OUR FIRST WALK OUT—THE DEPÔT PARTY.

In the first portions of our journey, we found a narrow but obstructed passage between the ice-belt and the outside pack. It was but a few yards in width, and the young ice upon it was nearly thick enough to bear our weight. By breaking it up we were able with effort to make about seven miles a day.

After such work,—wet, cold, and hungry,—the night’s rest was very welcome. A couple of stanchions were rigged fore and aft, a sail tightly spread over the canvas cover of our boat, the cooking-lamp lit, and the buffalo-robes spread out. Dry socks replaced the wet, hot tea and pemmican followed, and very soon we forgot the discomforts of the day,—the smokers musing over their pipes, and the sleepers snoring in dreamless forgetfulness.

We had been out something less than twenty-four hours when we came to the end of our boating. In front and on one side was the pack, and on the other a wall some ten feet above our heads, the impracticable ice-belt. By waiting for high tide, and taking advantage of a chasm which a water-stream had worn in the ice, we managed to haul up our boat on its surface; but it was apparent that we must leave her there. She was stowed away snugly under the shelter of a large hummock;[K] and we pushed forward in our sledge, laden with a few articles of absolute necessity.

We had to pass our sledge carefully down large gorges in our path, winding occasionally and generally steep-sided, and bear it upon our shoulders, wading, of course, through water of an extremely low temperature. Our night halts were upon knolls of snow under the rocks. At one of these the tide overflowed our tent, and forced us to save our buffalo sleeping-gear by holding it up until the water subsided. This exercise, as it turned out, was more of a trial to our patience than to our health. The circulation was assisted perhaps by a perception of the ludicrous. Eight Yankee Caryatides, up to their knees in water, and an entablature sustaining such of their household gods as could not bear immersion!

On the 1st of September, still following the ice-belt, we found that we were entering the recesses of another bay but little smaller than that in which we had left our brig.

After an absence of five days, during which we made many scientific observations of great value, we found that we were but forty miles from the brig. Besides our small daily progress, we had lost much by the tortuous windings of the coast. The ice outside did not invite a change of plan in that direction; but I determined to leave the sledge and proceed overland on foot. With the exception of our instruments, we carried no weight but pemmican and one buffalo-robe. The weather, as yet not far below the freezing-point, did not make a tent essential to the bivouac; and, with this light equipment, we could travel readily two miles to one with our entire outfit. On the 4th of September we made twenty-four miles with comparative ease, and were refreshed by a comfortable sleep after the toils of the day.

The only drawback to this new method of advance was the inability to carry a sufficient quantity of food. Each man at starting had a fixed allowance of pemmican, which, with his other load, made an average weight of thirty live pounds. It proved excessive; and we found—although we had good walkers in our party—that a very few pounds overweight broke us down.

Our progress on the 5th was arrested by another bay, much larger than any we had seen since entering Smith’s Straits. It was a noble sheet of water, perfectly open, and thus in strange contrast to the ice outside. The cause of this, at the time inexplicable phenomenon, was found in a roaring and tumultuous river, which, issuing from a fiord at the inner sweep of the bay, rolled with the violence of a snow-torrent over a broken bed of rocks. This river, the largest probably yet known in North Greenland, was about three-quarters of a mile wide at its mouth, and admitted the tides for about three miles, when its bed rapidly ascended, and could be traced by the configuration of the hills as far as a large inner fiord. I called it Mary Minturn River, after the sister of Mrs Henry Grinnell. Its course was afterwards pursued to an interior glacier, from the base of which it was found to issue in numerous streams, that united into a single trunk about forty miles above its mouth. By the banks of this stream we encamped, lulled by the unusual music of running waters.

We forded our way across this river in the morning; carrying our pemmican as well as we could out of water, but submitting ourselves to a succession of plunge baths as often as we trusted our weight on the ice-capped stones above the surface. The average depth was not over our hips; but the crossing cost us so much labour, that we were willing to halt half a day to rest.

Leaving four of my party to recruit at this station, I started the next morning, with three volunteers, to cross the ice to the north-eastern headland, and thus save the almost impossible circuit by the shores of the bay.

