"_NOVEMBER_ 22. I walked yesterday, and to-day again, to the open
water that separates us from Wellington Channel. It is a bold and
rapid river, as broad as the Delaware at Trenton or the Schuylkill
at Philadelphia, rolling wildly between dislocated hummock crags,
and whirling along in its black current the abraded fragments of its
shores. Ice of recent growth had cemented the gnarled masses about its
margin into a ragged wall some twenty feet high, and perhaps thirty
paces wide. I stood with perfect safety on a tall, spire-like pinnacle,
and endeavored to trace its course. It could be seen reaching from a
remote point in the southeastern part of the channel, and is probably
connected with the open shore leads that stretch from Cape Riley past
Cape Spencer toward the further coasts of North Devon. It passed about
a mile and a half to the northwest of our vessels, and was lost in the
distant ice-fields to the east.
"Returning with Captain De Haven, we saw the recent prints of a bear
and two cubs, that had evidently been scenting our footmarks of the day
before. The old bear was not large, measuring by her tail only six feet
four inches; the young ones so small as to surprise us, their track not
much bigger than that of a Newfoundland dog. At what breeding season
were these cubs produced?
"I have been for some evenings giving lectures on topics of popular
science, the atmosphere, the barometer, &c., to the crew. They are not
a very intellectual audience, but they listen with apparent interest,
and express themselves gratefully.
"_November_ 25. Great clouds of dark vapor were seen to the southward
to-day, the crape-wreaths of our first imprisonment. This frost-smoke
is an unfailing indication of open water, and to us, poor prison-bound
vagrants, is suggestive of things not pleasant to think about. It
streamed away on the wind in black drifts.
"Our daylight to-day was a mere name, three and a half hours of
meagre twilight. I was struck for the first time with the bleached
faces of my mess-mates. The sun left us finally only sixteen days
ago; but for some time before he had been very chary of his effective
rays; and our abiding-place below has a smoky atmosphere of lamplit
uncomfortableness. No wonder we grow pale with such a cosmetic.
Seventy-seven days more without a sunrise! twenty-six before we reach
the solstitial point of greatest darkness!
"The temperature continues singularly mild. Parry, at Melville Island,
had -47° before this, twenty degrees lower than our minimum; and
even in the more southern regions of Port Bowen and Prince Regent's
Straits, the cold was much greater. For some days now, zero has not
been an uncommon temperature; and to-day we are in -14°, here far from
unpleasantly cold. May not much of this moderated intensity of the
weather be referred to the influence of the open water around us?
"We are still in our old neighborhood, at the brink of the channel, a
mile or so from Cape Riley, and both shores in view.
"_November_ 28. The sunlight, a mere band of red cloud; the day, a poor
apology. Walked eastward toward Beechy Island, dimly seen. The ice
river is clogged with ground masses of granular ice: toward the south
it is more open.
"The wind to-day is getting stronger from the west, with some northing,
of all winds the most to be feared: the north drives us into Lancaster;
the west comes in aid of the current to keep us there, and speed us
back toward Baffin.
"Our thermometer does not fall below -11°. The frost-smoke is all
around us in bistre-colored vapor. Can it be that we are again
detached, our floe independent altogether of the field? We have heard
noises of grinding ice, distant, but bodingly distinct.
"In my walks for some days past, I have been studying the topography of
our ice-island residence. Here are my elements:
"1. To the north; over broken ice and edge-hummocks, that is to say,
hummocks formed at the margin of floes and afterward cemented there,
all of this season's growth. Several large masses, resembling berg-ice;
one, the largest, twenty-seven feet high. The water-lead margined by
rude hummocky crags trending to the westward and southward from the
southward and eastward, forming a rude, broken horseshoe. Distance to
water, one mile.
"2. To the south; over long floes of recent ice, young snow-covered,
and smooth, with few indications of heavy pressure at their junctions.
Distance to open water, glazed over with young ice, two miles: trend of
this lead east and west. The diameter of the floe, north and south, is
three miles from water to water.
"3. To the east, _i. e._, northeast by east; rough, mixed ice, with
lines of recent heavy hummocks. Thickness of ice, averaging four feet
to five feet eight inches; ice of the early part of last August.
