OUR FIRST WINTER.
"_November 7._--The darkness is coming on with insidious steadiness, and
its advances can only be perceived by comparing one day with its fellow
of some time back.
"Except upon the island of Spitzbergen, which has the advantages of
an insular climate and tempered by ocean currents, no Christians have
wintered in so high a latitude as this. They are Russian sailors who make
the encounter there, men inured to hardships and cold.
"_November 9._--Wishing to get the altitude of the cliffs on the
south-west cape of our bay before the darkness set in thoroughly, I
started in time to reach them with my Newfoundlanders at noonday.
Although it was but a short journey, the rough shore-ice and a slight
wind rendered the cold severe. I had been housed for a week with my
wretched rheumatism, and felt that daily exposure was necessary to enable
me to bear up against the cold. The thermometer indicated 23° below zero.
"_November 16._--The great difficulty is to keep up a cheery tone among
the men. Poor Hans has been sorely home-sick. Three days ago he bundled
up his clothes and took his rifle, to bid us all good-bye. It turns out
that besides his mother there is another of the softer sex at Fiskernaes
that the boy's heart is dreaming of. He looked as wretched as any lover
of a milder clime. I hope I have treated his nostalgia successfully, by
giving him first a dose of salts, and secondly, promotion. He has now all
the dignity of a henchman. He harnesses my dogs, builds my traps, and
walks with me on my ice-tramps; and, except hunting, is excused from all
other duty. He is ready attached to me, and as happy as a fat man might
to be.
[Sidenote: A "Fox Chase"]
"_November 22._--I offered a prize to-day of a Guernsey shirt to the
man who held out longest in a 'fox chase' round the decks. The rule of
the sport was, that 'Fox' was to run a given circuit between galley and
capstan, all hands following on his track; every four minutes a halt to
be called to blow, and the fox making the longest run to take the prize;
each of the crew to run as fox in turn. William Godfrey sustained the
chase for fourteen minutes, and _wore_ off the shirt.
"_November 27._--I sent out a volunteer party some days ago with Mr
Bonsall, to see whether the Esquimaux have returned to the huts we saw
empty at the cape. The thermometer was in the neighbourhood of 40° below
zero, and the day was too dark to read at noon. I was hardly surprised
when they returned after camping one night upon the snow. Their sledge
broke down, and they were obliged to leave tents and everything else
behind them. It must have been very cold, for a bottle of Monongahela
whisky of good stiff proof froze under Mr Bonsall's head.
"Morton went out on Friday to reclaim the things they had left, and
to-day at 1 P.M. he returned successful. He reached the wreck of
the former party, making nine miles in three hours,--pushed on six miles
further on the ice-foot,--then camped for the night; and, making a sturdy
march the nest day without luggage, reached the huts, and got back to
his camp to sleep. This journey of his was, we then thought, really an
achievement,--sixty-two miles in three marches, with a mean temperature
of 40° below zero, and a noonday so dark that you could hardly see a
hummock of ice fifty paces ahead.
"Under more favouring circumstances, Bonsall, Morton, and myself made
eighty-four miles in three consecutive marches. I go for the system of
forced marches on journeys that are not over a hundred and fifty miles. A
practised walker unencumbered by weight does twenty miles a day nearly as
easily as ten: it is the uncomfortable sleeping that wears a party out.
"_December 12._--A grand incident in our great monotony of life! We
had an occultation of Saturn at 2 A.M., and got a most satisfactory
observation. The emersion was obtained with greater accuracy than could
have been expected from the excessive atmospheric undulation of these
low temperatures. My little Fraunhöfer sustained its reputation well.
We can now fix our position without a cavil.
"_December 15._--We have lost the last vestige of our mid-day twilight.
We cannot see print, and hardly paper the fingers cannot be counted a
foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike, and, except a vague
glimmer on the sky that seems to define the hill outlines to the south,
we have nothing to tell us that this Arctic world of ours has a sun. In
one week more we shall reach the midnight of the year.
