little weather-worn craft, her gunwales touching on both sides, till the toppling ice began to break down on us, and sometimes, critically suspended, met above our heads. One of these passages I am sure we all of us remember. We were in an alley of pounded ice-masses, such as the receding floes leave when they have crushed the tables that were between them, and had pushed our way far enough to make retreat impossible, when the fields began to close in. There was no escaping a nip, for everything was loose and rolling around us, and the floes broke into hummock-ridges as they came together. They met just ahead of us, and gradually swayed in toward our boat. The fragments were already splitting off and spinning over us, when we found ourselves borne up by the accumulating rubbish, like the Advance in her winter drift; and, after resting for twenty minutes high out of water, quietly lowered again as the fields relaxed their pressure. Generally, however, the ice-fields came together directly, and so gradually as to enable us to anticipate their contact. In such cases, as we were short-handed and our boat heavily laden, we were glad to avail ourselves of the motion of the floes to assist in lifting her upon them. We threw her across the lead by a small pull of the steering-oar, and let her meet the approaching ice upon her bow. The effect, as we found in every instance, was to press her down forward as the floe advanced against her, and to raise her stern above the level of the other field. We held ourselves ready for the spring as she began to rise. II 122 THE FAR NORTH. ; It was a time of almost unbroken excitement; yet I am act surprised, as I turn over the notes of my meagre diary, to find how little of stirring incident it records. The story of one day's strife with the ice-floes might also serve for those which followed it. I remember that we were four times nipped before we succeeded in releasing ourselves, and that we were glad to haul upon the floes as often as a dozen times a day. We attempted to drag forward on the occasional fields; but we had to give it up, for it strained the boat so much that she was barely sea- worthy; it kept one man busy the last six days bailing her out. On the 31st, at the distance of ten miles from Cape Parry, we came to a dead halt. A solid mass lay directly across our path, extending onward to our furthest horizon. There were bergs in sight to the westward, and by walking for some four miles over the moving floe in that direction, M'Gary ^nd myself succeeded in reaching one. We climbed it to the height of a hundred and twenty feet, and, looking out from it with my excellent spy-glass to the south and west, we saw that all within a radius of thirty miles was a motionless, unbroken, and impenetrable sea. I had not counted on this. I had met no ice here only seven days later in 1853. Yet it was plain, that from Cape Combermere on the west ^ide, and an unnamed bay immediately to the north of it, across to Hakluyt Island, there extended a continuous barrier of ice. We had scarcely penetrated beyond its margin. We had, in fact, reached the dividing pack of the two great open waters of BajQfin's Bay. The experience of the whalers and of the expedition-ships that have traversed this region have made all of us familiar with that great expanse of open sea, to the north of Cape Dudley Diggs, which has received the name of the North Water. Com- i a si TUB ICE-BARRIER. 123 et I cini e diary, 3. The 30 serve ere four irselves, ten as a i on the strained it kept )m Cape directly horizon. walking direction, e climbed I, looking outh and lies was a here only that from amed bay yt Island, We had ■A the two nee of the traversed that great lley Diggs, ter. Com- bining the observations of Baffin, Ross, and Inglefield, we know that this sometimes extends as far north as Littleton Island, embracing an area of 90,000 square miles. The voyagers I have named could not, of course, be aware of the interesting fact that this water is divided, at least occasionally, into two distinct bodies; the one compre- hended between Lancaster and Jones's Sounds, the other extending from the point we had now reached to the upper pack of Smith's Straits. But it was evident to all of our party that the barrier which now arrested us was made up of the ices which Jones's Sound on the west and Murchi- son's on the east had discharged and driven together. It was obvious that a further attempt to penetrate to the south must be hopeless till the ice-barrier before us should undergo a change. I had observed, when passing Northumberland Island, that some of its glacier-slopes were margined with verdure, an almost unfailing indication of animal life; and, as my men were much wasted with diarrhoea, and our supplies of food had become scanty, I resolved to work my way to the island, and recruit there for another effort. Tracking and sometimes rowing through a heavy rain, we traversed the leads for two days, working eastward; and on the morning of the third gained the open water near the shore. Here a breeze can e to our aid, and in a couple of hours more we passed with now unwonted facility to the southern face of the island. We met several flocks of little auks as we approached it, and found on landing that it was one enormous homestead of the auks, dovekies, and gulls. We encamped on the 31st, on a low beach at the foot of a moraine that came down between precipitous cliffs of surpassing wildness. It had evidently been selected by 124 THE FAR NORTH. the Esquimaux for a winter settlement: five well-built huts of stone attested this. Three of them were still tolerably perfect, and bore marks of recent habitation. The droppings of the birds had fertilised the soil, and it abounded in grasses and sorrel to the water's edge. The foxes were about in great numbers, attracted, of course, by the abundance of birds. They were all of them of the lead- coloured variety, without a white one among them. The young ones, as yet lean and seemingly unskilled in hospitable courtesies, barked at us as we walked about. CHAPTER XII. THE SECOND WINTER — DEPARTURE OF HALF OF THE CREW. It was with mingled feelings that we neared the brig Our little party had grown fat and strong upon the auks and eiders and scurvy-grass ; and surmises were rife among us as to the condition of our comrades and the prospects of our ice-bound ship. The tide-leads, which one year ago had afforded a pre- carious passage to the vessel, now barely admitted our whale-boat ; and, as we forced her through the broken ice, she showed such signs of hard usage, that I had her hauled up upon the land-belt and housed under the cliffs at Six- mile Ravine. We crossed the rocks on foot, aided by our jumping-poles, and startled our shipmates by our sudden appearance. In the midst^ of the greeting which always met our jU-built ire still >itation. and it 3. The course, I of the y them, illed in )OUt. E CREW. le brig he auks } among pects of a pre- ted our ken ice, hauled at Six- by our sudden let our CUTTING THE ICE. 125 returning parties, and which gave to our little vessel the endearing associations of a homestead, our thoughts re- verted to the feeble chances of our liberation, and the fail- ure of our recent effort to secure the means of a retreat. The brig had been imprisoned by closely-cementing ice for eleven months, during which period she had not budged an inch from her icy cradle. ** August 8. — This morning two saw-lines were passed from the open-water pools at the sides of our stern-post, and the ice was bored for blasting. In the course of our operations the brig surged and righted, rising two and a half feet. We are now trying to warp her a few yards to- ward Butler Island, where we again go to work with our powder-canisters. The blasting succeeded; one canister cracked and uplifted 200 square yards of ice with but five pounds of powder. A prospect showed itself of getting inside the island at high water ; and I determined to at- tempt it at the highest spring-tide, which takes place on the 12th. "Avgmt 12. — The brig bore the strain of her new posi- tion very well. The tide fell fifteen feet, leaving her high and dry; but, as the water rose, everything was replaced, and the deck put in order for warping again. Every one in the little vessel turned to ; and after much excitement, at the very top of the tide, she passed * by the skin of her teeth.