We reached the headland after sixteen miles of walk, and found the ice-foot in good condition, evidently better fitted for sledge-travel than it was to the south. This point I named Cape William Makepeace Thackeray.

I now determined to seek some high headland beyond the cape, and make it my final point of reconnaissance.

I anxiously looked for, but could see no place combining so many of the requisites of a good winter harbour as the bay in which we left the Advance. Near its south-western corner the wide streams and the water-courses on the shore promised the earliest chances of liberation in the coming summer. It was secure against the moving ice: lofty headlands walled it in beautifully to seaward, enclosing an anchorage with a moderate depth of water; yet it open to the meridian sunlight, and guarded from winds, eddies, and drift. The space enclosed was only occupied by a few rocky islets and our brig. We soon came in sight of her on our return march, as she lay at anchor in its southern sweep, with her masts cutting sharply against the white glacier; and, hurrying on through a gale, we were taken on board without accident.

My comrades gathered anxiously around me, waiting for the news. I told them in a few words of the results of our journey, and why I had determined upon remaining and gave at once the order to warp in between the islands. We found seven fathom soundings and a perfect shelter from outside ice; and thus laid our little brig in the harbour, which we were fated never to leave together,—a long resting place to her indeed, for the same ice is around her still.

The winter was now approaching rapidly. The thermometer had fallen by the 10th of September to 14°, and the young ice had cemented the floes so that we could walk and sledge round the brig. About sixty paces north of us an iceberg had been caught, and was frozen in; it was our neighbour while we remained in harbour. The rocky islets around us were fringed with hummocks; and, as the tide fell, their sides were coated with opaque crystals of bright white. The birds had gone.

“September 10.—We have plenty of responsible work before us. The long night ‘when no man can work’ is close at hand: in another month we shall lose the sun.

“First and foremost, we have to unstow the hold and deposit its contents in the storehouse on the shore. Brooks and a party are now briskly engaged in this double labour, running loaded boats along a canal that has to be recut every morning.

“Next comes the catering for winter diet. We have little or no game as yet in Smith’s Sound; and, though the traces of deer that we have observed may be followed by the animals themselves, I cannot calculate upon them as a resource. Steaks of salt junk, artistically cut, are strung on lines and soaked in festoons under the ice. The salmon-trout and salt cod-fish which we bought at Fiskernaes are placed in barrels, perforated to permit a constant circulation of fresh water through them. Our pickled cabbage is similarly treated, after a little potash has been used to neutralize the acid. All these are submitted to twelve hours of alternate soaking and freezing, the crust of ice being removed from them before each immersion. This is the steward’s province, and a most important one it is.

“Every one else is well employed,—M’Gary arranging and Bonsall making the inventory of our stores; Ohlsen and Petersen building our deck-house; while I am devising the plan of an architectural interior, which is to combine, of course, the utmost ventilation, room, dryness, warmth, general accommodation, comfort,—in a word, all the appliances of health.

“We have made a comfortable dog-house on the island; but they cannot be persuaded to sleep away from the vessel. They prefer the bare snow, where they can couch within the sound of our voices, to a warm kennel upon the rocks.

“September 11.—To-day came to us the first quiet Sunday of harbour life. We changed our log registration from sea-time to the familiar home series that begins at midnight. It is not only that the season has given us once more a local habitation; but there is something in the return of varying day and night that makes it grateful to reinstate this domestic observance. The long staring day, which has clung to us for more than two months, to the exclusion of the stars, has begun to intermit its brightness.

“We had our accustomed morning and evening prayers; and the day went by, full of sober thought, and, I trust, wise resolve.

“September 12.—Still going on with Saturday’s operations, amid the thousand discomforts of house-cleaning and moving combined. I escaped them for an hour this morning, to fix with Mr Sontag upon a site for our observatory; and the men are already at work hauling the stone for it over the ice on sledges. It is to occupy a rocky islet, about a hundred yards off, that I have named after a little spot that I long to see again, ‘Fern Rock.’ This is to be for me the centre of familiar localities. As the classic Mivins breakfasted lightly on a cigar, and took it out in sleep, so I have dined on salt pork and made my dessert of dreams.