[Sidenote: Old Grim]
"_December 22._--There is an excitement in our little community
that dispenses with reflections upon the solstitial night. 'Old Grim' is
missing, and has been for more than a day. Since the lamented demise of
Cerberus, my leading Newfoundlander, he has been patriarch of our scanty
kennel.
"Old Grim was a 'character' such as peradventure may at some time be
found among beings of a higher order and under a more temperate sky.
A profound hypocrite and time-server, he so wriggled his adulatory
tail as to secure every one's good graces and nobody's respect. All
the spare morsels, the cast-off delicacies of the mess, passed through
the winnowing jaws of 'Old Grim,'--an illustration not so much of his
eclecticism as his universality of taste. He was never known to refuse
anything offered or approachable, and never known to be satisfied,
however prolonged and abundant the bounty or the spoil.
"Grim was an ancient dog: his teeth indicated many winters; and his
limbs, once splendid tractors for the sledge, were now covered with warts
and ringbones. Somehow or other, when the dogs were harnessing for a
journey, 'Old Grim' was sure not to be found; and upon one occasion, when
he was detected hiding away in a cast-off barrel, he incontinently became
lame. Strange to say, he has been lame ever since, except when the team
is away without him.
"Cold disagrees with Grim; but by a system of patient watchings at the
door of our deck-house, accompanied by a discriminating use of his tail,
he became at last the one privileged intruder. My seal-skin coat has been
his favourite bed for weeks together. Whatever love for an individual
Grim expressed by his tail, he could never be induced to follow him on
the ice after the cold darkness of 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 ferocious; 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 well-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 mass of snow-packed sterility which we
call the shore. His not rejoining the ship is a mystery quite in keeping
with his character."
My journal for the first two months of 1854 is so devoid of interest,
that I spare the reader the task of following me through it. In the
darkness and consequent inaction, as it was almost in vain that we sought
to create topics of thought, and by a forced excitement to ward off the
encroachments of disease. Our observatory and the dogs gave us our only
regular occupations.
[Sidenote: Returning Light]
The first traces of returning light were observed at noon on the 21st of
January, when the southern horizon had for a short time a distinct orange
tint. Though the sun had perhaps given us a band of illumination before,
it was not distinguishable from the cold light of the planets.
The influence of this long, intense darkness was most depressing.
Even our dogs, although the greater part of them were natives of the
Arctic Circle, were unable to withstand it. Most of them died from an
anomalous form of disease, to which, I am satisfied, the absence of light
contributed as much as the extreme cold. I give a little extract 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 between midnight and
noon--I went upon deck. It was absolutely dark; the cold not permitting a
swinging lamp. There was not a glimmer came to me through the ice-crusted
window-panes of the cabin. While I was feeling my way, half puzzled as
to the best method of steering clear of whatever might be before me,
two of my Newfoundland dogs put their cold noses against my hand, and
instantly commenced the most exuberant antics of satisfaction. It then
occurred to me how very dreary and forlorn must these poor animals be,
at atmospheres 10° indoors 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 daylight. 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 poor brutes go on without interruption: they
eat voraciously, retain their strength, and sleep well. But all the
indications 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. I 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
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."
[Sidenote: State of the Crew]
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 of the trials
we had undergone. It was plain that we were all of us unfit for arduous
travel on foot at the intense temperatures of the nominal spring; and
the return of the sun, by increasing the evaporation from the floes,
threatened us with a recurrence of still severer weather.
But I felt that our work was unfinished. The great object of the
expedition challenged us to a more northward exploration. My dogs, that
I had counted on so largely, the nine splendid Newfoundlanders and
thirty-five Esquimaux of six months before, had perished; there were
only six survivors of the whole pack, and one of these was unfit for
draught. Still, they formed my principal reliance, and I busied myself
from the very beginning of the month in training them to run together.
The carpenter was set to 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 preparing 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 'preparations' 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. 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 refreshing 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 breakfast, but
rejoices in pickled cabbage and dried peaches instead.
[Sidenote: The Raw Potato]
"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 absolutely 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 compound.
"Sleep, exercise, amusement, and work at will, carry on the day till
our six o'clock supper, 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 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 unyielding winter life.
This may explain the tone of my diary.
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