Plate II.—FOULKE FIORD AND THE INLAND ICE OF GREENLAND, July 28, 1875—p. [16].
FOULKE FIORD is a narrow ice-scooped inlet in the coast of Greenland, at the entrance of Smith’s Sound. Hayes made it his winter quarters; and Rensselaer Bay, where Kane spent his three winters, is close to the northward. On the shore of the fiord, and under the red granite cliff in foreground of the picture, a few ruined huts mark the site of the once populous Eskimo village of Etah—the capital of the “Arctic Highlanders.” At the head of the fiord an expanse of lake and valley leads to Brother John’s Glacier of Kane, stretching down in the shape of a huge paw from the inland ice beyond. This continental ice lies thousands of feet thick over what little is known of the interior of Greenland, and looks like a vast frozen sea, but that its level is sensibly above the horizon.
It was now high time to get back to the ships, so, shouldering a specimen pair of reindeer horns and our hare, we took a direct course across the Doige Range, but found it by no means an easy one, for a steep ravine had to be crossed, and a rapid knee-deep stream waded, before the hills of Reindeer Point were reached. On getting to the ship, we learned that a party of officers from the “Discovery” had been more successful than we were. Landing at the head of the inlet, they had searched the valley below Brother John’s Glacier, and climbed the cliffs on its southern side. There they found three reindeer, which led them a severe chase across the glacier. They finally secured one of them, and carried the best parts of the meat to their boat, but not until one of the most active of the party was so much exhausted, that it required the united exertions of the others to keep him awake.
The ice seen northwards from the hills over our anchorage at Port Foulke was met with off Cape Sabine the day after we left, and found to be altogether impenetrable. It was disheartening to see the ships come to a complete standstill under steam and sail in the very first pack-ice we encountered in Smith’s Sound. We were compelled again and again to return and shelter in a little harbour inside some islands three miles south of Cape Sabine. Our prospects seemed sufficiently discouraging. We had only reached the latitude of Dr. Kane’s winter quarters, and here was an impassable barrier of ice stretching north and east, as far as we could see from the rocky hills over our harbour of refuge. Our chances of progress were often discussed sitting round the table after dinner, and when one of us, hoping to gain support from opposition, suggested that perhaps we might have to winter here, it was at first treated as a joke, but after half-a-dozen failures to advance, the subject was dropped as altogether too serious for discussion. Four days were spent in fruitless efforts to push through the tongue of pack stretching into Hayes’ Sound, and we thus got early experience of the necessity of a continuous coast-line for ice navigation. At length a fine lead of water opened round Cape Sabine into Hayes’ Sound. If we could not go north, we might at least go west, and hold ourselves ready to seize any opportunities for advance that the unknown waters of Hayes’ Sound might offer.
After three or four hours’ rapid steam and sail, in the line of water between the floes and shore, the sound was found to subdivide into a number of narrow inlets. The only available lane of water led into the first of these. As we passed into it, a strange landmark on the top of a long hill on its south side attracted our attention. If we had been in an inhabited latitude, no one would have hesitated to call it a house. We could only suppose it to be a gigantic and singularly square specimen of the boulders which here strew the surface of the country. The inlet did not run far, and we soon found ourselves “brought up” off a broad valley closed in landwards by the union of two large glaciers. The ships were secured inside some rocks to wait for the opening of the ice, which would probably occur next tide. The shores here were virgin ground, and parties were soon organised to explore the valley. It was two miles wide at its sea face, and not far from three in length; precipitous hills rose on either side; along the centre, a stream from the ice above had cut a water-course, in some places as much as eighty feet deep, through the soft yellow sandstone. At the head of the valley, a wall of ice, formed by the junction of two glaciers, stood across it from side to side. The glacier on the right terminated in a perpendicular cliff seventy feet high, excavated along the ground, and with small streams spouting from blue fissures in its wall; that on the left was parallel with the former, but rounded off gradually to a sort of glacis covered with a thin layer of black mud, smelling strongly of decaying vegetable matter. Bunches of dead heather-like Cassiopea cropped up amongst the stones within three feet of the sloping face of ice. The stream came down from an amphitheatre between the glaciers, which, half-a-mile further on, met in a ridge, caused by the right hand glacier being forced up over the left.
We were greatly disappointed at finding no game in the valley; there was not even a ptarmigan or a hare to be seen, though tracks of both were numerous. Every gap in the banks of the water-course was pitted with the footprints of reindeer or musk oxen. A number of boulders strewed the valley, and every one that was large enough had been used as scratching-posts by musk oxen, as the white wool and brown hair on and around them testified.