CHAPTER VIII.IN THE EXTREME NORTH.

THE DOGS DIFFER AS TO THE TREATMENT OF YOUNG BEARS.

4. On the 25th of March our preparations for the extended journey northwards were brought to an end. The sledge with its load weighed about 14 cwt.

Each of the four sacks of provisions—calculated for seven days and seven men—contained 51 lbs. of boiled beef, 48 lbs. of bread, 8 lbs. of pemmican, 7 lbs. of bacon, 2 lbs. of extract of meat, 4 lbs. of condensed milk, 2 lbs. of coffee, 4 lbs. of chocolate, 7 lbs. of rice, 3 lbs. of grits, 1 lb. of salt and pepper, 2 lbs. of peas-sausage, 4 lbs. of sugar, besides a reserve bag with 20 lbs. of bread. We took boiled beef for the dogs. We counted also on the produce of our guns as a considerable supplement both for ourselves and them.

5. The sledge party consisted of myself, Orel, Klotz and Haller, and of three sailors, Zaninovich, Sussich, and Lukinovich; and we had with us three dogs, Jubinal, Torossy, and Sumbu, and men and dogs together dragged the large sledge. The duties were thus divided: Zaninovich managed the packing and the giving out of the spirit and rum, Haller served out the provisions, Klotz attended to the dogs and the arms, Sussich was responsible for keeping everything in working order, and at night Lukinovich acted as a wind-protector close to the door of the tent. We started on the morning of the 26th of March with the thermometer 6° F. below zero, and amid snow driving from the north-west. For some distance we were accompanied by Weyprecht and the rest of the crew. We had scarcely gone a thousand paces from the ship, before the snow began to drive to such an extent, that we could scarcely see our comrades close to us and keep together. As it was impossible to go on until the storm laid, we preferred, instead of returning to theTegetthoff, which would have been the simpler course, to erect the tent out of sight of the ship behind some ice-hummocks, and pass twenty-four hours in it. Our only employment except sleeping was to thaw the snow, which filled our clothes and especially ourpockets. On the 27th of March (the thermometer varying between 2° and 22° F. below zero) we continued our journey amid a slight fall of snow, and made an early start, in order that our halt of yesterday should remain unknown to the crew of the ship. When we reached the south-eastern point of Wilczek Island we lost sight of the ship, and the driving snow with a falling thermometer increased to such an extent, that Sussich’s hands were frost-bitten, and we were compelled to halt for an hour to rub them with snow. Starting again, we all ran the risk of having our faces frost-bitten, meeting as we did a strong wind. The heavily-laden sledge, too, compelled us to make such exertions that our faces were bathed in perspiration. On the 28th of March the wind fell to a calm, and as we passed over the Sound between Salm and Wilczek Islands in a north-westerly direction we advanced at the rate of eighty paces a minute. The track, which we followed, consisted partly of bay-ice a year old and partly of old floes, these together forming a continuous surface, here and there broken by barriers of hummocks, miles in length, due to ice-pressures. After we had passed the headlands south-west of Salm Island, we came in sight of the Wüllersdorf mountains, which we had hitherto seen only from a great distance, hoping from their summits to determine the route which we should take northwards.

6. At the distance of some miles right ahead of us lay several rocky islands, with their outlines scarcely discernible owing to the dull thick state of the atmosphere; but as they lay in the direction of our course, we made for them. We now passed some icebergs and saw on their southern sides the first signs of the process of liquefaction—new icicles. By and by a wind from the south-west set in, raising the temperature gradually to 6° F. and bringing with it fogs and then heavy snow-storms. Covered with snow and running before the wind with a large sledge-sail set, we came under the glacier-walls of Salm Island, among icebergs frozen fast together, trudging along through wind and whirling snow. Occasionally the wind was so strong, that the sail alone sufficed to impel the heavy sledge, while a man in front, guided by a whistle from those behind, kept it in its proper course. After a march of sixteen hours, the wind havingincreased to a storm, which rendered it impossible to keep the track, we determined to halt. Our clothes appeared to consist of nothing but snow, our eyes were iced up, and our strength exhausted. In great haste we erected the tent and took refuge within it; but our misery now properly began. One scraped the thawing snow from the clothes of another, or turned inside-out the pockets of his own trousers, filled with dissolving snow-balls. At last the cooking-machine was lighted, and we began to steam, and heartily wished that our miseries had arisen from cold instead of moisture. The temperature in the tent rose at the distance of three feet from the flame to 80°F., and twenty minutes after the production of this artificial heat it fell seven degrees below zero. Early in the morning of the 29th of March (Palm Sunday) the wind abated and the temperature rose to 24·5°F., so that it began to rain in the tent as we were preparing our breakfast. During the march of that day we ascended the rocky heights of Koldewey Island, at the foot of which we had put up the tent for the purpose of surveying. These rocks consisted of Dolerite, over-spread with a close network of Lichens (Cetraria nivalis) and in the clefts we foundSilene acaulis.