“September 13.—Besides preparing our winter quarters, I am engaged in the preliminary arrangements for my provision-depÔts along the Greenland, coast. I purpose arranging three of them at intervals,—pushing them as far forward as I can,—to contain in all some twelve hundred pounds of provision, of which eight hundred will be pemmican.”

My plans of future search were directly dependent upon the success of these operations of the autumn. With a chain of provision-depÔts along the coast of Greenland, I could readily extend my travel by dogs. These noble animals formed the basis of my future plans: the only drawback to their efficiency as a means of travel was their inability to carry the heavy loads of provender essential for their support. A badly-fed or heavily-loaded dog is useless for a long journey; but with relays of provision, I could start empty, and fill up at our final station.

My dogs were both Esquimaux and Newfoundlanders. Of these last I had ten: they were to be carefully broken, to travel by voice without the whip, and were expected to be very useful for heavy draught, as their tractability would allow the driver to regulate their pace. I was already training them in a light sledge to drive, unlike the Esquimaux, two abreast, with a regular harness, a breast-collar of flat leather, and a pair of traces. Six of them made a powerful travelling-team; and four could carry me and my instruments, for short journeys around the brig, with great ease.

The sledge I used for them was built, with the care of cabinet-work, of American hickory, thoroughly seasoned. The runners were shod with annealed steel, and fastened by copper rivets, which could be renewed at pleasure. Except this, no metal entered into its construction. All its parts were held together by seal-skin lashings, so that it yielded to inequalities of surface and to sudden shock. The three paramount considerations of lightness, strength, and diminished friction, were well combined in it. This beautiful, and, as we afterwards found, efficient and endurable sledge was named the Little Willie.

The Esquimaux dogs were reserved for the great tug of the actual journeys of search. They were now in the semi-savage condition which marks their close approach to the wolf; and, according to Mr Petersen, under whose care they were placed, were totally useless for journeys, over such ice as was now before us. A hard experience had not then opened my eyes to the inestimable value of these dogs: I had yet to learn their power and speed, their patient, enduring fortitude, their sagacity in tracking these icy morasses, among which they had been born and bred.

The men appointed to establish the depÔt were furnished with a sledge. Its model—which had been previously tested by the adventurous journeys of M’Clintock in Lancaster Sound—was to lessen the height and somewhat increase the breadth of the runner; both of which, I think, were improvements, giving increased strength. I named her the Faith. Her length was thirteen feet, and breadth four. She could readily carry fourteen hundred pounds of mixed stores.

This noble old sledge, which is now endeared to me by every pleasant association, bore the brunt of the heaviest parties, and came back, after the descent of the coast, comparatively sound. The men were attached in her in such a way as to make the line of draught or traction as near as possible in the axis of the weight. Each man had his own shoulder-belt, or “rue-raddy,” as we used to call it, and his own track line, which, for want of horse hair, was made of Manilla rope; it traversed freely by a ring on a loop or bridle, that extended from runner to runner In front of the sledge.

The cargo for this journey, without including the provisions of the party, was almost exclusively pemmican. Some of this was put up in cylinders of tinned iron with conical terminations, so as to resist the assaults of the white bear; but the larger quantity was in strong wooden cases or kegs, well hooped with iron, holding about seventy pounds each. Surmounting this load was a light India-rubber boat, made quite portable by a frame of basket-willow, which I hoped to launch on reaching the open water.

The personal equipment of the men was a buffalo-robe for the party to lie upon, and a bag of Mackinaw blanket for each man to crawl into at night. India-rubber cloth was to be the protection from the snow beneath. The tent was of canvas, made after the plan of our English predecessors. We afterward learned to modify and reduce our travelling gear, and found that in direct proportion to its simplicity and our apparent privation of articles of supposed necessity, were our actual comfort and practical efficiency. Step by step, as long as our Arctic service continued, we went on reducing our sledging outfit, until at last we came to the Esquimaux ultimatum of simplicity—raw meat and a fur bag.

“September 20.—I was unwilling to delay my depÔt party any longer. M’Gary and Bonsall, with five men, left the brig at half-past one to-day. We gave them three cheers, and I accompanied them with my dogs, as a farewell escort, for some miles.

“Our crew proper is now reduced to three men; but all the officers, the doctor among the rest, are hard at work upon the observatory and its arrangements.”