"A
UGUST28. Strange enough, during the night. Captain Austin, of her majesty’s search squadron, with his flag-ship theResolute, entered the same little indentation in which five of us were moored before. His steam-tender, thePioneer, grounded off the point of Beechy Island, and is now in sight, canted over by the ice nearly to her beam ends. He has come to us not of design, but under the irresistible guidance of the ice. We are now seven vessels within hailing distance, not counting Captain Ommanney’s, imbedded in the field to the westward.
“I called this morning on Sir John Ross, and had a long talk with him. He said that, as far back as 1847, anticipating the ‘detention’ of Sir John Franklin—I use his own word—he had volunteered his services for an expedition of retrieve, asking for the purpose four small vessels, something like ourown; but no one listened to him. Volunteering again in 1848, he was told that his nephew’s claim to the service had received a recognition; whereupon his own was withdrawn. ‘I told Sir John,’ said Ross, ‘that my own experience in these seas proved that all these sounds and inlets may, by the caprice or even the routine of seasons, be closed so as to prevent any egress, and that a missing or shut-off party must have some means of falling back. It was thus I saved myself from the abandonedVictoryby a previously constructed house for wintering, and a boat for temporary refuge.’ All this, he says, he pressed on Sir John Franklin before he set out, and he thinks that Melville Island is now the seat of such a house-asylum. ‘For, depend upon it,’ he added, ‘Franklin will be expecting some of us to be following on his traces. Now, may it be that the party, whose winter quarters we have discovered, sent out only exploring detachments along Wellington Sound in the spring, and then, when themselves released, continued on to the west, by Cape Hotham and Barrow’s Straits?’ I have given this extract from myjournal, though the theory it suggests has since been disproved by Lieutenant M’Clintock, because the tone and language of Sir John Ross may be regarded as characteristic of this manly old seaman.
“I next visited theResolute. I shall not here say how their perfect organization and provision for winter contrasted with those of our own little expedition. I had to shake off a feeling almost of despondency when I saw how much better fitted they were to grapple with the grim enemy, Cold. Winter, if we may judge of it by the clothing and warming appliances of the British squadron, must be something beyond our power to cope with; for, in comparison with them, we have nothing, absolutely nothing.
“The officers received me, for I was alone, with the cordiality of recognized brotherhood. They are a gentlemanly, well-educated set of men, thoroughly up to the history of what has been done by others, and full of personal resource. Among them I was rejoiced to meet an old acquaintance. Lieutenant Brown, whose admirably artistic sketches I had seen in Haghe’s lithotints, atMr. Grinnell’s, before leaving New York. When we were together last, it was among the tropical jungles of Luzon, surrounded by the palm, the cycas, and bamboo, in the glowing extreme of vegetable exuberance: here we are met once more, in the stinted region of lichen and mosses. He was then a junior, under Sir Edward Belcher: I—what I am yet. The lights and shadows of a naval life are nowhere better, and, alas! nowhere worse displayed, than in these remote accidental greetings.
“Returning, I paid a visit to Penny’s vessels, and formed a very agreeable acquaintance with the medical officer. Dr. R. Anstruther Goodsir, a brother of assistant surgeon Goodsir of Franklin’s flag-ship.
“In commemoration of the gathering of the searching squadrons within the little cove of Beechy Point, Commodore Austin has named it, very appropriately, Union Bay. It is here theMaryis deposited as an asylum to fall back upon in case of disaster.
“The sun is traveling rapidly to the south, so that our recently glaring midnight is now a twilight gloom. The coloring over thehills at Point Innes this evening was sombre, but in deep reds; and the sky had an inhospitable coldness. It made me thoughtful to see the long shadows stretching out upon the snow toward the isthmus of the Graves.
“The wind is from the north and westward, and the ice is so driven in around us as to grate and groan against the sides of our little vessel. The masses, though small, are very thick, and by the surging of the sea have been rubbed as round as pebbles. They make an abominable noise.”
The remaining days of August were not characterized by any incident of note. We had the same alternations of progress and retreat through the ice as before, and without sensibly advancing toward the western shore, which it was now our object to reach. The next extracts from my journal are of the date of September 3.
“After floating down, warping, to avoid the loose ice, we finally cast off in comparatively open water, and began beating toward Cape Spencer to get round the field. Once there, we got along finely, sinking the eastern shore by degrees, and nearing theundelineated coasts of Cornwallis Island. White whales, narwhals, seals—among them the Phoca leonina with his puffed cheeks—and two bears, were seen.
“The ice is tremendous, far ahead of anything we have met with. The thickness of the upraised tables is sometimes fourteen feet; and the hummocks are so ground and distorted by the rude attrition of the floes, that they rise up in cones like crushed sugar, some of them forty feet high. But that the queer life we are leading—a life of constant exposure and excitement, and one that seems more like the ‘roughing it’ of a land party than the life of shipboard—has inured us to the eccentric fancies of the ice, our position would be a sleepless one.
