CHAPTER V.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 becomesthe 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.Illustrated capital letterON 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 andcachedour 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 depositthe 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 separatedfrom 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 placefrom 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.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 ofmer 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.Plate V.—WINTER QUARTERSOUTSIDE, FROM THE FLOES ASTERN OF H.M.S. “ALERT,”December, 1876.—p.37.Decorative breakDrop Cap dDURING 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 curiouslyretentive 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 oursavans; 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.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 wasa 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.EFFECT OF EXTREME COLD ON A CANDLE.
CHAPTER V.
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 becomesthe 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.
Illustrated capital letter
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 andcachedour 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 depositthe 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 separatedfrom 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 placefrom 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.
INSIDE THE UNIFILER HOUSE.
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 ofmer 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.
Plate V.—WINTER QUARTERSOUTSIDE, FROM THE FLOES ASTERN OF H.M.S. “ALERT,”December, 1876.—p.37.
Plate V.—WINTER QUARTERSOUTSIDE, FROM THE FLOES ASTERN OF H.M.S. “ALERT,”December, 1876.—p.37.
Decorative break
Drop Cap dDURING 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.
Drop Cap d
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 curiouslyretentive 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 oursavans; 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.
BUILDING SNOW-HOUSES.
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 wasa 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.
EFFECT OF EXTREME COLD ON A CANDLE.
EFFECT OF EXTREME COLD ON A CANDLE.