7. From the summit of this island we suddenly beheld, in the field of view of the telescope of the theodolite, a bear, which had seized Torossy and severely wounded him. But almost immediately again the bear disappeared in the snow, and when we came to the place of his disappearance, we discovered the winter retreat of a family of bears. It was a cavity hollowed out in a mass of snow lying under a rocky wall. The bear had shown herself only once, but resisted all our efforts to seduce her to leave the shelter she had chosen, nor had we any special desire to creep on all fours into the narrow dark habitation. Sumbu only was bold enough to follow her, but he too saw things which led him to return very quickly. From the snow which had been thrown up at the entrance of this hole, we inferred that this had been the work of the bear in her efforts to close the approach to her abode. It was the first time that we came upon a family of bears in their winter quarters, or had the chance of adding anything to our scanty knowledge as to the winter sleep of those animals. Middendorff does not admit that they sleep during the winter;he considers the bear far too lean to be able to do so. According to Dr. Richardson it is only pregnant females who hibernate in a snow-hole, while the males roam over the Arctic seas in search of places free from ice.

THE WINTER HOLE OF A BEAR.

8. As we advanced further, we went round Schönau Island[42]so remarkable for its columnar structure and environed by ice which had been raised up by pressure. In a cleft of its precipitous rocky walls we buried a depôt of provisions and a supply of alcohol for two days, together with some articles of clothing, covering them up with four feet of snow. We could not, however, conceal from ourselves the danger of placing a depôt within sight of a bear’s hole, and greatly deplored that we were not able, like the fox in the fable, to obliterate the marks of our footsteps. Towards evening the temperature fell to -10° F., and the tent was frozen as stiff as a board. On the 30th of March the temperature fell to -22° F., and a strong north wind was blowing as we came out of the tent, and curling billows of snow, reddened by the rising sun, rolled round us, hiding from us at last even the sun himself. A march in the teeth of a wind at so low a temperature is quite useless and only exposes to the great danger of frost-bite. This was now clearly seen when, the tent being taken down as usual immediately after breakfast, the laggards, imperfectly clad,faced the wild weather. One was binding a stocking round his face with his braces, because his frozen fingers would not permit him to button on his nose-band and wind-guard; another had put on reindeer shoes instead of boots after a vain attempt to thaw them; a third had put on the wrong boot, and I myself was obliged to wind a long rope round my body, because I was unable to fasten my coat. Such a state of things is opposed to order and safety, and may degenerate into serious mischief. There was nothing for it therefore but to set up the tent again and to get back into our sleeping-bag. But the damp tent was frozen hard, and we felt much as if we were lying between two plates of cold metal. It would be difficult to say whether we suffered more from cold than from vexation. Zaninovich spread the sail over us, and shovelled down the snow from the walls of the tent;—who could be so serviceable as this comrade of ours, who on every occasion displayed such hardihood against cold? Orel and I made vain attempts to shorten the time by reading a volume of Dessing which we had brought with us; but we soon renounced the effort, finding that we could not fix our attention in such a situation. We had some compensation, however, in the amusement of listening to the Dalmatians learning to speak German with Klotz, who was far from the weakness of uttering a single word in Italian. As usual, when the weather was bad, the dogs gathered close to the wind-sheltered side of our tent. Sumbu forcing himself in among us had to be driven out, for he growled if he had the faintest suspicion that we meant to move or to smoke; but failing to make himself comfortable among the other dogs, he avenged himself by again rushing in among us, shaking the snow from his coat, and forced us to admit him.

LIFE IN THE TENT.

9. On the 31st of March, the weather having cleared, we continued our journey northwards, halting as usual at noon to refresh ourselves with soup. We measured the meridian altitude of the sun with a theodolite, and surveyed and sketched our surroundings. When we came to 80° 16′ N.L. we found a broad barrier of hummocks piled one upon another. This was succeeded by older ice, whose undulating surface was broken by numerous icebergs and high black basaltic cliffs. Here ended the possibility of determining the route to be taken; for although there was an opening between Cape Frankfurt and the Wüllersdorf mountains, we could not enter it, until we ascertained whether it led northwards. In order to settle this point Haller and I left the sledge and made a forced march to Cape Frankfurt, whence we hoped to discover the direction of our course. Meanwhile Orel and the rest of the party dragged the sledge with great exertions between hummocks and icebergs towards the north-east. Cape Frankfurt is a promontory of Hall Island, 2,000 feet high and surrounded with glaciers. The small difference of level in the sea-ice at the base of its cliffs showed that the tide did not rise high. Its glaciers flowed towards Markham Sound and Nordenskjöld fiord. When we arrived at the summit everything lay steeped in the rosy mists of evening. Flocks of birds flew from its massive basaltic crown, and as it was evident that they had not come there to breed, we inferred that open water was not far off.