“September4, 2A.M.Was awakened by Captain De Haven to look at the ice: an impressive sight. We were fast with three anchors to the main floe; and now, though the wind was still from the northward, and therefore in opposition to the drift, the floating masses under the action of the tide came with a westward trend directly past us. Fortunately, they were not borne down uponthe vessels; but, as they went by in slow procession to the west, our sensations were, to say the least, sensations. It was very grand to see up-piled blocks twenty feet and more above our heads, and to wonder whether this fellow would strike our main-yard or clear our stern. Some of the moving hummocks were thirty feet high. They grazed us; but a little projection of the main field to windward shied them off.
“I killed to-day my first polar bear. We made the animal on a large floe to the northward while we were sighting the western shores of Wellington, and of course could not stop to shoot bears. But he took to the water ahead of us, and came so near that we fired at him from the bows of the vessel. Mr. Lovell and myself fired so simultaneously, that we had to weigh the ball to determine which had hit. My bullet struck exactly in the ear, the mark I had aimed at, for he had only his head above water. The young ice was forming so rapidly around us that it was hard work getting him on board. I was one of the oarsmen, and sweated rarely, with the thermometer at 25°.
“On the way back I succeeded in hitting an enormous seal; but, much to my mortification, he sunk, after floating till we nearly reached him.
“Without any organization, and with very little time for the hunt, the Advance now counts upon her game list two polar bears, three seals, a single goose, and a fair table allowance of loons, divers, and snipes. TheRescueboasts of four bears, and, in addition to the small game, a couple of Arctic hares. Our solitary goose was the Anas bernicla, crowds of which now begin to fly over the land and ice in cunoid streams to the east of south. It was killed by Mr. Murdaugh with a rifle, on the wing.
“How very much I miss my good home assortment of hunting materials! We have not a decent gun on board; as for the rifle I am now shooting, it is a flintlock concern, and half the time hangs fire.”
The next morning found me at work skinning my bear, not a pleasant task with the thermometer below the freezing point. He was a noble specimen, larger than the largest recorded by Parry, measuring eight feeteight inches and three quarters from tip to tip. I presented the skin, on my return home, to the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia.
The carcass was larger than that of an ordinary ox fatted for market. We estimated his weight at nearly sixteen hundred pounds. In build he was very solid, and the muscles of the arms and haunch fearfully developed. I once before compared the posterior aspect of the Arctic bear to an elephant’s. All my mess-mates used the same comparison. The extreme roundness of his back and haunches, with the columnar character of the legs, and the round expansion of the feet, give you the impression of a small elephant. The plantigrade base of support overlapped by long hair heightens the resemblance. The head and neck, of course, are excluded from the comparison.
At five in the afternoon we succeeded in reaching within a quarter of a mile of the shore off Barlow’s Inlet, and made fast there to the floe. This inlet is but a few miles from Cape Hotham, and is marked on the charts as a mere interruption of the coastline. Parry, who named it, must have had wonderfully favoring weather to sight so accurately an insignificant cove. He was a practiced hydrographer.
The limestone cliffs rise on each side, forming stupendous piers gnarled by frost degradation, between which is the entrance, about a quarter of a mile wide. The moment our little vessel entered the shadow of these cliffs, a quiet gloom took the place of bustling movement. We ground our way into the newly-formed ice, and, after making a couple of ships’ lengths, found ourselves within a sort of cape of land floe, surrounded by high hummocks and anchored bergs. It was a melancholy spot; not one warm sun tint; everything blank, repulsive sterility.
“September6. The captain, Mr. Murdaugh, Mr. Carter, and myself started on a walk of exploration. The distance between the brig and the shore is not over three hundred yards, but the travel was arduous. The ice was eight and ten feet thick, studded with broken bergs and hummocks. These fragments were seldom larger than our Rensselaer dining-room, some twenty feetsquare, and, owing either to the rise and fall of the tides or the piling action of storms, deep crevices were formed around their edges, partially masked by the snow which had found its way into them, and by an icy crust over the surface. Alternately jumping these crevices and clambering up the hummocks between them made it a dangerous walk. We had some narrow escapes. Reaching the shore, we pushed forward about a mile and a quarter to the head of the inlet, and then crossed over on the ice to a cairn that stood near it. We found nothing but a communication from Captain Ommanney, whose vessels we saw as we entered the lead yesterday, informing the Secretary of the Admiralty that he had been off this place since the 24th, and that ‘no traces are to be found on Cornwallis Island of the party under Sir John Franklin’—a somewhat too confident assertion perhaps, seeing that the island, if it be one, is more than fifty miles across, and that the observations can hardly have extended beyond the coast line.
