DISCOVERIES IN A NEW WORLD OF ICE
On January 3, 1898, we started eastward through Beagle Channel,
intending to push southward at once, but an incident happened which
changed our progress and also disturbed our ease of mind. This incident
proved to be the _Belgica’s_ first geographical discovery. While
trying to find Harbourton, a missionary station on the south-eastern
shore of the main island of Tierra del Fuego, she struck a reef.
We were steaming eastward through Beagle Channel. It was late at
night, and before us there was the dim outline of a long panorama
of islands; behind lay the ice-covered mountains of the tail of the
Cordilleras. On each side were the black forest-covered steeps of the
wild and melancholy Fuegian Islands. At 11 o’clock the twilight was
still pouring over the white glacial sheets of the west; the tops of
the islands were aglow with a curious pearly light. The water was
as smooth as that of the Hudson, but deep down rested the feeble
white reflections of the mountain heights. The coastal outline was
indeterminable. We pushed along slowly, searching bay after bay for
some signs of human life. On a neck of land an object was reported
which might be a house, but we could not decide the question even with
our best telescopes. We aimed for it. In a few minutes we discovered
that our progress through the water was arrested. This was a mystery
to us. The engines were forced to their limits, but we remained
stationary. Soundings indicated that we were aground on a reef of
rocks, but we had gone on so easily that no one had felt a jar. We
hoped the tide would rise and lift us off, but it fell and left us
stranded. At 4 o’clock in the morning the _Belgica_ began to
careen, and at 6 o’clock she had a list, making it impossible to stand
on the floor. We tried to brace her up with spars, but they broke like
pipe-stems. We now made out the object on shore to be a house and saw
also some signs of life about it. Presently a group of men came from
it to us. They were Indians, under the direction of Mr. Lucas Bridges,
a sheep-farmer. Mr. Bridges volunteered to help us in our efforts to
save the ship. I went ashore with him to get the services of as many
Indians as possible. The sailors and the Indians, working side by side,
began at once to lighten the ship by removing cargo to the shores.
Only two or three boat-loads were landed when a sudden storm rolled
down the gullies from the high mountains to the north-westward, piling
up a sea which made further communication with the ship impossible.
From the shore we could see the _Belgica_ rock and roll in
response to every gust of wind which passed over us. On the shore and
on the ship there was little hope of saving the vessel. Following
a tremendous squall we saw the Belgian colours go up and then felt
relieved of fear. She drifted with the wind and in an hour disappeared
behind a black head of land. The next day she returned and reported no
serious injury.
[Illustration: Mount William, Antwerp Island.]
[Illustration: Mount Allo, Liege Island.]
From Harbourton we steamed eastward to the storm-washed shores of
Staten Island, where we took our last water-supply, and bade our
friends and the known world a final adieu. From the time we left
Staten Island, on January 13, 1898, until our return to Punta Arenas,
on March 28, 1899, we were in another world--a new icy world, where
communication with home regions was impossible. We had troubles of our
own, and a little warfare, too--but we were totally ignorant of the
Spanish-American War, the Dreyfus case, and the other great national
and international troubles which had made history in our absence.
Our first large task was the seemingly impossible work of making a map
of the sea bottom and a study of the waters south of Cape Horn. This is
a belt of ocean famous as being swept by the most destructive storms
on the globe. It is difficult enough for ordinary navigation, but to
attempt to remain stationary for three or four hours daily, and sink a
wire two miles, with delicate instruments attached, was a venture which
did not appeal to us with much promise of success. We were favoured,
however, with good weather until we got a glimpse of the South Shetland
Islands, and were thus able to make a line of soundings across the
previously unfathomed sea. The general depth here was considerable.
After passing over a narrow submarine shelf south of Staten Island, the
lead dropped suddenly to 13,300 feet. The ocean-bed then rose gradually
in an easy slope to the South Shetland Islands, thus proving a rather
sharp disconnection between the mountain-ranges of southern South
America and those of the imperfectly known antarctic lands.