* She was then warped in a bight of the floe, neai Fox-Trap Point, and there she now lies. " We congratulated ourselves upon effecting this crossing. Had we failed, we should have had to remain fast probably for the high tides a fortnight hence. The young ice is already forming, and our hopes rest mainly upon the late gales of August and September. " Aufficst 15. — To-dax I made another ice-inspection to Ill I! 12G THE FAR NORTH. the north-east. The floe on which I have trudged so often, the big bay-floe of our former mooring, is nearly the same as when we left it. I recognised the holes and cracks, through the fog, by a sort of instinct. M'Gary and myself had little difficulty in reaching the Fiord Water by our jump- ing-poles. " I have my eye on this water, for it may connect with the north-east headland, and hereafter give us a passage. " The season travels on : the young ice grows thicker, and my messmates' faces grow longer every day. I have again to play buffoon to keep up the spirits of the party. " A raven ! The snow-birds begin to fly to the south in groups, coming at night to our brig to hover on the rig- ging. Winter is hurrying upon us. The poppies are quite wilted. *' Examined ice with Mr Bonsall, and determined to enter the broken land-ices by warping ; not that there is the slightest probability of getting through, but it affords moral aid and comfort to the men and officers : it looks as if we were doing something. ^^ August 17. — Warped about 100 yards into the trash, and, after a long day of labour, have turned in, hoping to recommence at 5 a.m. to-morrow. " In five days the spring-tides come back; should we fail in passing with them, I think our fortunes are fixed. The young ice bore a man this morning : it had a bad look, this man-supporting August ice! The temperature it ?v3r falls below 28° ; but it is cold o' nights with no fire. *^ August 18. — Reduced our allowance of wood to six pounds a meal. This, among eighteen mouths, is one-third of a pound of fuel for each. It allows us coffee twice a day, and soup once. Our fare besides this is cold pork I HOPE ABANDONED. 127 often, same as through lelf had r jump- 3ct with ssage. thickeif, 1 have of the south in the rig- ire quite lined to there is t affords looks as le trash, oping to Lould we re fixed, lad look, re iiOv3r e. i to six >ne-third twice a )ld pork boiled in quantity and eaten as required. This sort of thing works badly ; but I must save coal for other emer- gencies. I see * darkness ahead.' " I inspected the ice again to-day. Bad! bad! — I must look another winter in the face. I do not shrink from the thought ; but, while we have a chance ahead, it is my first duty to have all things in readiness to meet it. It is horrible — yes, that is the word I — to look forward to another year of disease and darkness, to be met without fresh food and without fuel. I should meet it with a more tempered sadness if I had no comrades to think for and protect. ^^ August 20. — Rest for all hands. The daily prayer is no longer, * Lord, accept our gratitude, and bless our un- dertaking,* but, * Lord, accept our gratitude, and restore us to our homes.' The ice shows no change : after a boat and foot journey around the entire south-eastern curve of the bay, no signs!" My attempt to reach Beechy Island had disclosed, as I thought it would, the impossibility of reaching the settle- ments of Greenland. Everything before us was now involved in gloomy doubt. Hopeful as I had been, it was impossible not to feel that we were near the climax of the expedition. I determined to place upon Observatory Island a large signal-beacon or cairn, and to bury under it documents which, in case of disaster to our party, would convey to any who might seek us intelligence of our proceedings and our fate. The memory of the first winter-quarters of Sir John Franklin, and the painful feelings with whi<5h, while standing by the graves of his dead, I had five years before sought for written signs pointing to the fate of the living, made me careful to avoid a similar neglect. A conspicuous spot was selected upon a cliff looking 128 THE FAR NORTH. out upon the icy desert, and on a broad face of rock the words — ADVANCE, A.D. 1863-64, were painted in letters which could be read at a distance. A pyramid of heavy stones, perched above it, was marked with the ChriGlian symbol of the cross. It was not with- out a holier sentiment than that of mere utility that I placed under this the coffins of our two poor comrades. It was our beacon, and their gravestone. Near this a hole was worked into the rock, and a paper, enclosed in glass, sealed in with melted lead. It read as follows : — "Brig 'Advance,* August 14, 1854. " E. K. Kane, with his comrades, Henry Brooks, John Wall Wilson, James M'Gary, I. I. Hayes, Christian Ohlsen, Amos Bonsall, Henry Goodfellow, August Sontag, William Morton, J. Carl Petersen, George Stephenson, Jefferson Temple Baker, George Riley, Peter Schubert, George Whipple, John Blake, Thomas Hickey, William Godfrey, and Hans Christian, members of the Second Grinnell Expe- dition in search of Sir John Franklin and the missing crews of the Erebus and Terror^ were forced into this harbour while endeavouring to bore the ice to the north and east. " They were frozen in on the 8th of September 1853, and liberated " During this period the labours of the expedition have delineated 960 miles of coast-line, without developing any traces of the missing ships or the slightest information bearinc; upon their fate. The amount of travel to effect this exploration exceeded 2000 miles, all of which was upon foot or by the aid of dogs. MEMORIALS PLACED. 129 ck the .stance, narked (t with- that I nrades. t paper, read as 1854. 5, John Ohlsen, Villiam alFerson George odfrey, Expe- nissing o this north 1853, m have ng any mation effect h was " Greenland has been traced to its northern face, whence it is connected with the further north of the opposite coast by a great glacier. This coast has been charted as high as lat. 82® 27'. Smith's Sound expands into a capa- cious bay: it has been surveyed throughout its entire extent. From its northern and eastern corner, in lat. 80® 10', long. 66*, a channel has been discovered and followed until further progress was checked by water free from ice. This channel trended nearly due north, and expanded into an apparently open sea, which abounded with birds and bears and marine life. " The death of the dogs during the winter threw the travel essential to the above discoveries upon the personal efforts of the officers and men. The summer finds them much broken in health and strength. " Jefferson Temple Baker and Peter Schubert died from injuries received from cold while in manly performance of their duty. Their remains are deposited under a cairn at the north point of Observatory Island. " The site of the observatory is 76 English feet from the northernmost salient point of this island, in a direction south 14° east. Its position is in lat. 78° 37' 10% long. 70* 40'. The mean tidal level is 20 feet below the highest point upon this island. Both of these sites are further designated by copper bolts, sealed with melted lead into holes upon the rocks. " On the 12th of August 1854, the brig warped from her position, and, after passing inside the group of islands, fastened to the outer floe about a mile to the north-west, where she is now awaiting further changes in the ice. (Signed) " E. K. Kane, '' Commanding Expedition. "Fox -Trap Point, August 14, 1854." 130 THE FAR NORTH. The following note was added some hours later: — " The young ice having formed between the brig and this island, and prospects of a gale showing themselves, the date of departure is left unfilled. If possible, a second visit will be made to insert our dates, our final escape being still dependent upon the course of the season. " E. K. Kane." And now came the question of the second winter — how to look our enemy in the face, and how to meet him. Anything was better than inaction; and, in spite of th« uncertainty which yet attended our plans, a host of ex- pedients were to be resorted to, and much Robinson Crusoe labour ahead. Moss was to be gathered for eking out our winter fuel, and willow-stems, and stonecrops, and sorrel, as antiscorbutics, collected and buried in the snow. But while all these were in progress came othei' and graver questions. Some of my party had entertained the idea than an escape to the south was still practicable; and this opinion was supported by Mr Petersen, our Danish interpreter, who had accompanied the Searching Expedition of Captain Penny, and had a matured experience in the changes of Arctic ice. They even thought that the safety of all would be promoted by a withdrawal from the brig. " August 21. — The question of detaching a party was in my mind some time ago; but the more I thought it over, the more I was convinced that it would be neither right in itself nor practically safe. For myself personally, it is a simple duty of honour to remain by the brig : I could not think of leaving her till I had proved the effect of the later tides; and after that, as I have known all along, it would be too late. Come what may, I share her fortunes. feel I if to hav^ «i andl posi tliisi A NEiV DIFFICULT 1\ 131 ; and elves, econd being }} RE. ■how him. of the of ex- Crusoe )ut our sorrel, But graver han an opinion ;er, who Captain mges of 11 would y was in ; it over, right in ', it is a )uld not t of the along, it fortunes. " But it is a diflforent question with my associates. T cannot expect them to adopt my impulses ; and I am by no means sure that I ought to hold them bound by my conclusions. Have I the moral right ? for, as to nautical rules, they do not fit the circumstances ; among the whalers, when a ship is hopelessly beset, the master's authority gives way, and the crew take counsel for themselves whether to go or stay by her. My party is subordinate and well- disposed ; but if the restlessness of suffering makes some of them anxious to brave the chances, they may certainly plead that a second winter in the ice was no part of the cruise they bargained for. " But what presses on me is of another character. I cannot disguise it from myself that we are wretchedly pre-, pared for another winter on board. We are a set of scurvy- riddled, broken-down men ; our provisions are sorely reduced in quantity, and are altogether unsuited to our condition. My only hope of maintaining or restoring such a degree of health among us as is indispensable to our escape in the spring has been and must be in a wholesome, elastic tone of feeling among the men : a reluctant, brood- ing, disheartened spirit would sweep our decks like a pestilence. I fear the bane of depressing example. " I know all this as a medical man and an officer; and I feel that we might be wearing away the hearts and energies, if not the lives of all, by forcing those who were reluctant to remain. With half a dozen confiding, resolute men, I have no fears of ultimate safety. " I will make a thorough inspection of the ice to-morrow, and decide finally the prospects of our liberation. " August 23.