“September7. The spot at which wehave been lying is in front of Barlow’s Inlet. There is no barrier between it and our vessels but the young ice, which has now attained a thickness of three inches. On the east we have the drift plain of Wellington Channel, impacted with floes, hummocks, and broken bergs; and to the south we look out upon a wild aggregation of enormous hummocks. These hummocks are totally unlike anything we saw in Baffin’s Bay. They seem to have been so disintegrated by the conflicting forces that raised them as to have lost altogether the character of tables. If hogshead upon hogshead of crushed sugar had been emptied out at random, two or three in one pile, and two or three ship loads in another, and the summits of these irregular heaps were covered over with a succession of layers of snow, and the heaps themselves multiplied in number indefinitely, and crowded together in a disordered phalanx, they would look a good deal like the hummock field some twenty yards south of us. These fearful masses are all anchored, solid hills, rising thirty feet above the level from a bottom twenty-two feet below it.
“Our situation might be regarded as an ugly one in some states of the wind, but for the solid main floe to the north of us. This projected from the cliff, which served as an abutment for it; and, after forming a sort of cape outside of our position, extended with a horseshoe sweep to the northward and eastward, as far as the eye could reach, following the trend of the shore. It formed, of course, a reliable break-water. Commodore Austin’s vessels were made fast to it some distance to the north and east of us.
“The barometer had given us, in the early morning of the 4th, 29.90, since when it rose steadily till the 5th, at 6A.M., when it stood 30.38. For the next twenty-four hours it fluctuated between .33 and .37; but at 6A.M.of the 6th, it again began to rise; by midnight, it had reached 30.44; and before ten o’clockP.M.of the 7th, it was at the unwonted height of 30.68. At 2P.M.the wind had changed from S.S.E. to N.N.E., and went on increasing to a gale.
“We were seated cosily around our little table in the cabin, imagining our harbor of land ice perfectly secure, when we werestartled by a crash. We rushed on deck just in time to see the solid floe to windward part in the middle, liberate itself from its attachment to the shore, and bear down upon us with the full energy of the storm. Our lee bristled ominously half a ship’s length from us, and to the east was the main drift. TheRescuewas first caught, nipped astern, and lifted bodily out of water; fortunately she withstood the pressure, and rising till she snapped her cable, launched into open water, crushing the young ice before her. TheAdvance, by hard warping, drew a little closer to the cove; and, a moment after, the ice drove by, just clearing our stern. Commodore Austin’s vessels were imprisoned in the moving fragments, and carried helplessly past us. In a very little while they were some four miles off."
The summer was now leaving us rapidly. The thermometer had been at 21° and 23° for several nights, and scarcely rose above 32° in the daytime. Our little harbor at Barlow’s Inlet was completely blocked in by heavy masses; the new ice gave plenty of sport to the skaters; but on shipboard it wasuncomfortably cold. As yet we had no fires below; and, after drawing around me the India-rubber curtains of my berth, with my lamp burning inside, I frequently wrote my journal in a freezing temperature. “This is not very cold, no doubt”—I quote from an entry of the 8th—“not very cold to your forty-five minus men of Arctic winters; but to us poor devils from the zone of the liriodendrons and peaches, it is rather cold for the September month of water-melons. My bear with his arsenic swabs is a solid lump, and some birds that are waiting to be skinned are absolutely rigid with frost.”
In the afternoon of this day, the 8th, we went to work, all hands, officers included, to cut up the young ice and tow it out into the current: once there, the drift carried it rapidly to the south. We cleared away in this manner a space of some forty yards square, and at five the next morning were rewarded by being again under weigh. We were past Cape Hotham by breakfast-time on the 9th, and in the afternoon were beating to the west in Lancaster Sound.
“The sound presented a novel spectacleto us; the young ice glazing it over, so as to form a viscid sea of sludge andtickly-benders, from the northern shore to the pack, a distance of at least ten miles. This was mingled with the drift floes from Wellington Channel; and in them, steaming away manfully, were theResoluteandPioneer. The wind was dead ahead; yet, but for the new ice, there was a clear sea to the west. What, then, was our mortification, first, to see our pack-bound neighbors force themselves from their prison and steam ahead dead in the wind’s eye, and, next, to be overhauled by Penny, and passed by both his brigs. We are now the last of all the searchers, except perhaps old Sir John, who is probably yet in Union Bay, or at least east of the straits.
“The shores along which we are passing are of the same configuration with the coast to the east of Beechy Island; the cliffs, however, are not so high, and their bluff appearance is relieved occasionally by terraces and shingle beach. The lithological characters of the limestone appear to be the same.
“We are all together here, on a singletrack but little wider than the Delaware or Hudson. There is no getting out of it, for the shore is on one side and the fixed ice close on the other. All have the lead of us, and we are working only to save a distance. Ommanney must be near Melville by this time: pleasant, very!
“Closing memoranda for the day: 1. I have the rheumatism in my knees; 2. I left a bag containing my dress suit of uniforms, and, what is worse, my winter suit of furs, and with them my double-barrel gun, on board Austin’s vessel. The gale of the 7th has carried him and them out of sight.