Distance to open river, one and three fourths to two miles. Marks
of recent action excessive here; hummock banks massive; and tables
sometimes five feet thick, rising to a height of eighteen feet. From
the east and northeast, the trend of the break is to the southward at
first, and some two miles below to the westward.
"4. To the west; over the broken region of varied ice, traveled over in
my attempts to reach Barlow's Inlet some days ago. Distance to lead,
one mile. Chasm very irregular; but from the point I visited at the
north and east, trending nearly due west, and pointing to the southward
of Cape Hotham.
"From all this it is clear enough that we are a moving floe,
comparatively isolated. The only point of our circumscribed horizon I
have not visited, and where no frost-smoke asserts the near proximity
of water, is the northwest. Whether on that side the ice of Lancaster
is blocked against us by the easterly current, or whether the frost has
made our floe one more speck in the massive field, is the only question
remaining.
"_November_ 29. The doubt is gone. Our floe, ice-cradle, safeguard,
has been thrown round. Its eastern margin is grinding its way to the
northward, and the west is already pointing to the south. Our bow
is to Baffin's Bay, and we are traveling toward it. So far, ours has
been a mysterious journeying. For two months and more, not a sail has
fluttered from our frozen spars; yet we have passed from Lancaster
Sound into the highest latitude of Wellington Channel, one never
attained before, and have been borne back again past our point of
starting, along a capriciously varied line of drift. Cape Riley is
bearing, by compass, S. 1/2 E., N.N.E. 1/2 E. (true); and Beechy Head,
by compass, S.E. 1/2 E., N. 1/2 E. (true). Cape Hurd is visible to the
northward and eastward, and to the east are the ice-clogged waters of
Lancaster Sound.
"_November_ 30. When I came on deck this morning, the lanterns were
burning at ten o'clock, and the southern sky had not even a trace of
red. Our head had slewed rather more to the southward; and off on our
starboard beam sundry dark lines on the ice had a suspicious look. I
walked toward them with some of our officers. After sundry groping
tumbles, we came, sure enough, upon open water, one hundred yards
to the south of the brig. Returning on our track, and taking a new
departure toward the east--open water again. Off to the dim, hazy
north--still open water. Off to the hummocky west, feeling our way
with walking-poles--open water all round us. Once more, then, we are
launched on a little ice-island, to float wherever God's mercy may
guide us.
"The India-rubber boat inflated, and a few clothes stowed away, ready
for a sudden break out; and all hands turn in for the night.
"_December_ 1. There was a rude murmur in the night, that mingled
its tones of admonition with the wind. But we are habituated pretty
thoroughly to sounds of this sort, and they have ceased to disturb
us. Walking after breakfast toward the northeast, to an ice-quarry,
from which we have obtained our fresh water of late, we found that a
water-crack we observed yesterday had undergone severe pressure during
the night, and that the action was still going on. A low, hazy twilight
just allowed us to distinguish near objects. A level, snow-covered
surface was rising up in inclined planes or rudely undulating curves.
These, breaking at their summits, fell off on each side in masses of
twenty tons' weight. Tables of six feet in thickness by twenty of
perpendicular height, and some of them fifteen yards in length, surging
up into the misty air, heaving, rolling, tottering, and falling with
a majestic deliberation worthy of the forces that impelled them. When
a huge block would rise vertically, tremble for a moment, and topple
over, you heard the heavy _sough_ of the snow-padding that received
it; but this was only the deep bass accompaniment to a wild, yet not
unmusical chorus. I can not attempt to describe the sounds. There
was the ringing clatter of ice, made friable by the intense cold and
crumbling under lateral force; the low whine which the ice gives out
when we cut it at right angles with a sharp knife, rising sometimes
into a shriek, or sinking to the plaintive outcry of our night-hawk at
home; the whirr of rapidly-urged machinery; the hum of multitudes: and
all these mingled with tones that have no analogy among the familiar
ones of unadventurous life.
"So slowly and regularly did these masses roll, rise, break, and fall,
that, standing upon a broad table, ice-pole in air, we rolled when it
rolled, rose when it rose, balanced when it broke, and jumped as it
fell. What would our quiet people in brick houses say to such a ride?
