“Wednesday, June 12th. This is getting worse and worse. Yesterday we did nothing, hardly advanced more than a mile. Wretched snow, uneven ice, lanes, and villanous weather stopped us. There was certainly a crust on the snow, on which the sledges ran well when they were on it; but when they broke through—and they did it constantly—they stood immovable. This crust, too, was bad for the dogs, poor things! They sank through it into the deep snow between the irregularities, and it was like swimming through slush for them. But all the same we made way. Lanes stopped us, it is true, but we cleared them somehow. Over one of them, the last, which looked nasty, we got by making a bridge of small floes, which we guided to the narrowest place. But then a shameless storm of wet snow, or, more correctly, sleet, with immense flakes, set in, and the wind increased. We could not see our way in this labyrinth of lanes and hummocks, and were as soaked as ducked crows, as we say. The going was impossible, and the sledges as good as immovable in the wet snow, which was soon deep enough to cling to our ‘ski’ underneath in great lumps, and prevent them from running. There was hardly any choice but to find a camping-ground as soon as possible, for to force one’s way along in such weather and on such snow, and make no progress, was of little use. We found a good camping-ground and pitched our tent after only four hours’ march, and went without our dinner to make up.
“Here we are, then, hardly knowing what to do next. What the going is like outside I do not know yet, but probably not much better than yesterday, and whether we ought to push on the little we can, or go out and try to capture a seal, I cannot decide. The worst of it is that there do not seem to be many seals in the ice where we now are. We have seen none the last few days. Perhaps it is too thick and compact for them (?). The ice here is strikingly different in character from that we have been travelling over of late. It is considerably more uneven, for one thing, with mounds and somewhat old ridges—among them some very large ones. Nor does it look so very old—in general, I should say, of last winter’s formation, though there are occasional old floes in between. They appear to have been near land, as clay and earthy matter are frequently to be seen, particularly in the newly formed ridges.
“Johansen, who has gone out, says the same water-sky is to be seen in the south. Why is it we cannot reach it? But there it is, all the same, an alluring goal for us to make for, even if we do not reach it very soon. We see it again and again, looking so blue and beautiful; for us it is the color of hope.
“Friday, June 14th. It is three months to-day since we left the Fram. A quarter of a year have we been wandering in this desert of ice, and here we are still. When we shall see the end of it I can no longer form any idea; I only hope whatever may be in store for us is not very far off, open water or land—Wilczek Land, Zichy Land, Spitzbergen, or some other country.
“Yesterday was not quite so bad a day as I expected. We really did advance, though not very far—hardly more than a couple of miles—but we must be content with that at this time of year. The dogs could not manage to draw the sledges alone; if there was nobody beside them they stopped at every other step. The only thing to be done was to make a journey to and fro, and thus go over the ground three times. While I went on ahead to explore, Johansen drove the sledges as far as he could; first mine, and then back again after his own. By that time I had returned and drove my own sledge as far as I had found a way; and then this performance was repeated all over again. It was not rapid progress, but progress it was of a kind, and that was something. The ice we are going over is anything but even; it is still rather massive and old, with hummocks and irregularities in every direction, and no real flat tracts. When, added to this, after going a short distance, we came to a place where the ice was broken up into small floes, with high ridges and broad lanes filled with slush and brash, so that the whole thing looked like a single mass of débris, where there was hardly standing-room, to say nothing of any prospect of advance, it was only human to lose courage and give up, for the time being, trying to get on. Wherever I turned the way was closed, and it looked as if advance was denied us for good. To launch the kayaks would be of no avail, for we could hardly expect to propel them through this accumulation of fragments, and I was on the point of making up my mind to wait and try our luck with the net and line, and see if we could not manage to find a seal somewhere in these lanes.
Channels in the Ice in Summer. June, 1895
“These are moments full of anxiety, when from some hummock one looks doubtingly over the ice, one’s thoughts continually reverting to the same question: have we provisions enough to wait for the time when the snow will have melted and the ice have become slacker and more intersected with lanes, so that one can row between the floes? Or is there any probability of our being able to obtain sufficient food, if that which we have should fall short? These are great and important questions which I cannot yet answer for certain. That it will take a long time before all this snow melts away and advance becomes fairly practicable is certain; at what time the ice may become slacker, and progress by means of the lanes possible, we cannot say; and up to this we have taken nothing, with the exception of two ivory gulls and a small fish. We did, indeed, see another fish swimming near the surface of the water, but it was no larger than the other. Where we are just now there seems to be little prospect of capturing anything. I have not seen a single seal the last few days; though yesterday I saw the snowed-down track of a bear. Meanwhile we see ivory gulls continually; but they are still too small to be worth a cartridge; yesterday, however, I saw a large gull, probably Larus argentatus.
