HOW WE RECEIVED BEARS. CAPE TYROL IN THE BACKGROUND.
16. During our march, spying us at a great distance, a bear approached us at a rapid pace, but when he came within forty paces he fell, receiving three bullets in his head. The accompanying illustration shows how we received bears when they attacked us on our journey; it represents also the fine forms of Cape Tyrol in the background. A few hours afterwards, we observed a she-bear about 400 yards from us, apparently diligent in burrowing in the snow; but as soon as she got wind of us she suddenly turned, reared herself on her hind legs, and began to snuff the air. She then came towards us, but as she advanced she rolled herself over with evident pleasure on her back several times, then pushed on with her snout and belly close to the ground, perfectly unconscious of the three rifles which were levelled at her. At fifty paces distance we fired, and brought her down. We immediately examined the place where we had seen her so busy. We did not find poor Sumbu, as we half expected, but a partially-consumed seal, and close to it a hole in the ice, into which the creature no doubt would plunge when danger threatened; but the bear had been sharper and cleverer than the seal, and had probably seized it when asleep on the ice. Bear-flesh now formed our principal food, and the sledge was heavily laden with it. We ate it both raw and cooked, and when the flesh was badly cooked—especially if it were the flesh of an old bear—it was less palatable than when uncooked. It may be tolerable food for sea-gulls, but it is a diet hardly fit even for devils on the fast-days of the infernal regions. Arctic lands certainly do not furnish delicacies to gratify a refined taste; the best things they have to offer are coarse and oily, and if ever they are eaten with relish, it is a relish which comes from hunger alone. The desolate shores of these lands are truly the very home of hunger, and nowhere else are the calculations of travellers so much influenced and determined by the stomach and its needs. Remains or fragments are unknown in Arctic regions. The dead are consumed by the living, and the living find their never-ceasing occupation in the toilsome search for food. In my three Arctic expeditions, I very seldom indeed found the remains of animals, never the remains of a bear or a fox. The man who visits these wastes must do homage to the principle of eating everything, and throwing away nothing. Franklin was unsurpassed in this, but I believe we were little behind him. Franklin and his people found the flesh of a white fox as pleasant to the taste as young geese—a proof how entirely they had forgotten how geese taste. They preferred foxes, too, to lean reindeer; and they considered the flesh of a grey bear exceedingly palatable, though even the Eskimos eat it only in dire necessity. Reindeer marrow, even raw, was to them a great delicacy, and they ate animals in a state of decomposition. Barentz and his crew were very modest in their tastes; they compared whale-flesh to beef, and foxes to rabbits, as articles of diet; bears’ meat they utterly detested. Once only it seems they partook of the liver of a bear, and three of his men became exceedingly ill in consequence, their skin peeling off from head to foot. Kane was prejudiced against bear, notwithstanding the great straits to which he was reduced, and complains of this food as being absolutely uneatable. The testimony of Dunér is more favourable. “If,” says he, “a bear has not been eating walrus or seal in a state of semiputrefaction before he is killed, his flesh, though somewhat coarse, is yet palatable, and not at all prejudicial to health.” Parry thought whale-flesh and walrus-flesh equally distasteful: he makes an exception in favour only of the heart of the walrus; but he speaks of the tenderness and excellence of the flesh of young seals. As for ourselves, we disdained nothing that we could get hold of, after the manner of Sir John Ross, who thought the fox the best of all food, better than the gull (Larus tridactylus).
DINING ON BEARS’ FLESH.
17. The continued moisture of the last few days had completely saturated our canvas boots; and those of several of us were besides nearly worn out, and in the morning when completely frozen, to put the foot into one was as bad as putting it into an ice-hole, so that we were obliged to thaw them over a spirit-flame, and to knock their heels with a hammer continually during the march. Sussich had made himself a pair of new boots out of a cloth jacket. It would, however, be a mistake to think that we should have been any better off with leather boots. In fact, we could not have put them on, and in the increasing cold of the following weeks our feet would certainly have been frost-bitten. Our clothes were completely saturated in like manner, and whenever the temperature fell they became stiff with ice. I suffered the least of any, for my bird-skin garments were the best preservatives against the penetration of moisture.
