13. The effect of the long winter night is even greater on the body than on the mind, because of the insufficient opportunities for exercise. Middendorf contrasting the influence of climate on men remarks:—“I consider travels in cold regions, even in the most unfavourable conditions of climate, to be far less dangerous to life than travels under the tropics. The former certainly are unutterably more miserable, but as certainly less deadly. I say this notwithstanding the danger which threatens ships when they penetrate far within the realms of ice. We are never secure from sudden and deadly attacks of illness in tropical countries, but the longer we remain in them the less is the danger; whereas the high North deteriorates the constitution of the blood, and after three winters, very few can stand a fourth.” To the influences of Polar life detrimental to health must be added the constant hindrance to perspiration from wearing an extra quantity of woollen clothing—more or less hurtful as it is more or less waterproof—the want of fresh animal and vegetable food, and last, but not least, the periodic departure of light and warmth.
14. Our sanitary condition during the two winters we spent on board the Tegetthoff was not altogether satisfactory. Scorbutic affections of the mouth and diseases of the lungs appeared sometimes in distressing shapes, and scarcely a day passed in which we had not one or two on the sick-list. I believe, however, that our trying situation had far more to do with these evils than the southern blood and breeding of our people. The incessant watchfulness and care of Dr. Kepes left nothing undone which would counteract the evil influences to which we were exposed. The berths of the crew were changed in rotation, and those which were exposed to the greatest accumulation of ice were dried by warm air conveyed through movable pipes. Want of exercise, constant change of temperature, depression of mind, the periodic scarcity of fresh meat, were the causes of the scurvy. In our first winter it appeared only in the more crowded quarters of the crew. It was then also that the first symptoms of lung-disease appeared in Krisch, the engineer, which he probably contracted from “catching cold.” From that time he liked to sit by the stove and always complained of cold. Our supplies of preservatives against, and remedies for scurvy were rather limited, although we had at our disposal several hundred tins of preserved vegetables, a cask of cloud-berries (Rubus chamæmorus), which we had brought from Tromsoe, and above a hundred bottles of lime-juice. Wine also is an important preservative; we therefore served out to the crew, notwithstanding our small supply, twice a week, not Kepes’ artificial, but real wine—at the rate of two bottles for eighteen men. No doubt scorbutic symptoms would have been far more general and severe, had we not been fortunate enough to shoot no less than sixty-seven Polar bears, a larger number than had fallen to any previous expedition. It was more a sign of our good intentions to leave nothing undone or untried in our efforts against this malady, than any actual service it was to us, that we sowed cress and cabbage—radishes did not succeed—in a bed which we suspended over the stove. It was interesting, however, to observe how the little plants of cress, with every change of position, always turned to the light of the lamp, growing to the height of three inches, and in spite of their brimstone colour retaining the true cress flavour.
15. The use of the bath tends greatly to promote health, for without it the skin of the body has no other stimulant; but the insecurity of our position rendered bathing sometimes a somewhat doubtful enjoyment. I remember many cases, when some of us, while bathing in the cold dark washing place in lukewarm water an inch deep, were alarmed by a sudden pressure of ice. Ultimately we gave up this practice, finding that it produced a troublesome amount of damp.
