“Accordingly, I started out this morning to hunt walrus, with which the Sound is teeming. We saw at least fifty of these dusky monsters, and approached many groups within twenty paces. But our rifle balls reverberated from their hides like cork pellets from a pop-gun target, and we could not get within harpoon distance of one. Later in the day, however, Ohlsen, climbing a neighboring hill to scan the horizon and see if the ice had slackened, found the dead carcass of a narwhale or sea-unicorn; a happy discovery, which has secured for us at least six hundred pounds of good, fetid, wholesome flesh. The length of the narwhale was fourteen feet, and his process, or ‘horn,’ from the tip to its bony encasement, four feet.... We built a fire on the rocks, and melted down his blubber: he will yield readily two barrels of oil.”
DR. ELISHA K. KANE
The condition of the ice, furious gales, and the fast approaching winter all combined to dishearten the crew, who with one exception desired to return south and find winter quarters. Dr. Kane, however, determined to push northward, and finally located in Rensseläer Harbour 78° 37´ N., 71° W. By the 10th of September, the long “night in which no man can work” was close at hand; the thermometer stood at 14°; every preparation was made for wintering; a storehouse was erected at Butler Island; an astronomical observatory arranged at a short distance from the ship.
“Besides preparing our winter quarters,” writes Dr. Kane, “I am engaged in the preliminary arrangements for my provision depots along the Greenland coast. Mr. Kennedy is, I believe, the only one of my predecessors who has used October and November for Arctic field work; but I deem it important to our movements during the winter and spring, that depots in advance should be made before the darkness sets in. I purpose arranging three of them at intervals,—pushing them as far forward as I can,—to contain in all some twelve hundred pounds of provision, of which eight hundred will be pemmican.”
To this end one hundred and twenty-five miles of the Greenland coast was traced to the north and east; the largest of the three depots was located on an island in latitude 70° 12´ 6´´, and longitude 65° 25´.
By the 20th of November, the darkness made field work impossible, and for one hundred and twenty days the little band of Arctic explorers endured the weariness and bitter cold of the long night.
“On the 17th of January,” writes Dr. Kane, “our thermometers stood at forty-nine degrees below zero; and on the 20th the range of those at the observatory was at -64° to -67°. The temperature on the floes was always somewhat higher than at the island; the difference being due, as I suppose, to the heat conducted from the sea-water, which was at a temperature of +29°; the suspended instruments being affected by radiation.
“On the 5th of February, our thermometers began to show unexampled temperature. They ranged from 60° to 75° below zero, and one very reliable instrument stood upon the taffrail of our brig at -65°. The reduced mean of our best spirit-standards gave -67°, or 99° below the freezing-point of water.
“At these temperatures chloric ether became solid, and carefully prepared chloroform exhibited a granular pellicle on its surface. Spirit of naphtha froze at -54°, and oil of wintergreen was in a flocculent state at -56°, and solid at -63° and -65°.
“The exhalations from the surface of the body invested the exposed or partially clad parts with a wreath of vapor. The air had a perceptible pungency upon inspiration, but I could not perceive the painful sensation which has been spoken of by some Siberian travellers. When breathed for any length of time, it imparted a sensation of dryness to the air-passages. I noticed that, as it were involuntarily, we all breathed guardedly, with compressed lips.”