“September10. Unaccountable, most unaccountable, the caprices of this ice-locked region! Here we are again all together, even Ommanney with the rest. TheResolute,Intrepid,Assistance,Pioneer,Lady Franklin,Sophia,Advance, andRescue; Austin, Ommanney, Penny, and De Haven, all anchored to the ‘fast’ off Griffith’s Island. The way to the west completely shut out."
CHAPTER IV
T
HE succeeding pages are very little else than a transcript from my journal. It would have been easy to condense them into a more attractive form; but they relate to the furthest limits of our cruise, “long arum meta viarum” and some of the topics which they embrace may perhaps invite that sort of evidence which is best furnished by a contemporary record.
“September11, Wednesday. Snow, light and fleecy, covering the decks, and carried by our clothes into our little cabin. The moisture of the atmosphere condenses over the beams, and trickles down over the lockers and bedding. We are still alongside of the fixed ice off Griffith’s Island, and the British squadron under Commodore Austin are clustered together within three hundred yards of us. Penny, like an indefatigable old trump, as he is, is out, pushing, working,groping in the fog. The sludge ice, that had driven in around us and almost congealed under our stern, is now by the ebb of the tide, or at least its change, carried out again, although the wind still sets toward the floe.
“September12, Thursday. We have had a rough night. About 4P.M., the heavy snow which had covered our decks changed to a driving drift; the wind blew a gale from the northwest, and the thermometer fell as low as +16°. All the squadron of search, with the exception of Penny, were fastened by ice-anchors to the main ice; but the great obscurity made us invisible to each other.
“At three theRescueparted her cable’s hold, and was carried out to sea, leaving two men, her boat, and her anchors behind. We snapped our stern-cable, lost our anchor, swung out, but fortunately held by the forward line. All the English vessels were in similar peril, thePioneerbeing at one time actually free; and Commodore Austin, who in theResoluteoccupied the head of the line, was in momentary fear of coming down upon us. Altogether I have seldom seen anight of greater trial. The wind roared over the snow floes, and every thing about the vessel froze into heavy ice stalactites. Had the main floe parted, we had been carried down with the liberated ice. Fortunately, every thing held; and here we are, safe and sound. TheRescuewas last seen beating to windward against the gale, probably seeking a lee under Griffith’s Island. This morning the snow continues in the form of a fine cutting drift, the water freezes wherever it touches, and the thermometer has been at no time above 17°.
“September12, 10P.M.Just from deck. How very dismal every thing seems! The snow is driven like sand upon a level beach, lifted up in long curve lines, and then obscuring the atmosphere with a white darkness. The wind, too, is howling in a shrill minor, singing across the hummock ridges. The eight vessels are no longer here. The Rescue is driven out to sea, and poor Penny is probably to the southward. Five black masses, however, their cordage defined by rime and snow, are seen with their snouts shoved into the shore of ice: cables, chains,and anchors are covered feet below the drift, and the ships adhere mysteriously, their tackle completely invisible. Should any of us break away, the gale would carry us into streams of heavy floating ice; and our running rigging is so coated with icicles as to make it impossible to work it. The thermometer stands at 14°.
“At this temperature the young ice forms in spite of the increasing movement of the waves, stretching out from the floe in long, zigzag lines of smoothness resembling watered silk. The loose ice seems to have a southerly and easterly drift; and, from the increasing distance of Griffith’s Island, seen during occasional intervals, we are evidently movingen masseto the south.
“Now when you remember that we are in open sea, attached to precarious ice, and surrounded by floating streams; that the coast is unknown, and the ice forming inshore, so as to make harbors, if we knew of them, inaccessible, you may suppose that our position is far from pleasant. One harbor was discovered by a lieutenant of the Assistance some days ago, and namedAssistanceHarbor,but that is out of the question; the wind is not only a gale, but ahead. Had we the quarters of Capua before us, we should be unable to reach them. It is a windward shore.
“11P.M.Captain De Haven reports ice forming fast: extra anchors are out; thermometer +8°. The British squadron, under Austin, have fires in full blast: we are without them still.
“12 M. In bed, reading or trying to read. The gale has increased; the floes are in upon us from the eastward; and it is evident that we are all of us drifting bodily, God knows where, for we have no means of taking observations.
“September13, 10A.M.Found, on waking, that at about three this morning the squadron commenced getting under weigh. The rime-coated rigging was cleared; the hawsers thashed;[A]the ice-clogged boats hauled in; the steamers steamed, and off went the rest of us as we might. This step was not taken a whit too soon, if it be ordained that we are yet in time; for thestream-ice covers the entire horizon, and the large floe or main which we have deserted is barely separated from the drifting masses. TheRescueis now the object of our search. Could she be found, the captain has determined to turn his steps homeward.
