Here is another significant passage; yet all its significance can scarcely be appreciated by the dwellers in temperate climes:—
“November 27, Sunday.—The thermometer was in the neighbourhood of 40° below zero, and the day was too dark to read at noon.”
“December 15, Thursday.—We have lost the last vestige of our mid-day twilight. We cannot see print, and hardly paper: the fingers cannot be counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike; and, except a vague glimmer on 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.”
On the 11th of January (1854), Dr. Kane’s thermometer stood at 49° below zero; and on the 20th the range of those at the observatory was at -64° to -67°. On the 5th of February they began to show an unexampled temperature. They ranged from 60° to 75° below zero, and one very admirable instrument on the taffrail of the brig stood at -65°. The reduced mean of the best spirit-standards gave -67°, or 97° below the freezing-point of water.
At these temperatures chloric ether became solid, and carefully prepared chloroform exhibited a granular film or pellicle on its surface. Spirit of naphtha froze at -54°, and oil of sassafras at -49°. The oil of winter-green assumes a flocculent appearance at -56°, and solid at -63° and -65°.
Some further details, borrowed from Dr. Kane’s experiences, will illustrate still more powerfully the singular atmospheric conditions of the Arctic winter.
The exhalations from the surface of the body invested any exposed or partially-clad part with a wreath of vapour. The air had a perceptible pungency when inspired, but Dr. Kane did not undergo the painful sensation described by some Siberian travellers. When breathed for any length of time it imparted a sensation of dryness to the air-passages; and Dr. Kane observed that all his party, as it were involuntarily, breathed gradually, and with compressed lips.
It was at noon on the 21st of January that the first glimmer of returning light became visible, the southern horizon being touched for a short time with a distinct orange hue. The sun had, perhaps, afforded them a kind of illumination before, but if so, it was not to be distinguished from the “cold light of stars.” They had been nearing the sunshine for thirty-two days, and had just reached that degree of mitigated darkness which made the extreme midnight of Sir Edward Parry in lat. 74° 47’.
We have already alluded to the depressing influence exercised by the prolonged and intense darkness of the Arctic night, and we have referred to the singular effect it has upon animals. Dr. Kane’s dogs, though most of them were natives of the Arctic Circle, proved unable to bear up against it. Most of them died from an anomalous form of disease, to which the absence of light would seem to have contributed as much as the extreme cold. This circumstance seems worthy of fuller notice, and we quote, therefore, Dr. Kane’s observation upon it:—
“January 20.—This morning at five o’clock—for I am so afflicted with the insomnium of this eternal night, that I rise at any time between midnight and noon—I went upon deck. It was absolutely dark, the cold not permitting a swinging lamp. There was not a glimmer came to me through the ice-crusted window-panes of the cabin. While I was feeling my way, half puzzled as to the best method of steering clear of whatever might be before me, two of my Newfoundland dogs put their cold noses against my hand, and instantly commenced the most exuberant antics of satisfaction. It then occurred to me how very dreary and forlorn must these poor animals be, at atmospheres +10° in-doors and -50° without,—living in darkness, howling at an accidental light, as if it reminded them of the moon,—and with nothing, either of instinct or sensation, to tell them of the passing hours, or to explain the long-lost daylight.”