KLOTZ’S AMAZEMENT.
THE ALARM OF THE HOHENLOHE PARTY.
7. We now left the glacier and the icebergs, and by midnight had reached Cape Habermann. Here we slept, and the dogs with us, as uncomfortably as possible. On the morning of the 11th of April (the thermometer marking 3° F.), we started at an hour when we would much rather have continued to sleep. Our thirst was so great that we felt ourselves equal to drinking up a stream. Haller, Sussich, Lukinovich had during the night returned to Cape Schrötter. Before they started Haller earnestly besought me to come back as soon as possible; for the recent event, he said, had not been without its disquieting effects on the men. On the whole, we might congratulate ourselves on being able to continue our journey, without having received any serious damage, though no longer over the treacherous glacier.
HALT UNDER CROWN-PRINCE RUDOLF’S LAND.
8. A sharp turn to the left brought us to the west coast of Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land, along which we pursued our route northwards. When we reached Cape Brorock, where by an observation we found our latitude at noon to be 81° 45′, the weather became wonderfully bright, and the warm sunlight lay on the broken summits of the Dolerite mountains, which, though covered with gleaming ice, were free from snow. To the north-west we saw at first nothing but ice up to the horizon; even with the telescope of the theodolite I could not decide for the existence of land, which Orel’s sharp eye discovered in the far distance. In the Arctic regions, it often happens that banks of fog on the horizon assume the character of distant ranges, for the small height to which these banks rise in the cold air causes them to be very sharply defined. It is very common also to make the same mistake in the case of mists arising from the waste water of enormous glaciers. We marched on northward close under the land, and for the first time over smooth undulating ice, in high spirits at the increasing grandeur of the scenery and at the happy issue of our adventure of yesterday. Thirst compelled us frequently to halt in order to liquefy snow;[47] sometimes we melted it as we marched along, and our sledge with smoke curling up from the cooking-machine then resembled a small steamer.
9. By and by we came to more snow, and the ice, through which many fissures ran, became gradually thinner, but when we reached the imposing headland, which we called Cape Auk, the ice lay in forced-up barriers. A strange change had come over the aspect of nature. A dark water-sky appeared in the north, and heavy mists rolled down to the steep promontories of Karl Alexander Land; the temperature rose to 10° F.,[48] our track became moist, the snow-drifts collapsed under us with a loud noise, and if we had previously been surprised with the flight of birds from the north, we now found all the rocky precipices of Rudolf’s Land covered with thousands of auks and divers. Enormous flocks of birds flew up and filled the air, and the whole region seemed alive with their incessant whirring. We met everywhere with traces of bears and foxes. Seals lay on the ice, but sprang into the water before we got within shot of them. But notwithstanding these signs of a richer animal life, we should not be justified in inferring, from what we saw in a single locality, that life increases as we move northwards. It was a venial exaggeration, if amid such impressions we pronounced for the nearness of an open Polar sea, and without doubt all adherents of this opinion, had they come with us to this point and no further, would have found in these signs fresh grounds to support their belief. In enumerating these observations, I am conscious what attractions they must have for every one who still leans to the opinion that an open ocean will be found at the Pole; subsequent experience, however, will show how little is their value in support of this antiquated hypothesis.
