4. Next to the season, the state of the snow road, depending on the hardening action of wind and cold, has to be considered. The cold should not vary more than from -2° to -24° F., because greater frost transforms the smooth evaporating surface of snow into a rough plain, bestrewed with sharp pointed crystals, so that the sledge instead of gliding along encounters the friction, as if of a sandstone surface, and stops at the least obstacle. Snow of an ivory-like smoothness rarely occurs; on the contrary, we find the snow in deep layers as fine as powder, into which we sink knee-deep, or among barriers of hummocks, miles in extent, which impose enormous détours in the transport of the baggage. During the journey from 2° to 13° below zero F. constitutes the pleasantest temperature, and even the nights, under this condition, are passed without inconvenience by a party inured to exposure. Snow-storms, however, in their mildest form—snow-drifting—are, at this moderate temperature, distressing and dangerous. In fact, among all the contingencies which may occur during a Polar expedition, there is no severer test of enduring perseverance than dragging a sledge in the face of drifting snow at a temperature from 13° to 35° below zero F.
5. The ship in its winter harbour is the only place of refuge, in all cases where a meeting with Eskimos cannot be counted on. Except for the accidents of hunting, on which no dependence should be placed, the country itself affords no kind of means of subsistence; hence all the necessaries of life must be carried in the sledges. The heavily laden sledge becomes in truth a ship of the icy wastes, and its loss involves the destruction of the whole party. In order to lighten its load and yet prolong the journey as much as possible, supplies of provisions are often deposited along the routes to be traversed. This may be done, either by previous shorter journeys, or by leaving behind a part of the provisions which have been taken from the ship, or by burying the product of the chase in the manner adopted by fur-hunters and Indians. The danger to such stores from the inroads of bears or the breaking up of the ice must be guarded against by a careful selection of localities; and the place being chosen, the provisions should either be buried four feet deep in snow between steep rocks, somewhat above the level of the sea, or the bags containing them should be suspended on the inaccessible faces of the rocks. The choice of an elevated point is some security against visits from bears. But it is never advisable to build confidently on finding the depôt, or to make the possibility of return dependent on this contingency. A small stock of the necessaries of life should always be kept in reserve, as a prudent precaution in case the depôt should be destroyed. If however the depôts remain untouched and uninjured, and their numbers be considerable, the duration of the journey, which can be prolonged for thirty or forty days only where provisions are carried in the sledges, may thus be doubled in extent. The depôts for journeys in the spring are often formed in the preceding autumn, though their preservation is of course exposed to great risk.
6. Sledges are dragged sometimes by men and dogs conjointly, sometimes by men without dogs, or by dogs alone. Reindeer are found to be unfit for sledge dragging; although Parry in former days, and Nordenskjöld more recently, frequently attempted to employ them in this service. Though a reindeer is able to make with a sledge as many as 120 miles in three days, it cannot continue such efforts without long periods of repose, nor drag the heavy loads which are requisite in longer journeys. Besides this, he who has had any experience in this mode of travelling, knows the unaccountable capriciousness of these animals, their stubbornness, and the difficulty of feeding them. Natives alone are able to manage them, while to strangers they refuse subjection. When the sledges are dragged by men alone, unexpected contingencies are less to be apprehended, but at the same time their rate of progress is diminished. In an expedition calculated to last a month, ten miles constitute the average day’s march, when circumstances are favourable. If the length of the journey be prolonged, this average will be considerably diminished. The combination of men and dogs in the work of dragging accelerates the speed. With regard to the men employed in this work, it is advisable to engage experienced mountaineers[28] of great bodily strength, such men being able to do work for which, it is admitted, sailors have neither training nor inclination.
