Exploration to the Westward—Dumb-bell Bay—A Seal—Search for
Game—Lonely Lake—Fish in the Lake—A Gale—Return of the Boat
Party—An Opportunity fortunately lost—The Expedition becomes _the
most Northern_—Depôts sent forward—Frost-bite Range—Attempts to
communicate with H.M.S. “Discovery”—Unexpected Difficulties—Soft
Snow—Sunset—Preparations for Winter—The Snow Town—Building Snow
Houses—Twilight Walk Shoreward.
On the 9th September, a party of four officers and four men, with
three sledges, each drawn by eight dogs, left the ship for the
westward to explore a route for subsequent crews, push forward a small
depôt, and search the country for game. On the first day’s march, our
halt for lunch was ludicrously uncomfortable. A cold wind blew. All
our water-bottles were hermetically sealed by the freezing in of the
rough wooden plugs we had hastily fitted to them. There was nothing
to drink but icy cold raw rum. One or two attempted it, and only
succeeded in half-choking themselves, very much to the amusement of
the rest.
When camping-time came, we found ourselves rounding into a narrow
channel between two fine bays, whose “dumb-bell” shape at once
suggested the title by which they were ever afterwards known. A strong
tide in the narrow passage, representing the handle of a dumb-bell,
had kept a small pool of water from freezing, leaving a hole about
as large as a Trafalgar Square fountain. In this a seal was swimming
about, turning his black shining head and large eyes from side to side
in amazement at our appearance. All was fish that came to our net. He
would at least make a good beginning for our game-bag. He was struck
in the head, and consequently floated; but it was by no means a simple
matter to get him out of the pool, for the ice was thin at the edges,
and an unpleasantly swift-looking current was running below. Fred, our
Eskimo, was equal to the occasion. Spread out flat on the ice, with
a piece of cord in one hand and a batten in the other, he managed to
reach the edge and secure our prize. He was rewarded for his exertions
by a good share of liver for supper; indeed, no one at that time felt
inclined to dispute the delicacy with him, for, by some mistake, our
unpractised cook had fried a little of the blubber with it. The meat
is very dark and rich, and is far from unpalatable; but if the least
bit of blubber is cooked with it, it is exactly like mutton fried in
cod-liver oil. This solitary “floe-rat” was the only seal shot in
the Northern Sea. We had little sleep that night, the novelty of the
circumstances, the low temperature of our beds, and the wind, which
threatened to blow the tent over, kept most of us awake. The dogs
too were behaving in an extraordinary manner. Something evidently
made them uneasy; there was none of the usual snarling and growling
going on. All at once there was a tremendous hubbub. We rushed out,
and discovered that the brutes had scented out the spot where we had
buried and _cached_ our seal. They had succeeded in digging it up, and
not a fragment was left. Fortunately, the skin and blubber were buried
separately, and were still safe. Next morning our party subdivided.
Three travelled forward with the sledges to deposit the depôt as far
as possible northward and westward. Petersen, the Dane, experienced
in snow-house building in Hayes’ Expedition, set about constructing
huts in a position that might be useful to later parties; and two of
us started inland to search for game. The broad flats at the head
of the bay looked promising, but were lifeless. Then we plodded on
over the hills; not even a lemming track was to be seen. A few ridges
were blown clear of snow, and sometimes the lee side of a red granite
boulder would appear above the universal white. We worked towards a
long westward-running depression in the land, hoping that there at
least a little vegetation might exist; but on reaching the last ridge
overlooking it, we discovered that it was filled with a sheet of green
ice, stretching several miles to the westward. The lake—for lake it
was—evidently discharged through gullies in the low hills at its
farther end, and beyond these, twenty miles off, a range of pyramidal
snowy peaks stood out clear and sharp against the calm green sky. When
we stopped to secure a sketch, the lifeless stillness of our lonely
lake was most impressive. No human eye had ever looked upon it before.
And now there was neither bird or beast, or even tiny flower or blade
of grass, to dispute possession.
About a mile from us on the left shore, a small rocky island caught
a gleam of sunshine coming down through a ravine, and flickered
strangely by refraction. The ice afforded easy walking towards it,
but on reaching it we found that a rapidly-freshening wind was coming
off the land, carrying clouds of snow with it, so that a retreat
towards camp was plainly advisable. Before leaving, however, we set
about piling up a few stones to record our visit. Under the edges of
almost the first stone raised we were surprised to find the scattered
vertebræ of a small fish. Some feathered summer visitor had evidently
carried them there from the lake. We bottled the little bones in a
small glass tube, and during two long days’ most careful search for
game, no other vestige or track of living creature was discovered.