The first iceberg was met the day before we saw the snowy outline of
the South Shetlands. It appeared a long way off, over our port bow, at
about 8 o’clock in the evening of January 19th. We all went on deck to
get a glimpse of our first antarctic berg, but we made no efforts to
get nearer. The sky was sooty, and the air so heavy that the coming
twilight was lost in a gloomy mist. Around the dull white mass there
was a cloud of vapour which rose and fell, now offering a peep at the
strange block of ice, and again veiling it from view. Half sorry to
leave it without further observation, we steamed onward until it sank
into the stormy sea over our port quarter.
The night which followed was dark. The sea rolled under our stern
in huge inky mountains, while the wind scraped the deck with an icy
edge. We kept a sharp lookout for icebergs, which might come suddenly
into our path out of the impenetrable darkness ahead. The sudden fall
of the temperature and the stinging, penetrating character of the
wind seemed to warn us that ice was near; but we encountered none.
Life was plentiful, but melancholy. Curious albatrosses and petrels
hovered about us, uttering strange cries, and in the water there was
an occasional spout from a whale. It was a night of uncertainty, of
anticipation, of discomfort--an experience which only those who have
gone through the wilderness of an unknown sea can understand.
[Illustration: Weddell Sea Leopards of Belgica Strait.
(_Leptonychotes Weddelli._)]
The morning dawned, as it usually does over Cape Horn seas, without
the sun, and with a smoky, low, lead-streaked sky. At noon the icy
mist overhead melted and an occasional sunburst gave life and colour
to the scene. Our soundings indicated a proximity to land, which
caused us to skim the horizon constantly through our glasses with
keen interest. A small white speck here and there indicated distant
icebergs. At about three o’clock in the afternoon a series of low
pyramidal masses appeared under the southern sky. It was like a
bank of blue fog fringed with snowy bands. The whole length of our
seaboard formed an ill-defined, cloud-like aggregation resting on
the black waters and extending the entire length from north-east to
south-west. As we steamed on, the central groups became more distinct
and the whole line rose above the horizon. We now recognised it as the
northern exposure of the South Shetland Islands. During the afternoon
a gentle but piercing wind came from the land, bringing with it a
glassy air and an easy, silvery sea, over which the new land stood out
in bold relief. We could distinguish Livingston Island over our port
bow, and north-eastward, melting into the blue airy distance, were
numerous similar islands. Over our starboard bow was Smith Island, its
base still under the water, and its table-topped crest rising into
mouse-coloured clouds, sixty miles away.
We hoped that the night would not again be darkened by the
ever-present black mist, and pushed rapidly landward to get a good
view before midnight. But this was not to be, for as the sun sank in
the south-west the wind came out of the north-east with a sooty smoke
which blocked out our horizon. The distance was too great to make a
good study of the land. In a general way this coast-line resembles
the northern parts of the Greenland landscape. About the largest
islands there are many small, ice-free isles, or rocks, which serve
as resting-places for seals, penguins, cormorants, and gulls. On the
larger islands, and especially on Livingston Island, there are high
peaks and rounded, dome-like hills, which are crowned with snow, but
whose sides are mostly bare and wind-rasped. The valleys are filled
with huge glaciers, which send tongues out to the sea. We saw no
glaciers, however, which came out from any distance into the water.
The limit of the ice was generally at high-water mark, where it wasted
away in small fragments. From what we later learned of the lands
farther south, it is extremely probable that moss and lichens are here
abundant, but there is no hope for grass or trees.
It is very curious that this group of islands, about one hundred in
number, with a thousand miles of accessible coast-line, and several
good harbours, free of ice for much of the year, should remain
unclaimed by any government, and unsettled by human efforts. It would
be a humane mission if our government would take possession of these
islands, and place there a lighthouse, with a supply station, for
the preservation of ship-wrecked sailors. Vessels are lost in this
vicinity almost every year, and we do not know but that some poor
seamen are not now stranded on one of the many desolate islands,
awaiting the relief which never comes.
During the night of the 20th, the ship was kept moving slowly
southward. It was another night of anxiety, though there were few
icebergs about, and no pack-ice; yet the proximity to an unknown coast
and the uncertainty of our position, with unsettled weather, made
us all but comfortable. In the morning it was misty. Numerous small
icebergs were about us, and while trying to dodge these we made another
discovery--we struck a rock. This time we did not go on to it as easily
as we did in Beagle Channel. We struck with a force that made the ship
tremble and crack from stem to stern. We needed no call to come on
deck, but after reaching it, we could not see what had happened.
