“But we have been supposing your back to the wind; and if you are a good Arcticized subject, a warm glow has already been followed by a profuse sweat. Now turn about and face the wind; what a devil of a change! how the atmospheres are wafted off! how penetratingly the cold trickles down your neck, and in at your pockets! Whew! a jack-knife, heretofore, like Bob Sawyer’s apple, ‘unpleasantly warm’ in the breeches pocket, has changed to something as cold as ice and hot as fire: make your way back to the ship! I was once caught three miles off with a freshening wind, and at one time feared that I would hardly see the brig again. Morton, who accompanied me, had his cheeks frozen, and I felt that lethargic numbness mentioned in the story books.
“I will tell you what this feels like, for I have been twice ‘caught out.’ Sleepiness is not the sensation. Have you ever received the shocks of a magneto-electric machine, and had the peculiar benumbing sensation of ‘can’t let go,’ extending up to your elbow-joints? Deprive this of its paroxysmal character; subdue, but diffuse it over every part of the system, and you have the so-called pleasurable feelings of incipient freezing. It seems even to extend to your brain. Its inertia is augmented; every thing about you seems of a ponderous sort; and the whole amount of pleasure is in gratifying the disposition to remain at rest, and spare yourself an encounter with these latent resistances. This is, I suppose, the pleasurable sleepiness of the story books.
“I could fill page after page with the ludicrous miseries of our shipboard life. We have two climates, hygrometrically as well as thermometrically at opposite ends of the scale. A pocket-handkerchief, pocketed below in the region of stoves, comes up unchanged. Go below again, and it becomes moist, flaccid, and almost wet. Go on deck again, and it resembles a shingle covered with linen. I could pick my teeth with it.
“You are anxious to know how I manage to stand this remorseless temperature. It is a short story, and perhaps worth the telling. ‘The Doctor’ still retains three luxuries, remnants of better times—silk next his skin, a tooth-brush for his teeth, and white linen for his nose. Everything else is Arctic and hairy—fur, fur, fur. The silk is light and washable, needing neither the clean dirt of starch nor the uncomfortable trouble of flat-irons. It secures to me a clean screen between my epidermoid and seal-skin integuments.
“I try to be a practical man as to clothing and the et ceteras of a traveler. All baggage beyond the essential I regard as impedimenta, and believe in the wisdom of Titian Peale, who, when preparing for an exploring tour around the world, purchased—a tin cup. For the sake of poor devils condemned to cold winters, I give in detail my dress, the result of much trial, and, I think, nearly perfect. Here it is, from tip to toe.
“1. Feet. A pair of cotton socks (Lisle thread) covered by a pair of ribbed woolen stockings, rising above the knee and half way up the thigh. Over these a pair of Esquimaux water-proof boots, lined by a sock of dog-skin, the hair inside; the leg of dressed seal-hide; a sole with the edges turned up, and crimped so as to form a water-tight cup; the furred edge of a dog-skin sock inserted as a lining; and some clean straw laid smoothly at the bottom, which forms the elastic cushion on which you tread.
“2. Legs. A pair of coarse woolen drawers, and a pair of seal-skin breeks over them, stitched with reindeer tendon.
“3. Chest. A jumper or short coat, double, of seal-skin and reindeer fur. This invaluable article I got at Disco on my fur journey, obtaining a good number besides for men and officers. It consists of an inner-hooded shirt of reindeer-skin with the hair inside, reaching as far as the upper ridge of the hips, so as to allow free swing to the legs, and fitting about the throat very closely. It is drawn on like the shirt, and, except at the neck, is perfectly loose and unbinding.
“4. Head. Our people generally wear fur caps. I wear an ear-ridge, a tiara, to speak heroically, of wolf-skin. Excellent is this Mormon fur! Leaving the entire poll bare to the elements, it guards the ears and forehead effectually: in any ordinary state of the wind above -15°, I am not troubled with the cold. Before I resorted to this, my cap was full of frozen water, stiff and uncomfortable, all the condensation turning to ice the moment I uncovered. When the weather is very cold, I up hood; when colder, say -40°, with a middling breeze—quite cold enough, I assure you—I wear an elastic silk night-cap in addition, one of a pair forced on me by a certain brother of mine as I was leaving New York, drawn over my head and face, and lined with a mask of wolf-skin. To prevent excessive condensation, I cut only two eye-holes, and leave a large aperture below the point of the nose for talking and breathing. A grim-looking object is this wolf-skin mask, its openings lined with water-proof oiled silk.