No pen can tell of the unredeemed loneliness of an October evening in this part of the polar world: the monotonous, rounded outline of the adjacent hills, as well as the flat, unmeaning valleys, were of one uniform colour, either deadly white with snow or striped with brown where too steep for the winter mantle as yet to find a holding ground. You felt pity for the shivering blade of grass, which, at your feet, was already drooping under the cold and icy hand that would press it down to mother earth for nine long months. Talk of "antres vast and deserts idle,"—talk of the sadness awakened in the wanderer's bosom by the lone scenes, be it even by the cursed waters of Judea, or afflicted lands of Assyria,—give me, I say, death in any one of them, with the good sun and a bright heaven to whisper hope, rather than the solitary horrors of such scenes as these. The very wind scorned courtesy to such a repulsive landscape, and as the stones rattled down the slope of a ravine before the blast, it only recalled dead men's bones, and motion in a catacomb. A truce, however, to such thoughts—May's merry recognition breaks the stillness of the frosty air. He has been to the point, and finds it an island; he says—and I vow he means what he says—that May Island is a beautiful spot! it has grass and moss upon it, and traces of game: next year he intends to bag many a hare there. Sanguine feelings are infectious; I forget my own impressions, adopt his rosy ones, and we walk back to our tent, guided by the smoke, plotting plans for shooting excursions in 1851!
"Pemmican is all ready, sir!" reports our Soyer. In troth, appetite need wait on one, for the greasy compound would pall on moderate taste or hunger. Tradition said that it was composed of the best rump-steaks and suet, and cost 1s. 6d. per pound, but we generally voted it composed of broken-down horses and Russian tallow. If not sweet in savour, it was strong in nourishment, and after six table-spoonfuls, the most ravenous feeder might have cried, hold! enough!
Frozen pork, which had been boiled on board the ship, was quite a treat, and decidedly better than cold, thawed pork could have been; this, with plenty of biscuit and a "jolly hot" basin of tea, and, as one of the seamen observed, "an invitation to Windsor would have been declined." The meal done, the tent was carefully swept out, the last careful arrangement of the pebbles, termed "picking the feathers," was made, and then a water-proof sheet spread, to prevent our warm bodies, during the night, melting the frozen ground and wetting us through. Then every man his blanket bag, a general popping thereinto of the legs and body, in order that the operation of undressing might be decently performed, the jacket and wet boots carefully arranged for a pillow; the wolf-skin robes,—Oh, that the contractor may be haunted by the aroma of the said robes for his life-time!—brought along both over and under the party, who lie down alternately, head and feet in a row, across the tent. Pipes are lighted, the evening's glass of grog served out; and whilst the cook is washing up, and preparing his things ready for the morning meal, as well as securing the food on the sledges from foxes, or a hungry bear, many a tough yarn is told, or joke made, which keep all hands laughing until the cook reports all right, comes in, hooks up the door, tucks in the fur robe; and seven jolly mortals, with a brown-holland tent over their heads, and a winter's gale without, try to nestle their sides amongst the softest stones, and at last drop into such a sleep as those only enjoy who drag a sledge all day, with the temperature 30° below freezing point.
AUTUMNAL TRAVELLING.
Friday morning, at seven o'clock, we rolled up our beds, or rather sleeping-bags, stowed the sledge, drank boiling hot chocolate, and gnawed cheerily at frozen pork and biscuit; the weather beautiful, calm, and very cold, below zero, we started, skirting round the bay. By noon a gale sprung up, sending a body of icy spiculæ against our faces, causing both pain and annoyance. Two mock suns for the first time were seen to-day. At noon we sat down under the lee of our sledge, and partook of a mouthful of grog and biscuit, and again marched rapidly towards "Cape No Name!" By the evening we had marched fourteen miles, the entire circuit of the bay, without observing any trace of Franklin having visited the neighbourhood; and as frost-bites began to attack our faces, we erected our tent as expeditiously as possible, and in it took shelter from the wind and cold. The pungent smoke of the lignum vitæ kept us weeping, as long as the cooking went on; and between the annoyance of it, the cold, and fatigue, we all dropped off to sleep, indifferent to a falling temperature, prowling bears, or a violent gale, which threatened to blow us from the beach on which we had pitched our fluttering tent.
Next day, my work being done, we struck homeward for the squadron, and reached it the same evening, the said 12th of October being the last autumnal travelling of our squadron.
The following week the temperature rallied a little, and the weather was generally finer; our preparations for wintering were nearly completed, and the poor sickly sun barely for two hours a day rose above the heights of Griffith's Island.
To our great joy, on the 17th of October, Captain Penny came over from Assistance Harbour. He had happily decided on taking up the search of Wellington Channel; and an understanding was come to, that his squadron should carry out the travelling operations next spring on that route, whilst our squadron accomplished the farthest possible distance towards Melville Island, and from Cape Walker to the south-west.
Captain P. expressed it as his opinion that the Americans had not escaped out of Barrow's Strait, in consequence of a sudden gale springing up from the southward, shortly after they had passed his winter quarters. This supposition we of course afterwards found to be true, although at the time we all used to speak of the Americans as being safe and snug in New York, instead of drifting about in the ice, within a few miles of us, as was really the case.
With Penny's return to his vessels, may be said to have closed all the Arctic operations of the year 1850. Our upper decks were now covered in; stoves and warming apparatus set at work; boats secured on the ice; all the lumber taken off the upper decks, to clear them for exercise in bad weather; masts and yards made as snug as possible; rows of posts placed to show the road in the darkness and snow-storms from ship to ship; holes cut through the ice into the sea, to secure a ready supply of water, in the event of fire; arrangements made to insure cleanliness of ships and crews, and a winter routine entered upon, which those curious in such matters may find fully detailed in Parry's "First Voyage," or Ross's "Four Years in Boothia."