CAPE FRANKFURT, AUSTRIA SOUND, AND THE WÜLLERSDORF MOUNTAINS.

10. Our attention was directed, however, especially to the configuration of the country, and great was our delight when we beheld beneath us a broad inlet, which promised to be of considerable extent and to run towards the north. This inlet was covered with icebergs and could be traced up to the faint outlines of a distant promontory (Cape Tyrol). It now appeared certain, that we could reach the eighty-first degree of latitude on an ice-covered sea, and the measurement of some angles furnished us with a provisional guidance for penetrating intothese new regions. The coasts of Wilczek Land appeared to run in a northerly direction, and then to trend gradually to the north-east. At a great distance below us we saw a dark point moving over the dimly-seen plain of sea-ice. Its advance was discernible only when for a short time it disappeared behind an iceberg, and again reappeared. It was Orel with the large sledge; but neither the snowy mountains bathed in carmine light, which surrounded our point of view with picturesque effect, nor the crimson veil spread over them, nor the profound solitude of the wastes that lay around us, could so rivet our attention as that little point in which lodged forces apparently so insignificant, but yet made potent by human will. With pain and toil we descended the mountain in our canvas boots between steep precipices of ice, and pressed on for six miles in the rapidly-waning light over hummocky-ice to rejoin our companions, whose position we had marked by the stars, from the elevation we had ascended. We reached our friends before midnight and our news excited great joy.

11. On the 1st of April (the thermometer marking -20°F.) we penetrated by Cape Hansa into the newly-discovered passage, which was covered with heavy ice; I called it Austria Sound. The nearer we approached the coast of Wilczek Land, the more unquestionable did it appear that the Wüllersdorf mountains extended far into the interior; but it would have cost more time than the attempt was worth to ascend them. The latitude taken at noon was 80° 22′. Nothing can be more exciting than the discovery of new countries. The combining faculty never tires in tracing their configuration, and the fancy is restlessly busy in filling up the gaps of what is as yet unseen, and though the next step may destroy its illusions, it is ever prone to indulge in fresh ones. Herein lies the great charm of sledge expeditions, as compared with the tiresome monotony of life on board ship—a charm which is only then diminished when we have to wander for days over wastes of snow, with the coasts at such a distance, that they do not change sufficiently rapidly, or leave scope for indulging in surmises and fancies of what is coming. The discomforts incident to this mode of travelling are in this case doubly felt. The sledge is draggedwith great difficulty in the hours of the early morning, for the hard edges of the snow crystals have not yet felt the smoothing effects of evaporation under the power of the sun. The goal itself appears as if it were never to be reached, because the limited horizon of the travellers constantly retreats. Thirst and languor then set in. The small quantity of water which we were able to prepare during the march had no more effect than a drop on a plate of hot iron. Klotz felt unwell to-day, and cured himself by swallowing his ration of rum at one gulp. Even the dogs seemed languid, and crept along with drooping heads and their tails between their legs.

12. The land on our right was a monotonous waste of ridges and terraces of parallel raised beaches, partially covered with snow. Following its line as we marched onwards, we passed iceberg after iceberg. Towards evening I ascended one of these, and made the joyful discovery that Austria Sound stretched in a northerly direction at least as far as a cape—afterwards called Cape Tyrol. In the midst of my observations Orel called to me from below that a bear was coming near us. We awaited his approach with the greed of cannibals, for his flesh would be priceless while we were making such great exertions and had only the insufficient nourishment of boiled beef. I promised Haller and Klotz the bear-money of 30 gulden, usual in Tyrol, if the bear should be bagged. The animal received three shots at the same moment and at first stood stock still, but then began to drag himself slowly off. We rushed after him, and to save our cartridges struck him with the butts of our rifles, and finished him by thrusting our long knives into his body. We appropriated 50 lbs. of his flesh to our own use, and gave the rest of his carcase to the dogs, and deposited 50 lbs. of boiled beef on the iceberg, close by which we erected our tent.