[A]So in the original. Evidently a misprint.—(Ed.)
[A]So in the original. Evidently a misprint.—(Ed.)
“11:20A.M.We are working,i. e., beating our way in the narrow leads intervening irregularly between the main ice and the drift. We have gained at least two miles to windward of Austin’s squadron, who are unable, in spite of steamers, to move along these dangerous passages like ourselves. Our object is to reach Griffith’s Island, from which we have drifted some fifteen miles with the main ice, and then look out for our lost consort.
“The lowest temperature last night was +5°, but the wind makes it colder to sensation. We are grinding through newly-formed ice three inches thick; the perfect consolidation being prevented by its motion and the wind. Even in the little fireless cabin in which I now write, water and coffee are freezing, and the mercury stands at 29°.
“The navigation is certainly exciting. Ihave never seen a description in my Arctic readings of any thing like this. We are literally running for our lives, surrounded by the imminent hazards of sudden consolidation in an open sea. All minor perils, nips, humps, and sunken bergs are discarded; we are staggering along under all sail, forcing our way while we can. One thump, received since I commenced writing, jerked the time-keeper from our binnacle down the cabin hatch, and, but for our strong bows, seven and a half solid feet, would have stove us in. Another time, we cleared a tongue of the main pack by riding it down at eight knots. Commodore Austin seems caught by the closing floes. This is really sharp work.
“4P.M.We continued beating toward Griffith’s Island, till, by doubling a tongue of ice, we were able to force our way. The English seemed to watch our movements, and almost to follow in our wake, till we came to a comparatively open space, about the area of Washington Square, where we stood off and on, the ice being too close upon the eastern end of Griffith’s Island to permit us to pass. Our companions in this littlevacancy were Captain Ommanney’sAssistance, Osborne’s steam tender thePioneer, and Kater’s steamer theIntrepid. Commodore Austin’s vessel was to the southward, entangled in the moving ice, but momentarily nearing the open leads.
“While thus boxing about on one of our tacks, we neared the north edge of our little opening, and were hailed by the Assistance with the glad intelligence of theRescueclose under the island. Our captain, who was at his usual post, conning the ship from the foretop-sail yard, made her out at the same time, and immediately determined upon boring the intervening ice. This was done successfully, the brig bearing the hard knocks nobly. Strange to say, the English vessels, now joined by Austin, followed in our wake—a compliment, certainly, to De Haven’s ice-mastership.
“We were no sooner through, than signal was made to theRescueto ‘cast off,’ and our ensign was run up from the peak: the captain had determined upon attempting a return to the United States.”
It could not be my office to discuss thepolicy of this step, even if the question were one of policy alone. But it was one of instructions. The Navy Department, imitating in this the English Board of Admiralty, had, in its orders to our commander, marked out to him the course of the expedition, and had enjoined that, unless under special circumstances, he should “endeavor not to be caught in the ice during the winter, but that he should, after completing his examinations for the season, make his escape, and return to New York in the fall.” In the judgment of Commodore De Haven, these special circumstances did not exist; and he felt himself, therefore, controlled by the general terms of the injunction. I believe that there was but one feeling among the officers of our little squadron, that of unmitigated regret that we were no longer to co-operate with our gallant associates under the sister flag. Our intercourse with them had been most cordial from the very first. We had interchanged many courtesies, and I should be sorry to think that there had not been formed on both sides some enduring friendships.
In a little while we had theRescuein tow, and were heading to the east. She had had a fearful night of it after leaving us. She beat about, short-handed, clogged with ice, and with the thermometer at 8°. The snow fell heavily, and the rigging was a solid, almost unmanageable lump. Steering, or rather beating, she made, on the evening of the 12th, the southern edge of Griffith’s Island, and by good luck and excellent management succeeded in holding to the land hummocks. She had split her rudder-post so as to make herunworkable, and now we have her in tow. An anchor with its fluke snapped—her best bower; and her little boat, stove in by the ice, was cut adrift.
“We were now homeward bound, but a saddened homeward bound for all of us. The vessels of our gallant brethren soon lost themselves in the mist, and we steered our course with a fresh breeze for Cape Hotham.
“As we passed the sweep of coast between Capes Martyr and Hotham, and were making the chord of the curve, our captain called my attention to a point of the coast line about six miles off. On looking without aglass, I distinctly saw the naked spars of a couple of vessels. ‘Brigs!’ said I. ‘Undoubtedly,’ said De Haven; and then both of us simultaneously, ‘Penny!’ On looking with the glass, the masts, yards, gaffs, every thing but the bowsprits, were made out distinctly. Lovell was called and saw the same. Murdaugh, who was half undressed, was summoned; and he, examining with the glass, saw a third, which De Haven, after a look, confirmed as a top-sail schooner, theFelixof old Sir John.
