MORTON and Hans returned to the brig on the tenth of July, after having been on their separate exploration three weeks and a half. Their story is full of thrilling incidents and important results.
The first day they made twenty-eight miles, and were greatly encouraged. The next day the arctic enemies of exploration appeared on the field, skirmishing with deep snow through which dogs and men had to wade. Next came a compact host of icebergs. They were not the surface-worn, dingy-looking specimens of Baffin Bay, but fresh productions from the grand glacier near which they lay. Their color was bluish white, and their outlines clearly and beautifully defined. Some were square, often a quarter of a mile each side. Others were not less than a mile long, and narrow. Now and then one of colossal size lifted its head far above its fellows, like a grand observatory. Between these giant bergs were crowded smaller ones of every imaginable size and form.
Through these our explorers had to pick their way. Beginning one night at eight, they dashed along through a narrow lane, turning this way and that, for seven hours. Then they came against the face of a solid ice-cliff, closing the path altogether. Back they urged their weary dogs, and their own weary selves, looking for an opening by which they might turn north, but none appeared until they reached the camp from which they had started. Resting awhile, they commenced anew.
Sometimes they climbed over an ice hillock, making a ladder of their sledge. Morton would climb up first, and then draw up the dogs, around whose bodies Hans tied a rope; then the load was passed up; lastly Hans mounted, and drew up the sledge.
Having broken through the bergy detachment of their arctic foes and reached smoother ice, other opposing columns met them. Dense mists, giving evidence of open water, chilled and bewildered them; but the welcome birds, giving other proof of the nearness of the Polar Sea, cheered them on.
The next attack was in the form of insecure ice. The dogs were dashing on in their wild flight when it began to yield beneath them. The dogs trembled with fear and lay down, as is their habit in such cases. Hans, by a skillful mingling of force and coaxing, succeeding in getting the party out of the danger.
At one time a long, wide channel presented its protest to their farther progress. To this they were obliged so far to yield as to go ten miles out of their way to reach its northern side.
Their right of way was also challenged by seams in the ice often four feet deep, filled with water, and too wide for their best jumping ability. These they filled up by attacking the nearest hummocks with their axes and tumbling the fragments into it until a bridge was made. This work often caused hours of delay.
The signs of open water became more and more apparent. The birds were so plenty that Hans brought down two at one shot. Soon they struck the icy edge of a channel. Along this they coasted on the land side. It brought them to a cape around which the channel run close to a craggy point. Here they deposited a part of their provisions to lighten the sledge. Morton went ahead to learn the condition of the land-ice round the point. He found it narrow and decaying, so that he feared there would be none on their return; yet, forward! was the word. The dogs were unloosed and driven forward alone; then Hans and Morton tilted the sledge edgewise and drew it along, while far below the gurgling waters were rushing southward with a freight of crushed ice.
The cape passed, they opened into a bay of clear water extending far and wide. Along its shore was a wide, smooth ice-belt. Over this the dogs scampered with their sledge and men with wonderful fleetness, making sixty miles the first day! The land grew more and more sloping to the bay as they advanced until it opened from the sea into a plain between two elevated rocky ranges. Into this they entered, steering north, until they struck the entrance of a bay; but the rugged ice across their path forbid farther sledge-travel in that direction. So they picketed, securely, as they thought, the dogs, took each a back load of provisions, and went forward. Their trusty rifles were in hand, and their boat-hook and a few scientific instruments were carefully secured to their persons. Thus equipped, they had tramped about nine miles from the last camp when an exciting scene occurred. It was a bear fight, shaded this time with the tender and tragic. A mother-bear and her child came in sight. They were a loving couple, and had plainly been engaged in a frolic together. Their tracks were scattered profusely about, like those of school children at recess in a recent snow. There were also long furrows down the sloping side of an ice-hill, upon and around which the footprints were seen. Morton declared that they had been coasting down this slope on their haunches, and this opinion was supported by the fact that Dr. Kane did, at another time, see bears thus coasting!