THE DIFFICULTIES MULTIPLYING.--SLEDGE BROKEN.--REFLECTIONS ON
THE PROSPECT.--THE MEN BREAKING DOWN.--WORSE AND WORSE.--THE
SITUATION.--DEFEAT OF MAIN PARTY.--RESOLVE TO SEND THE PARTY
BACK AND CONTINUE THE JOURNEY WITH DOGS.
April 24th.
These journal entries are becoming rather monotonous. I have little to
set down to-day that I did not set down yesterday. There is no variety
in this journeying over the same track, week in and week out, in the
same endless snarl continually,--to-day almost in sight of our camp of
yesterday, the sledge broken, the men utterly exhausted, and the dogs
used up. We are now twenty-two days from the schooner, and have made on
our course not more than an average of three miles a day. From Cairn
Point we are distant about thirty miles, and our progress from that
place has been slow indeed. Grinnell Land looms up temptingly above the
frozen sea to the north of us, but it rises very slowly. I have tried
to carry out my original design of striking for Cape Sabine, but the
hummocks were wholly impassable in that direction, and I have had to
bear more to the northward. The temperature has risen steadily, but it
is still very low and colder than during the greater part of the winter
at Port Foulke. The lowest to-day was 19° below zero, calm and clear,
and the sun blazing upon us as in the early spring-time at home.
April 25th.
[Sidenote: REFLECTIONS ON THE PROSPECT.]
A most distressing day. The sledge was repaired in the morning with
much difficulty, but not so that it held without renewal through
the march. The traveling grows even worse the further we proceed.
The hummocks are not heavier, but the recent snows have not been
disturbed by the wind and lie loose upon the surface, making the labor
of dragging the sledge much greater than before, even in those few
level patches with which we have been favored since setting out in the
morning.
My party are in a very sorry condition. One of the men has sprained his
back from lifting; another has a sprained ancle; another has gastritis;
another a frosted toe; and all are thoroughly overwhelmed with fatigue.
The men do not stand it as well as the dogs.
Thus far I have not ventured to express in this journal any doubts
concerning the success of this undertaking; but of late the idea has
crossed my mind that the chances of ever reaching the west coast with
this party look almost hopeless. The question of the boat was decided
days ago, and it becomes now a very serious subject for reflection,
whether it is really likely that the men can get over these hummocks
to the west coast with even provisions enough to bring them back. It
is almost as much as they can do to transport their own camp fixtures,
which are neither weighty nor bulky.
April 26th.
[Sidenote: THE SITUATION.]
The progress to-day has been even more unsatisfactory than yesterday.
The men are completely used up, broken down, dejected, to the last
degree. Human nature cannot stand it. There is no let up to it. Cold,
penetrating to the very sources of life, dangers from frost and dangers
from heavy lifting, labors which have no end,--a heartless sticking
in the mud, as it were, all the time; and then comes snow-blindness,
cheerless nights, with imperfect rest in snow-huts, piercing storms
and unsatisfying food. This the daily experience, and this the daily
prospect ahead; to-day closing upon us in the same vast ice-jungle as
yesterday. My party have, I must own, good reason to be discouraged;
for human beings were never before so beset with difficulties and
so inextricably tangled in a wilderness. We got into a _cul-de-sac_
to-day, and we had as much trouble to surmount the lofty barrier which
bounded it as Jean Valjean to escape from the _cul-de-sac Genrot_ to
the convent yard. But our convent yard was a hard old floe, scarce
better than the hummocked barrier.
I feel to-night that I am getting rapidly to the end of my rope. Each
day strengthens the conviction, not only that we can never reach
Grinnell Land, with provisions for a journey up the coast to the Polar
Sea, but that it cannot be done at all. I have talked to the officers,
and they are all of this opinion. They say the thing is hopeless. Dodge
put it thus: "You might as well try to cross the city of New York over
the house-tops!" They are brave and spirited men enough, lack not
courage nor perseverance; but it does seem as if one must own that
there are some difficulties which cannot be surmounted. But I have in
this enterprise too much at stake to own readily to defeat, and we will
try again to-morrow.
April 27th.
[Sidenote: THE SITUATION.]
Worse and worse! We have to-day made but little progress, the sledge is
badly broken, and I am brought to a stand-still. There does not appear
to be the ghost of a chance for me. Must I own myself a defeated man? I
fear so.
I was never in all my life so disheartened as I am to-night; not even
when, in the midst of a former winter, I bore up with my party through
hunger and cold, beset by hostile savages, and, without food or means
of transportation, encountered the uncertain fortunes of the Arctic
night in the ineffectual pursuit of succor.
