CHAPTER XXIV.

STARTING ON MY FIRST JOURNEY.—OBJECT OF THE JOURNEY.—A MISHAP.—A FRESH START.—THE FIRST CAMP.—HARTSTENE'S CAIRN.—EXPLORING A TRACK.—A NEW STYLE OF SNOW-HUT.—AN UNCOMFORTABLE NIGHT.—LOW TEMPERATURE.—EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE ON THE SNOW.—AMONG THE HUMMOCKS.—SIGHTING HUMBOLDT GLACIER.—THE TRACK IMPRACTICABLE TO THE MAIN PARTY.—VAN RENSSELAER HARBOR.—FATE OF THE ADVANCE.—A DRIVE IN A GALE.

On the 16th of March I found myself able for the first time to get around Sunrise Point. Except during a brief interval, the temperature had now fallen lower than at any previous period of the winter; and, the air having been quite calm for two days, the ice had formed over the outer bay. This long desired event was hailed with satisfaction, and I determined to start north at once.

My preparations occupied but a few hours, as every thing had been ready for weeks past. The charge of one of the sledges was given to Jensen, the other to Kalutunah, the former having nine and the latter six dogs. One of the dogs had died and another had been crippled in a fight, thus leaving me only fifteen for service.

My object in this preliminary journey was chiefly to explore the track, and determine whether it were best to adhere to the Greenland coast, following up the route of Dr. Kane, or to strike directly across the Sound from above Cape Hatherton, in the endeavor to reach, on Grinnell Land, the point of departurefor which I had striven, without success, the previous autumn. It was evident that every thing depended upon being now able to make good what I had lost by that failure, through a chain of circumstances which I have no need to repeat, as the reader will recall the struggle which resulted in the crippling of my vessel, and which had nearly caused its total wreck among the ice-fields in the mouth of the Sound. If the state of the ice should prove favorable to a speedy crossing of the Sound to Grinnell Land, or even to securing, without much delay, a convenient point of departure on the Greenland side beyond Humboldt Glacier, I had little doubt as to the successful termination of my summer labors.

A MISHAP.

Upon reaching Sunrise Point we found the ice to be very rough and insecure, and the tide of the previous night had opened a wide crack directly off the point, which it was necessary for us to cross. This crack had been closed over but a few hours, and the dogs hesitated a moment at its margin; but Jensen's whip reassured them, and they plunged ahead. The ice bent under their weight, and, as if by a mutual understanding, the team scattered, but not in time to save themselves, for down they all sank, higgledy-piggledy, into the sea, dragging the sledge after them. Being seated on the back part of it, I had time to roll myself off, but Jensen was not so fortunate, and dogs, sledge, driver and all were floundering together in a confused tangle among the broken ice. Kalutunah, who was a few paces in the rear, coming up, we extricated them from their cold bath. Jensen was pretty well soaked, and his boots were filled with water. Being only five miles from the schooner, I thought it safest to drive back as rapidly as possible rather thanconstruct a snow-hut to shelter my unlucky driver from the cold wind which was beginning to blow. Besides, our buffalo-skins were as wet as they could be, and we should have precious little comfort on our journey if we did not return and exchange them for dry ones. The dogs, too, ran great risk of injury by being allowed to rest in their wet coats in so low a temperature. The whip was not spared, and the vessel was reached without serious consequences either to Jensen or the team. An hour or so sufficed for us to refit, when we started again; and being this time more cautious, we got around the point without further trouble.

The ice was found to be smooth and the traveling good as we moved up the coast; and, not being very heavily laden, we got on at a good pace. The snow had been packed very hard by the winds, and wherever there had been hummocks it had collected between them, so that, although the surface was somewhat rolling and uneven, yet it was as firm as a country road. Darkness coming on, (we had not yet reached the constant sunlight of summer,) we hauled in under Cape Hatherton and made our first camp.

THE FIRST CAMP.

It was a real Arctic camp;—picketing the dogs and burrowing in a snow-bank are very simple operations, and require but little time. Jensen made the burrow, and Kalutunah looked after the animals; and when all was ready we crawled in and tried our best to be comfortable and to sleep; but the recollection of the ship's bunk was too recent to render either practicable, except to Kalutunah, who did not seem to mind any thing, and snored all through the night in a most awful manner. The outside temperature was 40° below zero.

HARTSTENE'S CAIRN.

