CHAPTER XIX.THE JOURNEY NORTHWARD.
At dawn the next day Hatteras gave the signal for departure. The dogswere harnessed to the sledge; since they were well fed and hadthoroughly rested, after a comfortable winter there was no reason fortheir not being of great service during the summer. Hence they werenot averse to being put into harness.
After all, these Greenland dogs are kind beasts. Their wildness waspartly gone; they had lost their likeness to the wolf, and had becomemore like Duke, the finished model of the canine race,--in a word,they were becoming civilized. Duke could certainly claim a share intheir education; he had given them lessons and an example in goodmanners. In his quality of Englishman, and so punctilious in thematter of cant, he was a long time in making the acquaintance of theother dogs, who had not been introduced to him, and in fact he neverused to speak to them; but after sharing the same dangers andprivations, they gradually grew used to one another. Duke, who had akind heart, made the first advances, and soon all the dogs werefriends. The doctor used to pet the Greenland dogs, and Duke saw himdo it without jealousy. The men were in equally good condition; if thedogs could draw well, the men could walk well.
They left at six o'clock in the morning; it was a very pleasant day.After they had followed the line of the bay and passed CapeWashington, Hatteras gave the order to turn northward; by seven thetravellers lost sight of the lighthouse and of Fort Providence in thesouth.
"They left at six o'clock in the morning."]
The journey promised well, much better than the expedition begun inthe dead of winter in search of coal. Hatteras then left behind him,on board of the ship, mutiny and despair, without being certain of theobject of his journey; he left a crew half dead with cold, he startedwith companions who were weakened by the miseries of an arctic winter;he, too, eager for the north, had to return to the south! Now, on theother hand, surrounded by vigorous, healthy friends, encouraged andaided in many ways, he was starting for the Pole, the object of hiswhole life! No man had ever been nearer acquiring this glory forhimself and his country.
Was he thinking of all this, which was so naturally inspired by hispresent position? The doctor liked to think so, and could hardly doubtit when he saw him so eager. Clawbonny rejoiced in what so pleased hisfriend; and since the reconciliation of the two captains, the twofriends, he was the happiest of men; for hatred, envy, and rivalrywere passions he had never felt. What would be the issue of thisvoyage he did not know; but, at any rate, it began well, and that wasa good deal.
The western shore of New America stretched out in a series of baysbeyond Cape Washington; the travellers, to avoid this long curve,after crossing the first spurs of Mount Bell, turned northward overthe upper plateaus. This was a great saving of time; Hatteras wasanxious, unless prevented by seas or mountains, to make a straightline of three hundred and fifty miles to the Pole from FortProvidence.
Their journey was easy; these lofty plains were covered with deepsnow, over which the sledge passed easily, and the men in theirsnow-shoes walked easily and rapidly.
The thermometer stood at 37 degrees. The weather was not absolutelysettled; at one moment it was clear, the next cloudy: but neither coldnor showers could have stopped the eager party. They could be followedeasily by the compass; the needle was more active as they receded fromthe magnetic pole; it is true that it turned to the opposite directionand pointed to the south, while they were walking northward; but thisdid not in any way embarrass them. Besides, the doctor devised asimple method of staking out the way and thereby avoiding perpetualreference to the compass; when once they had got their bearings bysome object two or three miles to the north, they walked till theyreached it, when they chose another, and so on. In this way they had astraight road.
In the first two days they made twenty miles in twelve hours; the restof the time was devoted to meals and rest. The tent was ampleprotection against the cold when they were sleeping. The temperaturegradually rose. The snow melted away in some places, according to theshape of the ground, while in others it lay in large patches. Broadpools appeared here and there, often almost as large as lakes. Theywould walk in up to their waists very often; but they only laughed atit, and the doctor more than any.
"Water has no right to wet us in this country," he used to say; "itought to appear only as a solid, or a gas; as to its being liquid,it's absurd! Ice or vapor will do, but water won't!"
They did not forget their shooting, for thereby they got fresh meat.So Altamont and Bell, without going very far away, scoured theneighboring ravines; they brought back ptarmigan, geese, and a fewgray rabbits. Gradually these animals became very shy and hard toapproach. Without Duke they would often have found it hard to get anygame. Hatteras advised them not to go off farther than a mile, for nota day nor an hour was to be lost, and he could not count on more thanthree months of good weather.
Besides, each one had to be at his post by the sledge whenever a hardspot, a narrow gorge, or steep inclines lay in the path; then each onehelped pull or push. More than once everything had to be taken off;and this even did not fully protect against shocks and damage, whichBell repaired as well as he could.
The third day, Wednesday, June 26th, they came across a vast lake,still frozen by reason of its being sheltered from the sun; the icewas even strong enough to bear both men and sledge. It was a solidmirror which no arctic summers had melted, as was shown by the factthat its borders were surrounded by a dry snow, of which the lowerlayers evidently belonged to previous years.
From this moment the land grew lower, whence the doctor concluded thatit did not extend very far to the north. Besides, it was very likelythat New America was merely an island, and did not extend to the Pole.The ground grew more level; in the west a few low hills could be seenin the distance, covered with a bluish mist.
So far they had experienced no hardships; they had suffered fromnothing except the reflection of the sun's rays upon the snow, whichcould easily give them snow-blindness. At any other time they wouldhave travelled by night to avoid this inconvenience, but then therewas no night. The snow was fortunately melting away, and it was muchless brilliant when it was about turning into water.