Temperature at 30° below zero.
"On deck; looming up in the very midst of the haze, land! so high
and close on our port beam, that we felt like men under a precipice.
We could see the vertical crevices in the limestone, the recesses
contrasting in black shadow. What land is this? Is it the eastern line
of Cape Riley, or have we reached Cape Ricketts?
"There is one thing tolerably certain: the Grinnell expedition is quite
as likely to be searched for hereafter as to search. Poor Sir John
Franklin! this night drift is an ugly omen.
"Do you remember, in the Spanish coasting craft, down about Barcelona
and the Balearies, the queer little pictures of Saint Nicholas we
used to see pasted up over the locker--a sort of mythic effigy, which
the owner looked upon pretty much as some of our old commodores do the
barometer, a mysterious something, which he sneers at in fair weather,
but is sure, in the strong faith of ignorance, to appeal to in foul!
Well, very much such a Saint Anthony have we down in the cabin here,
staring us always in the face. Not a vermilion-daubed puerility, with
a glory in Dutch leaf stretching from ear to ear; but a good, genuine,
hearty representative of English flesh and blood, a mouth that speaks
of strong energies as well as a kindly heart, and an eye--the other one
is spoiled in the lithography--that looks stern will. Many a time in
the night have I discoursed with him, as he looked out on me from his
gutta percha frame--'Sir John Franklin; presented by his wife;' and
sometimes I have imagined how and where I was yet to shake the glorious
old voyager by the hand. I see him now while I am writing; his face is
darkened by the lamp-smoke that serves us for daylight and air, and he
seems almost disheartened. So far as help and hope of it are afloat in
this little vessel, Sir John, well you may be!
"It is Sunday: we have had religious service as usual, and after
it that relic of effete absurdity, the reading of the 'Rules and
Regulations.'
"We had the aurora about 7 P.M. The thermometer at -33° and falling;
barometer, aneroid, 30°. 74; attached thermometer, 86°. Wind steady,
W.N.W. The meteor resembled an illuminated cloud; illuminated, because
seen against the deep blue night sky; otherwise it resembled the
mackerel fleeces and mare's tails of our summer skies at home.
"It began toward the northwestern horizon as an irregular flaring
cloud, sometimes sweeping out into wreaths of stratus; sometimes a
condensed opaline nebulosity, rising in a zone of clearly-defined
whiteness, from 3° to 5° in breadth up to the zenith, and then arching
to the opposite horizon. This zone resembled more a long line of white
cirro-stratus than the auroral light of the systematic descriptions.
There was no approach to coruscations, or even rectangular deviations
from the axis of the zone. When it varied from a right line, its
curvatures were waving and irregular, such as might be produced by
wind, but having no relation to the observed air-currents at the
earth's surface. It passed from the due northwest, between the Pleiades
and the Corona Borealis; the star of greatest magnitude in the latter
of these constellations remaining in the centre, although its waving
curves sometimes reached the Pleiades. At the zenith, its mean distance
from the Polar Star was 7° south, and it passed down, increasing in
intensity, near Vega, in Lyra, to the southeast.
"There was throughout the arc no marked seat of greatest intensity.
Around the Corona of the north, its light was more diffused. The zone
appeared narrowed at the zenith, and bright and clear, without marked
intermission, to the southeast. The frost-smoke was in smoky banks to
the northwest; but the aurora did not seem to be affected by it, and
the compass remained constant.
"_December_ 2. Drifting down the sound. Every thing getting ready for
the chance of a hurried good-by to our vessels. Pork, and sugar, and
bread put up in small bags to fling on the ice. Every man his knapsack
and change of clothing. Arms, bear-knives, ammunition out on deck, and
sledges loaded. Yet this thermometer, at -30°, tells us to stick to the
ship while we can.
"This packing up of one's carpet-bag in a hurry requires a mighty
discreet memory. I have often wondered that seamen in pushing off
from a wreck left so many little wants unprovided for; but I think I
understand it now. After bestowing away my boots, with the rest of a
walking wardrobe, in a snugly-lashed bundle, I discovered by accident
that I had left my stockings behind.
