“November 7.—The darkness is coming on with insidious steadiness, and its advances can only be perceived by comparing one day with its fellow of some time back.
“Except upon the island of Spitzbergen, which has the advantages of an insular climate and tempered by ocean currents, no Christians have wintered in so high a latitude as this. They are Russian sailors who make the encounter there, men inured to hardships and cold.
“November 9.—Wishing to get the altitude of the cliffs on the south-west cape of our bay before the darkness set in thoroughly, I started in time to reach them with my Newfoundlanders at noonday. Although it was but a short journey, the rough shore-ice and a slight wind rendered the cold severe. I had been housed for a week with my wretched rheumatism, and felt that daily exposure was necessary to enable me to bear up against the cold. The thermometer indicated 23° below zero.
“November 16.—The great difficulty is to keep up a cheery tone among the men. Poor Hans has been sorely home-sick. Three days ago he bundled up his clothes and took his rifle, to bid us all good-bye. It turns out that besides his mother there is another of the softer sex at Fiskernaes that the boy’s heart is dreaming of. He looked as wretched as any lover of a milder clime. I hope I have treated his nostalgia successfully, by giving him first a dose of salts, and secondly, promotion. He has now all the dignity of a henchman. He harnesses my dogs, builds my traps, and walks with me on my ice-tramps; and, except hunting, is excused from all other duty. He is ready attached to me, and as happy as a fat man might to be.
A “Fox Chase”
“November 22.—I offered a prize to-day of a Guernsey shirt to the man who held out longest in a ‘fox chase’ round the decks. The rule of the sport was, that ‘Fox’ was to run a given circuit between galley and capstan, all hands following on his track; every four minutes a halt to be called to blow, and the fox making the longest run to take the prize; each of the crew to run as fox in turn. William Godfrey sustained the chase for fourteen minutes, and wore off the shirt.
“November 27.—I sent out a volunteer party some days ago with Mr Bonsall, to see whether the Esquimaux have returned to the huts we saw empty at the cape. The thermometer was in the neighbourhood of 40° below zero, and the day was too dark to read at noon. I was hardly surprised when they returned after camping one night upon the snow. Their sledge broke down, and they were obliged to leave tents and everything else behind them. It must have been very cold, for a bottle of Monongahela whisky of good stiff proof froze under Mr Bonsall’s head.
“Morton went out on Friday to reclaim the things they had left, and to-day at 1 P.M. he returned successful. He reached the wreck of the former party, making nine miles in three hours,—pushed on six miles further on the ice-foot,—then camped for the night; and, making a sturdy march the nest day without luggage, reached the huts, and got back to his camp to sleep. This journey of his was, we then thought, really an achievement,—sixty-two miles in three marches, with a mean temperature of 40° below zero, and a noonday so dark that you could hardly see a hummock of ice fifty paces ahead.
“Under more favouring circumstances, Bonsall, Morton, and myself made eighty-four miles in three consecutive marches. I go for the system of forced marches on journeys that are not over a hundred and fifty miles. A practised walker unencumbered by weight does twenty miles a day nearly as easily as ten: it is the uncomfortable sleeping that wears a party out.