Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

"I climbed," he says, "the steep hillside to the top of a ragged cliff, which I supposed to be about eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. The view which I had from this elevation furnished a solution of the cause of my progress being arrested on the previous day. The ice was everywhere in the same condition as in the mouth of the bay across which I had endeavoured to pass. A broad crack, starting from the middle of the bay, stretched over the sea, and uniting with other cracks as it meandered to the eastward, it expanded as the delta of some mighty river discharging into the ocean, and under a water-sky, which hung upon the northern horizon, it was lost in the open sea. The sea beneath me was a mottled sheet of white and dark patches, these latter being either soft decaying ice or places where the ice had wholly disappeared. These spots were heightened in intensity of shade and multiplied in size as they receded, until the belt of the water-sky blended them all together into one uniform colour of dark blue. The old and solid floes (some a quarter of a mile, and others miles across) and the massive ridges and wastes of hummocked ice which lay piled between them and around their margins, were the only parts of the sea which retained the whiteness and solidity of winter."

Unfortunately for Hayes, the astronomer of the expedition, August Sonntag, who had assisted Kane in the same capacity, was frozen to death on a sledge journey, and the doctor was left to do the work for himself, with disappointing results, as with errors of many miles in either latitude or longitude his journeys can only be noticed in a very general way. In October, 1860, he proceeded for some distance over the glacier to the east of his wintering place. The first attempt to scale the glacier was attended by what might have been a serious accident. The foremost member of the party missed his footing as he was clambering up the rude steps, and, sliding down the steep side, scattered those who were below him to the right and left and sent them rolling into the valley beneath. The next effort was more successful, and, the end of a rope being carried over the side of the glacier, the sledge was drawn up the inclined plane and a fair start obtained. A little further on Hayes was only saved from disappearing down a crevasse by clutching a pole he was carrying on his shoulder. Next day, the surface being smoother, more progress was made, and they reached a plain of compact snow covered with a crust through which the feet broke at every step. The day afterwards the cold grew more intense and a gale came on. At night the men complained bitterly and could not sleep, and as the storm increased in strength they were forced to leave the tent and by active exercise prevent themselves from freezing.

THE SHORES OF KENNEDY CHANNEL

To face the wind was impossible, and shelter was nowhere to be found upon the unbroken plain, there being but one direction in which they could move, that being with their backs to the gale. It was not without difficulty that the tent was taken down and bundled upon the sledge, the wind blowing so fiercely that they could scarcely roll it up with their stiffened hands. The men were in pain and could only hold on for a few moments to the hardened canvas, their fingers, freezing continually, requiring vigorous pounding to keep them on the flickering verge of life. "In the midst of a vast frozen Sahara, with neither hill, mountain, nor gorge anywhere in view," says Hayes, "fitful clouds swept over the face of the full-orbed moon, which, descending toward the horizon, glimmered through the drifting snow that whirled out of the illimitable distance, and scudded over the icy plain, to the eye in undulating lines of downy softness, to the flesh in showers of piercing darts. Our only safety was in flight; and like a ship driven before a tempest which she cannot withstand, and which has threatened her ruin, we turned our backs to the gale; and, hastening down the slope, we ran to save our lives. We travelled upwards of forty miles, and had descended about three thousand feet before we ventured to halt."

Next year he visited the large glacier in Whale Sound which he named after Professor John Tyndall, pulling first along its front in a boat and then mounting its surface. As he rowed along within a few fathoms of this two miles of ice, he found the face "worn and wasted away until it seemed like the front of some vast incongruous temple, here a groined roof of some huge cathedral, and there a pointed window or a Norman doorway deeply moulded; while on all sides were pillars round and fluted and pendants dripping crystal drops of the purest water, and all bathed in a soft blue atmosphere. Above these wondrous archways and galleries there was still preserved the same Gothic character; tall spires and pinnacles rose along the entire front and multiplied behind them, and new forms met the eye continually. Strange, there was nothing cold or forbidding anywhere. The ice seemed to take the warmth which suffused the air, and I longed to pull my boat far within the opening and paddle beneath the Gothic archways."

Charles Francis Hall, of Cincinnati, was a man of a very different stamp. He was a genius and a genuine worker, an accurate observer and painstaking explorer who believed above all things in thoroughness. Realising that the best way to study the Polar regions was to understand the Eskimos, who know most about them, and utilise their local knowledge, he settled amongst them, lived with them, adopted their customs, and became as one of them in their huts and tents, taking part in their sports and hardships. Two friends he made amongst them, Ebierbing and his wife Tookoolito, better known as Joe and Hannah, who accompanied him till he died.

TYNDALL GLACIER

After clearing up the Frobisher problem and throwing some light on the Franklin mystery, he started in 1871 to go as far north as he could across the reported Polar Sea. To him Henry Grinnell, who did so much for northern discovery, entrusted the American flag which had been to the Antarctic with Wilkes in 1838, to the Arctic with De Haven, with Kane and with Hayes, and was a sort of oriflamme of Polar discovery. His ship was the Polaris, of 387 tons, once the Periwinkle, a name which seemed to be a little too unassuming. Buddington, his sailing-master, was an experienced whaling captain; his assistant, Tyson, destined for the independent command of an ice-floe, was another whale-fisher. The naturalist was Emil Bessels. On board were also Joe and Hannah—of course—and William Morton, to show where the sea was, and, picked up at Upernivik, the indispensable Hans Hendrik with his wife and three children.