11. The number of those afflicted with scurvy decreased with the approach of spring. Their gums recovered their fresh and natural appearance, and the general weakness, the pains in the joints, the leaden weight of the feet, the depression of spirits—symptoms of this terrible malady—abated, and the scorbutic marks disappeared from their bodies. Pachtusow, when he wintered in Novaya Zemlya, so abundant in supplies of drift-wood, caused his people to use the bath once a week in a log house constructed on the land, as a preservative against scurvy, and had their inner clothing washed twice a week, but even these steps were insufficient to avert the malady. In our case baths so added to the moisture that we were obliged to put a stop to them, and our under-garments could be changed only as our stock of them permitted. Hence we could hope to prevent the spread of scurvy only by the improvement of our diet. Several hundred-weight of potatoes and a large supply of preserved meat had been kept in store for the second winter. These now came into use, and were the more welcome as our supply of lemon-juice—the most important preservative against scurvy—was diminishing. By the advice of our physician, Dr. Kepes, we departed from the maxim, so generally adhered to in Arctic expeditions, of avoiding spirituous liquors. From the beginning of October our men daily received rations of brandy. When I compare the sanitary condition of the crew of the Tegetthoff with the better state of that of the Germania, I attribute this to the lesser power of resistance to disease in some of our people on board the Tegetthoff and to the moral depression so easily explained by our disasters in this ship.
12. The Arctic voyager is exposed to no disease so much as to scurvy. Its appearance among a crew exercises a most untoward influence. Its causes are still but little known; the means, however, of combating it are numerous. It is no longer the scourge it was in the days of Barentz, when he and all his men were attacked with it on the short summer excursion of 1595, or when in Munk’s expedition of 1619 all died but two. In Behring’s expedition of 1741, out of seventy-six men, forty-two were attacked and thirty died. In Tschirikoff’s summer expedition during that same year (1741), out of seventy men, twenty died. Rossmyslow, who passed the winter of 1768-69 in “Matoschkin-Schar,” lost seven out of thirteen men. When the disease gains the mastery, the utter incapacity of the expedition for further exploration follows as a necessary consequence. Lassinius, who was sent out to explore Novaya Zemlya in 1819, had to return in the height of summer, all his men having fallen down with the scurvy. This disease has been a frightful enemy to expeditions which have wintered in that region, and carried off numerous victims. All these, it is true, were miserably equipped, and depended on the medicinal virtues of the “Löffel-kraut” of that country for remedies against the disease. In 1832-33 Pachtusow, wintering in the south of the island, out of ten men lost three; in 1834-35, two more died of the same disease. In the expedition of Ziwolka and Mojsejew, 1838-39, the scurvy gained such mastery that at the end of February half of the crew were attacked, and Ziwolka himself with eight men died. Parry regarded damp, especially damp bedding, as the principal cause of the malady. During his wintering at Melville Island he found sorrel an effective remedy or palliative. He attributed the greatest anti-scorbutic effect to beer; and according to him and to most of the English expeditions, beer and wine take the place of brandy. The disease generally has a fatal issue when there has been excessive loss of blood, or when dropsy supervenes. Most of Ross’s second expedition suffered more or less from it, and the experience of that expedition showed that vegetable nourishment alone was not competent to make head against it. Ross regarded the addition of fish or seals to the ordinary diet as an effective preservative, and did not disdain the use of blubber for the same purpose. Lemon-juice, uncooked potatoes, fruit with much acidity, fresh vegetables and fresh meat, wine and yeast, exercise in the open air, and cheerfulness, have always proved sufficient to prevent its appearance, or at any rate to render it improbable. But however valuable these may be as preventives, they almost cease to have any effect when the disease has once broken out. The lime-juice must be fresh, and, like vinegar, be taken in as concentrated a form as possible. It is decomposed and useless by being kept too long, and also by the action of frost. This was the case with the lemon-juice which Sir John Ross found among the stores of the Fury. An anti-scorbutic effect has been attributed also—and with justice—to the chewing of tobacco. It appears that liability to scurvy is very different among different races, and that neither vegetable nor animal food is an absolute preservative. The Eskimos, and even the Lapps, who seldom or never use vegetables, are almost exempt from it, and McClure’s men fell down with it in their second winter, although they had fresh meat three times a week. Steller relates that in Kamschatka scurvy attacks strangers only, but not the natives, who live largely on vegetables; he states also, that the scurvy when it does appear among strangers and visitors there, is cured by a diet of the fresh fish of spring.
