11. Nothing except the wind makes men so sensitive to cold as the want of exercise. The fall of the temperature had been felt far more by those who remained behind, than by ourselves. Even the wonderful beauty of the snow-clad summit bathed in rosy light failed to modify their severe judgment of Franz-Josef Land. Instead of greeting us with supper ready at the appointed hour, which he ought to have prepared without the use of spirit, the bewildered cook was vainly endeavouring to roast bear’s flesh over smoky chips and sticks, and we got our supper only after I had served out a bottle of alcohol. We then went to rest in the common sleeping bag, but soon began to shake with cold, which threw Pospischill, who took oil twice a day for lung-disease, into a fever. When I left the tent to look at the thermometers, the mercury in one had gone down into the bulb and was frozen, and the spirits of wine in the other showed 41° below zero (C.). Some hot grog, for which a whole bottle of strong rum was used, put us all right, raising the temperature of our bodies by one or two degrees. After this refreshment we all fell into a deep sleep, which was incommoded only by the increasing dampness of our clothes.
12. We started again about six o’clock on the morning of March 13. The sun had not risen, the spirit of wine thermometer indicated nearly 44° (C.) below zero, and a piercingly cold breeze met us from the land. Even on board the ship the temperature at the same time marked 37° (C.) below zero, a difference to be ascribed to the influence of the land in lowering the temperature. In Greenland we observed still greater deviations of this nature, which seem to show that climatical influences are subject to great variations, even in places which are in close proximity. Cape Berghaus was our goal. From its summit a general view of the distribution of the land under 80° N. lat. was reasonably to be expected. Long before the rise of the sun, the hard snowy plains were tinted with a pale green reflected light, and the icebergs wore a dull silvery hue, while their outlines constantly changed and undulated. Our road was formed from millions of glittering snow crystals, so hard that the sledge glided over them with difficulty and with a creaking noise, and after three hours, the exertion of dragging had so exhausted us that we determined to unload the sledge, and, after melting some snow, to wet its runners with water. A layer of ice was immediately formed on them, which greatly facilitated the labour of dragging, till it was rubbed off. A broad inlet surrounded by picturesque mountains—Nordenskjöld Fiord—had opened out on our left, and as a large glacier formed the background of this fiord, we took a westerly direction in order to study the ice-formation. The heights surrounding this fiord seemed equally as well fitted as Cape Berghaus for the object we had in view. The further we penetrated into it, the deeper became the layer of fine powdery snow which the wind had deposited in this hollow. At noon we reached the high precipitous termination of Sonklar-Glacier, and pitched our tent by an iceberg.
MELTING SNOW DURING A HALT NEAR CAPE BERGHAUS.
13. In the afternoon, accompanied by the Tyrolese, I ascended a mountain—Cape Littrow—whose height, by means of an aneroid barometer, we ascertained to be 2,500 feet. From its summit we had a view of the mountains of Hall Island, and of the islands which lay to the east. Not a breath of wind was stirring, and the atmosphere was clearer than usual, so that, without suffering in the least degree from cold, I could work for three hours, first in sketching our surroundings and then in taking observations. From south-west to north-east the peaks of distant mountains rose above the summits of those in the foreground. This view, while it assured us that the land we had named after our monarch must be of great extent, stimulated our impatience to know its extent, and the nature and relation of its constituent parts. The Wüllersdorf Mountains were the extreme limits of what could be known for the present, and their three peaks glowed in the setting sun above the dark edges of the terraces of the Sonklar-Glacier, whose broad terminal front over-hung the frozen bay of Nordenskjöld Fiord. It was eight o’clock in the evening when we returned to our tent, not, however, before we had made suitable preparations for the observation of the movement of the glacier. Sumbu and Torossy were our companions; but we had to tie them with a rope both in going up and coming down, and we ourselves only mastered the great steepness of the cone of the mountain by steps which Klotz, who went on before, hewed with incomparable dexterity and precision in the ice. During the night the temperature fell to 46° below zero (C.) (-47° F. in the ship), and I do not believe that we could have passed through it without the help of grog. We drank it as we lay close together muffled up in our sleeping bag. It was boiling hot, and so strong, that under other circumstances it must have made us incapable of work, yet in spite of the grog, we suffered much all through the night from cold and our frozen clothes.
CHAPTER V.
THE COLD.
1. THE coldest day we had during this expedition was the 14th of March. By six o’clock on the morning of that day the Tyrolese and I stood on the summit of the precipitous face of the Sonklar-Glacier. The others remained behind to clear the tent of snow, and to bury a small depôt of provisions in an iceberg which was close at hand. The sun had not yet risen, though a golden gleam behind the glaciers of Salm Island indicated his near approach. At last the sun himself appeared, blood-red, glowing with indistinct outline through the mists, and surrounded with parhelia, which generally occur when the cold is great. The tops of the high snowy mountains were first touched with rosy light, which gradually descended and spread over the icy plains, and the sun like a ball of fire shone at length clearly through the frosty mist, and everything around seemed on fire. As the sun even at noon was but a few degrees above the horizon, this wonderful colouring lasted throughout the day, and the mountains, whose steepest sides were covered with a frosty efflorescence, shone like glass in this radiant light. The alcohol thermometer soon after we came on the glacier fell to 59° 1′ (F.) below zero,[34] and a light breeze blowing from the interior, which would have been pleasant enough on a March day in Europe, exposed me, while engaged in the indispensable work of drawing and measuring, to such danger, that though I worked under the shelter of my Tyrolese companions as a protection against the cold, I was constantly compelled to rub my stiffened and benumbed hands with snow. We had taken some rum with us, and as each took his share, he knelt down and allowed another to shake it into his mouth, without bringing the metal cup in contact with his lips. This rum, though it was strong, seemed to have lost all its strength and fluidity. It tasted like innocent milk, and its consistence was that of oil. The bread was frozen so hard that we feared to break our teeth in biting it, and it brought blood as we ate it. The attempt to smoke a cigar was a punishment rather than an enjoyment, because the icicles on our beards always put them out, and when we took them out of our mouths they were frozen. Even the shortest pipes met the same fate. The instruments I used in surveying seemed to burn when I touched them, and the medals which my companions wore on their breasts felt like hot iron.