13. On the 2nd of April (the thermometer marking -11 F.) we again started with renewed vigour, though in the face of a strong north wind. I myself left the sledge in order to examine the raised beach for some distance. It was for the most part bare of snow, and exhibited laminæ of brown-coal sandstone amid the Dolerite. Close beside the scanty remains of some drift-wood, I was surprised to find a circle of largestones resembling those erections which I had seen in East Greenland in deserted Eskimo villages. As, however, there were no other marked traces of former settlements, this circle of stones was no doubt something accidental. The magnitude of Franz-Josef Land seemed to grow before our eyes, as we saw the broad Markham Sound opening up towards the west, and ranges of high mountains stretching away towards Cape Tyrol. The coasts abounded in fiords, and glaciers were everywhere to be seen. Wilczek Land disappeared under ice-streams, and only reappeared again in the rocky heights of Cape Heller and Cape Schmarda, opposite Wiener-neustadt Island. In the evening we reckoned that we had reached latitude 80° 42′.

14. On the 3rd of April (the thermometer standing at -9° F.) we should have reached Cape Tyrol, had not snow-storms from the south kept us in the afternoon in our tent: a delay with which Lukinovich was by no means displeased, for this being Good Friday he had counted on a day of complete rest,—for our friend Lukinovich was prone to turn his eyes to heaven, spoke constantly of the saints, could mention their festivals as they occurred in the calendar; but, alas! was a snow-eater, and could march not a whit better than Falstaff. On the 4th of April the temperature, with constant driving storms of snow from the south, rose from -4° to 23° F.; and the snow accumulated to such an extent even in the tent, that it had to be shovelled out. It was towards the afternoon before we could continue our march, the delay made being not so much on account of the cold, as from dread of the moisture. Our start proved, however, useless, for the snow began to drive so furiously, that, as we dragged, those behind could scarcely see the men in front. We again travelled by the compass and used our sledge-sail; but we constantly deviated from the right course, though we pressed on, passing Cape Tyrol without seeing it, and entered an unknown region in which we were guided by mere chance—expecting every moment to stumble on a fissure in the ice or open water. This day we sustained a painful loss—the loss of my dog Sumbu. For two long years he had been almost our only source of amusement by his cunning and his impudence. He had long been the rival of the frolicsome Torossy, indragging the sledge; and it was often almost touching to see how at evening he would sink down exhausted in the snow, in the very spot where he was unharnessed. It cannot well detract from the merit of such services—and after all they were rendered in the interests of science!—that they were those of an animal and sprang from attachment.[43]To this vigorous lively animal, what more natural than that he should be almost beside himself if in one of these vast solitudes he should get sight of a living creature? So it happened to-day. A gull flew over his head, and Sumbu burst away from the sledge. In hot pursuit of the bird he disappeared from our sight and never returned again. All our shouts were thrown away. Our track was soon covered over by the drifting snow, and there cannot be a doubt that our faithful companion, after wandering about for days, either died of hunger or fell a victim to a bear.

HOW SUMBU WAS LOST.

15. April 5, after a short rest, we again started about midnight in order to economize our time (the thermometer being at 19° F.). The weather had greatly improved. Klotz, who was the first to step out of the tent, startled us by the information that some high land barred our further progress. But when we followed him into the open air, we found that Klotz had looked to the west instead of to the north, and we discovered the true state of things, that Zichy Land ran on our left in a northerly direction, while Wilczek Land trended towards the north-east. We pursued, therefore, our course on the vast icy wastes, over which hung Cape Easter (81° 1′), and Cape Hellwald shining in the sun, and hoisted the flag on the sledge to celebrate our passage of the eighty-first degree of north latitude, and in commemoration of Easter Sunday.

CAPE EASTER AND STERNEK SOUND.

HOW WE RECEIVED BEARS. CAPE TYROL IN THE BACKGROUND.

