Journeying then about five miles, we pitched our tent upon the ice, and, turning into it, after a hearty supper of hash, bread, and coffee, we slept soundly,—being too much fatigued to give thought to the temperature, which had fallen several degrees lower than during the previous night.
THE ASCENT.
On the following day we traveled thirty miles; and the ascent, which, during the last march, had been at an angle of about 6°, diminished gradually to about one third of that angle of elevation; and from a surface of hard ice we had come upon an even plain of compacted snow, through which no true ice could be found after digging down to the depth of three feet. At that depth, however, the snow assumed a more gelid condition, and, although not actually ice, we could not penetrate further into it with our shovel without great difficulty. The snow was covered with a crust through which the foot broke at every step, thus making the traveling very laborious.
EXCESSIVE COLD.
About twenty-five miles were made during the following day, the track being of the same character as the day before, and at about the same elevation; but the condition of my party warned me against the hazard of continuing the journey. The temperature had fallen to 30° below zero, and a fierce gale of wind meeting us in the face, drove us into our tent for shelter, and, after resting there for a few hours, compelled our return. I had, however, accomplished the principal purpose of my journey, and had not in any case intended to proceed more than one day further, at this critical period of the year.
My party had not yet become sufficiently inured to exposure at such low temperatures to enable them to bear it without risk. They were all more or less touched with the frost, and the faces of two of them had been so often frozen that they had become very painful and much swollen, and their feet being constantly cold, I was fearful of some serious accident if we did not speedily seek safety at a lower level. The temperature fell to 34° below zero during the night, and it is a circumstance worthy of mention that the lowest record of the thermometer at Port Foulke, during our absence, was 22° higher. The men complained bitterly, and could not sleep. One of them seemed likely to give up altogether, and I was compelled to send him into the open air to save himself from perishing by a vigorous walk.
The storm steadily increased in force, and, the temperature falling lower and lower, we were all at length forced to quit the tent, and in active exercise strive to prevent ourselves from freezing. To face the wind was not possible, and shelter was nowhere to be found upon the unbroken plain. There was but one direction in which we could move, and that was with our backs to the gale. Much as I should have liked to continue the journey one day more, it was clear to me that longer delay would not alone endanger the lives of one or two members of my party, but would wholly defeat the purposes of the expedition by the destruction of all of us.
It was not without much difficulty that the tent was taken down and bundled upon the sledge. The wind blew so fiercely that we could scarcely roll it up with our stiffened hands. The men were suffering with pain, and could only for a few moments hold on to the hardened canvas. Their fingers, freezing continually, required active pounding to keep them upon the flickering verge of life. We did not wait for neat stowage or an orderly start. Danger suggests prompt expedients.
A DANGEROUS SITUATION.
Our situation at this camp was as sublime as it was dangerous. We had attained an altitude of five thousand feet above the level of the sea, and we were seventy miles from the coast, in the midst of a vast frozen sahara, immeasurable to the human eye. There was neither hill, mountain, nor gorge anywhere in view. We had completely sunk the strip of land which lies between the mer de glace and the sea; and no object met the eye but our feeble tent, which bent to the storm. Fitful clouds swept over the face of the full-orbed moon, which, descending toward the horizon, glimmered through the drifting snow that whirled out of the illimitable distance, and scudded over the icy plain;—to the eye, in undulating lines of downy softness; to the flesh, in showers of piercing darts.