7. No form of sledge travelling, when measured by results, can be compared with sledging by the help of dogs alone; for this method enables us to compass the greatest possible distance, and diminishes the dead-weight of the load in the sledge. Besides this, dogs are not only active but tractable; they show no fear; they can endure hunger longer than men, even while making great exertions; they neither drink nor smoke; neither fuel for the stove to liquefy the snow, nor tent, nor sleeping bag, need be taken for them; none, in fact, of those many little things which are indispensable for men. In extreme necessity they may be even used for food. And since a strong dog is able to drag, even for a long journey, double of what he needs for his own support, the surplus falls to the share of the man who accompanies him, and who is able, therefore, to prolong his absence from the ship. Without considering the forced marches which Englishmen, Americans, and Russians have frequently made on the ice with a number of dogs, the employment of a few dogs in sledge expeditions has such conspicuous advantage over teams of men, that I would earnestly recommend the following method of procedure: two teams of dogs, each of two or four strong Newfoundlands, should be employed, one to be driven by the leader of the expedition and the other by one of the most experienced and trustworthy of the party. Each sledge should carry at starting, a weight of from 4 to 7 cwt., i.e. provisions for thirty to fifty days, only needing a slight supplement from the products of the chase. Sixteen miles a day, on an average, may easily be thus accomplished, especially if the rest of the party attached to each sledge walk on before their respective teams. Distances varying from 500 to 800 miles may thus be reached, while 300 or at the most 500 miles are all that men alone in the same time can perform. Journeys of this kind require much experience, so that those men only are serviceable who have much practical acquaintance with life in the Arctic wastes, and not merely with life as it is in the ship, but who are inured to fatigues and skilled in the use of those precautions which distance from the ship imperatively demands during the prevalence of extreme cold. With regard to the route itself, whenever the object is the reaching of higher latitudes and the exploration of a still unknown country, it is advisable to choose one from four to eight miles distant from the land. The search for a route is greatly facilitated whenever we can ascend dominating heights to enable us to determine our position. Such a course not only saves us from the necessity of making détours, but affords the only possibility of being able to touch the land at desirable points and of ascertaining the character of the intervening districts. A survey may be made either by triangulation, the base being measured by those who remain behind in the ship and the summits of the mountains serving as the points of the triangles, or by the determination of the geographical latitude and longitude of the different spots. The combination of both methods is of course most desirable.
8. The following instruments may be employed in sledge journeys, according to the degree of exactness which is required: a small universal instrument, a sextant with an artificial horizon, a pocket chronometer, an azimuth compass, a boat compass of simple construction, an alcohol and mercurial thermometer, and two small aneroids.
CHAPTER III.
THE EQUIPMENT OF A SLEDGE EXPEDITION.
1. The equipment of a sledge expedition on a large scale demands an amount of circumspection and precision which experience alone can give, and its safety and success may be endangered by the neglect of apparently trifling precautions. At a distance from the ship the most formidable dangers may arise, from allowing the matches to become damp, from the leaking or the loss of a vessel containing spirit, from the setting fire to a tent, which only too probably may happen from the carelessness of the cook, to say nothing of those yet greater perils,—the inability of some of the party to march, the destruction of depôts of provisions by bears, or the breaking in of the sea. The first principle in fitting out such an expedition should be the rejection of everything not absolutely necessary for the support of life, the instruments only excepted; and the second, that the whole of the travelling gear should be of the most perfect and convenient form. The departure from these rules contributed, among other things, to the melancholy issue of the Franklin expedition. McClintock speaks most emphatically of the evils of over-loading with things not absolutely necessary. The success of an undertaking may be defeated by the neglect even of things apparently insignificant. Mojsejew’s sledge expedition along the coast of Novaya Zemlya in 1839 was a proof and illustration of this. It was wrecked within a few days by the snow-blindness of the entire party, caused by their want of snow-spectacles. If we except the journeys of the Russian explorers of the Siberian coast, carried out, however, at the sacrifice of the whole nomad population, and of all the dogs and reindeer of North Asia—from which to this day the exhausted country has not recovered—the merit of the organization of sledge expeditions belongs pre-eminently to the English. It was by Parry and James Ross that those experiments with sledges were begun, which have since been brought nearly to perfection by McClintock.[29] The method thus perfected serves to this day as a pattern to be imitated, as it enables a party of men, inured to hardships and fatigues, to pass many weeks without the help of those resources which only a ship in such icy wastes can afford. I will now endeavour to describe with sufficient detail the equipment of our sledges in the journeys we carried out.
2. The changeableness of the weather during the season for sledging, and the character of our expeditions, required the employment of three sledges of different sizes. The smallest of these was a dog-sledge, and the two others were larger and intended to be drawn by men. The runners were respectively 6, 8 and 11 feet long, and 1½, 2 and 2¾ inches broad[30]—gently curved at each end—and about one foot high, so as to raise the lading above the snow. The sledges were constructed of the best ash, and carried loads amounting to 7, 12, and 20 cwts. respectively. The two runners were fastened together by two strong front boards, and by four cross-pieces of wood firmly lashed to the upright standards of the sledge, which were themselves dovetailed into the runners. Screws were sparingly used, and chiefly in the fittings of the two horns of the sledge, and of the rail on which the rifles were suspended, and which also was used to push and guide the sledge. The rail was, therefore, of considerable strength, in order to withstand the pressure of a man’s force. The runners were shod with steel carefully riveted on. The accompanying sketch shows the manner in which a sledge is drawn by a team of men and dogs combined. Those who take the longest steps in the march should precede, and the less active should be placed in the middle, so that any slackness may be easily detected; for in a sledge journey it is disgraceful to draw a weight less than the weight of what we can eat. The centre trace should never be grasped, as this diminishes the force of the pull.