I was not sorry when we got under way again next morning, and we were soon warmed up with the exercise. The same condition of ice continuing after passing Cape Hatherton, we quickly reached the north horn of Fog Inlet. Here, as we approached the point, I discovered a cairn perched upon a conspicuous spot, and, not having remembered it as the work of any of Dr. Kane's parties, I halted the sledges and went ashore to inspect it. It proved to have been built by Captain Hartstene, while searching for Dr. Kane, as shown by a record found in a glass vial at its base. The record was as follows:—

"The U. S. SteamerArctictouched here and examined thoroughly for traces of Dr. Kane and his associates, without finding any thing more than a vial, with a small piece of cartridge-paper with the letters 'O. K. Aug. 1853,' some matches, and a ship's rifle-ball. We go from this unknown point to Cape Hatherton for a search."H. J. Hartstene,Lieut. Comdg. Arctic Expedition."8 P. M. August 16th, 1855."P. S. Should the U. S. barkReleasefind this, she will understand that we are bound for a search at Cape Hatherton."H. J. H."

"H. J. Hartstene,Lieut. Comdg. Arctic Expedition.

"8 P. M. August 16th, 1855.

"P. S. Should the U. S. barkReleasefind this, she will understand that we are bound for a search at Cape Hatherton.

"H. J. H."

I was much gratified with this discovery, for it brought to my mind the recollection of the protecting care of our government, and a gallant effort to rescue from the jaws of the Arctic ice a very forlorn party of men. I was only sorry that the author of this hastily written evidence of his spirited search had not reached Cape Hatherton some time earlier, for then we should have been saved many a hard and weary pull. The locality will hereafter be known asCairn Point.

Climbing to an elevation, I had a good view of the sea over a radius of several miles. The prospectwas not encouraging. In every direction, except immediately down the coast toward Cape Hatherton, the ice was very rough, being jammed against the shore and piled up over the sea in great ridges, which looked rather unpromising for sledges.

The view decided my course of action. Cairn Point would be my starting-place if I crossed the Sound, and a most convenient position for a depot of supplies in the event of being obliged to hold on up the Greenland coast. Accordingly, I took from the sledges all of the provisions except what was necessary for a six days' consumption, and discovering a suitable cleft in a rock, deposited it therein, covering it over with heavy stones, to protect it from the bears, intending to proceed up the coast for a general inspection of the condition of the ice on the Sound.

These various operations consumed the day; so we fed the dogs and dug into another snow-bank, and got through another night after the fashion of Arctic travelers, which is not much of a fashion to boast of. We slept and did not freeze, and more than this we did not expect.

EXPLORING A TRACK.

The next day's journey was made with light sledges, but it was much more tedious than the two days preceding; for the track was rough, and during the greater part of the time it was as much as the dogs could do to get through the hummocked ice with nothing on the sledge but our little food and sleeping gear. As for riding, that was entirely out of the question. After nine hours of this sort of work, during which we made, lightened as we were, not over twenty miles, we were well satisfied to draw up to the first convenient snow-bank for another nightly burrow.

A NEW STYLE OF SNOW-HUT.

Being naturally inclined to innovation, I had busiedmy mind all through the day, as I tumbled among the ice and the drifts, in devising some better plan of hut than the cavern arrangement of the nomadic Kalutunah. The snow-bank which I selected had a square side about five feet high. Starting on the top of this, we dug a pit about six feet long, four and a half wide, and four deep, leaving between the pit and the square side of the bank a wall about two feet thick. Over the top of this pit we placed one of the sledges, over the sledge the canvas apron used, while traveling, to inclose the cargo, and over that again we shoveled loose snow to the depth of some three feet. Then we dug a hole into this inclosure through the thin wall, pushed in our buffalo-skin bedding, and all articles penetrable by a dog's tooth and not inclosed in tin cases, (for the dogs will eat any thing, their own harness included,) then a few blocks of hard snow, and finally we crawled in ourselves. The blocks of snow were jammed into the entrance, and we were housed for the night.

Being bound on a short journey, I thought that I could afford a little extra weight, and carried alcohol for fuel, as this is the only fuel that can be used in the close atmosphere of a snow-hut. A ghastly blue blaze was soon flickering in our faces, and in our single tin-kettle some snow was being converted into water, and then the water began to hum, and then after a long while it boiled, (it is no easy matter to boil water in such temperature with a small lamp,) and we were refreshed with a good strong pint pot of tea; then the tea-leaves were tossed into one corner, some more snow was put in the tea-kettle and melted, and out of desiccated beef and desiccated potatoes we make a substantial hash; and when this was disposed of we litour pipes, rolled up in our buffaloes, and did the best we could for the balance of the night.

COLD LODGINGS.

My invention did not, however, turn out so satisfactory as was expected. The hut, if more commodious, and admitting of a little movement without knocking down the loose snow all over us, was much colder than either of our dens of the Kalutunah plan, the temperature in each of which stood about zero through the night, elevated to that degree by the heat radiated from our own persons, and from the lamp which cooked the supper. But this pit under the sledge could not be warmed above 20° below zero. No amount of coaxing could induce the thermometer to rise.