“We struck an iceberg,” some one said.
“Yes; a black one,” said Knudsen.
A few moments later the fog lifted, and we saw white crests and black
rocks about us on every side. The good old ship was turned; she rolled
off and struck two or three other rocks, and then steamed away, none
the worse for it. As we withdrew we watched the small icebergs being
dashed to pieces on the same rocks, and wondered if that would not be
our fate with the next encounter.
At about noon on the 21st, the horizon cleared a little, giving us an
opportunity to pass safely from the rocks and bergs around us. Sail
Rock was visible on our port, but nothing else except the dim outline
of Deception Island and the rocks eastward. Sail Rock is remarkable
from a distance; it has the appearance of a ship under sail; but
at close range it is more like a house with a gable-roof. It is a
solid rock about four hundred feet high, a thousand feet long, and
five hundred feet wide. The sides for three or four hundred feet are
perpendicular, offering no beach, and no ledge as a resting-place for
birds, except at the peak. As we had Sail Rock over our quarter, the
weather changed; the bright gray of the waters became black, the sky
grew lead-coloured, and penguins jumped out of the water and then
rushed through it landward with electric swiftness, as if to warn us of
a coming storm. The storm, however, did not come until the morning of
the 22d.
[Illustration: Cormorants at Home.]
[Illustration: Arctowski gathering Geological Specimens, observed
by a Megalestris.
(Cape Lancaster in the Background.)]
This storm proved to us a melancholy affair. The wind at first was not
strong or steady, but the sea which rolled under our starboard quarter
tossed us about upon its bosom as a child does a toy. Occasionally it
broke over us amidship, flooding the laboratory and the galley. There
was a large quantity of coal on the decks, and some of this was carried
by the swash into the scuppers, making escape of the water impossible.
To free the scuppers one of our youngest sailors--Wiencke--was at
work periodically during much of his watch. In the afternoon the
tempest increased and gathered force hour after hour. Great seas
broke over us with increasing violence, while the wind came and went
with a cannon-like roar. Everything movable on the decks was swept
overboard. At about three o’clock in the afternoon Amundsen and I
were on the bridge, straining our eyes and levelling our glasses on
a mysterious black object ahead, directly in our course; while thus
engaged, we heard an unearthly cry,--a cry which made me shiver because
of its force and painful tone. We turned about quickly, but saw nothing
to indicate the direction of the noise. Amundsen, thinking there had
been an accident in the engine-room, rushed in that direction. I went
aft to the quarter-deck, and, looking astern, saw a man struggling
among the foamy crests. It was Wiencke--in trying to free the scuppers
he had lost his balance, and in falling, he had uttered the awful
cry which had startled us. With quick presence of mind he sought the
log-line and grasped it. I caught hold of the other end, and began to
draw it slowly in, but he slipped until his hand was stopped by the
log; upon this he held with a death-like grasp. Before I had pulled in
the full length of the line everybody was on deck; but there was little
to be done. With the sea tossing the ship about like a chip, and the
wind blowing a gale, it was impossible to lower a boat. As I brought
Wiencke close to the stern, Lecointe, with a bravery impossible to
appreciate, volunteered to be lowered into the icy sea to pass a rope
around the poor fellow. He followed his offer with demands for a rope,
which was securely fastened around his waist. With two men at the rope,
Lecointe was lowered into the churning waters, but he sank at once with
the counter-eddies, and nearly lost his own life without being able
to keep near Wiencke. Lecointe was raised, and without delay or undue
excitement, we managed to tow Wiencke to the side of the ship, where we
expected to lower another man. But while we were doing this, he gave up
his grip on the log and sank. We waited there for an hour, but saw no
more of our unfortunate shipmate. Wiencke was a boy with many friends,
and his absence was deeply felt in our little party.