Our return to camp was very near being enlivened by an incident.
The wind had freshened so much, and carried such a quantity of
large crystalled snow with it, that it was impossible to travel
except in one direction—namely, straight before it. Fortunately, it
blew directly towards our camp. So we started off across the lake,
knee-deep or more in a flying drift which rustled like dead leaves in
autumn. The ice was not thick even close to shore, for we had fired
a bullet through it to try whether the water beneath was salt or
not, and when we got about half-way across, it began to crack in an
alarming manner, and to yield unmistakably to every footstep. We could
neither stop nor turn back; the only thing to be done was to separate
and shuffle on as fast as possible. The water soaked through cracks in
our footsteps; but we were soon wading in the deeper snow of the land,
and reached camp without further excitement, and thoroughly resolved
to be more careful of untried ice in the future. Starting early next
morning, we made a more extended, but equally fruitless, search for
game. There was neither bird nor beast in the country, and but for a
musk ox skull picked up near the shore we might have supposed that no
living creature had ever visited the land. Punctual to their time, our
sledges reappeared on the morning of the fourth day, having succeeded
in depositing their load of pemmican on the further shore of Black
Cliff Bay. The ice they had travelled over was so insecure in some
places between the shore and the heavy floes that the sledges had
broken through more than once, and the travellers had been wet through
ever since they left us. There was evidently no game to be got, so we
returned to the ship, and on the way back met a strong party hauling
forward two boats in order to deposit them at an advanced point in
readiness for the spring sledging.
Two days afterwards, on 14th September, a wind came from the south
and gradually increased into a violent gale. The ice between the ship
and the land broke up, and the pack again separated from the shore.
The whole air was filled with drifting snow blown from the land, and
flying past in a dense cloud higher than the topmasts. It was only
in the lulls that it was possible to distinguish the shore not one
hundred yards off. The boat party had not yet returned, and we were
not a little anxious about it; but late in the evening a figure was
seen signalling from the beach. A double-manned boat pushed off from
the ship, and, after a tough struggle, pulling in the teeth of the
gale, reached the shore. Then we learnt that the returning crews
had narrowly escaped being carried off by the breaking-up ice, and
were about two miles from the ship dragging an exhausted man on the
sledge, and thoroughly fatigued by their long forced march against
the gale. Assistance was promptly despatched to them; all were soon
brought safely on board. The severity of the weather was not the
only reason why we were anxious that the sledge parties should be on
board. A crisis in our fortunes was approaching, for the pack was
still moving from the shore, and in a few hours it might be possible
to advance the ship a little further westward, and perhaps a mile or
two further northward. As the drifting snow became less thick, and
the weather cleared, we saw that the opportunity had come. Once more
we heard the joyful order to get up steam. The rudder was rapidly got
into its place, but no efforts could get the screw into its bearings.
The fresh surface water entangled about it froze when it was lowered
into the colder salt sea beneath, and while all hands were still
working at it, the pack closed in as tightly as before. We were all
greatly disappointed at the time, but there is now not the slightest
doubt that if H.M.S. “Alert” had advanced two miles to the westward
she would never have carried her crew southward again. It was from
henceforth evident that the ship would have to winter in the spot
where chance had placed her, and every effort was at once directed to
the sledging.
There was no time to be lost; winter was fast approaching; day and
night had again returned. The sun’s dip below the icy horizon to the
north was longer and longer every night, and during the day he skirted
so low above the southern land that even at noon it was already dusk
in our wardroom and between decks. Light fleecy snow fell frequently,
and day by day the temperature declined nearer and nearer to zero;
but nevertheless, no change took place in the outside pack—it still
roared and grated in constant motion. The idea of travelling over it
could not be entertained for a moment, and it was necessary to wait
till the snow of the shores and the new ice of the inlets and narrow
spaces between the pack and shore were hard enough to bear the loaded
sledges. On 22nd September the dog-sledges again started for the north
to ascertain whether Cape Joseph Henry could be crossed or rounded.
