THE FIRST DAY'S JOURNEY.--A FALL OF TEMPERATURE.--ITS
EFFECT UPON THE MEN.--CAMPED IN A SNOW-HUT.--THE
SECOND DAY'S JOURNEY.--AT CAIRN POINT.--CHARACTER OF
THE ICE.--THE PROSPECT.--STORM-STAYED.--THE COOKS IN
DIFFICULTY.--SNOW-DRIFT.--VIOLENCE OF THE GALE.--OUR SNOW-HUT.
April 4th.
[Sidenote: THE FIRST DAY'S JOURNEY.]
Buried in a snow-bank, and not over well pleased with my first day's
work. The temperature of the air has tumbled down to -32°, and inside
the hut it is now, two hours after entering it, a degree above zero,
and steadily rising. Three of the party succumbed to the cold on the
march, and I had much difficulty in keeping them from being seriously
frozen. We got on finely until we reached Sunrise Point, where the
ice was very rough, and we were bothered for more than two hours in
getting over it with our long and cumbersome boat and sledge. It was
probably only a little foretaste of what is to come when we strike
across the Sound. Once over this ugly place, we halted to melt some
water, for the men had become very warm and thirsty. Unluckily, just at
this time a smart breeze sprung up, chilling us through and through,
for we had been perspiring freely with the violent exercise. The first
cold blast put an extinguisher upon the enthusiasm which the party had
carried along with them from the ship, and it was singular to observe
the change which came over their spirits. It was the contrast of
champagne and sour cider. Some of them looked as if they were going
to their own funerals, and wore that "My God! what shall I do?" look
that would have been amusing enough had it not been alarming. One of
these, without sufficient energy to keep himself in motion, crouched
behind a snow-drift, and when discovered he had squarely settled
himself for a freeze. In half an hour his inclination would have been
accomplished. When I came up to him he said very coolly, and with a
tone of resignation worthy a martyr, "I'm freezing." His fingers and
toes were already as white as a tallow-candle. There was no time to be
lost. I rubbed a little circulation back into them, and, placing him
in charge of two men with orders to keep him moving, I saved him from
the serious consequences which would otherwise have resulted from his
faint-heartedness. Without waiting for more of the coveted drops of
water, I pushed on for the first snow-bank, and got my party out of
the wind and under cover. But this was not done without difficulty. It
seemed as if two or three of them were possessed with a heroic desire
to die on the spot, and I really believe that they would have done it
cheerfully rather than, of their own accord, seize a shovel and aid
in constructing, if not a place of comfort, at least a place of rest
and safety. This sort of thing at the start is not encouraging, but I
cannot say that I am much surprised at it; for my former experience has
shown the hazard of exposing men in the wind in such low temperatures.
This, however, is one of those things against which no foresight
can provide. No serious consequences appear to have resulted from
the event, and the sufferers are growing more comfortable as the
temperature of the hut rises. We have had our rude camp supper, and I
have started an alcohol lamp; the door is closed tightly; the party are
all drawn under the sleeping-furs; the plucky ones smoke their pipes,
and the balance of them shiver as if they would grow warm with the
exercise. The chattering of teeth is not pleasant music.
April 5th.
Under the snow again near Cape Hatherton. Our halt at the last camp
was continued for eighteen hours, until the men had got fairly thawed
out, and the wind had entirely subsided. The short march hence was made
slowly and steadily, as I do not wish at first to urge upon the men
too much work, nor to keep them long exposed to the cold. There are no
frost-bites of consequence resulting from the exposure of yesterday.
The spirits of the party have somewhat revived. The temperature has
risen, and the hut is warmer than that of last night,--that is, my
thermometer, hanging from the runner of the sledge over my head shows
10° above zero.
April 6th.
[Sidenote: AT CAIRN POINT.]
We have reached Cairn Point, and are comfortably housed. The men have
come up to the work reasonably well. The depression of spirits which
followed the blast of cold wind that overtook us above Sunrise Point
has passed away, and all hands are gay and lively. I had no need to
urge or instruct or use the snow-shovel myself at this camp. The weak
in spirit have profited by their lessons, and have learned that in
providing for one's comfort and safety on the ice-fields the shovel
materially assists appeals to Heaven,--a very wholesome change, and, as
a result of it, instead of being upward of two hours in constructing
our hut, as on the first night, we have this time accomplished the
task in less than one, and everybody seemed ambitious of doing the work
in the shortest possible space of time.
[Sidenote: THE PROSPECT.]
