CHAPTER XII.
THE AUTUMN OF 1873.—THE STRANGE LAND VISITED.
1. The autumn was unusually mild, though stormy and gloomy. The thermometer up to the 20th of September fell daily some degrees below zero (C.), and occasionally we had rain. At the end of the month the minimum temperature ranged from 14° to 5° F., and the mean temperature of the month was as low as 24·5° F. The mildness of the season was, perhaps, connected with the unusual recession of the ice-barrier in the south; though it might have been a consequence of the open water which had been formed under the land during the drifting of the floes. The land itself was but seldom visible, and heavy masses of dark-blue clouds, which are peculiar to southern latitudes, generally hung over it. Frequent falls of snow again covered everything around us. Parhelia were sometimes visible, and these were generally the precursors of driving snow, which reared deep drifts round the ship. The numerous little lakes on the ice-floes were frozen over in the night even in the earlier part of August, and at the end of the month these bore us during the day. The clear mirror of their surface cracked whenever the temperature fell suddenly some degrees, while the effect of contraction in the ship was followed by the noises which we called “Schüsse.” The “ice-holes” were overspread with a viscous ropy ice, which was strong enough to bear us at their edges. The ship now stood out from the ice; her hull was about fourteen feet above the surrounding surface of snow. To facilitate egress and ingress, we constructed steps of ice on each side of the vessel. After the 7th of September our efforts to free the ship were given up. The little basin at the fore-part of the ship—the result of the toil of many months—was completely frozen over, and afforded us the recreation of skating as a reward for our labours.
2. The experience of the past greatly strengthened all the grounds and motives which so readily presented themselves to abandon our helpless vessel in the following summer and attempt the return to Europe by means of sledges and boats. If there had been no other reason for this resolution, regard for our health would have dictated the step. Our supply of lemon-juice was so reduced, as to leave scarcely a doubt as to the necessity of attempting to return. But amid these prudential considerations, we were filled with fear lest we should be unable to explore the mysterious land we had discovered.
3. The daylight now began to fail. On the 9th of September the sun set at 8.30 and the stars were visible at night. About the middle of the month lamps were kept burning all the night through in our quarters below, and our environment, never very animated, again wore the aspect of the dark realm of ice. The visits of birds became rarer, although they did not quite leave us as long as there was any open water near. The divers and auks had already disappeared. They flew in long lines southward, and as they whizzed past us through the rigging of the ship, we acknowledged the superiority of these little creatures to us and to our ship, which was never to hoist its sails again. The ice-birds, and the robber-gulls still remained with us. We once shot a rose-coloured gull (Ross’s gull), said to belong only to North America and Iceland. On the 28th we saw the last snow-bunting. The first aurora was seen on the 22nd, and during the winter its light fell not merely on the Frozen Ocean but on the distant Franz-Josef’s Land, showing us that we were not drifting away from it. By the end of the month we had drifted to the eightieth degree of latitude, nearly; and every cliff of the land, even the most insignificant, emerging at a distance from the ice, had charms enough to call us all on deck.
4. In the second half of October, winds from the north and north-east had driven us towards the south and south-west, and as we neared the land we saw that the ice-fields were broken up by their contact with its immovable barrier. Our own floe had been greatly diminished from the general pressure of the ice. On the 1st of October we were driven so near the land that we found ourselves in the midst of the destruction going on in the ice. Our ice-floe was shattered and broken, and so rapidly had it diminished in size, that the distance of the ship from the edge of the floe, which was 1,300 paces on the 1st, amounted to only 875 two days afterwards. On the 6th it had diminished to 200 paces, so that it was reduced to a mere fragment of its former size. The shocks it now received caused the ship to quiver and shake, and we heard the cracking and straining in its timbers, which kept us on the tenter-hook of expectation lest the ice should suddenly break up. It seemed as if we were doomed to a repetition of the trials and dangers of the preceding winter. The bags of necessaries to be taken with us if we should be forced to leave the ship, were kept in readiness for immediate use. As we watched the advancing wall of ice, and heard the too well known howl it sent forth, and saw how fissures were formed at the edge of the floe, the days of the ice-pressures were painfully recalled, and the thought constantly returned—what will be the end of all this? The Land we had so longed to visit lay indeed before us, but the very sight of it had become a torment; it seemed to be as unattainable as before; and, if our ship should reach it, it appeared too likely that it would be as a wreck on its inhospitable shore. Many were the plans we formed and debated, but all were alike impracticable, and all owed their existence to the wish to escape from the destruction that stared us in the face. Such were our out-looks when on the 31st of October we were driven close to a headland of no great height, about three miles distant from the ship, and found ourselves in the midst of icebergs, several of which were of considerable magnitude. Towards this, the bergs, or we ourselves, or both, were rapidly drifting, as the soundings showed. If the icebergs drifted they would of course crush all the ice-fields which stood in their way. We were now in 79° 51′ N. Lat. and 58° 56′E. Long. Here exactly in the longitude of Admiralty peninsula of Novaya Zemlya, and with the ship lying north and south, we were to pass the winter—but harbourless.