^-The brig cannot escape. I got an eligible position with my sledge to review the floes, and returned this morning at two o'clock. There is no possibility of I 132 THE FAR NORTH our release, unless by some extreme interveiition of the coining tides. I doubt whether a boat could be forced as far as the Soutliern Water. When I think of the extra- ordinary way in wliich the ice was impacted last winter, how very little it has yielded through the summer, and how early another winter is making its onset upon us, I am very doubtful, indeed, whether our brig can get away at all. It would be inexpedient to attempt leaving her now in boats — the water-streams closing, the pack nearly fast again, and the young ice almost impenetrable. *' I shall call the officers and crew together, and make known to them very fully how things look, and what hazards must attend such an effort as has been proposed among them. They shall have my view unequivocally ex- pressed. I will then give them twenty-four hours to deliberate; and at the end of that time all who determine to go shall say so in writing, with a full exposition of the circumstances of the case. They shall have the best outfit I can give, an abundant share of our remaining stores, and my good-bye blessing. ^^ August 24. — At noon to-day I had all hands called, and explained to them frankly the considerations which have determined me to remain where we are. I endea- voured to show them that an escape to open water could not succeed, and that the effort must be exceedingly hazardous : I alluded to our duties to the ship ; in a word, I advised them strenuously to forego the project. I then told them that I should freely give my permission to such as were desirous of makirig the attempt, but that I should require tliem to phice themselves under the command of officers selected by them before sotting out, and to renounce in writing all claims upon myself and the rest who were resolved to stay by the vessel. Having done this, I DIVISION OF THE CREW, 133 f the cd as sxtra- ' inter, , and I am at all. ow in again, make . what Dposed ,lly ex- lurs to ermine of the outfit BS, and called, which endea- could 3dingly word, I then o such should land of nounce lo were this, T directed the roll to b^ called, and each man to answer for himself." In the result, eight out of the seventeen survivors of my party resolved to stand by the brig. It is just that I should record their names. They were Ihooks, M'Gary, Wilson, Goodfcllow, Morton, Ohlscn, Hickey, and Christian. I divided to the others tlicir portion of our resources justly and even liberally ; and they left us on Monday, the 28tli, with every appliance our narrow circumstances could furnish to speed and guard them. One of them, George lUley, returned a few days afterward; but weary months went by before we saw the rest again. They carried with them a written assurance of a brother's welcome should thoy be driven back; and this assurance was redeemed when hard trials had prepared them to share again our fortunes. The party moved off with the elastic step of men con- fident in their purpose, and were out of sight in a few hours. As we lost them among the hummocks, the stern realities of our condition pressed themselves upon us anew. The reduced numbers of our party, the helplessness of many, the waning efficiency of all, the impending winter, with its cold dark night, our penury of resources, the dreary sense of increased isolation, — these made the staple of our thoughts. For a time Sir John Franklin and his party, our daily topic through so many months, gave place to the question of our own fortunes, — how we were to escape, how to live. The summer had gone, the harvest was ended, and We did not care to finish the sentence. We were like men driven to the wall, quickened, not depressed. Our plans were formed at once: there is nothing like emergency to speed, if not to instruct, the energies. 134 THE FAR NORTH, It was my first definite resolve that, come what might, our organization and its routine of observances should bo adhered to strictly. It is the experience of eveiy man who has either combated difficulties himself, or attempted to guide others through them, that the controlling law shall be systematic action. Nothing depresses and de- moralises so much as a surrender of the approved and habitual forms of life. I resolved that everything should go on as it had done. Th3 arrangement of hours, the dis- tribution and details of duty, the religious exercises, the ceremonials of the table, the fires, the lights, the watch, even the labours of the observatory and the notation of the tides and the sky, — nothing should be intermitted that had contributed to make up the day. My next was to practise on the lessons we had learned from the Esquimaux. I had studied them carefully, and determined that their form of habitation and their pecu- liarities of diet, without their unthrift and filth, were the safest and best to which the necessity of our circumstances invited us. My journal tells how these resolves were carried out : — " September 6. — We are at i*, all hands, sick and well, each man accordir)g to his measure, working at our winter's home. We are none of us in condition to brave the frost, and our fuel is nearly out. " The sledge is to bring us moss and turf from wherever the men can scrape it. This is an excellent non-conductor; and when we get the quarter-deck well padded with it, we shall have a nearly cold-proof covering. Down below we will enclose a space some eighteen feet square, and pack it from floor to ceiling with inner walls of the same material. The floor itself we are calking carefully with plaster of Paris and common paste, and will cover it, when we have « _^fe SEAL HUNTING. 135 miglit, uld bo y man jmpted ag law ,nd de- ed and ; should the dis- uses, the I -watch, n of the ihat had L learned illy, and jir pecu- were the nstanccs i out : — md well, " winter's ;he frost, wherever inductor ; th it, we lelow we d pack It material, (laster of we have done, with Manilla oakum a couple of inches deep, and a canvas carpet. The entrance is to be from the hold, by a low, moss-lined tunnel, the tossut of the native huts, with as many doors and curtains to close it up as our ingenuity can devise. This is to be our apartment of all uses, — not a very large one ; but we are only ten to stow away, and the closer the warmer. " Septemher 9. — All hands but the carpenter and Morton are again out * mossing.' " Septemher 10. — * The work goes bravely on.' We have got moss enough for our roof, and something to spare for below. To-morrow we begin to strip oflf the outer-deck planking of the brig, and to stack it for firewood. It is cold work, hatches open and no fires going; but we saved time enough for our Sunday's exercises, though we forego its rest. " I determined to try a novel expedient for catching seal. Not more than ten miles to seaward the icebergs keep up a rude stream of broken ice and water, and the seals resort there in scanty numbers to breathe. I drove out with my dogs, taking Hans along; but we found the spot so hemmed in by loose and fragile ice that there was no approaching it. The thermometer was 8®, and a light breeze increased my difiiculties. " Deo volente^ I will be more lucky to-morrow. I am going to take my long Kentucky rifle, the kayack, an Esquimaux harpoon with its attached line and bladder, naligeit and awahtoky and a pair of large snow-shoes to boot. My plan this time is to kneel where the ice is unsafe, resting my weight on the broad surface of the snow-shoes, Hans following astride of his kayack, as a sort of life-pre- server in case of breaking in. If T am fortunate enough to stalk within gun-range, Hans will take to the water and 136 THE FAR NORTH. secure the game before it sinks. "We will be gone