“December 15th.—We have lost the last vestige of our mid-day twilight. We cannot see print, and hardly paper; the finger’s cannot be counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike; and, except a vague glimmer in the sky that seems to define the hill outlines to the south, we have nothing to tell us that this Arctic world of ours has a sun. In the darkness, and consequent inaction, it is almost in vain that we seek to create topics of thought, and, by a forced excitement, to ward off the encroachments of disease.”
But in due time the long Arctic night passed away, and the season came round for undertaking the sledge journeys which were the main object of the expedition. But Dr. Kane was then met by a new difficulty. Out of the nine splendid Newfoundland and thirty-five Eskimo dogs which he had originally possessed, only six had survived a peculiar malady that had seized them during the winter; and though some fresh purchases were made from the Eskimos who visited Rensselaer Harbour early in April, his means of transport remained wholly inadequate.
Kane, moreover, who though strong of heart was weak of body, had suffered much from the rigour of the climate, and was in a sadly feeble condition when, on the 25th of April 1854, he started on his northward journey. He found the Greenland coast, as he ascended Kane Sea, full of romantic surprises; the cliffs rising to a height of ten hundred and eleven hundred feet, and presenting the boldest and most fantastic outlines. This character is continued as far as the Great Humboldt Glacier. The coast is indented by four great bays, all of them communicating with deep gorges, which are watered by streams from the interior ice-fields. The mean height of the table-land, till it reaches the bed of the Great Glacier, Dr. Kane estimated, in round numbers, at 900 feet; its tallest summit near the water at 1300, and the rise of the background above the general level at 600 more. The face of this stupendous ice-mass, as it defined the coast, was everywhere an abrupt and threatening precipice, only broken by clefts and deep ravines, giving breadth and interest to its wild expression.
THE “THREE BROTHER TURRETS.”
Dr. Kane informs us that the most picturesque portion of the coast occurs in the neighbourhood of Dallas Bay. Here the red sandstones contrast very favourably with the blank whiteness, and associate the warm colours of more southern lands with the cold tints of the Arctic scenery. The seasons have acted on the different layers of the cliff so as to give them all the appearance of jointed masonry, and the narrow stratum of greenstone at the top surmounts them with boldly-designed battlements. To one of these “interesting freaks of Nature” Kane gave the name of the “Three Brother Turrets.” The crumbled ruin at the foot of the coast-wall led up, like an artificial causeway, to a ravine that blazed at noonday with the glow of the southern sun, when everywhere else the rock lay in blackest shadow. Just at the edge of this lane of light rose the semblance of a castle, flanked with triple towers, completely isolated and defined. These were the Three Turrets.
Still further to the north, a solitary cliff of greenstone, marked by the slaty limestone that once encased it, sprang from a mass of broken sandstone, like the rough-hewn rampart of an ancient city. At its northern extremity, on the brink of a deep ravine, wrought out among the ruin, stood a solitary column, or minaret-tower, the pedestal of which was not less than 280 feet in height, while the shaft was fully 480 feet. Dr. Kane associated this remarkable beacon with the name of the poet Tennyson.
Dr. Kane continued his advance, and on the 4th of May approached the Great Glacier. This progress, however, was dearly earned. Owing to the excessive cold and labour, most of his party suffered from painful prostration; three were attacked with snow-blindness; and all were troubled with dropsical swellings. Off Cape Kent, while taking an observation for latitude, Kane himself was seized with a sudden pain, and fainted. His limbs became rigid. He was strapped upon the sledge, and insisted that the march should be continued. But, on the 5th, he grew delirious, and fainting every time that he was taken from the tent to the sledge, he succumbed entirely.
“My comrades,” writes this heroic man, than whom no braver or more resolute spirit ever ventured into the dreary Northern wilds, “would kindly persuade me that, even had I continued sound, we could not have proceeded on our journey. The snows were very heavy, and increasing as we went; some of the drifts perfectly impassable, and the level floes often four feet deep in yielding snow. The scurvy had already broken out among the men, with symptoms like my own; and Morton, our strongest man, was beginning to give way. It is the reverse of comfort to me that they shared my weakness. All that I should remember with pleasurable feeling is, that to five brave men, themselves scarcely able to travel, I owe my preservation.”
They carried him back to the brig at Rensselaer Harbour, and for several days he lay fluctuating between life and death. As the summer came on, however, his health slowly improved; and though unable to undertake any sledge excursions in person, he organized a series of expeditions in which his stronger companions took part. Dr. Hayes crossed the strait in a north-easterly direction, reached the opposite coast of Grinnell Land, where the cliffs varied from 1200 to 2000 feet in height, and surveyed it as far as Cape Fraser, in lat. 79° 45’.