“I determined to make one more attempt to get on by striking farther east and this time I was successful in finding a passage across by way of a number of small floes. On the other side there was rather old compact ice, partially of formation a summer old, which seemed to have been near land, as it was irregular, and much intermixed with earthy matter. We have travelled over this ice-field ever since without coming on lanes; but it was uneven, and we came to grief several times. In other places again it was pretty good.
“We began our march at 8 o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, and halted here at 5 o’clock this morning.[4] Later on in the forenoon the wind went over to the northeast and the temperature fell. The snow froze hard, and eventually the going became pretty good. The crust on the snow bore the dogs up, and also the sledges to a certain extent, and we looked forward to good going on the following day; but in this we were doomed to disappointment. No sooner had we got inside the tent than it began to snow, and kept briskly at it the whole day while we slept; and yesterday evening, when we turned out to get breakfast ready and start off, it was still snowing, and deep, loose snow covered everything—a state of things bad beyond description. There was no sense in going on, and we decided to wait and see how matters would turn out. Meanwhile we were hungry, but a full breakfast we could not afford, so I prepared a small portion of fish soup, and we returned to the bag again—Johansen to sleep on, I to rereckon all my observations from the time we left the Fram, and see if some error might not explain the mystery why no land was yet to be found. The sun had partially appeared, and I tried, though in vain, to take an observation. I stood waiting for more than an hour with the theodolite up, but the sun went in again and remained out of sight. I have calculated and calculated and thought and thought, but can find no mistake of any importance, and the whole thing is a riddle to me. I am beginning seriously to doubt that we may be too far west, after all. I simply cannot conceive that we are too far east; for in such a case we cannot, at any rate, be more than 5° farther east than our observations[5] make us. Supposing, for instance, that our watches have gone too fast, ‘Johannsen’[6] cannot, at all events, have gained more than double its previous escapement. I have assumed an escapement of five seconds; but supposing that the escapement has been ten seconds, this does not make more difference than 6′ 40″ in eighty days (the time from our departure from the Fram till the last observation)—that is, 1° 40′ farther east than we ought to be. Assuming, too, that I have calculated our days’ marches at too great length, in the days between April 8th and 13th, and that instead of 36 English geographical miles, or, rather, more than 40 statute miles, we have only gone 24 English geographical miles, or 28 statute miles (less we cannot possibly have gone), we should then have been in 89° E. instead of 86° E, on the 13th, as we supposed. That is 3° farther east, or with the figures above, let us say together 5° farther east—i.e., we now instead of being in longitude 61° E. should be in 66° E.,[7] or about 70 miles from Cape Fligely. But it seems to me we ought to see land south of us just the same. Wilczek Land cannot be so low and trend suddenly so far to the south, when Cape Budapest is said to lie in about 61° E. and 82° N., and should thus be not so much as 50 miles from us. No, this is inconceivable. On the other hand, it is not any easier to suppose ourselves west of it; we must have drifted very materially between April 8th and 13th, or my watch must have stopped for a time before April 2d. The observations from April 2d, 4th, and 8th seem, indeed, to indicate that we drifted considerably westward. On the 2d we appeared to be in 103° 6′ E., on the 4th in 99° 59′ E., and April 8th in 95° 7′ E. Between these dates there were no marches of importance; between the observations on the 2d and the 4th there was only a short half-day’s march; and between the 4th and the 7th a couple, which amounted to nothing, and could only have carried us a little westward. This is as much as to say that we must have drifted 8°, or let us reckon at any rate 7°, westward in the six days and nights. Assuming that the drift was the same during the five days and nights between the 8th and 13th, we then get 7° farther west than we suppose. We should consequently now be in 54° E., instead of in 61° E., and not more than 36 to 40 miles from Cape Fligely, and close by Oscar’s Land. We ought to see something of them, I think. Let us assume meanwhile that the drift westward was strong in the period before April 2d also, and grant the possibility that my watch did stop at that time (which, I fear, is not excluded), and we may then be any distance west for all we can tell. It is this possibility which I begin to think of more and more. Meanwhile, apparently there is nothing for it but to continue as we have done already—perhaps a little more south—and a solution must come.