Notwithstanding all this I still adhered to my theory about snow-huts, and I very unjustly threw the blame on Jensen for carelessness in the construction; so I sent him out to pile on more snow. This did not mend matters in the least, but rather made them worse; for, through the now open door-way, what little warmth we had managed to get up made its escape; and when Jensen came back and we shut ourselves in again, the temperature was -35°, and never afterwards reached higher than -30°. Even Kalutunah was troubled to sleep, and, as he rubbed his eyes and pounded his feet together to keep them from freezing, he made a grimace which told more plainly than words in what low estimation he held the Nalegaksoak's talents for making snow-huts.

LOW TEMPERATURE.

The cause of all this trouble was, however, explained next morning. The hut was well enough, and I stuck ever afterward to the plan, and even Kalutunah was compelled to own that it was the correct thing. It was perfectly tight. The thermometertold the story. As it hung against the snow wall I called Jensen's attention to it. The top of the delicate red streak of alcohol stood at 31° below zero.

We crawled out in the open air at last, to try the sunshine. "I will give you the best buffalo-skin in the ship, Jensen, if the air outside is not warmer than in that den which you have left so full of holes." And it really seemed so. Human eye never lit upon a more pure and glowing morning. The sunlight was sparkling all over the landscape and the great world of whiteness; and the frozen plain, the hummocks, the icebergs, and the tall mountains, made a picture inviting to the eye. Not a breath of air was stirring. Jensen gave in without a murmur. "Well, the hut must have been full of holes, after all; but I'll fix it next time."

I brought out the thermometer and set it up in the shadow of an iceberg near by. I really expected to see it rise; but no, down sank the little red column, down, down, almost to the very bulb, and it never stopped until it had touched 68½° below zero,—100½° below the freezing point of water.[7]

[7]It is worthy of observation that the lowest temperature recorded at Port Foulke, during my absence, was 27° below zero.

I do not recall but two instances of equally low temperature having been previously recorded, one of which, by Niveroff, at Yakoutsk, in Siberia, was -72° of the Fahrenheit scale. I am not, however, aware that any traveler has ever noted so low a temperature while in the field.

It struck me as a singular circumstance that this great depression of temperature was not perceptible to the senses, which utterly failed to give us even so much as a hint that here in this blazing sunlight wewere experiencing about the coldest temperature ever recorded. But this would have held good only in the profound calm with which we were favored. At such low temperature the least wind is painful and even dangerous, especially if the traveler is compelled to face it. It is also a singular circumstance that, while the sun's rays, penetrating the atmosphere, seem to impart to it so little warmth, they are powerful enough to blister the skin, so that in truth the opposite conditions of heat—positive and negative—are operating upon the unfortunate face at one and the same time.

The effect of these low temperatures upon the snow is very striking. It becomes hardened to such a degree that it almost equals sand in grittiness, and the friction to the sledge-runner is increased accordingly. The same circumstance was noted by Baron Wrangel, but it is not new to the Esquimaux. The sledge runs most glibly when the snow is slightly wet. To obviate in some measure the difficulty thus occasioned, the native covers the sole of his runner with moisture. Dissolving in his mouth a piece of snow, he pours it out into his hand and coats with it the polished ivory sole, and in an instant he has formed a thin film of ice to meet the hardened crystals. Kalutunah stopped frequently for this purpose; and, upon trying the experiment with my own sledge, I found it to work admirably, and to produce a very perceptible difference in the draft.

It would be needless for me to give from day to day the details of this journey. As I have said before, it was merely experimental, and it was continued until I had satisfied myself fully that the route northward by the Greenland coast was wholly impracticable.The condition of the ice was very different from what it was in 1853-54. Then the coast ice was mainly smooth, and the hummocks were not met until we had gone from ten to twenty miles from the shore. Now there was no such belt. The winter had set in while the ice was crowding upon the land, and the pressure had been tremendous. Vast masses were piled up along the track, and the whole sea was but one confused jumble of ice-fragments, forced up by the pressure to an enormous height, and frozen together in that position. The whole scene was the Rocky Mountains on a small scale; peak after peak, ridge after ridge, spur after spur, separated by deep valleys, into which we descended over a rough declivity, and then again ascended on the other side, to cross an elevated crest and repeat the operation. The traveling was very laborious. It was but an endless clambering over ice-masses of every form and size.

KALUTUNAH PUZZLED.