"4 P.M. Brooks comes down while we are dining to say we are driving
east like a race-horse, and a crack ahead: 'All hands on deck!' We had
heard the grindings last night, and our floe in the morning was cut
down to a diameter of three hundred yards: we had little to spare of
it. But the new chasm is there, already fifteen feet wide, and about
twenty-five paces from our bows, stretching across at right angles with
the old cleft of October the 2d.
"Our floe, released from its more bulky portion, seems to be making
rapidly toward the shore. This, however, may be owing to the separated
mass having an opposite motion, for the darkness is intense. Our
largest snow-house is carried away; the disconsolate little cupola,
with its flag of red bunting, should it survive the winter, may puzzle
conjectures for our English brethren.
"Mr. Griffin and myself walked through the gloom to the seat of hummock
action abeam of the _Rescue_. A dark, hard walk: no changes. The crack,
noticed some time ago as parallel to and alongside of the _Rescue_, has
not opened. Her officers have brought their private papers on board the
_Advance_, and such indispensable articles as may be needed in case of
her destruction.
"Our ship's head is toward a point of land to the northeastward,
but her position changes so constantly that there is little use of
recording it. Caught a fox this morning; have now two on board.
"Our bearings, taken by azimuth compass this morning at eleven, gave
Cape Hurd, S. by W. 1/4 W.; Western Bluff, of Rigsby's Inlet, S.E. 1/4
S.; Table-hill of Parry, S.E. by S. 1/2 S.; Cape Ricketts, E. by N.
"Wind changed at 9 P.M. to N.N.W.; thermometer, minimum, -26°; maximum,
22°; mean, 23° 82'.
"_December_ 4, Wednesday. This morning showed us an interval of over
two hundred yards already covered with stiff ice: so much for our chasm
of last night! All around us is a moving wreck of ice-fields.
"Our drift seems to have been to the westward. We have certainly left
the coast, which yesterday seemed almost over us, though it is still
too near for good fellowship.
"This is the first clear day--truly clear, that we have had since my
record of the changing daylight. Compared with the gloomy haziness of
its predecessors, it was cheering. The southern horizon was a zone of
red light; and although the clear blue soon absorbed it, we could read
small print with a little effort at noonday by turning the book to the
south. The stars were visible all the time, except where the horizon
was lighted up."
The next four days were full of excitement and anxiety. One crack after
another passed across our floe, still reducing its dimensions, and
at one time bringing down our vessel again to an even keel. An hour
afterward, the chasms would close around us with a sound like escaping
steam. Again they would open under some mysterious influence; a field
of ice from two to four inches thick would cover them; and then,
without an apparent change of causes, the separated sides would come
together with an explosion like a mortar, crunching the newly-formed
field, and driving it headlong in fragments for fifty feet upon the
floe till it piled against our bulwarks. Every thing betokened a
crisis. Sledges, boats, packages of all sorts, were disposed in order;
contingencies were met as they approached by new delegations of duty;
every man was at work, officer and seaman alike; for necessity, when
it spares no one, is essentially democratic, even on shipboard. The
_Rescue_, crippled and thrown away from us to the further side of a
chasm, was deserted, and her company consolidated with ours. Our own
brig groaned and quivered under the pressure against her sides. I give
my diary for December 7.
[Illustration: Dec. 1. Dec. 4. Dec. 6. Dec. 7.
ILLUSTRATING THE CHANGES IN THE POSITIONS OF THE SHIPS FROM DAY TO DAY.]
"_December_ 7, Saturday. The danger which surrounds us is so immediate,
that in the bustle of preparation for emergency I could not spend a
moment upon my journal. Now the little knapsack is made up again, and
the blanket sewed and strapped. The little home Bible at hand, and the
ice-clothes ready for a jump.
"The above is a rough idea of our last three days' positions and
changes.
"From this it is evident that a gradual process of breaking up has
taken place. We are afloat.
"The ice, as I have sketched it, December 7, began to close at 11 A.M.,
and, at the same time, the brig was driven toward the open crack of
December 4 (_c_). At 1 P.M. this closed on us with fearful nipping.
"1 P.M. Ran on deck. The ice was comparatively quiescent when I
attempted to write; but it recommenced with a steady pressure, which
must soon prove irresistible. It catches against a protruding tongue
forward, and is again temporarily arrested.