for some days probably, tenting it in the open air; but our sick men — that is to say, all of us — are languishing for fresh meat." I started with Hans and five dogs, and in a couple of hours we emerged upon a plain unlimited to the eye and smooth as a billiard-table. Feathers of young frosting gave a plush-like nap to its surface, and toward the hori- zon dark columns of frost-smoke pointed clearly to the open water. This ice was firm enough; our experience satisfied us that it was not a very recent freezing. We pushed on without hesitation, cheering ourselves with the expectation of coming every minute to the seals. We passed a second ice-growth ; it was not so strong as the one we had just come over, but stilf safe for a party like ours. On we went at a brisker gallop, maybe for another mils, when Hans sang out, at the top of his voice, " Pusey ! puseymut ! seal, seal !" At the same instant the dogs bounded forward, and, as I looked up, I saw crowds of grey netsik, the rough or hispid seal of the whalers, disporting in an open sea of water. I had hardly welcomed the spectacle when I saw that we had passed upon a new belt of ice that was obviously unsafe. To turn was impossible; we had to keep up our gait. We urged on the dogs with whip and voice, the ice rolling like leather beneath the sledge-runners; it was more than a mile to the lump of solid ice. Fear gave to the poor beasts their utmost speed, and our voices were soon hushed to silence. This desperate race against fate could not last: the rolling of the tough salt-water ice terrified our dogs; and when within fifty paces from the floe they paused. The left-hand runner went through ; our leader "Toodlamick" some r sick • fresh iple of ^e and osting e hori- to the erience ;. We ith the We as the rty like another Pusey ! e dogs |of grey •orting LW that Iviously |eep up Lce, the it was ;ave to 5S were ^t: the ^s; and The iraick" A SERIOUS ACCIDENT. 137 followed, and in one second the entire left of the sledge was submerged. My first thought was to liberate the dogs. I leaned forward to cut poor Tood's traces, and the next minute was swimming in a little circle of pasty ice and water alongside him. Hans, dear good fellow, drew near to help me, uttering piteous expressions in broken English; but I ordered him to throw himself on his belly, with his hands and legs extended, and to make for the island by cogging himself forward with his jack-knife. In the mean- time — a mere instant — I was floundering about with sledge, dogs, and lines, in confused puddle around me. I succeeded in cutting poor Tood's lines and letting him scramble to the ice, for the poor fellow was drowning me with his piteous caresses^ and made my way for the sledge; but I found that it would not buoy me, and that I had no resource but to try the circumference of the hole. Around this I paddled faithfully, the miserable ice always yielding when my hopes of a lodgment were greatest. During this process I enlarged my circle of operations to a very uncom- fortable diameter, and was beginning to feel weaker after every effort. Hans meanwhile had reached the firm ice, and was on his knees, like a good Moravian, praying incoherently in English and Esquimax; at every fresh crushing-in of the ice he would ejaculate "Godl" and when I recommenced my paddling he recommenced his prayers. I was nearly gone. My knife had been lost in cutting out the dogs; and a spare one which I carried in my trousers-pocket was so enveloped in the wet skins that I could not reach it. I owed my extrication at last to a newly broken team dog, who was still fast to the sledge, ..id in struggling carried one of the runners choke against the edge of the circle. All my previous attempts to use I 138 THE FAR NORTH. the sledge as a bridge had failed, for it broke through^ to the much greater injury of the ice. I felt that it was a last chance. I threw myself on my back, so as to lessen as much as possible my weight, and placed the nape of my neck against the rim or edge of the ice; then with caution slowly bent my leg, and, placing the ball of my mocassined foot against the sledge, I pressed steadily against the runner, listening to the half -yielding crunch of the ice beneath. Presently I felt that my head was pillowed by the ice, and that my wet fur jumper was sliding up the surface. Next came my shoulders; they were fairly on. One more decided push, and I was launched up on the ice and safe. I reached the ice-floe, and was rubbed by Hans with frightful zeal. We saved fU the dogs; but the sledge, kayack, tent, gun, snow-shoes, and everything besides, were left behind. On reaching the ship, after a twelve-mile trot, I found so much of comfort and warm welcome that I forgot my failure. The fire was lit up, and one of our few birds slaughtered forthwith. It is with real gratitude that I look backfupon my escape, and bless the great presiding Goodness for the very many resources which remain to us. CHAPTER XIII. NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE ESQUIMAUX. :i; I FIND that my journal is exceedingly meagre for the period of our anxious preparations to meet the winter, and ESQUIMAUX VISITORS. 139 agh^ to was a t lessen 5 of my caution lassined ast the the ice the ice, surface, ne more ,nd safe, ns with J sledge, les, were I found rgot my jw birds 5 that I )residing in to us. • ■i: for the iter, and that I have omitted to mention the course of circumstances which led us step by step into familiar communication with the Esquimaux. My last notice of this strange people, whose fortunes became afterward so closely connected with our own, was at the time of Myouk's escape from imprisonment on board the brig. Although, during my absence on the attempted visit to Beechy Island, the men I had left behind had frequent and unrestrained intercourse with them, I myself saw ni natives in Rensselaer Bay till immediately after the departure of Petersen and his companions. Just then, by a coincidence which convinced me how closely we had been under surveillance, a party of three made their appear- ance, as if to note for themselves our condition and re- sources. When the three visitors came to us near the end of August, I established them in a tent below deck, with a copper lamp, a cooking-basin, and a liberal supply of slush for fuel. I left them under guard when I went to bed at two in the morning, contentedly eating and cooking and eating again, without the promise of an intermission. They repaid my liberality by stealing not only buffalo-robes, the lamp, boiler, and cooking-pot they had used for the feast, but Nannook also, my best dog. If the rest of my team had not been worn down by over-travel, no doubt they would have taken them all. The theft of these articles embarrassed me. I was in- disposed to take it as an act of hostility. Their pilferings before this had been conducted with such a superb simplicity, the detection followed by such honest explosions of laughter, that I could not help thinking they had some law of general appropriation, less removed from the Lycur- gan than the Mosaic code. But it was plain^ at least, that 140 THE FAR NORTH. \ we were now too few to watch our property as we had done, and that our gentleness was to some extent misunder- stood. I was puzzled how to inflict punishment, but saw that I must act vigorously, even at a venture. I despatched my two best walkers, Morton and Riley, as soon as I heard of the theft of the stores, with orders to make all speed to Anoatok, and overtake the thieves, who, I thought, would probably halt there to rest. They found young Myouk m.aking himself quite comfortable in the hut, in company with Sievu, the wife of Metek, and Aningna, the wife of Marsinga, and the buffalo-robes already tailored into kape- tahs on their backs. A continued search of the premises recovered the cook- ing-utensils, and a number of otter things of greater or less value that we had not missed from the brig. With the prompt ceremonial which outraged law delights in among the officials of the police everywhere, the women were stripped and tied; and then, laden with their stolen goods and as much walrus-beef besides from their own stores as would pay for their board, they were marched on the instant back to the brig. The thirty miles was a hard walk for them; but they did not complain, nor did their constabulary guardians, who had marched thirty miles already to apprehend them. It was hardly twenty-four hours since' they left the brig with their booty before they were prisoners in the hold, with a dreadful white man for keeper, who never addressed to them a word that had not all the terrors of an unintel- ligible reproof, and whose scowl, I flatter myself, exhibited a well-arranged variety of menacing and demoniacal ex- pressions. They had not even the companionship of Myouk. Him PEA CE- OFFERINGS. 