The weather, though cold, causing some frost-bites, had been beautiful during their stay here. The men had done their parts well, and had endured uncomplainingly much hard work, hardship, and exposure. The supporting party left at 4 P. M., after hearty hand-shaking and wishing good luck to Lockwood, Brainard, and Frederick, leaving the three lonely and depressed on that desolate shore.
And now, as the returning party disappeared in the distance, the explorers turned toward Cape Britannia. Although they started with a very heavy load, yet the traveling was fine, and, all three pushing, they made rapid progress, having Cape May directly ahead and across the fiord. The dogs seemed to object to going over the sea, and kept deflecting constantly to the right, the only difficulty arising from the deepening of the snow and its becoming soft. When they got stuck, Brainard would pull at the traces, while Lockwood would push at the upstand, and Frederick divide his energies between helping them and inducing the dogs to do so.
At 1 A. M. on April 30th, they camped on the fiord, well satisfied with their advance of sixteen miles in eight hours without once doubling.
Moving off at 5 P. M. with full load, they had not gone far before they were forced to throw off half of it, and soon with this half they found it difficult to get along, for the sledge would sink down to the slats and the men to their knees through the deep, soft snow. Lockwood could fully appreciate poor Brainard’s efforts and labors in a fiord at the southwest, when he crawled through snow waist-deep, and on hands and knees, for two hundred yards. At 9 P. M. they came to hummocks, pitched tent, threw off load, and, while Lockwood prepared supper, the others went back with the team to bring up what they had thrown off. They had to adhere strictly to the allowance, for they had rations for just so many days. They had advanced six miles in seven hours and three quarters.
They started again the next morning with full load, but soon had to pitch off again. Had better traveling, on the whole, than on the previous day, though meeting with ranges of old floes and hummocks filled in with snow. Shortly after midnight, they came abreast Cape May, the desire of Beaumont, but which, with his crew broken down with scurvy, and with heavy sledges loaded down with all kinds of equipments, he never attained. The party pitched tent near an immense floe extending as far back as the eye could reach. Brainard and Frederick went back for the dismounted stuff, while Lockwood turned cook again, the first thing being to pulverize a lot of ice and set it on the lamp to melt. Cape Britannia and Beaumont Island were very distinctly seen, the latter from refraction double. Their allowance of alcohol was a constant source of trouble. They could not afford meat for both breakfast and supper, hence their supper consisted of tea, cracker-dust, and bean-stew. Advanced twelve miles in fourteen hours.
Lockwood and Brainard now took turns in cooking, Frederick being excused. The two former did not sleep well, and, as usual, the Esquimaux blew his trumpet loudly, but not sweetly. They left at 7 P. M. with full load, but as usual threw off a portion, leaving Brainard with it. Toward midnight they came to an open crack in the ice ten feet wide, through which sea-water could be seen below, and had to follow it several hundred yards before coming to a crossing. Thinking this a favorable chance to get a deep-sea sounding, they threw off the load, and Frederick went back for Brainard and the balance of the stores, while Lockwood got into a sleeping-bag and read “King Lear” until their return. In sounding, they ran out all the line they had, then four coils of seal-thongs, then some rope, and finally Frederick’s dog-whip, and got no bottom at eight hundred and twenty feet. They began to haul up after debating whether they should not risk the dog-traces, when, presto! the rope broke, and all below was lost. Leaving their treasures in the deep, they moved on with half-load over a low line of hummocky ice having the same general direction as the crack, namely, toward Beaumont’s Island. Beyond was an unbroken field of snow extending apparently to Cape Britannia. Ice being required for supper, they went into camp on the hummocks, going back, however, for the stores left behind, having advanced eight miles in ten hours.
After taking bearings, they broke camp at 4 P. M., and, with a full load, proceeded over the level snowfield, broken here and there only by hummocks trending in a curve toward Cape Britannia. Until midnight the snow-crust sustained the sledge, but after that, failing to do so, they had to reduce load. Wind and snow coming on, they camped near a small ice-mound, after advancing fourteen miles in fourteen hours, and again brought up the stores left behind.
The next morning proved clear and calm, and gave them a full view of the long-desired cape, which they reached at 8 P. M., pitching tent on the ice-foot—four miles in one hour and a half. Lockwood had read so much of scurvy, deep snows, etc., as associated with sledge-journeys in the experience of the English expedition, that he had come to regard them as inseparable from such enterprises. Yet here they were, at a point which Beaumont saw only from afar, without the first and without serious difficulty from the others. Cape Britannia had been the ultima Thule of Beaumont’s hopes, and quite as far as Lieutenant Greely expected Lockwood to reach. But he was able to go much farther, and would do so. He built a cairn, and deposited a record of their journey to date, also rations for five days for use on their return, the spare sledge-runner, and everything they could do without. Leaving Frederick to see that the dogs did not eat up the tent and everything in it, Lockwood and Brainard climbed the adjacent mountain, two thousand and fifty feet high, to view the magnificent prospect spread out before them from that point. “We seemed,” Lockwood writes, “to be on an island terminating some miles to the north in a rocky headland. To the northeast, seemingly twenty miles away, was a dark promontory stretching out into the Polar Ocean, and limiting the view in that direction. Intermediate, were several islands separated by vast, dreary fiords, stretching indefinitely southward. Extending halfway round the horizon, the eye rested on nothing but the ice of the Polar Sea; in-shore, composed of level floes, but beyond, of ridges and masses of the roughest kind of ice. The whole panorama was grand, but dreary and desolate in the extreme. After erecting a monument, we were glad to escape the cold wind by returning.”
While here, Lockwood took several astronomical observations. They broke camp at 7 P. M., and traveled northward over smooth ice free from snow, to the promontory, where they came in sight of the distant headland northeast, which they had seen from the mountain-top. Hearing a low, moaning sound, and looking to the north, they saw a line of hummocks, and near it their old acquaintance, the tidal crack, stretching in one direction toward Beaumont Island, and in the other, curving toward Black Cape, as Lockwood named the headland northeast of them. Repairing their sledge, which had given way, they proceeded toward this headland, having fairly good traveling though somewhat obstructed by soft and deep snow, and camped at midnight near a hummock and not far from the crack, from which Frederick tried, without success, to get a seal. This would have relieved his mortified feelings at the loss of a ptarmigan he had shot at the cape, and which Ritenbank had stolen. Took observations for latitude and longitude before turning into their sleeping-bags. Advanced eleven miles in five hours.
The observations were repeated next morning, and they then went on their course. After going a considerable distance, they halted to rest and to view the tide-crack, now near them and about one hundred yards across, filled in here and there with young ice or detached masses. This crack was incomprehensible, differing from those seen in the straits, which were near shore and so narrow as to attract little attention. Frederick gave Lockwood to understand by signs and gestures that after a while the ice outside, or north of the crack, would move oft seaward. Resuming their way, they soon after passed Blue Cape, and thence crossing a small fiord got to Black Cape, the bold, rocky headland they had seen from the mountain. Beyond Black Cape, and in the same general direction, but seen indistinctly, appeared a dark, rocky cape, which Lockwood called Distant Cape, because, seeming so near, it was yet so far, as they afterward found. At Black Cape were seen bear-tracks, also those of the fox, hare, and lemming, in great numbers. The tide-crack here came near the shore, and then extended directly across to the next cape. The ice along shore indicated having sustained enormous pressure. Great bergs and hummocks, weighing thousands of tons, had been pushed upon the ice-foot like pebbles.