And two days later, three eight-man sledges, under Commander Markham,
with Lieutenants Parr and May, left the ship with a heavy load of
provisions and stores, to be deposited at the most northern suitable
fixed point in readiness for the spring campaign. Lieutenant Aldrich
and his dog-sledges returned in fourteen days. He had reached the
Cape, crossing on his way the ring of latitude from which Sir Edward
Parry, the most poleward of our predecessors, had turned back 48 years
before. From a cliff two thousand feet above the polar floes, he had
seen nothing but ice to the northward; but far westward, seventy miles
or more distant, snowy headlands, one beyond the other, extended
slightly northward of the land on which he stood.
This was the worst news we had anticipated. It left the future
undecided. If his telescope had detected the loom of land to the
north, our duty would have been plain, and success at least probable.
If, on the other hand, the coast beyond the Cape ran definitely south,
the clear negative would have allowed us to turn every energy into a
new channel. But now this new-found land must be tracked westward for
many a weary mile, and those distant headlands must be rounded one by
one before we could be certain that the coast-line did not finally
turn polewards, and afford a route which might be followed, if not
next year, at least in the following season.
Wind, insecure ice, and constant falls of snow told heavily against
Captain Markham’s three sledges, but they successfully deposited their
depôt near the Cape, and in such a position that anyone travelling
along the beach could not fail to find it even in fog or storm. On
their way back, part of the ice they had recently sledged over was
found destroyed by the motion of the pack, and it was necessary to
haul the sledges over the summits of the Black Cliffs. There, there
was no shelter from the wind; the temperature fell to 47 degrees below
freezing. That bleak ridge was afterwards known as “Frost-bite Range.”
When, after three weeks’ absence, they reached the ship, the whole
party was in a wretched condition. Their sleeping-bags, robes, and
tent were stiffened into boards of ice, more than twice as heavy as
when they set out; and the twenty-four men and officers had no less
than forty-three frost-bites amongst them, most of them comparatively
slight, but three so severe as to require amputation. While these
sledge parties were laying out the autumn depôts and exploring
northward, others were no less active in another direction.
The programme of our Expedition stipulated that the “Alert,” in order
to keep up communication with her consort, was not to winter more than
two hundred miles from her. An officer and sledge crew belonging to
the “Discovery” had accompanied us northwards with the intention of
returning to their ship as soon as the “Alert” had reached her winter
quarters. We had advanced but sixty miles, and yet the most gallant
and persevering efforts to communicate with the “Discovery” were
again and again unsuccessful. The deep soft snow lying piled against
the cliffs of Cape Rawson and Black Cape barred the way. The men,
buried to their waists in the snow, dug a path for the sledge till the
excavation became a tunnel, and a day’s hard labour could be measured
by a few paces. The last and most determined effort to force a road
southward was undertaken on the 2nd October, but on the 12th the party
returned without having got further than six miles from the ship. This
failure to communicate with the “Discovery” over so short a distance
as only 60 miles was altogether unlooked for, and could not but
suggest uncomfortable reflections. It had been assumed that even two
hundred miles would not interrupt communication between our ships, and
that sledges could travel the whole length of Smith’s Sound to reach a
relief ship, or to deposit despatches at its entrance. Where was the
error in the assumption? Were our men degenerate? Our picked crews,
full of health and strength, and enthusiastic to a man, were equal
to the best of their predecessors. The conclusion was inevitable—the
conditions and not the men were to blame. Within half-a-mile of our
ship, there were many places that would stop the finest crew that
ever drew a sledge. The ice was massive beyond all expectation; but
it was not the ice that stopped our travellers—it was the soft snow.
Some idea of its fleecy lightness may be gathered from the fact that
ten measures of it could easily be pressed into one, and that one
melted into only one-tenth its bulk of water. Everyone noticed the
beauty of its crystals; they were delicate eighteen-rayed stars, rayed
not in one plane, but in all. In British Columbia and other parts of
Canada, when such soft snow interferes with travelling, it is usual
to camp for a day or so—perhaps under a comfortable tree—and, when
the snow has hardened a little, make a firm path for the sledge, or
long tobbogin, by tramping in advance on snow-shoes. But we might
have waited till permanent darkness set in before our snow hardened.
Our sledges, perfect as they were for their own work, were not suited
for land travelling over soft snow; and as snow-shoes had never been
used by Arctic Expeditions, we had but two pairs in the ship. There
are two causes that tend to harden and cake the surface of snow—the
first is wind, and we had comparatively little of that; the second is
a contrast in temperature between the earth below and the air above
the snow. When the lower part of the snow is twenty or thirty degrees
warmer than the upper, evaporation takes place from the one, and
condensation in the other. At Floeberg Beach the earth was permanently
cold. Even in midsummer only a few inches of the surface thawed, and
during the whole winter it remained close to zero, so that it was not
until the intensely cold weather of spring that any marked contrast
was established.