141 we had sunder- V that I hed my leard of peed to ;, would Myouk ompauy wife of to kape- iie cook- eater or . With ights in J women ir stolen eir own :ched on )ut they lardians, id them, the brig he hold, ddressed unintel- xhibited iacal ex- £. Him I had despatched to Metek, " head-man of Etah, and others," with the message of a melo-dramatic tyrant, to negotiate for their ransom. For five long days the women had to sigh and sing and cry in solitary converse, — their appetite continuing excellent, it should be remarked, though mourning the while a rightfully-impending doom. At last the great Metek arrived. He brought with him Ootuniah, another man of elevated social position, and quite a sledge- load of knives, tin cups, and other stolen goods, refuse of wood and scraps of iron, the sinful prizes of many covet- ings. \ I I may pass over our peace conferences and the indirect advantages which I, of course, derived from having the opposing powers represented in my own capital. But the splendours of our Arctic centre of civilisation, with its wonders of art and science, — our " fire-death " ordnance included, — could not all of them impress Metek so much as the intimations he had received of our superior physical endowments. Nomads as they are, these people know better than all the world besides what endurance and energy it requires to brave the moving ice and snow-drifts. Metek thought, no doubt, that our strength was gone with the withdrawing party; but the fact that, within ten hours after the loss of our buffalo-skins, we had marched to their hut, seized three of the culprits, and marched them back to the brig as prisoners, — such a sixty miles' achievement as this they thoroughly understood. It confirmed them in the faith that the whites are, and of right ought to be, everywhere the dominant tribe. The protocol was arranged without difficulty, though not without the accustomed number of adjournments for festivity and repose. It abounded in protestations of power, fearlessness, and good-will by each of the contract- I 'I 142 THE FAR NORTH. ing parties, which meant as much as such protestations usually do on both sides the Arctic circle. I could give a summary of it without invading the privacy of a diplomatic bureau, for I have notes of it that were taken by a subor- dinate; but I prefer passing at once to the reciprocal en- gagements in which it resulted. On the part of the Esquimaux, they were after this fashion : — " We promise that we will not steal. We promise we will bring you fresh meat. We promise we will sell or lend you dogs. We will keep you company whenever you want us, and show you where to find the game," On the part of the white men, the stipulation was of this ample equivalent : — " We promise that we will not visit you with death or sorcery, nor do you any hurt or mischief whatsoever. We will shoot for you on our hunts. You shall be made wel- come aboard ship. We will give you presents of needles, pins, two kinds of knife, a hoop, three bits of hard wood, some fat, an awl, and some sewing-thread; and we will trade with you of these and everything else you want, for walrus and seal-meat of the first quality." This treaty — which, though I have spoken of it jocosely, was really an aflFair of much interest to us — was ratified, with Hans and Morton as my accredited representatives, by a full assembly of the people at Etah. All our future intercourse was conducted under it. It was not solemnised by an oath, but it was never broken. We went to and fro between the villages and the brig, paid our visits of courtesy and necessity on both sides, met each other in hunting-parties on the floe and the ice-foot, organized a general community of interests, and really, I believe, esta.blished some personal attachments deserving of the CELEBRATION OF THE TREATY 143 name. As long as we remained prisoners of the ice, we were indebted to them for invaluable counsel in relation to our hunting expeditions; and in the joint hunt we shared alike, according to their own laws. Our dogs were in one sense common property; and often have they robbed themselves to offer supplies of food to our starving teams. They gave us supplies of meat at critical periods; we were able to do as much for them. They learned to look on us only as benefactors; and, I know, mourned our departure bitterly. "September 17. — ^Writing by this miserable flicker of my pork-fat lamp, I can hardly steady pen, paper, or thought. All hands have rested after a heavy week's work, which has advanced us nobly in our arrangements for the winter. The season is by our tables at least three weeks earlier than the last, and everything indicates a severe ordeal ahead of us. " Just as we were finishing our chapter this morning in the * Book of Ruth,* M'Gary and Morton, who had been to Anoatok, came in triumphantly, pretty well worn down by their fifty miles' travel, but with good news, and a flipper of walrus that must weigh some forty pounds. Ohlsen and Hans : re in too. They arrived as we were sitting down to celebrate the Anoatok ratification of our treaty of the 6th. " It is a strange life we are leading. We are absolutely nomads, so far as there can be anything of pastoral life in this region; and our wild encounter with the elements seems to agree with us all. Our table-talk at supper was as merry as a marriage bell. One party was just in from a seventy-four miles' trip with the dogs; another from a foot journey of a hundred and sixty, with five nights on the floe. Each had his story to tell. i 144 TUB FAR NORTH. « September 20. — The natives are really acting up to con- tract. They are on board to-day, and I have been off with a party of them on a hunt inland. We had no great luck ; the weather was against us, and there are signs of a gale." My next extracts show the progress of our winter arrangements. ** September 30. — We have been clearing up on the ice, " Thanks to our allies the Esquimaux, our beef -house is now a pile of barrels holding our water-soaked beef and pork. Flour, beans, and dried apples make a quadrangular blockhouse on the floe; from one corner of it rises our flagstaff, lighting up the dusky grey with its red and white ensign, only on Sunday giving place to the Henry Grin- nell flag, of happy memories. " From this, along an avenue that opens abeam of the brig, — New London Avenue, named after M'Qary's town at home, — are our boats and square cordage. • Outside of all these is a magnificent hut of barrel-frames and snow, to accommodate our Esquimaux visitors — the only thing about it exposed to hazard being the tempting woodwork. What remains to complete our camp-plot is the rope barrier that is to mark out our little curtilage around the vessel ; this, when finished, is to be the dividing-line between us and the rest of mankind. " There is something in the simplicity of all this simplex munditiisj which might commend itself to the most rigor- ous taste. Nothing is wasted on ornament. " October 4. — I sent Hans and Hickey two days ago out to the hunting-ice, to see if the natives have had any luck with the walrus. They are back to-night with bad news, — no meat, no Esquimaux. These strange children of the snow have made a mysterious flitting — ^whe^e or how it is hard to guess, for they have no sledges. They cannot have SEARCH FOR FOOD. 145 travelled very far; and yet they have such unquiet im- pulses, that, once on the track, no civilised man can say where they will bring up. " Ohlsen had just completed a sledge, fashioned like the (Smith Sound kommetih^ with an improved curvature of the runners. It weighs only twenty-four pounds, and, though I think it too short for light draught, it is just the article our Etah neighbours would delight in for their land- portages. I intended it for them, as a great price for a great stock of walrus-meat; but the other parties to the bargain have flown. " October 5. — We are nearly out of fresh meat again, one rabbit and three ducks being our sum total. We have been on short allowance for several days. What vegetables we have — the dried apples and peaches, and pickled cab- bage — have lost much of their anti-scorbutic virtue by constant u5e. Our spices are all gone. Except four small bottles of horse-radish, our carte is comprised in three lines — bread, beef, pork. " I must be off after these Esquimaux. They certainly have meat, and wherever they have gone we can foUow. Once upon their trail, our hungry instincts will not risk being baffled. I will stay only long enough to complete my latest root-beer brewage. Its basis is the big crawling willow, the miniature giant of our Arctic forests, of which we laid in a stock some weeks ago. It is quite pleasantly bitter, and I hope to get it fermenting in the deck-house without extra fuel, by heat from below. " October 7. — Lively sensation, as they say in the land of olives and champagne. * Nannook, nannook ! ' — * A bear, a bear!' — Hans and Morton in a breath! " To the scandal of our domestic regulations, the guns were all impracticable. While the men were loading and 14C THE FAR NORTH. capping anew, I seized my pillow-companion six shooter, and ran on deck. A medium-sized bear, with a four months' cub, was in active warfare with our dogs. Thc^ were hanging on her skirts, and she with wonderful alertness was picking out one victim after another, snatching him b> tlie nape of the neck, and flinging him