* * * * *
Before night the fog raised, and exposed under it a continuous wall of
ice about one hundred and fifty feet high, extending as far eastward
and westward as we could see. At first we thought it an iceberg. It had
every resemblance to one, but its enormous size led us into doubts. We
steamed eastward, keeping from it a distance of about four miles, and
presently were able to make out a black line above the water, which
later we determined to be rocks. Around the eastern termination were a
number of small peaks of volcanic rocks, and from them came, first the
odour of guano-beds, and then the deafening squawk--_gha-a-ah_,
_gha-a-ah_,--of countless millions of penguins. This was Low
Island. We rested here in the lee of its walls for the night, but owing
to persistent fogs we did not get a glimpse of its interior.
[Illustration: A Penguin Rookery, Isle Cobalescou.]
[Illustration: Penguins--A Family Gathering on the Pack-ice.]
On the morning of the 23d the sea was easier but choppy, and the
weather offered promises of clearing. We took advantage of the
conditions to cross Bransfield Strait, which separates the South
Shetlands from the mainlands of the true antarctic. The promise of a
clear horizon was not realised, for it remained misty all day. Icebergs
were passed in great numbers, most of them being table-topped and
square cut, with great blue lines, crevasses, and cavities. The mist
destroyed the fine outlines and the fascinating colours of the ice.
The knife-like corners of the crowns were ill-defined, and the usual
exquisite blues and greens were covered by the gloomy gray of the sky.
There was about these bergs, even with their subdued colours, something
wildly picturesque, but there was also a real danger in our proximity
to them in hazy weather.
Historically the record of our predecessors in the region which we are
about to enter is short. Early in the twenties the islands about Cape
Horn and the South Shetlands were besieged by American fur sealers.
They did their work of execution so thoroughly that in the short period
of five years almost the entire race of fur seals was exterminated.
One of these sealers, Captain Nathaniel Palmer, in a little shallop
of forty tons, while seeking new sealing grounds southward, found an
extensive country covered with ice and inhabited by penguins and seals.
Some years later Captain Biscoe, a British sea-elephant hunter, saw a
part of the same country somewhat farther to the south-west, and still
later a German sealer, Dallman, saw a part of the same northern coast.
To Palmer belongs the honour of the discovery of this vast tract of
land. It is a disappointment that his records are so imperfect, but the
record of everything antarctic is of a similar nature. Palmer has been
forgotten by his own countrymen and ignored by foreign cartographers.
In the arrangement of the new chart the Belgian Expedition will attempt
to place his name where it belongs--on the land which he saw first of
all men.
At 3 o’clock in the afternoon of the 23d a curious white haze appeared
upon the southern sky. A little later an imperfect outline of land rose
into this haze. It extended as far as we could see to the east and to
the west. The top was everywhere veiled by a high mist, and this mist
had within it a mysterious light, which is one of the most startling of
all the south polar effects. As we drew nearer we noticed that the land
was not as it at first appeared, an endless wall of ice, but rough,
irregular and disconnected, though it was buried under a mantle of
glacial ice, extending to the water’s edge. Here and there were large
bays, and one directly over our bowsprit was so wide that it offered
us a tempting path southward. Now the maps were carefully studied that
we might be able to fix our position on paper; but in this effort we
failed.
Over the starboard bow rose two beautiful headlands, mountains of
moderate height, perhaps two thousand feet; the first (Mount Pierre)
having around it a circular cloak of ice extending from a black crown
of rocks at the summit to the sea-line, where it terminated in a
perpendicular wall of ice of about one hundred and twenty feet in
height. The second (Mount Allo) had a similar form but was much more
heavily laden with snow. In front of these remarkable headlands there
was a bay, and beyond a long series of mountains, clothed in the same
sheet of perennial ice. Eastward there were a number of small islands,
mostly free of ice, and beyond, low under the south-eastern sky, was
the dim outline of an extensive white country. We set our course
somewhat east of south to examine the interruption between the high
mountainous land before us and the more even country eastward.
That the reader may better understand the positions I will give the
names, which have since been affixed to the discoveries, as we steam
along through the undiscovered country.