[Illustration: INSIDE THE UNIFILER HOUSE.]
Two days before the return of the last autumn party the sun sank below
the south horizon, not to return for nearly five months. We climbed
Cairn Hill to have a last look at him, but the high land southwards
hid him from view. His refracted rays still lit up the ice of the
northern horizon, but Floeberg Beach and the pack, for a mile outside
the ship, lay in the shadow of the land. Away southwards to the right,
the sides of the Greenland hills caught the sunlight, and through the
gaps in their undulating outline a distant horizontal plain of _mer de
glace_, the northern termination of Greenland’s continental ice, was
yet distinguishable at intervals.
After the return of the depôt detachment from Cape Joseph Henry, the
twilight had darkened so much that further sledging was impossible,
and all hands set about making preparations to encounter the fast
closing-in winter. Firm ice had formed round the ship, and cemented
her to the grounded floebergs on her right; but, in order to guard
against being again blown from shore, she was secured to the beach
by two strong chain cables, supported at intervals by barrels, so
that the heavy metal links should not sink into the ice. The “crow’s
nest” and all the rigging that could be spared were taken down from
aloft and packed away. A thick felty awning was spread overhead
across spars fastened between the masts so as to completely roof in
the greater part of the ship. Then snow was heaped up all round her
black hull as high as the crimson stripe along her bulwarks. But for
her masts and yards she might have been taken for a great marquee,
with stove-pipes coming through at intervals. Her unshipped rudder
was hung across the stern, safe from any ice pressure during
the winter. To enter the ship, one had to pass through a narrow gap
in the snow embankment, near the middle of her left side, ascend two
or three steps, and lift up a hanging door closing an entrance cut
in the bulwarks. The whole of the upper deck was covered with a deep
layer of snow, so as to keep the heat in. Snow passages, with double
wooden doors, self-closing by means of weights, were made over the
two hatch-ways leading down below. The skylights were all covered up.
Lamps and candles had already been in use for some time. By means of
eight stoves, distributed in various parts between decks, and each
burning twenty-eight pounds of coal per day, an average temperature
of forty-nine was maintained through the winter. It was intended to
utilise all the heat by leading the flues along the deck overhead
before they passed up into the outer air; but the horizontal flues
smoked so much that it was necessary to let them pass directly
upwards, and even then they were as smoky as ships’ stoves usually
are. Meantime, the bleak beach opposite the ship was also undergoing
metamorphosis. Boats, spars, blocks of patent fuel, casks, and cans
of stores innumerable had been carried to it from the ship, so as to
increase the habitable space on board. The casks and barrels were
piled into walls, and roofed in with spars and sails, so as to make a
large storehouse to hold everything that could be taken from the ship.
A short distance off, a great pyramid of pemmican, stearine-fuel,
bacon, and other sledging stores rose above the snow. Next came the
preparations for the scientific observations of the winter. The
wooden observatory, on a firm foundation of snow-filled casks, looked
like a bathing-box unaccountably gone astray. Then a whole group
of beehive-shaped snow-houses, each one the temple of some special
instrument, the “Declinometer,” the “Unifiler,” and so on, and a whole
system of catacomb-like passages cut in the deep snow and roofed in,
connected the buildings.
[Illustration: PLATE V.—WINTER QUARTERS _OUTSIDE_, FROM THE FLOES
ASTERN OF H.M.S. “ALERT,” DECEMBER, 1876.—p. 37.
During winter moonlight this view of the ship was a familiar one;
for it is from the end of the half-mile marked out for exercise on
the Hoes. The foretopmast has gone to make a roof-tree for the thick
awnings that house in the deck. The crow’s nest and much of the
rigging are packed away till next wanted. The unshipped rudder hangs
across the stern, out of the way of damage from any crushing of the
floes. Snow packed up carefully all round the ship is an all-important
protection against the increasing cold.]