many feet, or rathei yards, by a barely perceptible movement of her head. " I lodged a pistol-ball in the side of the cub. Ohlsen wounded the mother as she went, but she scarcely noticed it. She tore down, by single efforts of her forearms, the barrels of frozen beef which made the triple walls of the storehouse, mounted the rubbish, and snatching up a half barrel of herrings, carried it down by her teeth, and was making oflF. It was time to close, I thought. Going up within half-pistol range, I gave her six buckshot. She dropped, but instantly rose, and, getting her cub into its former position, moved oflf once more. " This time she would really have escaped but for the admirable tactics of our new recruits from the Esquimaux. The dogs of Smith's Sound are educated more thoroughly than any of their southern brethren. Next to the walrus, the bear is the staple of diet to the north, and except the fox, supplies the most important element of the wardrobe. Unlike the dogs we had brought with us from Baffin's Bay, these were trained, not to attack, but to embarrass. They ran in circles round the uear, and w^hen pursued would keep ahead with regulated gait, their comrades effecting a diversion at the critical moment by a nip at her hind-quarters. This was done so systematically, and with so little seeming excitement, as to strike every one on board. I have seen bear-dogs elsewhere that had been drilled to relieve each other in the melee and avoid the direct assault; but here, two dogs without even a demonstration of attack, \ A BEAR ENCOUNTER. 147 would put themselves before the path of the animal, and retreating right and left, lead him into a profitless pursuit that checked his advance completely. ** The poor animal was still backing ont, yet still fight- ing, carrying along her wounded cub, embarrassed by the dogs, yet gaining distance from the brig, when Hans and myself threw in the odds in the shape of a couple of rifle- balls. She staggered in front of her young one, faced us in death-like defiance, and only sank when pierced by six more bullets. " The little cub sprang upon the corpse of her mother, and raised a woeful lamentation over her wounds. She repelled my efforts to noose her with great ferocity; but at last, completely muzzled with a line fastened by a running knot between her jaws and the back of her head, she moved off to the brig amid the clamour of the dogs. We have her now chained alongside, but snarling and snapping constantly, evidently suffering from her wound. " October 8. — When I was out in the Advance, with Captain de Haven, I satisfied mypelf that it wajs a vulgar prejudice to regard the liver of the bear as poisonous. I ate of it freely myself, and succeeded in making it a favourite dish with the mess. But I find to my cost that it may sometimes be more savoury than safe. The cub*3 liver was my supper last night, and to-day I have the symptoms of poison in full measure — vertigo, diarrhoea, and their concomitants. " October 10. — If I was asked what, after darkness and cold and scurvy, are the three besetting curses of our Arctic sojourn, I should say, Kats, Rats, Rats. A mother-rat bit my finger to the bo^ne last Friday, as I was intruding ray hand into a bear-skin mitter which she had chosen as a homestead for hec little family. I withdrew it I 148 THE FAR NORTH. of course with instinctive courtesy; but among them they carried off the mitten before I could suck the finger. " Last week I sent down Rhina, the most intelligent dog of our whole pack, to bivouac in their citadel forward ; I thoight she might at least be able to defend herself Jigainst them, for she had distinguished herself in the bear- hunt. She slept very well for a couple of hours on a bed she had chosen for herself on the top of some iron spikes. But the rats could not or would not forgo the horny skin about her paws; and they gnawed her feet and nails so ferociously, that we drew her up yelping and vanquished. " October 13. — The Esquimaux have not been near us, and it is a puzzle of some interest where they have re- treated to. Wherever they are, there must be our hunt- ing-grounds, for they certainly have not changed their quarters to a more destitute region. I have sent Morton and Hans to-day to track them out if they can. They carry a hand-sledge with them, Ohlsen's last manufacture, ride with the dog-sledge as far as Anoatok, and leave the old dogs of our team there. From that point they are to try a device of my own. We have a couple of dogs that we got from these same Esquimaux, who are at least as instinctive as their former masters. One of these they are to let run, holding the other by a long leash. I feel con- fident that the free dog will find the camping-ground, and I think it probable the other will follow. I thought of tying the two together; but it would embarrass their mov^ements, and give them something to occupy their minds, besides the leading object of their mission. " October 14. — Wilson and Hickey reported last night a wolf at the meat-house. Now, the meat-house is a thing of too much worth to be left to casualty, and a wolf might incidentally add some freshness of flavour to its contenis. INTUNSE COLD. 149 So I went out in all haste with the Marston rifle, but without my mittens, and with only a single cartridge. The metal burnt ray hands, as metal is apt to do at 50° below the point of freezing ; but I got a somewhat rapid shot. I hit one of our dogs, a truant from Morton's team ; luckily a flesh wound only, for he is too good a beast to lose. I could have sworn he was a wolf. " October 19. — Our black dog Erebus has come back to the brig. Morton has perhaps released him, but he lias more probably broken loose. " October 21. — Hard at it still, slinging chains and planting shores. The thermometer is too near zero for work like this. We swaddle our feet in old cloth, and guard our hands with fur mits; but the cold iron bites through them all. "6.30 P.M. — Morton and Hans are in, after tracking the Esquimaux to the lower settlement of Etah. I cannot give their report to-night : the poor fellows are completely knocked up by the hardships of their march. Hans, who is always careless of powder and fire-arms, — a trait which I have observed among both the American and the Oriental savages, — exploded his powder-flask while attempting to kindle a tinder fire. The explosion has risked his hand. I have dressed it, extracting several pieces of foreign mat- ter, and poulticing it in yeast and charcoal. Morton has frostbitten both his heels ; I hope not too severely, for the indurated skin of the heel makes it a bad region for sup- puration. But they bring us two hundred and seventy pounds of walrus-meat, and a couple of foxes. This supply, with what we have remaining of our two bears, must last us till the return of daylight allows us to join the natives in their hunts. The light is fast leaving us. The sun has ceased to {( 150 THE FAR NORTH. reach the vessel. The north-eastern headlands, or their southern faces up the fiords, have still a warm yellow tint, and the pinnacles of the icebergs far out on the floes are lighted up at noonday; but all else is dark shadow." CHAPTER XIV. THE ESQUIMAUX VILLAGE — A WALRUS HUNT. Morton reached the huts beyond Anoatok upon the fourth day after leaving the brig. There were four of them, but two of them are in ruins. They were all of them the homes of families only four winters ago. Of the two which are still habitable, Myouk, his father, mother, brother and sister occupied one; and Awahtok and Ootuniah, with their wives and three young ones, the other. The little community had lost two of ita members by death since the spring. They received Morton and his companions with much kindness, giving them water to drink, rubbing their feet, drying their moccasins, and the like. The women, who did this ,with something of the goodwife's air of prerogative, seemed to have toned down much of the rudeness which characterised the bachelor settlement at Anoatok. The lamps were cheerful and smokeless, and the huts much less filthy. Each had its two lamps constantly burning, with a framework of bone-hooks and walrus-line above them for drying the wet clothes of the household. Except a few dog-skins, which are used as a support to the small AN ESQUIMAUX HUT. 151 of the back, the dais was destitute of sleeping accommo- dations altogether: a single walrus-hide was spread out for Morton and Hans. The hut had the usual tossuty or en- trance passage, at least twelve feet long — very low, straight, and level, until it reached the inner part of the chamber, when it rose abruptly by a small hole, through which with some squeezing was the entrance into the true apartment. Over this entrance was the rude window, with its scraped seal-intestine instead of glass, heavily coated with frost of course ; but a small eye-hole commanding the bay enabled the indwellers to peep out and speak or call to any who were outside. A smoke-hole passed through the roof. \^hen all the family, with Morton and Hans, were gr,. c e ,', together, the two lamps in full blaze, and the narrow hole of entrance covered by a flat stone, the heat became insupportable. Outside, the thermometer stood at 30° below zero; within, 90® above; a difference of 120°. The vermin were not as troublesome as in the Anoatok dormitory, the natives hanging their clothing over the lamp-frames, and lying down to sleep perfectly naked, with the exception of a sort of T bandage, as surgeons call it, of seal-skin, three inches wide, worn by the women as a badge of their sex, and supported by a mere strip around the hips. After sharing the supper of their hosts, the visitors stretched themselves out and passed the night in unbroken perspiration and slumber. It was evident from the meagre- ness of the larder that the hunters of the family had work to do; and from some signs, which did not escape the sagacity o^ Morton, it was plain that Myouk and his father had determined to seek their next dinner upon the floes. They were going upon a walrus hunt ; and Morton, true to the mission with which I had charged him, invited himself and Kans to be of the party. 