16. During our march, spying us at a great distance, a bear approached us at a rapid pace, but when he came within forty paces he fell, receiving three bullets in his head. The accompanying illustration shows how we received bears when they attacked us on our journey; it represents also the fine forms of Cape Tyrol in the background. A few hours afterwards, we observed a she-bear about 400 yards from us, apparently diligent in burrowing in the snow; but as soon as she got wind of us she suddenly turned, reared herself on her hind legs, and began to snuff the air. She then came towards us, but as she advanced she rolled herself over with evident pleasure on her back several times, then pushed on with her snout and belly close to the ground, perfectly unconscious of the three rifles which were levelled at her. At fifty paces distance we fired, and brought her down. We immediately examined the place where we had seen her so busy. We did not find poor Sumbu, as we half expected, but a partially-consumed seal, and close to it a hole in the ice, into which the creature no doubt would plunge when danger threatened; but the bear had been sharper and cleverer than the seal, and had probably seized it when asleep on the ice. Bear-flesh now formed our principal food, and the sledge was heavily laden with it. We ate it both raw and cooked, and when the flesh was badly cooked—especially if it were the flesh of an old bear—it was less palatable than when uncooked. It may be tolerable food for sea-gulls, but it is a diet hardly fit even for devils on the fast-days of the infernal regions. Arctic lands certainly do not furnish delicacies to gratify a refined taste; the best things they have to offer are coarse and oily, and if ever they are eaten with relish, it is a relish which comes from hunger alone. The desolate shores of these lands are truly the very home of hunger, and nowhere else are the calculations of travellers so much influenced and determined by thestomach and its needs. Remains or fragments are unknown in Arctic regions. The dead are consumed by the living, and the living find their never-ceasing occupation in the toilsome search for food. In my three Arctic expeditions, I very seldom indeed found the remains of animals, never the remains of a bear or a fox. The man who visits these wastes must do homage to the principle of eating everything, and throwing away nothing. Franklin was unsurpassed in this, but I believe we were little behind him. Franklin and his people found the flesh of a white fox as pleasant to the taste as young geese—a proof how entirely they had forgotten how geese taste. They preferred foxes, too, to lean reindeer; and they considered the flesh of a grey bear exceedingly palatable, though even the Eskimos eat it only in dire necessity. Reindeer marrow, even raw, was to them a great delicacy, and they ate animals in a state of decomposition. Barentz and his crew were very modest in their tastes; they compared whale-flesh to beef, and foxes to rabbits, as articles of diet; bears’ meat they utterly detested. Once only it seems they partook of the liver of a bear, and three of his men became exceedingly ill in consequence, their skin peeling off from head to foot. Kane was prejudiced against bear, notwithstanding the great straits to which he was reduced, and complains of this food as being absolutely uneatable. The testimony of Dunér is more favourable. “If,” says he, “a bear has not been eating walrus or seal in a state of semiputrefaction before he is killed, his flesh, though somewhat coarse, is yet palatable, and not at all prejudicial to health.” Parry thought whale-flesh and walrus-flesh equally distasteful: he makes an exception in favour only of the heart of the walrus; but he speaks of the tenderness and excellence of the flesh of young seals. As for ourselves, we disdained nothing that we could get hold of, after the manner of Sir John Ross, who thought the fox the best of all food, better than the gull (Larus tridactylus).

DINING ON BEARS’ FLESH.

17. The continued moisture of the last few days had completely saturated our canvas boots; and those of several of us were besides nearly worn out, and in the morning when completely frozen, to put the foot into one was as bad as putting it into an ice-hole, so that we were obliged to thawthem over a spirit-flame, and to knock their heels with a hammer continually during the march. Sussich had made himself a pair of new boots out of a cloth jacket. It would, however, be a mistake to think that we should have been any better off with leather boots. In fact, we could not have put them on, and in the increasing cold of the following weeks our feet would certainly have been frost-bitten. Our clothes were completely saturated in like manner, and whenever the temperature fell they became stiff with ice. I suffered the least of any, for my bird-skin garments were the best preservatives against the penetration of moisture.

18. No kind of snow opposes such hindrances to sledge-dragging as the snow with the thermometer not much below freezing-point, for at this temperature it balls. This impediment we now encountered. The air, too, became oppressively heavy; land and sky were suddenly overspread with darkness; and, from behind thunderlike clouds, red rays of the sun fell on the conical mountains of Kane Island. Falls of snow, calms, and violent gusts of wind rapidly succeeded one another, and just before we erected our tent it again became clear. Far to the north we saw two white masses—Becker and Archduke-Rainer Islands, and an extensive inlet—Back Inlet; but only within Austria Sound could we count on pursuing our journey northwards without making any détours. On Easter Monday, April 7th (the thermometer varying between 9° and 19° below zero (C.)), we approached Becker Island; but the atmosphere was on this day so moist and thick, though without mist in the proper sense, that its existence might be asserted or disputed according as the light changed; and it was only when we were not further off than 100 paces that we could be positive of the existence of land, rising gently at an angle of 1° 7′. Over this ice-covered island we now dragged, and, full of expectation, mounted its highest point. To the north lay an indescribable waste, more utterly desolate than anything I had ever seen, even in the Arctic regions, interspersed with snow-covered islands, all, big and little, of the same low, rounded shape. The whole, at a distance, presented the appearance of a chaos of icehills and icebergs scattered over a frozen sea. One thing only in this view gave us much satisfaction. Austria Sound still stretcheduninterruptedly towards the north. Could we have forgotten how theTegetthoffhad drifted towards Franz-Josef Land, that Sound would have seemed to us the true road to the Pole. Nor could we doubt that in the immediate north open water would be found, for in no other way could we interpret the indications we had observed in the course of the last few days—the great moisture and high temperature, the dark colour of the northern sky, the frequent flights of Auks, and Divers, grey and white Gulls, which flew from the north southward, orvice versâ.