“We changed our course, ran in, and determined to convince ourselves of their character, and perhaps to speak them. The fog, however, closed around them. Still we stood on. Presently, a flaw of wind drove off the vapor; and upon eagerly gazing at the spot, now less than three miles off, no vessels were to be seen.
“I can hardly comment upon this strange circumstance. It was a complete puzzle to all of us. Refractive distortion plays strange freaks in these Arctic solitudes; but this could hardly be one of its illusions. Four persons saw the same image with thenaked eye, and the glass confirmed the details. There was no disagreement. As plainly as I see these letters did I see those brigs; and although we supposed theLady FranklinandSophiato be ice-caught at or toward Cape Walker, I did not hesitate to name them as the vessels before us. Ten minutes of obscurity, we sailing directly toward them, a sudden interval of brightness—and they had passed away.
“Some large hummocks of grounded ice were near them, and we try to convince ourselves that they may have been closed in by changes in our relative positions; but this is hard to believe, for we should have seen their upper spars above the ice. I gazed long and attentively with our Fraünhofer telescope, at three miles’ distance, but saw absolutely no semblance of what a few minutes before was so apparent.”
We were obliged several times the next day to bore through the young ice; for the low temperature continued, and our wind lulled under Cape Hotham. The night gave us now three hours of complete darkness. It was danger to run on, yet equallydanger to pause. Grim winter was following close upon our heels; and even the captain, sanguine and fearless in emergency as he always proved himself, as he saw the tenacious fields of sludge and pancake thickening around us, began to feel anxious. Mine was a jumble of sensations. I had been desirous to the last degree that we might remain on the field of search, and could hardly be dissatisfied at what promised to realize my wish. Yet I had hoped that our wintering would be near our English friends, that in case of trouble or disease we might mutually sustain each other. But the interval of fifty miles between us, in these inhospitable deserts, was as complete a separation as an entire continent; and I confess that I looked at the dark shadows closing around Barlow’s Inlet, the prison from which we cut ourselves on the seventh, just six days before, with feelings as sombre as the landscape itself.
The sound of our vessel crunching her way through the new ice is not easy to be described. It was not like the grinding of the old formed ice, nor was it the slushy scrapingof sludge. We may all of us remember, in the skating frolics of early days, the peculiar reverberating outcry of a pebble, as we tossed it from us along the edges of an old mill-dam, and heard it dying away in echoes almost musical. Imagine such a tone as this, combined with the whir of rapid motion, and the rasping noise of close-grained sugar. I was listening to the sound in my little den, after a sorrowful day, close upon zero, trying to warm up my stiffened limbs. Presently it grew less, then increased, then stopped, then went on again, but jerking and irregular; and then it waned, and waned, and waned away to silence.
Down came the captain: “Doctor, the ice has caught us: we are frozen up.” On went my furs at once. As I reached the deck, the wind was there, blowing stiff, and the sails were filled and puffing with it. It was not yet dark enough to hide the smooth surface of ice that filled up the horizon, holding the American expedition in search of Sir John Franklin imbedded in its centre. There we were, literally frozen tight in the mid-channel of Wellington’s Straits.
“September15. The change of tide, or, rather, those diurnal changes in the movement of the ice which seem to be indirectly connected with it, gave us a little while before noon a partial opening in the solid ice around us. We made by hard work about a mile, and were then more fast than ever. The ice alongside will now bear a man: the wind, however, is hauling around to the westward. With a strong northwester, there might still be a hope for us.
“This afternoon, at 6h. 20m., a large spheroidal mass was seen floating in the air at an unknown distance to the north. It undulated for a while over the ice-lined horizon of Wellington Channel; and after a little while, another, smaller than the first, became visible a short distance below it. They receded with the wind from the southward and eastward, but did not disappear for some time. Captain De Haven at first thought it a kite; but, independently of the difficulty of imagining a kite flying without a master, and where no master could be, its outline and movement convinced me it was a balloon. TheResolutedispatched a courier balloonon the 2d; but that could never have survived the storms of the past week. I therefore suppose it must have been sent up by some English vessel to the west of us.
“I make a formal note of this circumstance, trivial as it may be; for at first Franklin rose to my mind, as possibly signalizing up Wellington Channel.”
Cape Hotham was at this time nearly in range, from our position, with the first headland to the west of it; and our captain estimated that we were about thirty miles from the eastern side of the strait. The balloon was to leeward, nearly due north of us, more so than could be referred to the course of the wind as we observed it, supposing it to have set out from any vessel of whose place we were aware. It appeared to me, the principal one, about two feet long by eighteen inches broad; its appendage larger than an ordinary dinner-plate. The incident interested us much at the time, and I have not seen any thing in the published journals of the English searchers that explains it.
CHAPTER V
T
HE region, which ten days before was teeming with animal life, was now almost deserted. We saw but one narwhal and a few seal. The Ivory gull too, a solitary traveler, occasionally flitted by us; but the season had evidently wrought its change.
