When we in the squadron off Griffith's Island heard of the departure of the mail, the opinion prevalent was, the birds would be frozen to death. We were mistaken; for, in about one hundred and twenty hours, one of these birds, as verified by the lady to whom it had originally belonged, reached her house, and flew to the nest in which it had been hatched in the pigeon-house. It had, however, by some means or other, shaken itself clear of the packet entrusted to its charge. This marvellous flight of three thousand miles is the longest on record; but, of course, we are unable to say for what portion of the distance the bird was carried by the balloon, and when or where liberated; that depending upon the strength and direction of the gale in which the balloon was carried along.
CARRIER-PIGEONS.—KITES.
Kites, which the kind Mr. Benjamin Smith had supplied me with, both as a tractile power to assist us in dragging sledges, as well as a means of signalizing between parties, afforded much interest, and the success of our experiments in applying them to dragging weights was so great, that all those I was able to supply gladly provided themselves with so useful an auxiliary to foot-travellers. Experience, however, taught us how impossible it was to command a fair wind, without which they were useless weight, and in severe weather there was some danger, when handling or coiling up the lines, of having to expose the hands and being frost-bitten.
My attempts failed to despatch the kites with a weight attached sufficient to keep a strain on the string, and so keep the kite aloft, whilst at the same time it was enabled to proceed through the air in any direction I chose; for, as may be conceived, a little too much weight made the kite a fixture, whilst a little too little, or a sudden flaw of wind, would topple the kite over and bring it to the earth. As a means of signalizing between ships when stationary, the flying of kites of different colours, sizes, or numbers, attached one to the other, would, I am sure, in the clear atmosphere of the Arctic regions, be found wonderfully efficacious.
Lastly, we carried out, more I believe from amusement than from any idea of being useful, a plan which had suggested itself to the people of Sir James Ross's expedition when wintering in Leopold Harbour in 1848-49, that of enclosing information in a collar, secured to the necks of the Arctic foxes, caught in traps, and then liberated. Several animals thus entrusted with despatches or records were liberated by different ships; but, as the truth must be told, I fear in many cases the next night saw the poor "postman," as Jack facetiously termed him, in another trap, out of which he would be taken, killed, the skin taken off, and packed away, to ornament, at some future day, the neck of some fair Dulcinea. As a "sub," I was admitted into this secret mystery, or otherwise, I with others might have accounted for the disappearance of the collared foxes by believing them busy on their honourable mission. In order that the crime of killing the "postmen" may be recognized in its true light, it is but fair that I should say, that the brutes, having partaken once of the good cheer on board or around the ships, seldom seemed satisfied with the mere empty honours of a copper collar, and returned to be caught over and over again. Strict laws were laid down for their safety, such as an edict that no fox taken alive in a trap was to be killed: of course no fox was after this taken alive; they were all unaccountably dead, unless it was some fortunate wight whose brush and coat were worthless: in such case he lived either to drag about a quantity of information in a copper collar for the rest of his days, or else to die a slow death, as being intended for Lord Derby's menagerie.
The departure of a postman was a scene of no small merriment: all hands, from the captain to the cook, were out to chase the fox, who, half frightened out of its wits, seemed to doubt which way to run; whilst loud shouts and roars of laughter, breaking the cold, frosty air, were heard from ship to ship, as the fox-hunters swelled in numbers from all sides, and those that could not run mounted some neighbouring hummock of ice, and gave a view halloo, which said far more for robust health than for tuneful melody.
DESULTORY OCCUPATIONS.
During the darker period of the winter, and when the uncertainty of the weather was such that, from a perfect calm and clear weather, a few hours would change the scene to a howling tempest and thick drift, in which, if one had been caught, death must inevitably have followed, great care was necessary in taking our walks, to prevent being so overtaken; but, nevertheless, walks of seven or eight miles from the vessels were, on several occasions, performed, and a severe temperature faced and mastered with perfect indifference. I remember well on the 13th January seeing mercury, in a solid mass, with a temperature of 40° below zero, and being one of a good many who had taken three hours hard walking for mere pleasure.
We joked not a little at the fireside stories at home, of bitter cold nights, and being frozen to death on some English heath: it seemed to us so incredible that people should be frost-bitten, because the air was below freezing point; whilst we should have hailed with delight the thermometer standing at zero, and indeed looked forward to such a state of our climate, as people in the temperate zone would to May sunshine and flowers.
With the increasing twilight, many an anxious eye was cast from the top of Griffith's Island, to see the prospect of good foot-travelling offered by the floe: it cannot have been said to be cheering, for broken and hummocky ice met the eye whichever way one looked, with here and there a small smooth space; and if it looked so from the heights, we knew full well that when actually amongst those hummocks, the travelling would be arduous indeed. There was some time yet, however, to elapse before the tussle commenced; and many a snow-storm had time meanwhile to rage. With seamen's sanguineness, we trusted that they would fill up the hollows, and help to smooth over the broken pack; any way, we all knew "a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether," would master more difficulties than as yet had shown themselves in the Arctic regions.