Kalutunah was much puzzled to understand my object. He had never heard of a journey into that region except to catch bears, and then only in great emergencies; and when bear-track after bear-track was crossed without our giving chase, he became even more and more concerned. He had a double motive,—to have the sport and to see the effect of our rifles; but none of the tracks were fresh, and the chase would have been too long to agree with my purposes. At length, however, we came to a trail evidently not an hour old, and which we might have pursued to a successful issue, for the tracks were made by a mother and a small cub. Kalutunah halted his team, and was loud in his pleadings for leave to make a dash. He argued for the sport, for the skin which would makethe Nalegaksoak such a fine coat, for his wife and children, who had not tasted bear-meat for ever so long a time, and finally for his dogs. "See how unhappy they are," said he, pointing to his tired team, which seemed to possess little appreciation of the eloquence that was being wasted upon them, for they had all fallen down in their tracks as soon as we had halted the sledges. Four days of hauling through drifts and hummocks had made them care little for a bear-hunt.

SIGHTING HUMBOLDT GLACIER.

Despite the difficulties of the traveling, three days more brought me within view of the great Humboldt Glacier, but the ice was becoming worse and worse, the icebergs were multiplying, my dogs were being worn out to no purpose; and much as I should have liked to continue the journey, there was no object to be gained by doing so. The ground had been covered by Dr. Kane's parties, and there was nothing to be learned further than I had experienced already, namely, that, in no event, could I get my boat to the polar sea in this direction. Whether I could do any better by the passage across the Sound to Grinnell Land remained to be seen. In any case, this last was clearly my only route.

The Humboldt Glacier was visible from the top of an iceberg. It revealed itself in a long line of bluish whiteness. Cape Agassiz, the last known point of the Greenland coast, bounded it on the right, and to the left it melted away in the remote distance. The line of its trend appeared to me to be more to the eastward than given in the original survey of Mr. Bonnsall, of Dr. Kane's expedition; and, although of little practical importance, yet this circumstance, coupled with observations hereafter to be recorded, have caused meto deviate somewhat, in the small chart which accompanies this volume, from the chart of Dr. Kane.

FATE OF THE "ADVANCE."

The coast along which I had been traveling was a succession of well-remembered landmarks. The tall sandstone cliffs were as familiar as the rows of lofty warehouses and stores on Broadway. Both up and down the coast I had gone so often from Van Rensselaer Harbor that I knew every point of land, and gorge, and ravine as if I had seen them but yesterday. But when I got down into the harbor itself how changed was every thing! Instead of the broad, smooth ice over which I had so often strolled, there was but a uniform wilderness of hummocks. In the place where theAdvanceonce lay, the ice was piled up nearly as high as were her mast-heads. Fern Rock was almost overridden by the frightful avalanche which had torn down into the harbor from the north, and the locality of the store-house on Butler Island was almost buried out of sight. No vestige of theAdvanceremained, except a small bit of a deck-plank which I picked up near the site of the old Observatory. The fate of the vessel is of course a matter only of conjecture. When the ice broke up—it may have been the year we left her or years afterward—she was probably carried out to sea and ultimately crushed and sunk. From the Esquimaux I obtained many contradictory statements. Indeed, with the best intentions in the world, these Esquimaux have great trouble in telling a straight story. Even Kalutunah is not to be depended upon if there is the ghost of a chance for invention. He had been to the vessel, but at one time it was one year and then again it was another; he had carried off much wood, as many other Esquimaux had done. Another Esquimauhad seen a vessel drifting about in the North Water among the ice, and finally it was sunk in the mouth of Wolstenholme Sound. This was four summers ago. Another had seen the same vessel, but the event had happened only two years before; while still another had accidentally set fire to the brig and burned her up where she lay in Van Rensselaer Harbor. No two of them gave the same account. Indeed, one of them asserted quite positively that the vessel had drifted down into the bay below, was there frozen up the next winter, and he had there boarded her when on a bear-hunt. Kalutunah had nothing positive to say on the subject, but he rather inclined to the story of the burning.

Every object around me was filled with old associations, some pleasant and some painful. I visited the graves of Baker and the jovial cook, Pierre, and looked for the pyramid which Dr. Kane mentions as "our beacon and their tomb-stone," but it was scattered over the rocks, and the conspicuous cross which had been painted on its southern face was only here and there shown by a stone with a white patch upon it.

A DRIVE IN A GALE.

On our homeward journey we camped again at Cairn Point, and made there a long halt, as I desired to get another view, from a loftier position than before. Jensen was fortunate enough to shoot a deer, and our weary and battered dogs were refreshed with it. Thence to the schooner was one of the wildest rides that I remember ever to have made. A terrible gale of wind set upon us, and, with the thermometer at -52°, it carried a sting with it. The drifting snow was battering us at a furious rate; but the dogs, with their heads turned homeward, did their best, and the thirty miles were made in three and a half hours.

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