152 THE FAR NORTH. I have not yet described one of these exciting incidents of Esquimaux life. Morton was full of the one he wit- nessed; and his account of it when he came back was so graphic, that I shall be glad to escape from the egotism of personal narrative by giving it in his own words. The party which he attended upon their walrus hunt had three sledges. One was to be taken to a cache in the neighbourhood ; the other two dragged at a quick run to- ward the open water, about ten miles off to the south-west. They had but nine dogs to these two sledges, one man only riding, the others running by turns. As they neared the new ice, and where the black wastes of mingled cloud and water betokened the open sea, they would from time to time remove their hoods and listen intently for the animal's voice. After a while Myouk became convinced, from signs or sounds, or both, — for they were inappreciable by Morton, — that the walrus were waiting for him in a small space of recently-open water that was glazed over with a few days' growth of ice ; and moving gently on, they soon heard its characteristic bellow. The walrus, like some of the higher order of beings to which he has been compared, is fond of his own music, and will lie for hours listening to himself. His vocalisation is something between the mooing of a cow and the deepest baying of a mastiff : very round and full, with its barks or detached notes repeated rather quickly seven to nine times in succession. The party now formed in single file, following in each other's steps, and, guided by an admirable knowledge of ice-topography, wound behind hummocks and ridges in a serpentine approach toward a group of pond-like discoloura- tions, recently-frozen ice-spots, but surrounded by firmer and older ice. dents B wit- : was ;otisin hunt in the an to- i-west. e man neared I cloud tt time [or the igns or rton, — pace of days' lard its higher Ifond of imself. If a cow id full, [uickly in each jdge of |es in a joloura- firmer WALRUS HUNTING, 153 When within half a mile of these, the line broke, and each man crawled toward a separate pool — Morton on his hands and knees following Myouk. In a few minutes the walrus were in sight. They were five in number, rising at intervals through the ice in a body, and breaking it up with an explosive puff that might have been heard for miles. Two large grim-looking males were conspicuous as the leaders of the group. Now for the marvel of the craft. "When the walrus is above water, the hunter is flat and motionless ; as he begins to sink, alert and ready for a spring. The animal's head is hardly below the water-line before every man is in a rapid run; and again, as if by instinct, before the beast returns, all are motionless behind protecting knolls of ice. They seem to know beforehand not only the time he will be absent, but the very spot at which he will re-appear. In this way, hiding and advancing by turns, Myouk, with Morton at his heels, has reached a plate of thin ice, hardly strong enough to bear them, at the very brink of the water- pool the walrus are curvetting in. Myouk, till now phlegmatic, seems to waken with ex- citement. His coil of walrus-hide, a well-trimmed line of many fathoms' length, is lying at his side. He fixes one end of it in an iron barb, and fastens this loosely by a socket upon a shaft of unicorn's horn; the other end is already looped, or, as sailors would S"y, " doubled in a bight." It is the work of a moment. He has grasped the harpoon; the water is in motion. PujQfing with pent-up respiration, the walrus is within a couple of fathoms close before him. Myouk rises slowly — his right arm thrown back, the left flat at his side. The walrus looks about him, shaking the water from his crest; Myouk throws up his left jwm, and the animal, rising breast-high, 154 THE FAR NORTH. fixes one look before lie plunges. It has cost him all that curiosity can cost; the harpoon is buried under his left flipper. Though the walrus is down in a moment, Myouk is running at desperate speed from the scene of his victory, paying off his coil freely, but clutching the end by its loop. He seizes as he runs a small stick of bone, rudely pointed with iron, and by a sudden movement drives it into the ice ; to this he secures his line, pressing it down close to the ice-surface with his feet. Now comes the struggle. The hole is dashed in mad commotion with the struggles of the wounded beast; the line is drawn tight at one moment, the next relaxed: the hunter has not left his station. There is a crash of the ice ; and rearing up through it are two walruses, not many yards from where he stands. One of them, the male, is excited and seemingly terrified ; the other, the female, col- lected and vengeful. Down they go again, after one grim survey of the field ; and on the instant Myouk has changed his position, carrying his coil with him and fixing it anew. He has hardly fixed it before the pair have again risen, breaking up an area of ten feet diameter about the very spot he left. As they sink once more he again changes his place. And so the conflict goes on between address and force, till the victim, half exhausted, receives a second wound, and is played like a trout by the angler's reel. Some idea may be formed of the ferocity of the walrus, from the fact that the battle which Morton witnessed, not without sharing some of its danger, lasted four hours — during which the animal rushed continually at the Esqui- maux as they approached, tearing off great tables of ices with his tusks, and showing no indications of fear what- ever. He received upward of seventy lance-wounds,— i 'i CLOSE OF THE FIGHT. 155 1 all that his left ^youk is 8 victory, r its loop. y pointed into the n close to Deast; the axed: the ,sh of the not many e male, is imale, col- • one grim ; is changed g it anew. yain risen, the very langes his dress and a second reel. r Morton counted over sixty; and even then he remained hooked by his tusks to the margin of the ice, unable or unwilling to retire. His female fought in the same manner, but fled on receiving a lance- wound. The Esquimaux seen i to be fully aware of the danger of venturing too near ; for at the first onset of the walrus they jumped back far enough to be clear of the broken ice. Morton described the last three hours as wearing, on both sides, the aspect of an unbroken and seemingly doubtful combat. i in mad 1 The method of landing the beast upon the ice, too, showed a great deal of clever contrivance. They made two pair of incisions in the neck, where the hide is very thick, about six inches apart and parallel to each other, so as to form a couple of bands. A line of cut hide, about a quar- ter of an inch in diameter, was passed under one of these bands and carried up on the ice to a firm stick well secured in the floe, where it went through a loop, and was then taken back to the animal, made to pass under the second band, and led off to the Esquimaux. This formed a sort of " double purchase," the blubber so lubricating the cord as to admit of a free movement. By this contrivance the east, weighing some seven hundred pounds, was hauled p and butchered at leisure. The two sledges now journeyed homeward, carrying the ore valued parts of their prize. The intestines and a he walrus, Marge share of the carcass were buried up in the cavities of lessed, not J. berg; LucuUus himself could not have dreamed of a rander icehouse. As they doubled the little island which stood in front of heir settlement, the women ran down the rocks to meet ihem. A long hail carried the good news; and, as the arty alighted on the beach, knives were quickly at work, hours— ;he Esqui- Dies of ice I fear what- rounds,— 156 THE FAR NORTH. the allotment of the meat being determined by well-under- stood hunter laws. The Esquimaux, however gluttonously they may eat, evidently bear hunger with as little difficulty as excess. None of the morning party had breakfasted; yet it was after ten o'clock at night before they sat down to dinner. "Sat down to dinner!" This is the only expression of our own gastrology which is applicable to an Esquimaux feast They truly sit down, man, woman, and child, knife in hand, squatting cross-legged around a for- midable joint, — say forty pounds, — falling to like college commoners after grace. I have seen many such feeds. Han's account, however, of the glutton-festival is too cha- racteristic to be omitted : — " Why, Cappen Ken, sir, even the children ate all night ; you know the little two-year-old that Awiu carried in her hood — the one that bit you when you tickled it] Yes. Well, Cappen Ken, sir, that baby cut for herself, with a knife made out of an iron hoop, and so heavy that it could barely lift it, and cut and ate, and ate and cut, as long as I looked at it." " Well, Hans, try now and think; for I want an accurate answer : how much as to weight or quantity would you say that child ate?" Hans is an exact and truthful man: he pondered a little and said that he could not answer my question. " But I know this, sir, that it ate a sipak" — the Esquimaux name for the lump which is cut off close to the lips — "as large as its own head; and three hours after- ward, when 1 went to bed, it was cutting off another lump and eating still." A sipak, like the Dutch governor's foot, is, however, a varying unit of weight. er my I— the :o the I after- lump foot, FUEL FOR THE WINTER. 