18. No kind of snow opposes such hindrances to sledge-dragging as the snow with the thermometer not much below freezing-point, for at this temperature it balls. This impediment we now encountered. The air, too, became oppressively heavy; land and sky were suddenly overspread with darkness; and, from behind thunderlike clouds, red rays of the sun fell on the conical mountains of Kane Island. Falls of snow, calms, and violent gusts of wind rapidly succeeded one another, and just before we erected our tent it again became clear. Far to the north we saw two white masses—Becker and Archduke-Rainer Islands, and an extensive inlet—Back Inlet; but only within Austria Sound could we count on pursuing our journey northwards without making any détours. On Easter Monday, April 7th (the thermometer varying between 9° and 19° below zero (C.)), we approached Becker Island; but the atmosphere was on this day so moist and thick, though without mist in the proper sense, that its existence might be asserted or disputed according as the light changed; and it was only when we were not further off than 100 paces that we could be positive of the existence of land, rising gently at an angle of 1° 7′. Over this ice-covered island we now dragged, and, full of expectation, mounted its highest point. To the north lay an indescribable waste, more utterly desolate than anything I had ever seen, even in the Arctic regions, interspersed with snow-covered islands, all, big and little, of the same low, rounded shape. The whole, at a distance, presented the appearance of a chaos of icehills and icebergs scattered over a frozen sea. One thing only in this view gave us much satisfaction. Austria Sound still stretched uninterruptedly towards the north. Could we have forgotten how the Tegetthoff had drifted towards Franz-Josef Land, that Sound would have seemed to us the true road to the Pole. Nor could we doubt that in the immediate north open water would be found, for in no other way could we interpret the indications we had observed in the course of the last few days—the great moisture and high temperature, the dark colour of the northern sky, the frequent flights of Auks, and Divers, grey and white Gulls, which flew from the north southward, or vice versâ.
19. After crossing Becker Island, we went on again on the frozen sea, which was rough and undulating for some distance. From behind one of the hummocks a bear suddenly emerged, and came towards us without any fear or hesitation, his yellow colour forming a strong contrast with the gleaming hills of ice. When he was thirty paces off we fired; but though severely wounded he managed to get away. On the 7th of April (the thermometer varying between 16° and 25° below zero (C.), and with a light south-west wind), we passed close to Archduke-Rainer Island, a heavy rime frost seriously impeding our progress. We were able, however, to turn to good account the clear sunny weather of this day. We dried our clothes and tent furniture, spreading them out in the sun over the sledge or suspending them to its mast and yard. We had almost reached Cape Beurmann at noon, and having taken our observations, we found our latitude to be 81° 23′. We had consequently gone beyond the latitude reached by Morton; Hayes only having reached a slightly higher latitude than this. About this time of the day the horizon towards the north became exceedingly clear, and the steep rocks of Coburg Island were distinctly visible, and behind them now rose the faint outlines of mountains—Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land.
20. At this latitude it seemed as if Wilczek Land suddenly terminated, but when the sun scattered the driving mist we saw the glittering ranges of its enormous glaciers—the Dove[44] Glaciers—shining down on us. Towards the north-east we could trace land trending to a cape lying in the grey distance—Cape Buda Pesth, as it was afterwards called. The prospect thus opened to us of a vast glacier land, conflicted with the general impression we had formed of the resemblance between the newly-discovered region and Spitzbergen; for glaciers of such extraordinary magnitude presuppose the existence of a country stretching far into the interior. As it appeared to us that Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land and Karl Alexander’s Land formed a continuous whole, we left Austria Sound and diverged into Rawlinson Sound, and directed our course towards Cape Rath. It was my intention, if this headland should be reached, to leave behind the remainder of the party and push on with the dog-sledge and two companions. We could count on finding deep snow-wreaths behind the hummocks, and to dig out a snow-house would have been the labour of an hour for three men. Previous experience had convinced us that such a night encampment is warmer than the shelter which a tent can afford. But though we were filled with zeal to extend our discoveries as much as possible, we now felt that the excessive exertions we had made had reduced our strength. We had slept on an average but five hours a day, and marched the rest of the day, or at any rate had been occupied with all manner of work. Our appetite too had increased with our labours, and the partaking of bears’ flesh began to tell on some of us. The restricted use of bread-stuff was especially felt, and the almost exclusive, use of flesh produced diarrhœa and general debility. Nothing is more prejudicial to those engaged in extended sledge journeys than great exertion with insufficient sleep. The urgent reasons we had for losing no time in order that we might return as soon as possible to the ship, constrained us to depart from the rule of a ten hours’ sleep to a seven hours’ march on sledge journeys. In consequence of our persistent adherence to this principle during our return to Europe after abandoning the Tegetthoff, the labours incident to it were far more easily performed. We did not lose but gained strength; and some of us even grew stouter during it.