June 28th the temperature arose to 45 degrees; this was accompaniedwith heavy rain, which the travellers endured stoically, even withpleasure, for it hastened the disappearance of the snow. They had toput on their deer-skin moccasins, and change the runners of thesledge. Their journey was delayed, but still they were advancingwithout any serious obstacles. At times the doctor would pick uprounded or flat stones like pebbles worn smooth by the waves, and thenhe thought he was near the Polar Sea; but yet the plain stretched onout of sight. There was no trace of man, no hut, no cairn norEsquimaux snow-house; they were evidently the first to set foot inthis new land. The Greenlanders never had gone so far, and yet thiscountry offered plenty of game for the support of that half-starvedpeople. Sometimes bears appeared in the distance, but they showed nosigns of attacking; afar off were herds of musk-oxen and reindeer. Thedoctor would have liked to catch some of the latter to harness to thesledge; but they were timid, and not to be caught alive.
The 29th, Bell shot a fox, and Altamont was lucky enough to bring downa medium-sized musk-ox, after giving his companions a high idea of hisbravery and skill; he was indeed a remarkable hunter, and so muchadmired by the doctor. The ox was cut out, and gave plenty ofexcellent meat. These lucky supplies were always well received; theleast greedy could not restrain their joy at the sight of the meat.The doctor laughed at himself when he caught himself admiring thesehuge joints.
"On the 29th Bell shot a fox, and Altamont amedium-sized musk-ox."]
"Let us not be afraid to eat it," he used to say; "a good dinner is agood thing in these expeditions."
"Especially," said Johnson, "when it depends on a better or worseshot."
"You are right, Johnson," replied the doctor; "one thinks less ofone's food when one gets a regular supply from the kitchen."
The 30th, the country became unexpect
edly rugged, as if it had beenupheaved by some volcanic commotion; the cones and peaks increasedindefinitely in number, and were very high. A southeast breeze beganto blow with violence, and soon became a real hurricane. It rushedacross the snow-covered rocks, among the ice-mountains, which,although on the firm land, took the form of hummocks and icebergs;their presence on these lofty plateaus could not be explained even bythe doctor, who had an explanation for almost everything. Warm, dampweather succeeded the tempest; it was a genuine thaw; on all sidesresounded the cracking of the ice amid the roar of the avalanches.
"The masses of ice took the forms of hummocks andicebergs."]
"On all sides resounded the cracking of the ice amidthe roar of the avalanches."]
The travellers carefully avoided the base of these hills; they eventook care not to talk aloud, for the sound of the voice could shakethe air and cause accident. They were witnesses of frequent andterrible avalanches which they could not have foreseen. In fact, themain peculiarity of polar avalanches is their terrible swiftness;therein they differ from those of Switzerland and Norway, where theyform a ball, of small size at first, and then, by adding to themselvesthe snow and rocks in its passage, it falls with increasing swiftness,destroys forests and villages, but taking an appreciable time in itscourse. Now, it is otherwise in the countries where arctic cold rages;the fall of the block of ice is unexpected and startling; its fall isalmost instantaneous, and any one who saw it from beneath would becertainly crushed by it; the cannon-ball is not swifter, nor lightningquicker; it starts, falls, and crashes down in a single moment withthe dreadful roar of thunder, and with dull echoes.
So the amazed spectators see wonderful changes in the appearance ofthe country; the mountain becomes a plain under the action of a suddenthaw; when the rain has filtered into the fissures of the great blocksand freezes in a single night, it breaks everything by itsirresistible expansion, which is more powerful in forming ice than informing vapor: the phenomenon takes place with terrible swiftness.
No catastrophe, fortunately, threatened the sledge and its drivers;the proper precautions were taken, and every danger avoided. Besides,this rugged, icy country was not of great extent, and three dayslater, July 3d, the travellers were on smoother ground. But their eyeswere surprised by a new phenomenon, which has for a long time claimedthe attention of the scientific men of the two worlds. It was this:the party followed a line of hills not more than fifty feet high,which appeared to run on several miles, and their eastern side wascovered with red snow.
The surprise and even the sort of alarm which the sight of thiscrimson curtain gave them may be easily imagined. The doctor hastened,if not to reassure, at least to instruct, his companions; he wasfamiliar with this red snow and the chemical analysis made of it byWollaston, Candolle, Bauer. He told them this red snow was not foundin the arctic regions alone, but in Switzerland in the middle of theAlps; De Saussure collected a large quantity on the Breven in 1760;and since then Captains Ross, Sabine, and others had brought some backfrom their arctic journeys.
Altamont asked the doctor about the nature of this extraordinarysubstance. He was told that its color came simply from the presence oforganic corpuscles. For a long time it was a question whether thesecorpuscles were animal or vegetable; but it was soon ascertained thatthey belonged to the family of microscopic mushrooms, of the genus_Uredo_, which Bauer proposed naming _Uredo vivalis_.
Then the doctor, prying into the snow with his cane, showed hiscompanions that the scarlet layer was only nine feet deep, and he badethem calculate how many of these mushrooms there might be on a spaceof many miles, when scientific men estimated forty-three thousand in asquare centimetre.
This coloring probably ran back to a remote period, for the mushroomswere not decomposed by either evaporation or the melting of the snow,nor was their color altered.
The phenomenon, although explained, was no less strange. Red is a rarecolor in nature; the reflection of the sun's rays on this crimsonsurface produced strange effects; it gave the surrounding objects, menand animals, a brilliant appearance, as if they were lighted by aninward flame; and when the snow was melting, streams of blood seemedto be flowing beneath the travellers' feet.
The doctor, who had not been able to examine this substance when hesaw it on crimson cliffs from Baffin's Bay, here examined it at hisease, and gathered several bottlefuls of it.
This red ground, the "Field of Blood," as he called it, took threehours' walk to pass over, and then the country resumed its habitualappearance.