[Sidenote: MEN USED UP.]
Smith Sound has given me but one succession of baffling obstacles.
Since I first caught sight of Cape Alexander, last autumn, as the
vanishing storm uncovered its grizzly head, I have met with but ill
fortune. My struggles to reach the west coast were then made against
embarrassments of the most grave description, and they were not
abandoned until the winter closed upon me with a crippled and almost
a sinking ship, driving me to seek the nearest place of refuge. Then
my dogs died, and my best assistant became the victim of an unhappy
accident. Afterward I succeed in some measure in replacing the lost
teams, on which I had depended as my sole reliance; and here I am once
more baffled in the middle of the Sound, stuck fast and powerless.
My men have failed me as a means of getting over the difficulties,
as those of Dr. Kane did before me. Two foot parties sent out by
that commander to cross the Sound failed. Ultimately I succeeded in
crossing with dogs, but the passage was made against almost insuperable
difficulties, so great that my companion, convinced that starvation and
death only would result from a continuance of the trial, resolved to
settle it with a Sharp's rifle-ball; but the ball whizzed past my ear,
and I got to the shore notwithstanding,--discovered Grinnell Land, and
surveyed two hundred miles of its coast. But the ice is now infinitely
worse than it was then; and I am convinced that the difficulties of
this journey have now culminated and the crisis has been reached.
The men are, as I have before observed, completely exhausted from
the continued efforts of the past week, and are disheartened by the
contemplation of the little progress that was made as well as by the
formidable nature of the hummocks in front, which they realize are
becoming more and more difficult to surmount as they penetrate farther
and farther into them. Their strength has been giving way under the
incessant and extraordinary call upon their energies, at temperatures
in which it is difficult to exist even under the most favorable
circumstances, each realizing that upon his personal exertions depends
the only chance of making any progress, and recognizing that after all
their efforts and all their sacrifices the progress made is wholly
inadequate to accomplish the object in view. Besides this prostration
of the moral sentiments, there is the steady and alarming prostration
of the physical forces. One man is incapacitated from work by having
his back sprained in lifting; another is rendered useless by having
his ancle sprained in falling; the freezing of the fingers and toes
of others renders them almost helpless; and the vital energies of
the whole party are so lowered by exposure to the cold that they are
barely capable of attending to their own immediate necessities, without
harboring a thought of exerting themselves to complete a journey to
which they can see no termination, and in the very outset of which they
feel that their lives are being sacrificed.
[Sidenote: THE CONCLUSION.]
It is, therefore, in consideration of the condition of my men, that
I have been forced to the conclusion that the attempt to cross the
Sound with sledges has resulted in failure; and that my only hope to
accomplish that object now rests in the schooner. Having the whole of
the season before me, I think that I can, even without steam, get over
to Cape Isabella, and work thence up the west shore; and, even should
I not be able to get as far up the Sound as I once hoped, yet I can,
no doubt, secure a harbor for next winter in some eligible position.
Coming to this conclusion, I have determined to send back the men, and
I have given McCormick full directions what to do, in order that the
vessel may be prepared when the ice breaks up and liberates her. He is
to cradle the schooner in the ice by digging around her sides; repair
the damage done last autumn, and mend the broken spars, and patch the
sails.
For myself, I stay to fight away at the battle as best I can, with my
dogs.
The men have given me twenty-five days of good service, and have aided
me nearly half way across the Sound with about eight hundred pounds of
food; and this is all that they can do. Their work is ended.
[Sidenote: ONE MORE EFFORT.]
Although the chance of getting through with the dogs looks hopeless;
yet, hopeless though the prospect, I feel that, when disembarrassed
of the men, I ought to make one further effort. I have picked my
companions, and have given them their orders. They will be Knorr,
Jensen, and sailor McDonald,--plucky men all, if I mistake not, and
eager for the journey. There are others that are eager to go with
me; but, if they have courage and spirit, they have little physical
strength; and, besides, more than two persons to one sledge is
superfluous. And now when I think of this new trial which I shall make
to-morrow, my hopes revive; but when I remember the fruitless struggles
of the past few days and think of these hummocks, with peak after peak
rising one above the other, and with ridge after ridge in endless
succession intersecting each other at all angles and in all directions,
I must own that my heart almost fails me and my thoughts incline me
to abandon the effort and retreat from what everybody, from Jensen
down, says cannot be done, and rely upon the schooner for crossing
the Sound. But I have not failed yet! I have fourteen dogs and three
picked men left to me; and now, abandoning myself to the protecting
care of an all-wise Providence, who has so often led me to success and
shielded me from danger, I renew the struggle to-morrow with hope and
determination. Away with despondency!
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