19. After crossing Becker Island, we went on again on the frozen sea, which was rough and undulating for some distance. From behind one of the hummocks a bear suddenly emerged, and came towards us without any fear or hesitation, his yellow colour forming a strong contrast with the gleaming hills of ice. When he was thirty paces off we fired; but though severely wounded he managed to get away. On the 7th of April (the thermometer varying between 16° and 25° below zero (C.), and with a light south-west wind), we passed close to Archduke-Rainer Island, a heavy rime frost seriously impeding our progress. We were able, however, to turn to good account the clear sunny weather of this day. We dried our clothes and tent furniture, spreading them out in the sun over the sledge or suspending them to its mast and yard. We had almost reached Cape Beurmann at noon, and having taken our observations, we found our latitude to be 81° 23′. We had consequently gone beyond the latitude reached by Morton; Hayes only having reached a slightly higher latitude than this. About this time of the day the horizon towards the north became exceedingly clear, and the steep rocks of Coburg Island were distinctly visible, and behind them now rose the faint outlines of mountains—Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land.

20. At this latitude it seemed as if Wilczek Land suddenly terminated, but when the sun scattered the driving mist we saw the glittering ranges of its enormous glaciers—the Dove[44]Glaciers—shining down on us. Towards the north-east we could trace land trending to a cape lying in the grey distance—Cape Buda Pesth, as it was afterwards called. The prospectthus opened to us of a vast glacier land, conflicted with the general impression we had formed of the resemblance between the newly-discovered region and Spitzbergen; for glaciers of such extraordinary magnitude presuppose the existence of a country stretching far into the interior. As it appeared to us that Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land and Karl Alexander’s Land formed a continuous whole, we left Austria Sound and diverged into Rawlinson Sound, and directed our course towards Cape Rath. It was my intention, if this headland should be reached, to leave behind the remainder of the party and push on with the dog-sledge and two companions. We could count on finding deep snow-wreaths behind the hummocks, and to dig out a snow-house would have been the labour of an hour for three men. Previous experience had convinced us that such a night encampment is warmer than the shelter which a tent can afford. But though we were filled with zeal to extend our discoveries as much as possible, we now felt that the excessive exertions we had made had reduced our strength. We had slept on an average but five hours a day, and marched the rest of the day, or at any rate had been occupied with all manner of work. Our appetite too had increased with our labours, and the partaking of bears’ flesh began to tell on some of us. The restricted use of bread-stuff was especially felt, and the almost exclusive, use of flesh produced diarrhœa and general debility. Nothing is more prejudicial to those engaged in extended sledge journeys than great exertion with insufficient sleep. The urgent reasons we had for losing no time in order that we might return as soon as possible to the ship, constrained us to depart from the rule of a ten hours’ sleep to a seven hours’ march on sledge journeys. In consequence of our persistent adherence to this principle during our return to Europe after abandoning theTegetthoff, the labours incident to it were far more easily performed. We did not lose but gained strength; and some of us even grew stouter during it.

CUTTING UP THE BEARS.