Fortunately, the last gale had so far hardened the snow-drifts in this
spot that snow-house building had become possible. Every few days a
new “house” sprang up. A group of men would come out from the ship,
warmly booted and mitted, carrying shovels and saws, and perhaps a
lantern. They shovel off the loose surface snow, and proceed to mark
out two sets of concentric circles, one slightly larger than the
other, and follow the marks with the saw driven vertically into the
snow. The rings thus sawn out are then cut into blocks about two feet
square. The outer ring of blocks from the larger circles, placed round
the circular pit left by the removal of blocks from the smaller set,
makes the first tier. Then comes the outer ring from the smaller set,
and so on alternately, till a good flat block closes in the top. The
resulting edifice is all in steps, but it is thoroughly substantial,
and will last till midsummer. Thus our town sprang up, and each part
soon received its appropriate name—Markham Hall, Kew, Deptford,
Greenwich, &c., while at a safe distance southward an eccentric
edifice, surmounted by a broom handle to represent a lightning
conductor, acted as magazine and spirit-store.
Long before winter had passed, our town had disappeared as
completely as Nineveh or Pompeii. Only an uncertain mound here and
there projected over the bleak slope of drifted snow. Some of the
storehouses, indeed, were so effectively hidden that they were not
found till after several days’ excavations in the following July.
The great advantage of a snow-house is that it takes its temperature
from the earth, and not from the air. Some of ours were occasionally
as much as forty degrees warmer than the atmosphere, so that an
observer well muffled in furs could remain for four or five hours at
a time watching the swinging magnetic needle, or the progress of some
icy experiment. His meditations would sometimes be disturbed by the
wandering footfall of one of our dogs overhead, sounding strangely
loud and reverberating. The snow was curiously retentive of odours:
a little spirit spilt in one house made it ever afterwards smell like
a gin-palace; another had an unaccountable odour of oysters that
puzzled all our _savans_; but, as a rule, the smell of burnt candle
predominated. The manner, by-the-bye, in which the flame of a candle
gradually sank into a tallowy net-work cylinder afforded a striking
illustration of the still air and low temperature of a snow-house.
In strong moonlight, or after daylight returned, the effect inside
one of our buildings was most peculiar. The snow transmits a subdued
greenish-blue light, such as a diver sees deep under water.
[Illustration: BUILDING SNOW-HOUSES.]
While twilight lasted, many excursions were made landwards, but the
uncertain state of the deep snow made even a short walk a serious
undertaking. In places it lay merely dusted over the ground; in others
in deep drifts, here soft, and there hardened by wind. If we turned to
the north, we soon came to a steep ravine, by no means easily crossed,
winding down from Mount Pullen. All inland was a monotonous waste
of snow, and ten minutes’ walk to the south brought us to another
ravine—a smaller one—which somehow or other acquired the name of the
“Gap of Dunloe.” Here a summer torrent had cut a way under the ice and
snow that half filled the ravine. A few little frozen pools amongst
the boulders was all that remained of the torrent, but its size might
be estimated by the long flat cavern it had washed out under the ice,
lit from above by a number of dangerous “man-holes” opening through
the snow overhead. At the other side of the ravine, the land rose
towards the high capes overlooking Robeson Channel, and afforded very
rough walking, for the vertical slate strata was either smoothed over
with treacherous snow, or stuck up through it in various-sized flat
slabs, making the land look like a vast graveyard. As a rule, however,
there was really nothing to see but interminable snow. Sometimes, when
it was a little overcast, even the distinction between land and sky
was confused, and everything assumed a uniform whiteness. More than
once it occurred to us that our scenery was very simply portrayed: a
spotless sheet of white paper could not be improved upon. Under such
circumstances, it may easily be imagined that the discovery of a hare
track was quite an exciting event. Who could think of returning to
a half-past two o’clock dinner before the track was followed, and
the quarry found! A second hare track was fallen in with on the 29th
October, but after following it for some hours it became plain that
the creature had more than once been within thirty yards, and had
escaped unnoticed in the twilight. The chase was given up, and it
was at any rate a satisfaction to know that at least one live thing
was left to pass the winter in our neighbourhood. There was no use
in trying to hunt after this. That day we had hoped to get something
better than hare, for one of the ice quartermasters had reported that
he had heard wolves howling inland during the middle watch, and wolves
would hardly pay us a visit so far north unless they were driving musk
oxen or reindeer. A long walk on snow-shoes failed to discover any
tracks, and indeed the beasts themselves might have been close at hand
without being seen, for darkness was already stealing over the land.
[Illustration: EFFECT OF EXTREME COLD ON A CANDLE.]