16. To a stranger, who should have visited us during this winter, nothing in the ship would have been so surprising and interesting as a visit to the quarters of the crew. Except for an hour, from five to six o’clock in the evening, when they were encouraged to take exercise in the open air, the rest of their time was spent in school, or in the duties of the watch, or in the work of the ship. Our supply of Slavonic books was unfortunately not very ample, and besides, not all the crew were able to read; the greater therefore was their tendency, like men of southern climes, to harmless noise, and I believe that some of our people, during the whole expedition, never ceased to speak. Here I beg to insert some passages from my journal:—“Passing by the steaming kitchen, we enter their messroom. Here in a narrow space we find the toilers of the sea and the mountains—eighteen in number. A little band of Dalmatians who for the first time encounter darkness and cold, the horrors of which are increased tenfold to men born and bred in the sunny South. Truly it could be no little thing to such men to be torn from sleep almost every night by the movement of the ice, to sit day after day in the long night of winter without any real intellectual occupation, and yet not to become demoralized, but remain calm and composed, and ever ready to obey and oblige. Can anything higher be said in their praise? Those men slept, each by himself, in a double row of berths; only Lusina the boatswain, and Carlsen the harpooner, who had circumnavigated Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, occupied a separate partition. The clatter of the tongues of so many vehement Southerners was like the sound made by the smaller wheels of a machine, while the naive simplicity of the grave Tyrolese came in between times, like the steady beat of a great cog-wheel. It was a miniature reproduction of the confusion of tongues of Babel. Lusina speaks Italian to the occupants of the officers’ cabin, English with Carlsen, French with Dr. Kepes, and Slavonic with the crew. Carlsen had adopted for the ‘Slavonians,’ as he called our people, a kind of speech compounded of Norwegian, English, German, Italian, and Slavonic. The crew, with the exception of the two Italians, speak Slavonic among themselves. The head of the little German colony is the cook, a Styrian; his heart is better than his culinary skill, for only too readily he leaves his work to be done by the stove. There is also among them a Moravian, Pospischill, the Vulcan of the ship; but we must return to the predominant race—the Slavonic. There is Lukinovich, a very Harpagon, always collecting, finding treasures in nails, empty bottles, lamp wicks, and searching even under the snow for articles wherewith to fill his sack—the sack which he was one day to leave behind him, much against the grain, when we abandoned the ship. There is Marola, the steward, and Fallesich, who had worked at the Suez Canal; these are our great singers. Then Palmich with his lance, the man whose zeal never bated, and whose very glance transfixed everything; Vecerina, the Job of the party, and the merry Titans, Sussich and Catarinich; Latkovich and Lettis, ‘the philosophers;’ Stiglich, the immovable confessor of passive obedience and the unlawfulness of resistance; Zaninovich, the ‘pearl;’ Haller the herdsman and Klotz the prophet. Five of these men had run away from their wives. Klotz the prophet was under all circumstances, not indeed the most useful, but the most interesting person of this little community. A lofty calm worthy of an Evangelist graced his outer man; of still greater stature than Andreas Höfer, he wore, like him, a large black beard. As a hunter, a guide, a collector of stones, and a lonely enthusiast, he had moved about the mountains of his home, leading a life of visions. At home he was regarded as an incomparably bold mountaineer, and the ropes of the ship were to him so many convenient foot-paths. His reputation as a physician in his native land was great, and on board ship he failed not with his good offices. Haller, his fellow-countryman, shared with Klotz the office of armourer, and the duties of hunter and driver of the sledge-dogs; and when we began our sledge journeys, both of them were ready to relieve others in dragging. Both had served in the army, Klotz on the Tonale, Haller on the Stelvio, and in 1868 the latter had been my useful companion when I was engaged in the survey of the Ortler and Adamello Alps. ‘The philosophers’ of our party, Latkovich and Lettis, had drawn a fine distinction between the different layers of ice, according as they contained a greater or less amount of saline matter: Ghiaccio della prima and Ghiaccio della seconda qualità.”
17. To obviate as far as possible the evils of too much leisure among the men, a school was instituted at the beginning of the January of the second year; Lieutenant Weyprecht, Brosch, and Orel undertook the Italians and Slavonians, and I the Tyrolese. To avoid all confusion I retired with my smaller body of pupils to the shed on deck. Here, with the thermometer at 25° to 37° below zero C., the seed of wisdom was sown in the hearts of these sons of nature; but alas! the climate was not favourable to its growth. After many painful disillusions, the Pole was ascertained to be the intersection of lines in a point, of which nothing was to be seen in reality. If in this little lecture-room an exercise had to be examined, and the scholars were obliged to hold in their breath, in order that the teacher, who spoke out of a cloud, might be able to see the slate; or when the pupils engaged in a division sum had suddenly to stop to rub their hands with snow, was it a matter of wonder if the school did not flourish exceedingly?
18. The food of the crew consisted principally of preserved meats, different kinds of pulse, and the products of the chase, amounting on an average to two bears a week. Bear-flesh, roasted, was liked by all; the seal was at first despised, till necessity corrected taste. Besides artificial wine, water was their strongest drink.