21. On the 8th of April we continued our journey, making an early start as usual. Our track lay between countless hummocks, some of which were forty feet high, while the depressions between them were filled with deep layers of snow, and as we advanced into Rawlinson Sound, high icebergs toweredover a monotonous chaos of ice-forms. The ice resembled that which surrounded theTegetthoffduring our first winter, and indicated a periodical, perhaps even an annual, breaking up. There was nothing, however, to entitle us to infer that Rawlinson Sound was navigable in summer. Like many of the passages of the northern coast of North America, Austria and Rawlinson Sounds are too narrow for the purposes of navigation. They are, however, well calculated for sledge travelling. For some time we made use of our sledge-sail; but when the wind shifted to E.S.E., it drove the sledge so much from its true course, that we took it down. Our noses had become so susceptible, that we were glad to put on our wind-protectors to save them from frost-bite. Then followed snow-storms, alternating with brilliant sunshine which, however, illuminated, partially only, some reaches of the hummocky ice, while the distant land lay in shadow. It cost us excessive labour to get the sledge on; we had occasionally to dig a lane for it, and we ran some risk of breaking it. Our advance was one continual zig-zag, due to the confused character ofthe ice on which we travelled and the untrustworthiness of the compass in high latitudes. It seemed too, as if the declination of the magnetic needle had considerably diminished since we left the ship. Our labours were diversified by the visit of a bear, who, when we first observed him, was standing on the top of one of the many ice-hummocks about 300 paces distant. He then approached us, as was usually the case, under the wind, and we at once drew up to receive him. He took no notice of the bread we had laid down to gain his attention, but still pressed on till he received three bullets in his head. Notwithstanding this he ran for about seventy yards and then fell. To make sure, another bullet was fired into his body, and thinking him dead, we forthwith began to cut him up; but when his belly was being opened, he raised his head in a fury, seized the butt-end of my rifle with his teeth and tore it from my hand. My companions soon despatched him. The bear was eight feet long, and therefore of unusual size. We might have cut off two or three cwt. of flesh from his carcase, but in consideration of the heavy lading of the sledge, we contented ourselves with appropriating sixty pounds. Both Rawlinson and Austria Sounds were equally rich in fresh traces of bears, which seemed to be those of whole families and not of individual animals.

22. Our latitude from a meridian observation was found to be 81° 38′—and though the sun shining dimly through the clouds might account for an error of two or three minutes, we had certainly passed beyond the latitude 81° 35′ reached by Hayes in Smith’s Sound in 1861.[45]Having no conception at the time that Hall’s American expedition had penetrated, the year before we achieved this result, to 82° 9′ on the land and 82° 22′ at sea, we hoisted our sledge-flag to commemorate our success. The character of the ice now became so wild and confused that we wandered 45° from one point of the compass to the other. We constantly expected to come upon open fissures, and could not conceal from ourselves how easily its loose connection might be broken up by a storm, and our return to the ship exposed to great risks. The transport of our travelling gear became increasingly difficult, and great were our fears lest, through the constant heavy shocks whichthe sledge encountered, the case of spirit should be crushed and destroyed. The difficulties too to be overcome amid the multitude of hummocks were more depressing than the occurrence of snow-storms, inasmuch as their number almost destroyed the possibility of progress; and the monotonous uniformity which tired the eye tended also to depress the spirits.

23. On the 9th of April (the thermometer standing at 10° F., and a light breeze blowing from the east) we continued our work of dragging between the hummocks till noon. We then ascended an iceberg, and discovered that the hummocks of ice in Rawlinson’s Sound appeared to stretch on without end. We therefore altered our course and took a north-westerly direction, in order to come under Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land, whose noble mountain forms and mighty glaciers shone forth in the light of the sun. We expected to find smoother ice on its coast-line; but we were deceived in this expectation, for the character of the ice remained unchanged. We were compelled therefore to cross this Sound in a westerly direction to Hohenlohe Island, and to select the rocky pyramid—visible from a great distance—of Cape Schrötter as the point where our expedition should divide into two parties; the larger party to remain behind, the smaller to penetrate further towards the north over the glaciers of Rudolf’s Land. By noon of this day we reached 81° 37′ N. L. and in the evening arrived at Cape Schrötter. All the labours and efforts of the last few days had consequently been without result.

1. Immediately after reaching Cape Schrötter, the east end of Hohenlohe Island, we ascended the summit of this Dolerite rock, which was quite free from snow, and covered with a sparse vegetation. We were surprised to find here the excrement of a hare. The prospect which lay before us convinced us of the necessity of our proposed temporary separation. The mountains of Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land, separated from us by an arm of the sea covered with level ice, were so high (about 3,000 feet) that we saw at once that we could pass over them only with the small dog-sledge. The walking powers, moreover, of two of my companions had greatly deteriorated, and for them rest was not an indulgence, but a necessity. Austria Sound appeared to stretch still further to the north, but its western coasts turned sharply to the left in the precipitous cliffs of Cape Felder and Cape Böhm. The blue jagged line of mountains, towering above snow-fields lying in the sun, stretched away to the north-west till they were lost in dark streaks on the horizon, which our experience led us to interpret as a water-sky above open spaces of the sea.