"4 P.M. Up from dinner--'all hands!' The ice came in, with the momentum
before mentioned as 'irresistible,' progressive and grand. All expected
to betake ourselves sledgeless to the ice, for the open space around
the vessel barely admits of a foot-board. The timbers, and even
cross-beams protected by shores, vibrated so as to communicate to
you the peculiar tremor of a cotton-factory. Presently the stern of
the brig, by a succession of jerking leaps, began to rise, while her
bows dipped toward the last night's ice ahead. Everybody looked to see
her fall upon her beam-ends, and rushed out upon the ice. After a few
anxious breath-compressed moments, our nobly-strengthened little craft
rose up upon the encroaching floes bodily. Her dolphin-striker struck
the ice ahead; her bows began to feel the pressure; and thus lifted up
upon the solid tables, we have a temporary respite again.
"Stores are now put out upon the ice, and we await--time. Cape
Fellfoot, S. by W. 1/4 W. Remarkable perpendicular bluff, S.S.E. Cape
Hurd, E.N.E. 1/2 E., by compass; Cape Hurd, N.W. by W. 1/2 W. (true).
"We are at least fifty miles from Beechy Island and Union Bay--about
forty-five miles from Leopold Harbor stores. Leopold Harbor, or our
more distant English friends, about one hundred and twenty miles
off, are our only places of refuge. We are daily, hourly, drifting
further from both. It is this nakedness of resources, even more than
perpetual darkness and unendurable cold, that makes our position one of
bitterness. Drift a little westward; thermometer 17°."
My journal does not tell the story; but it is worth noting, as it
illustrates the sedative effect of a protracted succession of hazards.
Our brig had just mounted the floe, and as we stood on the ice watching
her vibration, it seemed so certain that she must come over on her
beam-ends, that our old boatswain, Brooks, called out to "stand from
under." At this moment it occurred to one of the officers that the
fires had not been put out, and that the stores remaining on board
would be burned by the falling of the stoves. Swinging himself back to
the deck, and rushing below, he found two persons in the cabin; the
officer who had been relieved from watch-duty a few minutes before,
quietly seated at the mess-table, and the steward as quietly waiting on
him. "You are a meal ahead of me," he said; "you didn't think I was
going out upon the ice without my dinner."
"_December_ 8, Sunday, 8 P.M. This has thus far been a day of rest.
Our vessel, lifted up upon the heavy ice, has borne without injury a
few fresh pressures. The wind has been still from the eastward, and
we have drifted about six miles to the westward again. This wind was
almost a gale; yet its influence upon the eastern drift is barely able
to produce this limited westing. I now regard it as past a doubt, that
should we survive the collisions of the journey, we must float into
Baffin's Bay.
"A small auroral light was seen to the northwest at 9 A.M., the second
within two days. Its axis was 16° W. of the magnetic meridian. The mean
temperature of the day has been -12° 70'. Wind more gentle from the
eastward.
"Mr. Griffin, who is now the executive officer of our consolidated
squadron, has undertaken a systematic drill of the crew. He has
mustered them for an ice-march, with knapsacks fitted to their backs,
and sledge equipments, just such as will be required when the worst
comes. Everything is rigorously inspected; the provisions and stores of
all sorts are packed snug, and have their places marked; and the men
are instructed as to their course in the moment of emergency.
"Here is a sketch of the present position of our vessel. It looks
extravagant, but it is in truth the very opposite. Every thing like
locomotion on board is up and down hill.
[Illustration]
"_December_ 9, Monday. Like its three predecessors, clear; that is to
say, for three scanty hours of scanty twilight, you see the skeleton
shore cliffs, and the bright stars, a little paled, but bright. The
moon, a second-quarter crescent, was for a while on the northern and
western horizon, distorted and flaming like a crimson lamp.
"Last night, mounted as we are, the nipping caused our timbers to
complain sadly. We had to send out parties to crowbar away the ice
from our bowsprit. The bob-stays were forced up and broken. Our floe
movement continued to the southeast, driving the heavy ice in upon the
_Rescue_. She rose up under the pressure, and is now surrounded by
hummock ruins like ourselves. She is not more than fifty yards distant
from us, astern."
