CHAPTER XI.MANVERSUSMOSQUITOES.
Onthe morning after we had anchored in Panther Bay I went ashore to stake off a base-line, preliminary to a survey of the glacier and surrounding region, in which operation I was kindly assisted by two of my shipmates and Peter Motzfeldt. We had a clear level space of half a mile for our work; but the operation was attended with some difficulty on account of the willow and birch bushes, which were about four feet high—too high to clamber through readily, and too thick to allow of crawling. But this was not the worst. When the sun was fairly up we were sweltering in heat, and the mosquitoes, coming out in swarms, excelled any thing I have ever seen. We persevered, however, and reached the glacier, close beside which we put up our last stake and fixed our last station. To observe with the instrument was, however, not possible. The eye was blinded by mosquitoes, the lenses were covered with them; the air was positively thick with them. They were in the mouth, they were in the nostrils, they were down the neck, they were everywhere, inside and outside the body. We breathed mosquitoes into the lungs and took them into the stomach. It was not that a swarm rose here and there from the marshy places or from among the bushes, but they hovered over the plain in a misty cloud.
I tried to return upon my track and take some sights, but the thing was impossible. Human nature could bear it no longer. I turned back, and, joining my comrades,together we made a break for the glacier, and, clambering up its sloping side, we found a convenient perch, and from our cool retreat looked down upon the scene of our recent battle, and, in peace, soothed our wounds. Our enemies did not dare venture on the ice, and we had got the best of them at last.
And we had besides a very convenient situation for observing the movements of our friends, the artists, who were ashore photographing and sketching the glacier from every available point. They had their heads covered with mosquito nettings at first; but that did not appear to make any difference. The mosquitoes got through and under them, in one way or another, and the nettings were torn off. Then they flirted them about their heads, and for an instant cleared a breathing space, but as soon as the work was resumed, back they came. The oil sketches of the artists became like geological formations which represent innumerable trilobites imbedded in the strata. Blob was so confused with his incessant efforts to keep his eyes cleared out, that he actually could not tell sky from water, nor ice from rock, when he came to expose his sketches in the cabin.
But the photographers had the worst of it; the “colonel” (who was first operator) especially, for he had to focus his instrument, which proceeding required time and care; and the agony of that interval of enforced quiet was most intense, if we might judge from the fierce pawing, and stamping, and running to and fro that followed, all of which would have been very amusing, had we not known by experience that it was very distressing and very painful. Then the insects got into the instrument and ruined the plates, which was a still further aggravation. The “major,” who was second operator, could do nothing satisfactorily in “developing,” for they filled his tent in placeof air. Like ourselves, they were all finally forced to own defeat, and, darting for our perch upon the ice, escaped the torture. From this safe retreat we managed to raise signals of distress, and a boat coming to the shore, we made a bold dash for the beach, and, getting on board, were at last in safety, for they did not venture so far out to sea. Our faces were swollen, like a prize-fighter’s fresh from battle.
Here, so close to such a great body of ice, we thought it strange, at first, to find the temperature so high; but, in that locality, to be attacked by mosquitoes surprised as much as it disgusted us. They were even much worse than at the ruins in Ericsfiord, where there was no ice at all.
Late in the day, when the sun was getting low, and the heat was less, the work was resumed under better auspices, and in the morning the labor was finished. I had in my port-folio as complete a map as was needful for my purposes, excepting some sights that I wished from the summit of the glacier, and these we proposed to obtain immediately.
While we were fighting the mosquitoes several icebergs broke away from the glacier with a very grand effect; but we were too much distressed to enjoy the scene fully, as we had been before too much alarmed. So, after all, although we had very lively impressions of the commotion caused by the birth of an iceberg, there was always some disturbing element to make the scene something less than perfect. However, after our ignominious retreat from fighting the mosquitoes, when, from our new anchorage, we could watch the glacier with perfect security, we had the good-fortune to see a berg somewhat larger than the first, broken off in the midst of much the same grand disturbance of the sea. Having no occasion now to look toour safety, we watched the crash, and listened to the loud reports with the eagerness of fascination. We saw the waves rolling away to the shore and sweeping over the ice that lay scattered upon the fiord; we observed the newly-liberated iceberg wallowing in the sea, and admired it as it floated off, slowly gathering to itself a white cloak, as if its tints were too delicate to bear the light of day.