2. I was greatly delighted by Orel’s readiness, though he was suffering from inflamed eyes, to take part in the expedition to the extreme north; and it only remained for us to select the fittest among the party and to calm the apprehensions of those who were to remain behind. On our return to the foot of the rocks, where the tent was already pitched, we found the rest of the party sitting close to each other at the rocky wall on which the sun was shining, in orderto warm themselves,—like crickets on the wall of a house. The success of an expedition like that we projected depends chiefly on the mutual good feeling among its members, and he who commands it, besides participating personally in all the labours to be endured, must show himself a sympathetic friend even in cases where strict duty does not enjoin it, so that confidence in him may grow into a kind of belief in his infallibility. There could not be more devoted or enduring men than those who were here lying in the sun, and whom we now joined, in order to decide the question of the hour. I explained to them the plans I meant to follow,—that I should be absent from five to eight days, that if I should not return to them within fifteen days they should march back to the ship with the sledge—sawn through the middle—and the stock of provisions which should be placed at their disposal would suffice for this emergency. I then asked each of them whether he could dismiss fear, and remain behind in this desolation. Sussich answered: “Se uno de lori resta indietro, mi non go paura:” so said the rest. By the expression, however, “uno de lori” they meant Orel or one of the two Tyrolese, and specially with an eye to the bears which might be prowling about. I left it free to Klotz and Haller to decide which of them was the fittest and most serviceable to accompany me: “You,” answered Haller, “you, Klotz, are the better man to drag the sledge and endure fatigue.” Accordingly Sussich and Lukinovich remained under Haller’s command. These three were ordered not to go more than 300 yards from Cape Schrötter, to remain on the defensive if attacked by bears, to spend their time in drying their clothes and repairing their torn boots, and to go about in wooden shoes to save wear and tear. Haller received as Governor of Hohenlohe Island a pocket-compass, a watch, an aneroid barometer, and a thermometer, and to them we left also our little medicine-chest. If Dr. Kepes had once tried to make a doctor of me in one hour, in now repeating the experiment on Haller I confined myself to ten minutes.

3. On the morning of the 10th of April (the thermometer standing at 5° F.) we divided the tent; one half was put on the dog-sledge, the other was pitched, with its open side close under the rock. Before a caravan takes the desert, the camels arewatered, and we too, though in a very different kind of desert, exposed to the constant evil of thirst, would gladly have been treated in like fashion. But we had to content ourselves with a pint of boiling water, served out to each of us every morning, reminding us, indeed, of coffee, for 2 lbs. of it were boiled in 105 gallons of water in the course of thirty days. The provisions were divided, and enough for eight days was dealt out to the party starting to the north, Orel, Zaninovitch, Klotz, myself, and two dogs. The special requirements of our expedition, among which were a rifle and a revolver, raised the weight of our sledge to about 4 cwt., which it was the business of the dogs to draw without any assistance from us, and this they did over the level snow with such zeal, that we had some trouble in keeping up with them.

4. The merits of our dogs I have hitherto left unnoticed, in order emphatically to assert that we owed the passing beyond the eighty-second degree of north latitude not to our own exertions, but to the endurance and courage of these animals. No kind of life among dogs is comparable for hardships with the life of a dog in an Arctic sledge. His tent is scarcely the pretext of a shelter, and his natural coat is generally covered by a thick rime. The snow when it drifts completely covers him, though he constantly but vainly seeks to shake it off. He draws his breath with difficulty, hunger gnaws at his bowels, and his wounded feet colour the snow with blood. Often, too, these poor animals amid the great cold must keep still; then they lift up their paws alternately, to prevent frost-bite. The two dogs, which accompanied us to the extreme North, were the noblest animals ever employed in a sledge expedition, and when I recall the great services they rendered us, both now and afterwards in the return to Europe, their sad end fills me with sincere sorrow. Jubinal and Torossy were dogs of remarkable size and strength, and escaped the epidemic diseases[46]which attacked the dogs of Hayes and Kane; and though it has been thought that thedogs of the Eskimo and of the Siberian people were alone adapted for Arctic expeditions, our experience with our own dogs most of them brought from Vienna, proves that they were not a whit less useful. Our dogs had only one defect: they had not been trained to sledge-drawing from their youth, but had been broken to it only during our expedition, and were therefore not always amenable to discipline. When left to themselves in dragging the sledge they went on, without turning to the right or left, from cape to cape, and if they found themselves on a wide plain of ice, and far from all striking landmarks, they ran either towards the sun or moon, or some remarkable star. It was against the grain with them to have to drag in the teeth of the wind, and if they had to push on amid hummocks of ice, they immediately began to growl. They were fed in the morning, and more particularly in the evening, and they showed a delicacy of taste in discriminating between bear’s flesh and the despised seal’s flesh. While they carefully avoided coming near us before our start, provided they were not very hungry, in order to escape being harnessed, yet when harnessed nothing could exceed their vigour and persistence in dragging.

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