Toward the end of April, Dr. Kane had completed his preparations for his grand sledge journey to the north.
“It was,” he writes, “to be the crowning expedition of the campaign to attain the ultima thule of the Greenland shore, measure the waste that lay between it and the unknown west, and seek round the furthest circle of the ice for an outlet to the mysterious channels beyond.”
“The worst thought I have now in setting out,” writes Dr. Kane, April 26, “is that of the entire crew I can leave but two behind in able condition, and the doctor and Bonsall are the only two officers who can help Ohlsen. This is our force, four able-bodied and six disabled to keep the brig; the commander and seven men, scarcely better upon the average, out upon the ice. Eighteen souls, thank God! certainly not eighteen bodies!
“I am going this time to follow the ice-belt (Eis-fod) to the Great Glacier of Humboldt, and there load up with pemmican from our cache of last October. From this point I expect to stretch along the face of the glacier inclining to the west of north, and make an attempt to cross the ice of the American side. Once on smooth ice, near this shore, I may pass to the west, and enter the large indentation whose existence I can infer with nearly positive certainty. In this I may find an outlet, and determine the state of things beyond the ice-clogged area of this bay.
“I take with me pemmican and bread and tea, a canvas tent, five by six, and two sleeping-bags of reindeer skin. The sledge has been built on board by Mr. Ohlsen. It is very light, of hickory, and but nine feet long. Our kitchen is a soup kettle for melting snow and making tea, arranged so as to boil with either lard or spirits.
“For instruments I have a fine Gambey sextant, in addition to my ordinary pocket-instrument, an artificial horizon, and a Barrow’s dip-circle. These occupy little room upon the sledge. My telescope and chronometer I carry on my person.”
Ill equipped, enfeebled in health, discouraged by the failure of their caches which had been broken into by bears, the little party struggled on as long as strength and provisions lasted. “The most picturesque portion of the North Greenland coast,” writes Dr. Kane, “is to be found after leaving Cape George Russell and approaching Dallas Bay. The red sandstones contrast most favorably with the blank whiteness, associating the cold tints of the dreary Arctic landscape with the warm coloring of more southern lands. The seasons have acted on the different layers of the cliff so as to give them the appearance of jointed masonry, and the narrow line of greenstone at the top caps them with well-simulated battlements. One of these interesting freaks of nature became known to us as the ‘Three Brother Turrets.’
“The sloping rubbish at the foot of the coast-wall led up, like an artificial causeway, to a gorge that was streaming at noonday with the southern sun; while everywhere else the rock stood out in the blackest shadow. Just at the edge of the bright opening rose the dreamy semblance of a castle, flanked with triple towers, completely isolated and defined. These were the ‘Three Brother Turrets.’
“I was still more struck with another of the same sort, in the immediate neighborhood of my halting ground beyond Sunny Gorge, to the north of latitude 79°. A single cliff of green stone, marked by the slaty limestone that once encased it, rears itself from a crumbled base of sandstones, like the boldly chiselled rampart of an ancient city. At its northern extremity, on the brink of a deep ravine which has worn its way among the ruins, there stands a solitary column or minaret-tower, as sharply finished as if it had been cast for the Place Vendome. Yet the length of the shaft alone is four hundred and eighty feet; and it rises on a plinth or pedestal itself two hundred and eighty feet high.”
GREAT GLACIER OF HUMBOLDT