Several flocks of the snow bunting had passed over us while we were attached to the main ice off Griffith’s Island, and a single raven was seen from theRescueat her holding grounds. The Brent geese, however, the dovekies, the divers, indeed all the anatidæ, the white whales, the walrus, the bearded and the hirsute seal, the white bear, whatever gave us life and incident, had vanished.
The following Sunday, the 15th, was signalized by the introduction of a bright new “Cornelius” lard lamp into the cabin, a luxurywhich I had often urged before, but which the difficulties of opening the hold had compelled the captain to deny us. The condensation of moisture had been excessive; the beams had been sweating great drops, and my bedding and bunk-boards bore the look of having been exposed to a drizzling mist. The temperature had been below the freezing point for a week before. The lamp gave us the very comfortable warmth of 44°, twelve degrees above congelation. It was a luxury such as few but Arctic travelers can apprehend.
For some days after this, an obscurity of fog and snow made it impossible to see more than a few hundred yards from the ship. This little area remained fast bound, the ice bearing us readily, though a very slight motion against the sides of the vessel seemed to show that it was not perfectly attached to the shores. But as I stood on deck in the afternoon of the 16th, watching the coast to the east of us, as the clouds cleared away for the first time, it struck me that its configuration was unknown to me. By-and-by. Cape Beechy, the isthmus of the Graves,loomed up; and we then found that we were a little to the north of Cape Bowden.
The next two days this northward drift continued without remission. The wind blew strong from the southward and eastward, sometimes approaching to a gale; but the ice-pack around us retained its tenacity, and increased rapidly in thickness.
Yet every now and then we could see that at some short distance it was broken by small pools of water, which would be effaced again, soon after they were formed, by an external pressure. At these times our vessels underwent a nipping on a small scale. The smoother ice-field that held us would be driven in, piling itself in miniature hummocks about us, sometimes higher than our decks, and much too near them to leave us a sense of security against their further advance. The noises, too, of whining puppies and swarming bees made part of these demonstrations, much as when the heavier masses were at work, but shriller perhaps, and more clamorous.
I was aroused at midnight of the 16th by one of these onsets of the enemy, crunchingand creaking against the ship’s sides till the masses ground themselves to powder. Our vessel was trembling like an ague-fit under the pressure; and when so pinched that she could not vibrate any longer between the driving and the stationary fields, making a quick, liberating jump above them that rattled the movables fore and aft. As it wore on toward morning, the ice, now ten inches thick, kept crowding upon us with increased energy; and the whole of the 17th was passed in a succession of conflicts with it.
The 18th began with a nipping that promised more of danger. The banks of ice rose one above another till they reached the line of our bulwarks. This, too, continued through the day, sometimes lulling for a while into comparative repose, but recurring after a few minutes of partial intermission. While I was watching this angry contest of the ice-tables, as they clashed together in the darkness of early dawn, I saw for the first time the luminous appearance, which has been described by voyagers as attending the collision of bergs. It was very marked; as decided a phosphorescence as that of the fire-fly, or the fox-fire of the Virginia meadows.
Still, amid all the tumult, our drift was toward the north. From the bearings of the coast, badly obtained through the fogs, it was quite evident that we had passed beyond any thing recorded on the charts. Cape Bowden, Parry’s furthest headland, was at least twenty-five miles south of us; and our old landmarks. Cape Hotham and Beechy, had entirely disappeared. Even the high bluffs of Barlow’s Inlet had gone. I hardly know why it was so, but this inlet had somehow or other been for me an object of special aversion: the naked desolation of its frost-bitten limestone, the cavernous recess of its cliffs, the cheerlessness of its dark shadows, had connected it, from the first day I saw it, with some dimly-remembered feeling of pain. But how glad we should all of us have been, as we floated along in hopeless isolation, to find a way open to its grim but protecting barriers.
I return to my journal.
“September19, Thursday. About fiveo’clock this morning the wind set in from the northward and eastward; but the ice was tightly compacted, and for a while did not budge. Presently, however, we could see the water-pools extending their irregular margins. Ahead of us, that is, still further to the north, was ice apparently more solid than the ten-inch field around us. It shot up into larger hummocks and heavier masses, and was evidently thicker and more permanent. It had been for the past two days not more than fifty yards ahead, and we called it in the log the ‘fixed ice.’ By breakfast-time this opened into two long pools on our right, and one on the left, which seemed to extend pretty well toward the western shore. It was evident that we were now drifting to the southward again.
“The sun, so long obscured, gave us to-day a rough meridian altitude. Murdaugh, always active and efficient, had his artificial horizon ready upon the ice, and gave us an approximate latitude. We were in 75° 20' 11″north. A large cape and several smaller headlands were seen, together with apparently an inlet or harbor, all on the westernside. They remain unchristened. From our mast-head, nopositiveland was visible to the north. Tides we have not had the means of observing. Our soundings on the 17th gave us bottom at 110 fathoms, nearly in mid-channel.