From this time to the 21st our drift was without intermission. As one
headland after another defined itself against the horizon, it was
apparent that we were skirting the northern coast of the sound. At
first this gave us some anxiety, when our floe, pressing hard against
the shore-ice as we doubled some projecting point, threatened to wreck
us among its fragments. But as we drew nearer to the outlet, and
began to compute the new hazards of entering Baffin's Bay, this very
circumstance became for us an important ground of hope. Theory, as well
as the accounts of the whalers, made the southeastern cape of Lancaster
Sound the seat of intense hummock action. The greater the distance
from that point, the broader must be the curvature of the meeting
currents, and the less perilous the conflict of the ice-masses in their
rotation. There was, of course, no escape for us from this encounter;
and the only question was of the degrees of hazard it must involve.
On the 19th, the tall, mural precipices to the northward, and the cape
in which they terminated toward the east, convinced us that we had
almost reached the western headland of Croker's Bay. We had drifted one
hundred and eleven miles since the beginning of the month. Our course
had been without any cheering incident. There was the same wretched
succession of openings and closings about our floe, somewhat dangerous,
but too uniform to be exciting; and we had drilled with knapsack and
sledge, till we were almost martinets in our evolutions on the ice. I
group the few entries of my journal that have any interest.
"_December_ 11. Wind last night fierce from the north; to-day as
fierce from the west. It has carried us clear of the great cape
that stretches out east of Maxwell's Bay, and that threatened us
with the variety of a lee shore. The _Rescue_ has had another trial:
her stern-post is carried away, her pintle and gudgeon wrenched off.
A party of officers and men are out, trying the experiment of a
night upon the ice, tented and bag-bedded. I wish them luck; but the
thermometer fifty-seven degrees below freezing is unfavorable to a
_fête chainpêtre_.
"_December_ 12. Every thing solid, and looking as if it had always been
so; yet, a few days ago, I had this journal of mine stitched up in its
tarred canvas-bag, and ready for a fling upon the ice four times in the
twenty-four hours. The floes have stopped abrading each other, and are
driving ahead right peacefully, with our brig mounted on top: how far
we are from the edges, it is too dark to see.
"_December_ 13. A little clearer than yesterday, but too dark to read
small print at noon. Something like a long reach of land looming up to
southward: it can not be Croker's Bay?
"All our mess took our tour of practice to-day, with a sledge and four
hundred pounds of provender. Hard work, and sweating abundantly; but we
feel already the good effects of this sort of exercise. Thermometer at
-11°.
"_December_ 14. A quiet day; the winds at rest, and the stars twinkling
through the lazy sky as I never saw them before. The moon, too, is in
high heaven, almost a three-quarter disk. She is a great comfort to us;
her high northern declination makes her visible all the time. It looks
strangely this undying fortnight moon. The frost-smoke is wreathing the
red zone of our southern horizon. It would be a good night-scene for a
painter.
"At 7 P.M. the thermometer rose from -3° to -1°. At 10 o'clock it was
-4°. Its maximum was +10°, a temperature mild and comfortable. The wind
changed from west by south to west by north, and the ice and the drift
are as yesterday.
"A poor bear, fired at last night by Mr. Carter, was found this
morning, about three hundred yards from the ship, dead. He was wedged
between two slabs of ice, and in his agony had rubbed his muzzle deep
into the frozen snow. Twice he had stopped to lie down during his
death-walk, marking each place with a large puddle of blood, which
branched out over the floe like crimson-streaked marble. He measured
eight feet four inches from tip to tip. I killed a fox; but missing his
head, opened the large arteries of the neck, and spoiled his pelt. The
temperature at the orifice of the ball was +92°. The crew were at work
till eleven, leveling our rugged floe, and heaping up snow against the
sides of the brig. The position of our vessel, high perched in air, and
dipping head foremost in a way most Arctic and uncomfortable, makes the
protection of snow very desirable. We feel the cold against her walls.
The crew had an hour of sledging, as well by way of exercise as of
preparation for their expected trials.
"A point supposed to be Cape Crawfurd bore, by compass, west. Our
distance from the north shore is about five miles."