157 CHAPTER XV. THE COMING WINTER. *^ October 26. — The thermometer at 34° below zero, but fortunately no wind blowing. We go on with the out- door work. We burn but seventy pounds of fuel a day, most of it in the galley — the fire being allowed to go out between meals. We go without fire altogether for four hours of the night; yet such is the excellence of our moss- walls and the air-proof of our toasuty that, when our housing is arranged, and the main hatch secured with a proper weather-tight screen of canvas, we shall be able, I hope, to meet the extreme cold of February and March without fear. "Darkness is the worst enemy we have to face; but we will strive against the scurvy in spite of him, till the light days of sun and vegetation. "Wilson and Brooks are my principal subjects of anxiety; for although Morton and Hans are on their backs, making four of our ten, I can see strength of system in their cheerfulness of heart. The best prophylactic is a hopeful, sanguine temperament; the best cure, moral resistance — that spirit of combat against every trial, which is alone true bravery. ^^ October 27. — The work is going on; we are ripping off the extra planking of our deck for fuel during the winter. The cold increases fast, and in spite of all my efforts we will have to burn largely into the brig. I prepared for this two months ago, and satisfied myself, after a consultation with the carpenter, that we may cut 158 TUB FAR NORTH. away some seven or eight tons of fuel without absolutely destroying her sea-worthiness." My narrative has now reached a period at which every- thing like progress was suspended. The increasing cold and brightening stars, — the labours, anxieties, and sickness that pressed upon us, — these almost engross the pages Df my journal. Now and then I find some marvel such .IS Petersen's about the fox's dexterity as a hunter; Hans tells me of domestic life in South Greenland, or of a seal- hunt and a wrecked kayack; or perhaps M'Gary repeats his thrice-told tale of humour; but the night has closed down upon us, and we are hibernating through it. Yet some of these are topics of interest. The intense beauty of the Arctic firmament can hardly be imagined. It looks close above our heads, with its stars magnified in glory, and the very planets twinkling so much as to baffle the observations of our astronomer. I am afraid to speak of some of these night-scenes. I have trodden the deck and the floes, when the life of earth seemed sus- pended, — its movements, its sounds, its colouring, its com- panionships ; and as I looked on the radiant hemisphere, circling above me as if rendering worship to the unseen centre of light, I have ejaculated in humility of spirit, "Lord, what is man that Thou art mindful of him]" And then I have thought of the kindly world we had left, with its revolving sunshine and shadow, and the other stars that gladden it in their changes, and the hearts that warmed to us there, till I lost myself in memories of those who are not — and they bore me back to the stars again. The narration of one day's hopes and fears, troubles, privations, and trials, — I am sorry I cannot add triumphs. I- sus- DESPONDENCr. 159 ; — so much resembles that of the next, that I feel it would be but tiring the patience of the reader were I to detail, with the same degree of minuteness which I have hitherto done, the daily progress of our little party, and the great cause in which we are engaged. The winter is now upon us, and little or nothing can be done either to *^,flfect the liberation of the brig from her icy fetters, or to further our explorations. On board the brig the mode of life is the same as last winter, except that we are subject to greater privations, consequent on the great demands which have been made upon the stores. "We have little to amuse ourselves, and we go through the monotonous rounc' of the day's duties with as much celerity and ready will, as our drooping circumstances will admit of. I cannot hide from myself the fact that the main object of our expedition must now be finally abandoned; and our duty, in the next instance, is toward ourselves: to wait the return of light in order to accomplish our escape from the ice, — with the brig if possible, if impossible, without it, — ^before the frail appliances and stores which are now left are entirely exhausted. Of course, it would be both impolitic and unwise to apprise the crew of my thoughts on this painful subject, so I will keep my own counsel in the meantime. I can see, however, that I am not alone in my convictions. During November, I observed a few of my best men getting nervous and depressed — M'Gary paced the deck all one Sunday in a fit of home-sickness, without eating a meal — I do my best to cheer them; but it is hard work to hide one's own trials for the sake of others who have not as many. I am glad of my professional drill and its companion influence over the sick and toil-worn. I could 160 THE FAR NORTU, not get along at all unless I combined the offices of physician and commander. You cannot punish sick men. December saw the brig fitted up for the winter; and, all things considered, very comfortably we made it. Tom Hickey, our good-humoured, blundering cabin-boy, deco- rated since poor Schubert's death with the dignities of cook, is in that little dirty cot on the starboard-side; the rest are bedded in rows, Mr Brooks and myself choke aft. Our bunks are close against the frozen moss-wall, where we can take in the entire family at a glance. The apartment measures twenty feet by eighteen; its height six feet four inches at one place, but diversified elsewhere by beams crossing at different distances from the floor. The avenue by which it is approached is barely to be seen in the moss- wall forward. The avenue — Ben-Djerback is our poetic name for it — closes on the inside with a door well patched with flannel, from which, stooping upon all- fours, you back down a descent of four feet in twelve, through a tunnel three feet high and two feet six inches broad. It would have been a tight squeeze for a man like Mr Brooks, when he was better fed and fatter. Arrived at the bottom, you straighten yourself, and a second door admits you into the dark and sorrowing hold, empty of stores, and stripped to its naked ceiling for firewood. From this we grope our way to the main hatch, and mount by a rude stairway of boxes into the open air. " Deoemher 2. — Many of the men are down with sickness and scurvy, and this adds greatly to my anxiety. M'Gary, Riley, Wilson, and Brooks, are all on the sick-list, and as for poor Morton, I am afraid I will lose him. Poor fellows, I can ill afiford to lose any of them ; but if Morton dies, it mil be a great loss indeed. He is not only one of my most ii tru8tw( "On in the when maux teams and in of chai sen, tw "Th tell of. ence all of thei: their as counsel gone, an acco were v( rescuing a party "On the cry groping the hoi human natives, about t my han by suff( tion, ai Poor f( them a RETURN OF THE WANDERERS, 101 most intelligent men, but he is daring, cool, and every way trustworthy. '< On the 7th we had an agreeable surprise. I was asleep in the forenoon, after the fatigue of an extra night-watch, when I was called to the deck by the report of * Esqui- maux sledges.' They came on rapidly, ^vti skv^<^'ep, with teams of six dogs each, most of the dr'vers strai.gers .:o us; and in a few minutes were at the br>g. ''I'lie'r en and was of charity : they were bringing back to us Bonsall and Petek*- sen, two of the party that left us on the li8ch ol iVugu?t " The party had many adventures ?,nd luuch puii«riri,<;" ro tell of. They had verified by pai uul and pcriloua vxperi- ence all I had anticipated for them. T»iit the ^i\o^X Htiriin^^ of their announcements was the condition -h