We headed for a small island (Auguste Island), steaming slowly; for
with the ordinary lead we found no bottom to the sea, and being in
absolutely unknown water we might at any moment strike a reef, as we
had done twice before. It was ten o’clock at night before we were near
enough to make a landing. Then a boat was lowered, and into it we
piled, eagerly seizing the first opportunity of our mission to study
the antarctic lands and life. It was a curious night. Everything about
us had an other-world appearance. The scenery, the life, the clouds,
the atmosphere, the water--everything wore an air of mystery. There was
nothing in our surroundings which resembled the part of the antipodes
with which I was familiar. Greenland and antarctic landscapes are
apparently as widely different as the distance between them.
Though the sun was sliding eastward just under the high mountains to
the south-west it seemed perfectly dark. Nevertheless, on the water,
as we paddled over it, there was a curious luminous gray light, by
which it was possible to read coarse print even at midnight. This
light rested on the new lands to the east and west, and brought out the
snowy outlines so perfectly that it was possible to take photographs
throughout the night. The sky, however, continued black, made so by the
sooty clouds which ceaselessly rose out of the Pacific to drop their
white cargoes of snow on the neighbouring lands. There was at this time
no wind. The water was smooth and glassy, the land far off and restful;
but the life was otherwise. Awe-inspiring and strangely interesting
were the curious noises of the cormorants, the penetrating voices of
the gulls, the coarse _gha-a-ah_, _gha-a-ah_ of the penguins,
the sudden and unexpected spouts of whales, the splash of seals and
penguins, and the babyish cries of the young animals on the rocks
before us.
There was nothing remarkable in the appearance of this land upon which
we were about to embark. It was a heap of hard rocks, mostly granite.
The northern exposure was bare, the ravines were still levelled with
winter ice, and the southern point had on it a small ice-cap. We
afterwards saw a hundred others of a similar nature, and all will pass
under the same description. We landed in a small bight, upon a ledge
of rocks. I think Arctowski, with his hammer and geological bag, was
the first to step ashore, and he was followed by Racovitza, with his
paraphernalia to capture natural history specimens. Gerlache and I next
stumbled over fragments of ice, and stones and impertinent penguins,
who disputed our landing. We wished to get a view of the new land, but
the force of the swell was such that we were compelled to return to
the boat and push away from the rocks to save it from being smashed.
We rested on the oars while Racovitza and Arctowski did the honours
of the expedition; we tried to follow them with our glasses as we
rocked about in the boat, but soon lost sight of their movements in
the darkness. We were able to locate Arctowski by the dull echo of
his hammer, and we were able to trace Racovitza by the chorus of
penguins which greeted him from rock to rock. The alternate interchange
of the music of the hammer and the war song of the penguins was an
entertainment which to Gerlache and myself, will be a long and weird
remembrance. At about midnight we returned to the rocky ledge to
pick up our companions with their loads of rocks and bags of game.
The inhabitants did not like their visitors. The penguins assembled
about us, picking at our feet; the gulls hovered threateningly about
our heads; and even the harmless cormorants dashed to and fro over
us, stretching their long necks to ask our mission. Worst of all the
sea-leopards clambered over the rocks near us, snorting and defiantly
showing their teeth and rolling their large, glassy eyes. As we left it
was too dark to see the movement of an animal one hundred yards from
shore, but the peculiar whiteness which rested on the scene made it
possible to take a photograph of the island with good details.
During the few hours of night we rested under easy steam, and in the
morning we found ourselves well into the bight (Hughes Inlet) which we
had entered. The land before us retreated and offered even greater
hopes of a passage southward. At five o’clock the sun had already
risen over the snowy heights of the east and was under the banks of
black clouds which sailed out of the west. There was a solitude and
restfulness about this sunburst, and the new world of ice under it
which is difficult to describe. Our position at this time was in the
centre of a wide waste of water, about twelve miles away from the
nearest land. We were too far from the rocks to see birds, and except
for an occasional spout of a whale there was nothing to mar the dead
silence. A strange pang of loneliness came over us as we paced the
deck. There were indications of channels to the south and west, but
from the distance at which we reviewed the lands every projection
seemed a continuous mass of impenetrable crystal solitude. Could there
be a place more desperately silent or more hopelessly deserted?