The traveling to-day has been very fair for the dog-sledges, but very
bad for the boat. It runs easily enough on the smooth surface, but
dragging its long length over a snow-drift even four feet deep, or,
worse still, over hummocks even half as high, is a troublesome task;
and we have crossed many strips of rough ice to-day which could not
be passed until we had broken a track. In consequence of this we were
obliged to leave some of the load behind, especially as I wished to
reach Cairn Point before camping. Knorr and Jensen had already cached
one of their cargoes of March at Cape Hatherton, and this was left with
it. It will cost us a day's labor to bring it up.
The difficulties in transporting the boat among the hummocks, and the
very light load which either the men or dogs can carry over the broken
ice, as shown by this day's experience, convince me that the boat and
cargo can hardly be transported to the west coast at one journey; and
I have therefore concluded to leave the boat here for the present, at
least until the track is further explored, and set out with the two
dog-sledges and a foot party dragging the other sledge, laden with such
stores as they can carry, for a depot on Grinnell Land. I can at any
time send the party back for the boat; and if it should turn out that
the boat cannot be got across the Sound, then I shall, in any event,
have a depot of supplies for my explorations over the ice with the
dog-sledges, before the thaw of June and July shall have put an end to
that species of traveling.
[Sidenote: STORM-STAYED.]
The track before me looks unpromising enough. After the party was
housed, I climbed up to a considerable eminence, and have had the
melancholy satisfaction of looking out over the ugliest scene that my
eye has ever chanced to rest upon. There was nothing inviting in it.
Except a few miles of what has evidently, up to a very late period of
the fall, been open water, which has frozen suddenly, there is not
a rod of smooth ice in sight. The whole Sound appears to have been
filled with ice of the most massive description, which, broken up into
a moving "pack" in the summer, has come down upon this Greenland coast
with the southerly setting current, and has piled up all over the sea
in a confused jumble. I know what it is from having crossed it in 1854;
and if it is as bad now as then (and it appears to be much worse) there
is every prospect of a severe tussle.
April 7th.
Did anybody ever see such capricious weather as this of Smith Sound?
It is the torment of my life and the enemy of my plans. I can never
depend upon it. It is the veriest flirt that ever owned Dame Nature for
a mother.
[Sidenote: THE COOKS IN DIFFICULTY.]
We camped in a calm atmosphere, but in the middle of the
night--bang!--down came a bugle-blast of Boreas, and then the old god
blew and blew as if he had never blown in all his life before, and
wanted to prove what he could do. We could hardly show our noses out
of doors, and have lain huddled together in this snow den all day,--a
doleful sort of imprisonment. It is with much difficulty that we have
got any thing to eat, and we never should if I had not turned cook
myself, and shown these innocents of mine how to keep the furnace-lamp
from being blown out; for we can use only lard for fuel, and the smoke
is so great that we cannot have the cooking done inside. It seems to me
that nothing takes the wits out of a man so quickly as the cold. The
cooks had not sense enough left to inclose themselves in a snow wall,
and I had to teach them how to keep up the proper proportion of lard
and rope-yarns in the lamp to prevent the flame from smothering on the
one hand, and from being whiffed out on the other. We were more than
two hours in making a pot of coffee, and came in out of the pelting
snow-drift with our furs all filled with it; and now it melts, and the
clothing is getting damp, for we do not change our dress when we crawl
in between our buffalo-skin sheets.
April 8th.
Could any thing be more aggravating? The gale holds on and keeps us
close prisoners. My people could no more live in it than in a fiery
furnace. I never saw any thing like it. Last night it fell warmer, and
snowed, which gave us encouragement; but the wind blew afterward more
fierce than ever, and human eye never beheld such sights. There was
nowhere any thing else but flying snow. The sun's face was blinded,
and the hills and coast were hidden completely out of sight. Once in a
while we can see the ghost of an iceberg, but that is rarely. We tried
to brave it yesterday, and again to-day, for I wanted to go down to
Cape Hatherton to bring up our cargo there. So we commenced tearing
down the hut to get at the sledge; but ten minutes convinced me that
half the party would freeze outright if we undertook to face the storm,
and I sent the flock again under cover, and went behind the snow wall
to help the cooks with their fire.
[Sidenote: IN A SNOW BANK.]
The poor dogs were almost buried out of sight. They had all crouched
together in a heap; and as the drift accumulated over them they poked
their heads further and further up into it; and when I came to count
them to see if any had left us and run back to the ship or been frozen
to death, it was truly counting noses. There were fourteen of them.