“September19, 11:20P.M.The wind continued all day from the northward and westward, freshening gradually to a gale. The barometer fell from 29.73 to 32, and our maximum temperature was 26°. A heavy fall of snow covered the deck.
“September20. I have been keeping the first watch and anxiously observing the ice; for I am no sailor, and in emergency can only wake my comrades. The darkness is now complete. The wind has changed again. At threeA.M.it set in from the southward and eastward, increasing gradually to a fresh gale. Perhaps it may be the breaking up of the season, or some unusual premonition of stern winter; but certain it is that our experience of Lancaster Sound has given us anything but tranquillity of winds. We entered on the wings of a storm; and ever since, with the exceptionof about three days off Cape Riley, we have had nothing but gales, rising and falling in alternating series from the north to northward and westward, and from the south to southward and eastward. The day was as usual ushered in with snow, and the thermometer rose to the height of 29°; yet to sensation it was cold. There is something very queer about this discrepancy between the thermometrical register and the effects of heat. It thawed palpably to-day at 28°; and yet all complain of cold, even without the influence of the wind.
“We are now, poor devils! drifting northward again. Creatures of habit, those who were anxious have forgotten anxiety; glued fast here in a moving mass, we eat, and drink, and sleep, unmindful of the morrow. It is almost beyond a doubt that, if we find our way through the contingencies of this Arctic autumn, we must spend our winter in open sea. Many miles to the south. Captain Back passed a memorable term of vigil and exposure. Here, however, I do not anticipate such encounters with drifting floes as are spoken of in Hudson’s Bay.The centre of greatest cold is too near us, and the communication with open sea too distant.—
“I was in the act of writing the above, when a startling sensation, resembling the spring of a well-drawn bow, announced a fresh movement. Running on deck, I found it blowing a furious gale, and the ice again in motion. I use the word motion inaccurately. The field, of which we are a part, is always in motion; that is, drifting with wind or current. It is only when other ice bears down upon our own, or our own ice is borne in against other floes, that pressure and resistance make us conscious of motion.
“The ice was again in motion. The great expanse of recently-formed solidity, already bristling with hummocks, had up to this moment resisted the enormous incidence of a heavy gale. Suddenly, however, the pressure increasing beyond its strength, it yielded. The twang of a bow-string is the only thing I can compare it to. In a single instant the broad field was rent asunder, cracked in every conceivable direction, tables ground against tables, and masses piled overmasses. The sea seemed to be churning ice.
“By the time I had yoked my neck in itsserape, and got up upon deck, the ice had piled up a couple of feet above our bulwarks. In less than another minute it had toppled over again, and we were floating helplessly in a confused mass of broken fragments. Fortunately theRescueremained fixed; our hawser was fast to her stern, and by it we were brought side by side again. Night passed anxiously;i. e., slept in my clothes, and dreamed of being presented to Queen Victoria.
“September21, Saturday. We have drifted still more to the northward and eastward. An observation gave us latitude 75° 20′ 38″ N. We are apparently not more than seven miles from the shore. It is still of the characteristic transition limestone, very uninviting, snow-covered, and destitute; but we look at it longingly. It would be so comforting to have landed a small depôt of provisions, in case of accident or impaction further north.
“No snow until afternoon. Thermometer, maximum 22°, minimum 19°, mean 20°35'. Wind gentle, and now nearly calm, from southward and eastward to southward.
“About tea-time (21st), the sun sufficiently low to give the effects of sunset, we saw distinctly to the north by west a series of hill-tops, apparently of the same configuration with those around us. The trend of the western coast extending northward from the point opposite our vessel receded westward, and a vacant space, either of unseen very low land or of water, separated it from the Terra Nova, which we see north of us. Whether this Grinnell Land, as our captain has named it, be a continuation of Cornwallis Island or a cape from a new northernland, or a new direction of the eastern coast of North Devon, or a new island, I am not prepared to say. We shall probably know more of each other before long.
“September22, Sunday. A cloudless morning: no snow till afternoon. Our drift during the night has been to the northward; and, except an occasional crack or pool, our horizon was one mass of snow-covered ice.
“The beautifully clear sky with which the day opened gave us another opportunity ofseeing the unvisited shores of Upper Wellington Sound. Our latitude by artificial horizon was 75° 24′ 21″ N., about sixty miles from Cape Hotham. Cape Bowden, on the eastern side, has disappeared; and on the west, Advance Bluff, a dark, projecting cape, from which we took sextant angles, was seen bearing to the west of south. To the northward and westward low land was seen, having the appearance of an island,[B]and mountain tops terminating the low strip ahead. The trend of the shore on our left, the western, is clearly to the westward since leaving Advance Bluff. It is rolling, with terraced shingle beach, and without bluffs. It terminates, or apparently terminates, abruptly, thus: