In this extremity Middendorff adopted with heroic self-denial the best and only means for his own preservation and that of his comrades. If, by departing without loss of time, they were fortunate enough to reach the Samoïedes before these nomads had left the Taimur country for the south, he also might be rescued; if they found them very late, they at least might expect to save their lives; if the Samoïedes could not be found, then of course the whole party was doomed. Thus Middendorff resolved to separate at once from his comrades. A remnant of flesh extract, reserved for extreme cases, was divided into five equal portions; the naturalist’s dog, the faithful companion of all his previous journeys, was killed, though reduced to a mere skeleton, and his scanty flesh similarly distributed among the party. The blood and a soup made of the bones served for the parting repast. Thus of his own free-will, the winter having already set in, Middendorff, ill and exhausted, remained quite alone in the icy desert, behind a sheltering rock, in 75° N. lat., several hundred versts from all human dwellings, almost without fuel, and with a miserable supply of food. The three first days he was still able to move. He saw the lake cover itself completely with ice, and the last birds depart for the south. Then his strength utterly failed him, and for the next three days he was unable to stir. When he was again able to move, he felt an excessive thirst. He crawled to the lake, broke the ice, and the water refreshed him. But he was not yet free from disease, and this was fortunate, as want of appetite did not make him feel the necessity of food. Now followed a succession of terrible snow-storms, which completely imprisoned the solitary traveller, but at the same time afforded him a better shelter against the wind.
“My companions,” he writes in a letter to a relation, “had now left me twelve days; human assistance could no longer be expected; I was convinced that I had only myself to rely upon, that I was doomed, and as good as numbered with, the dead. And yet my courage did not forsake me. Like our squirrels, I turned myself according to the changes of the wind. During the long sleepless nights fancy opened her domains, and I forgot even hunger and thirst. Then Boreas broke roaring out of the gullies as if he intended to sweep me away into the skies, and in a short time I was covered with a comfortable snow-mantle. Thus I lay three days, thinking of wretches who had been immured alive, and grown mad in their dreadful prison. An overwhelming fear of insanity befell me—it oppressed my heart—it became insupportable. In vain I attempted to cast it off—my weakened brain could grasp no other idea. And now suddenly—like a ray of light from heaven—the saving thought flashed upon me.
“My last pieces of wood were quickly lighted—some water was thawed and warmed—I poured into it the spirits from a flask containing a specimen of natural history, and drank. A new life seemed to awaken in me; my thoughts returned again to my family, to the happy days I had spent with the friends of my youth. Soon I fell into a profound sleep—how long it lasted I know not—but on awakening I felt like another man, and my breast was filled with gratitude. Appetite returned with recovery, and I was reduced to eat leather and birch-bark, when a ptarmigan fortunately came within reach of my gun. Having thus obtained some food for the journey, I resolved, although still very feeble, to set out and seek the provisions we had buried. Packing some articles of dress, my gun and ammunition, my journal, etc., on my small hand-sledge, I proceeded slowly, and frequently resting. At noon I saw, on a well-known declivity of the hills, three black spots which I had not previously noticed, and as they changed their position, I at once altered my route to join them. We approached each other—and, judge of my delight, it was Trischun, the Samoïede chieftain, whom I had previously assisted in the prevailing epidemic, and who now, guided by one of my companions, had set out with three sledges to seek me. Eager to serve his benefactor, the grateful savage had made his reindeer wander without food over a space of 150 versts where no moss grew.
“I now heard that my companions had fortunately reached the Samoïedes four days after our separation; but the dreadful snow-storms had prevented the nomads from coming sooner to my assistance, and had even forced them twice to retrace their steps.
“On September 30 the Samoïedes brought me to my tent, and on October 9 we bade the Taimur an eternal farewell. After five months we hailed with delight, on October 20, the verge of the forest, and on the following day we reached the smoky hut on the Boganida, where we had left our friends.”
Having thus accompanied Middendorff on his adventurous wanderings through Taimuria, I will now give a brief account of his observations on the climate and natural productions of this northern land.
The remark of Saussure that the difference of temperature between light and shade is greatest in summer, and in the high latitudes, was fully confirmed by Middendorff. While the thermometer marked -37° in the shade, the hillsides exposed to the sun were dripping with wet, and towards the end of June, though the mean temperature of the air was still below the freezing-point of water, the snow had already entirely disappeared on the sunny side of the Taimur River. Torrents came brawling down the hills; the swollen rivers rose forty or sixty feet above their winter level, and carried their icy covering along with them to the sea.
On August 3, in the very middle of the short Taimurian summer, in 74° 15´ of latitude, Middendorff hunted butterflies under the shelter of a hill, bare-footed and in light under-clothes. The thermometer rose in the sun to +68°, and close to the ground to +86°, while at a short distance on a spot exposed to the north-eastern air-current it fell at once to +27°.
The moisture of the air was very remarkable. In May thick snow-fogs almost perpetually obscured the atmosphere, so that it was impossible to ascertain the position of the sun. It appeared only in the evening, or about midnight, and then regularly a perpendicular column of luminous whiteness descended from its orb to the earth, and, widening as it approached the horizon, took the form and the appearance of a colossal lamp-flame, such as the latter appears when seen through the mists of a vapor bath. From the same cause parhelia and halos were very frequent.
During the daytime the snow-fogs, in perpetual motion, either entirely veiled the nearest objects, or magnified their size, or exhibited them in a dancing motion. In June the snow-fog became a vapor-fog, which daily from time to time precipitated its surplus of moisture in form of a light rain, but even then the nights, particularly after eleven o’clock, were mostly serene.