5. On the forenoon of the 1st of November, the land lay to the north-west of us in the twilight. The lines of rocks were so clearly and distinctly seen, that we were convinced that it could be reached without endangering our return to the ship. There was no room for hesitation; full of energy and wild excitement, we clambered over the ice-walls lying to the northward, which consisted of barriers, fifty feet high, of huge pieces of ice recently forced up amid the pressure. These passed, we came on a broad surface of young ice, which showed that there had been open water there a short time before. Over the surface of this young ice we now ran towards the land. We crossed the ice-foot and actually stepped on it. Snow and rocks and broken ice surrounded us on every side; a land more desolate could not be found on earth than the island we walked on; all this we saw not. To us it was a paradise; and this paradise we called Wilczek Island.
6. So great was our joy at having reached the Land at last, that we bestowed on all we saw an attention which, in itself it in no way merited. We looked into every rent in the rocks, we touched every block, we were ravished with the varied forms and outlines which each crevice presented. We talked in grand style of the frozen slopes of its hollows as glaciers! Nothing was of greater moment in these first hours than the question of its geological character, and great was our surprise to find here the same rocks, with which we had become acquainted at the Pendulum Islands during the second German North Polar Expedition. The columnar conformation of these Dolerite rocks singularly resembled those of Griper Roads and Shannon Island. The vegetation was indescribably meagre and miserable, consisting merely of a few lichens. The drift-wood we expected to find was no where to be seen. We looked for traces of the reindeer and the fox, but our search was utterly fruitless. The land appeared to be without a single living creature. We then ascended a rocky height on the southern margin of the island, whence we had a view of the frozen ocean extending some miles beyond the ship. There was something sublime to the imagination in the utter loneliness of a land never before visited; felt all the more from the extraordinary character of our position. We had become exceedingly sensitive to new impressions, and a golden mist which rose on the southern horizon of an invisible ice-hole, and which spread itself, like an undulating curtain, before the glow of the noontide heavens, had to us the charm of a landscape in Ceylon.
7. How vexatious was it to feel, that if we had reached this Land some weeks earlier, we might have explored it without the risk of being cut off from the ship. For some days the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the twilight of noon admitted of only a few short excursions from the ship, quite insufficient to satisfy our earnest desire to learn more of its structure and configuration; and we much feared lest the constant north winds should cause us to drift out of sight of it. Southwards stretched a flat surface of bluish-grey ice, and beyond the distant ship, a large “ice-hole” from whose yellow mirror there arose undulating mists. Beyond this again stretched dark lines of floes running parallel to the horizon, over which, in the south, hung the sky in deep carmine. We scrambled over a rugged slope covered with ice as smooth as glass, which ran into the interior of the little island, in order to get a clear view northward; but we were compelled to return without achieving our purpose, for we feared to absent ourselves longer from the ship. We accordingly went back, but returned next day to explore. But these barren days and small events made a profound impression on our minds, and even Carlsen, the old and tried navigator of the frozen deep, wore on his breast, beneath his fur coat, the star of the order of St. Olaf, to do due honour to the dignity of discovery. We built a pyramid of stones six feet high on the island, and fixed in it one of our flags attached to a pole.