The fourth was a powerful glacier, with a discharging face of blue three miles long, closing up a valley and damming up a lake about four miles long and one mile wide. The lake was beyond the most precipitous of the descending slopes. The upper cliffs of the walled valley to Flagler Bay were still visible, while to the west was seen a line of mountains and cliffs which marked the head of Bay Fiord, under which was seen the ice covering the first water of the Pacific upon which our future fortunes would be told. To this sea level there was an easy descent of four hundred feet on the river ice and snowdrifts, making, with good luck, a day's run of twenty miles.
Returning, at camp I was informed that not only had a trail been cut, but many of the sledges had been advanced to the good ice beyond. Two of the sledges, however, had been badly broken, and must be mended at dawn before starting.
The day was beautiful. For the first time I felt the heat of the sun. It came through the thick fur of my shoulders with the tenderness of a warm human hand. The mere thought of the genial sunbeams brought a glow of healthful warmth, but at the same time the thermometer was very low, -78½° F. One's sense of cold, under normal conditions, is a correct instrument in its bearing upon animal functions, but as an instrument of physics it makes an unreliable thermometer. If I had been asked to guess the temperature of the day I should have placed it at -25° F.
The night air had just a smart of bitterness. The igloo failed to become warm, so we fed our internal fires liberally with warming courses, coming in easy stages. We partook of superheated coffee, thickened with sugar, and biscuits, and later took butter chopped in squares, which was eaten as cheese with musk ox meat chopped by our axes into splinters. Delicious hare loins and hams, cooked in pea soup, served as dessert.
The amount of sugar and fat which we now consumed was quite remarkable. Fortunately, during the journey to the edge of the Polar sea, there was no urgent limit to transportation, and we were well supplied with the luxury of sugar and civilized foods, most of which later were to be abandoned.
In this very low temperature I found considerable difficulty in jotting down the brief notes of our day's doings. The paper was so cold that the pencil barely left a mark. A few moments had to be spent warming each page and pencil before beginning to write. With the same operation, the fingers were also sufficiently warmed to hold the pencil. All had to be done by the light and heat of a candle.
To economize fuel, the fires later were extinguished before retiring to sleep. In the morning we were buried in the frost falling from our own breath.
It was difficult to work at dawn with fur-covered hands; but the Eskimo can do much with his glove-fitting mitten. The broken sledges were soon repaired. After tumbling over irregular ice along the face of the glacier, the river offered a splendid highway over which the dogs galloped with remarkable speed. We rode until cold compelled exercise. The stream descended among picturesque hills, but the most careful scrutiny found no sign of life except the ever-present musk ox trails of seasons gone by.
As we neared the sea line, near the mouth of the river, we began to see a few fresh tracks of hare and musk ox. Passing out on the south of Bay Fiord, we noted bear and wolf tracks. Then the eyes of the hunter and the dog rolled with eager anticipation.
The sun flushed the skies in flaming colors as it was about to sink behind a run of high peaks. The western sky burned with gold, the ice flashed with crimson inlets, but the heat was very feeble. The temperature was -72° F. We had already gone twenty-five miles, and were looking forward to a point about ten miles beyond as the next camping place, when all my companions, seemingly at once, espied a herd of musk ox on the sky line of a whale-backed mountain to the north.