It seems rather strange to be writing on at this rate in a snow-hut,
but the truth is I have no more trouble in writing here than if I were
in my cabin. The temperature has come up almost to the freezing point,
and it is a great relief to write. What else should I do? I have two
small books which I have brought along for just such emergencies as
this, and while my companions play cards and bet gingerbread and oyster
suppers and bottles of rum to be paid in Boston, I find nothing better
to do than read and write; and, since I cannot remain unoccupied, but
must kill time in some manner, or else sleep, suppose I describe this
den in the snow-bank.
[Sidenote: THIRTEEN IN A BED.]
[Sidenote: THE SOURCE OF HAPPINESS.]
[Sidenote: "ALL IS VANITY."]
It is a pit eighteen feet long by eight wide and four deep. Over the
top of said pit are placed the boat-oars, to support the sledge, which
is laid across them; and over the sledge is thrown the boat's sail;
and over the sail is thrown loose snow. In one end of the den thus
formed there is a hole, through which we crawl in, and which is now
filled up tightly with blocks of snow. Over the floor (if the term
is admissible) there is spread a strip of India-rubber cloth; over
this cloth a strip of buffalo-skins, which are all squared and sewed
together; and over this again another just like it. When we want to
sleep we draw ourselves underneath the upper one of these buffalo
strips, and accommodate ourselves to the very moderate allowance of
space assigned to each person as best we can. The post of honor is at
the end furthest from the door; and, except the opposite end, this
post of honor is the least desirable of all other places, for, somehow
or other, the twelve sleepers below me manage to pull the "clothes"
off and leave me jammed against the snow wall, with nothing on me but
my traveling gear; for we go to bed without change of costume except
our boots and stockings, which we tuck under our heads to help out a
pillow, while what we call "reindeer sleeping stockings" take their
place on the feet. And, furthermore, there is not much that I can say.
This can hardly be called comfort. I have a vague remembrance of having
slept more soundly than I have done these last four nights, and of
having rested upon something more agreeable to the "quivering flesh"
than this bed of snow, the exact sensations communicated by which are
positively indescribable,--a sort of cross between a pine board and a
St. Lawrence gridiron. And yet the people are busy and merry enough.
Harris, one of my most energetic and ambitious men, is sewing a patch
on his seal-skin pantaloons, stopping "a hole to keep the winds away;"
Miller, another spirited and careful man, is closing up a rip in his
Esquimau boot; and Carl, who has a fine tenor voice, has just finished
a sailor's song, and is clearing his throat for "The Bold Soldier
Boy." Several packs of cards are in requisition, and altogether we are
rather a jolly party,--the veriest Mark Tapleys of travelers. We are
leading a novel sort of life, and I can imagine that the time will come
when I shall turn over the pages of this diary and be amused at the
strangeness of the contrast of these events with the humdrum routine of
ordinary existence. I have no doubt that I shall then wonder if this
is not all set down in a dream, so singular will it appear; and yet so
quickly do the human body and the human mind accommodate themselves
to the changing circumstances of life that, in every thing we do, the
events seem at the time always natural, and cause us no astonishment;
still, when we review the past, we are continually amazed that we have
undergone so many transformations, and can scarcely recognize ourselves
in our chamelion dresses. If it should ever again be my luck to eat
canvas-back at Delmonico's I shall no doubt very heartily despise
the dried beef and potato hash which now constitute, with bread and
coffee, my only fare; and yet no canvas-back was ever enjoyed as much
as this same hash; and no coffee distilled through French percolator
was ever so fine as the pint pot which is passed along to me, smoking
hot, in the morning; and the best treasures of Périgord forest were
never relished more than are the few little chips of ship's biscuit
which the coffee washes down. In fact, our pleasures are but relative.
They are never absolute; and happiness is quite probably, as Paley has
wisely hinted, but a certain state of that "nervous net-work lining the
whole region of the præcordia;" and, therefore, since this cold pencil
only gives me pain in the fingers, while nothing disturbs the harmony
of the præcordia, I do not know but that I am about as well off as I
ever was in my life. True, I have not the means which I expected to
have for the execution of my designs, and I am beset with difficulties
and embarrassments; but if happiness lies in that quarter, pleasure
lies in the future, for we willingly forget the present in the
anticipations,--in the delights to come from the contests and struggles
ahead; and it is well that this is so; for that which we spend most
time in getting is often not worth the having. The Preacher tells us
that "All is vanity;" and what says the Poet?--
"----pleasures are like poppies spread;
You seize the flower--its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow-fall in the river--
A moment white, then melts forever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flits ere you can point the place."
[Illustration]