We felt that we were fixed for the winter. We arranged our rude embankments of ice and snow around us, began to deposit our stores within them, and got out our felt covering that was to serve as our winter roof. The temperature was severe, ranging from 1°.5, and 4° to +10°; but the men worked with the energy, and hope too, of pioneer settlers, when building up their first home in our Western forests.
The closing day of the month was signalized by a brilliant meteor, a modification of the parhelion, the more interesting to us because the first we had seen.
“October 1, Tuesday. To-day the work of breaking hold commenced. The coal immediately under the main hatch was passed up in buckets, and some five tons piled upon the ice. The quarter-boats were hauled about twenty paces from our port-bow, and the sails covered and stacked; in short, all hands were at work preparing for the winter. Little had we calculated the caprices of Arctic ice.
“About ten o’clock A.M. a large crack opened nearly east and west, running as far as the eye could see, sometimes crossing the ice-pools, and sometimes breaking along the hummock ridges. The sun and moon will be in conjunction on the 3d; we had notice, therefore, that the spring tides are in action.
“Captain Griffin had been dispatched with Mr. Lovell before this, to establish on the shore the site for a depôt of provisions: at one o’clock a signal was made to recall them. At two P.M., seeing a seal, I ran out upon the ice; but losing him, was tempted to continue on about a mile to the eastward. The wind, which had been from the westward all the morning, now shifted to the southward, and the ice-tables began to be again in motion. The humming of bees and upheaving hummocks, together with exploding cracks, warned me back to the vessel.
“At 3:20, while we were at dinner, commenting with some anxiety upon the condition of things without, that unmistakable monitor, the ‘young puppies,’ began. Running on deck, we found a large fissure, nearly due north and south, in line with the Advance. A few minutes after, the entire floe on our starboard side was moving, and the ice breaking up in every direction.
“The emergency was startling enough. All hands turned to, officers included. The poor land party, returning at this moment, tired and dinnerless, went to work with the rest. Vreeland and myself worked like horses. Before dark, every thing was on board except the coal; and of this, such were the unwearied efforts of our crew, that we lost but a ton or two.
“This ice-opening was instructive practically, because it taught those of us who did not understand it before how capriciously insecure was our position. It revealed much, too, in relation to the action of the ice.
“1. The first crack was nearly at right angles to the axis of the channel; the subsequent ones crossed the first; the wind being in the one case from the westward, and afterward changing to the southward.
“2. The next subject of note was the disintegration of the old floes. It took place almost invariably at their original lines of junction, well marked by the hummocky ridges. This shows that the cementation was imperfect after seventeen days of very low temperature; a circumstance attributable, perhaps, to the massive character of the up-piled tables, which protected the inner portion of them from the air, and to the constant infiltration (endosmose) of salt-water at the abraded margins.