CHAPTER XIV.
SUNRISE OF 1874.
1. An unbroken sleep for the whole winter would, undoubtedly, be a blessing to the Arctic navigator, and the most energetic among us resigned himself to slumber for a few hours in the afternoon—the profane time of the day for all zones of the earth—especially after the coming in of the New Year, when the long unbroken night is intensely felt. The darkness diminished very gradually, and as the weather was frequently cloudy and dull, it was little lessened by the full moon, which we had at the beginning of January and February. December 26, we were able to read only the title of New Free Press, at the distance of a few inches, but not a word of Vogt’s Geology. January 11, the word Geology on the title of that book was discernible in clear weather, but only when the book was held up to the light of the midday twilight. On the following day it was as dark at nine o’clock in the morning as at noon on December 1st. The moon returned again on the 24th of January, and after it was four days old we could distinguish the common print of the “Press” by its light, and for the first time read off the degrees of the thermometer without artificial means. During the whole of the month we had alternations of high temperatures and snow-drifting, and at the end of it the wind dropped and the cold became exceedingly great, causing the ice to break up to the south of our position. It would be difficult to give in an illustration any notion of the wonderful forms produced by the twilight, and its glowing colour-effects, and quite impossible to describe the blaze of the meridian heavens, while deep shadows still lay over the ice-plains and a dark ridge fringed and closed the horizon.
2. At noon on the 23rd of February the rolling mists glowed with a red light, announcing the reappearance of the sun. The next day the sun himself, raised and distorted into an oval shape, appeared above the horizon about 10 A.M. Again there was spread over the snow that magical rosy hue, those bright azure shadows, which impart a poetical character even to the landscape of the frozen north. The return of the sun was this year the deliverance from our long night of 125 days.[25] Anxiously had we waited his return, and joyously we greeted it, but not with the frenzied feelings of the previous year. Then the reappearance of the sun was tantamount almost to a deliverance from hell itself; but now the sun was nothing to us but as a means to an end: would it enable us to begin our sledge-journeys to explore the Kaiser Franz-Josef Land? The mere thought of the possibility of making new discoveries threw us into a feverish impatience, and our fears became intense lest the ship with its floe should drift away and frustrate the execution of our plans just as they seemed feasible.
3. On that same day Lieutenant Weyprecht and I resolved to abandon the ship after the termination of our projected sledge-journeys of discovery, and to attempt to return to Europe by means of the boats and sledges. No arguments were needed to convince every one of the ship’s company of the absolute necessity of this resolution. Our ship lay on its icy elevation, beyond the power of man to liberate her, and the provisions would not be sufficient to sustain us for another year. But fear lest the state of our health should greatly deteriorate in a third winter spoke more forcibly than anything else in favour of our decision. When we looked at our medical stores, once so ample, now so reduced, at the few bottles of lemon-juice we could count on, all saw the impossibility of our remaining longer in these latitudes. The melancholy issue of Franklin’s expedition forced itself on our mind as an instructive example and warning. In all likelihood that ill-fated expedition had delayed its return a year longer than it should have done, and began it in so weakened a condition, that it was next to an impossibility that they should have succeeded in their purpose. We began to be pinched also in many of our stores, in spite of the greatest economy in their use. To add to our perils, the doctor drew a sad picture of the sanitary condition of our crew. Of nineteen men, several had fallen sick: Krisch still suffered from scurvy and consumption; Marola from the first scorbutic symptoms; Fallesich from its consequences; Vecerina from the utter inability to move his lower extremities produced by the same malady; Palmich from a constant tendency to it and the contraction of his lower extremities; Pospischill from lung disease; and Haller from a rheumatic affection of his extremities which almost incapacitated him for any exertion.