Frederick Albert Cook

“ A subtle sadness tinctures their life, and they are possessed by an impulse to weep. At this season, hour by hour, the darkness thickens; the cold increases and chills their igloos; the wind, exultant while the sun shines, now whines and sobs dolorously—there is something gruesome, uncanny, supernatural, in its siren sorrow. Outside, the snow falls, the sea closes. Its clamant beat of waves is silenced. Sea animals mostly disappear; land animals are rare. Their source of physical supply vanished, the Eskimos unconsciously feel the grim hand of want, of starvation, which means death, upon them. ”

“ Although we feel that we are on the threshold of more great discoveries, and although, for some unexplained reason, we are all in a fever-heat of excitement, quite like a prize-fighter on the eve of a great battle, calmly and coolly considered there is nothing very wonderful in our immediate surroundings. The weather is quiet but unsettled. A heavy sea rolls in under the pack-ice through which we plough. To the west there is a black sky and under it, just on the horizon, is the dark line of an open sea with the marbled peaks of bergs silhouetted against the black sheen of the heavens. ”

“ The stillness adds a charm, with which the imagination plays. It is not the music of silence, nor the gold solitude of summer, nor the deathlike stillness of the winter blackness. It is the stillness of zero's lowest, which has a beauty of its own.
The ice pinnacles are lined with hoar frost, on which there is a play of rainbow colors. The tread of one's feet is muffled by feathery beds of snow. The mountains, raised by the new glow of light or outlined by colored shadows, stand against the brightened heavens in sculptured magnificence. ”

“ Nearly one-third of the circumference of the globe is between us and our loved ones at home. Under such circumstances, far away from the world of life, isolated from accustomed comforts, on a sea of moving ice, in a dead, white world of eternal frigidity, how can we enjoy Easter? We try hard to arouse a buoyant spirit, and each has taken it upon himself to bring out the bright side of the one nearest to him, but our efforts are poorly rewarded. For after superficial laughter we sink into a lethargy which becomes more and more normal to us as the winter and the night advance. ”

“ The sea breathes, and lifts the crust of ice which the wind stirs. The pack ever drifts in response to the pull of the air and the drive of the water. Even the sun, the only fixed dot in this stirring, restless world, where all you see is, without your seeing it, moving like a ship at sea, seems to have a rapid movement in a gold-flushed circle not far above endless fields of purple crystal; but that movement is never higher, never lower—always in the same fixed path. The instruments detect a slight spiral ascent, day after day, but the eye detects no change. ”

“ There is a glitter in the sea, a sparkle on the ice, and a stillness in the atmosphere, which fascinates the soul but overpowers the mind. There is a solitude and restfulness about the whole scene which can only be felt; it cannot be described. Here, to the east, the face of the mysterious land is clothed by the successive sheets of snows of the sleeping years of countless silent centuries. About us are scores of icebergs, huge table-topped, pyramidal, and castle-like masses, fragments of this same unknown blanket of accumulated snows which clothes every aspect of antarctic land. ”

“ To me it was to be a season of feverish labor in which every hand at work and every hour employed counted in the problem of success. While the hands of the entire tribe would be busy, and while I should direct and help in the making of sleds, catching of game, preparing of meat, I knew that my mind would find continual excitement in dreams of my quest, in anticipating and solving its difficulties, in feeling the bounding pulse of the dash over the ice of the Polar sea, with dogs joyously barking, whips cracking the air, and the reappearing sun paving our pathway with liquid gold. ”

“ In the north-west and the north-east there is a water-sky, but the hopeless ice-blink is in every other direction. A dazzling whiteness has made the pack glitter to such an extent that it has become painful to walk about without smoked glasses, but to-night there is a restful lilac over the white glitter, which is a charming relief from the intense brilliancy of the day. As the sun descended into the invisible mist of ice-crystals, which always hangs over the pack, it poured out a wealth of golden light over the clouds and onto the pack. ”

“ I shall never forget that desolate drab scene about us—those endless stretches of gray and dead-white ice, that drab dull sky, that thickening blackness in the west which entered into and made gray and black our souls, that ominous, eerie and dreadful wind, betokening a terrorizing Arctic storm. I shall never forget the mournful group before me, in itself an awful picture of despair, of man's ambition failing just as victory is within his grasp. Ah-we-lah, a thin, half-starved figure in worn furs, lay over his sled, limp, dispirited, broken. ”

“ On some of the pans of ice are seals basking in the sun, and over the ship, apparently touching the masts and the ropes as the bark rocks to and fro, are giant petrels, Cape pigeons, gulls, white, brown, and blue petrels, all pointing their bills and stretching their necks to examine, perhaps for the first time, human beings and their crafts.
There is a dreamy stillness in the air, in spite of the frequent stirs of wild life, and a charming touch of colour to the sea, the ice, and the land, though the sky is dull, gray, and gloomy. ”

“ If misfortune at the time of birth befalls a mother, as is not infrequent, the snow mound becomes her grave; it is not opened for a long time.
After a long sleep, into which the mother falls after her first joy, she awakes, turns over, drinks some ice-water, eats a little half-cooked meat, and then, shaking the frozen breath from the covers, she wraps herself and her babe snugly in furs. Again she sleeps, perhaps twenty-four hours, seemingly in perfect comfort, while the life-stilling winter winds drive over the feeble wall of snow which shelters her from the chilly death outside. ”

“ The moving crust of the earth with which we drift, the hardy, simple life, and even the sky, all suggest a period of the earth in its infancy, long before the advent of man. It is this strange simplicity, this other-world air of terrestrial youth, which makes the polar regions so fascinating to nature-loving man. Everything about is new, yet old; every sight is simple, yet clothed in mystery; every phenomenon, like a shy maiden, is attractive but difficult of access. The haste and the bustle of the living world are far from the mental horizon, and the mind is ready to examine the new problems. ”

“ The fields of ice without reflected the warm light of the rising sun in running waves of tawny color. The ice was undisturbed. An unearthly quiet prevailed. Concluding that the ice was merely cracking under the sudden change of temperature, in quite the usual harmless manner, I turned over again, reassuring my companions, and promptly fell asleep.
Out of the blankness of sleep I suddenly wakened again. Half-dazed, I heard beneath me a series of echoing, thundering noises. I felt the ice floor on which I lay quivering. I experienced the sudden giddiness one feels on a tossing ship at sea. ”

“ A water sky, a land blink, or some other sign, indicative of land or open water, is constantly before us and these are, to the polar explorer, like the Star of Bethlehem to the children of Israel. They perpetually urge us on. We burn down the fires and wait impatiently for better success on the morrow, feeling always that we have won our success, thus far, by our own hard efforts, and by the same methods we hope to master the barriers now walled around us. Pressing ice, blasting head winds, blinding snow squalls, and all the worst elements of sea and weather combine to bewilder and defeat us. ”

“ Ma-nee—such was her name—was a descendant of the Eskimos of the American side. A foreign belle, and, although thin, fair to look upon, as Eskimo beauty goes, her hand was sought early by the ardent youths of the tribe, who, truth to tell, look upon utility as more desirable than beauty in a wife. The heart of Ma-nee throbbed to the pleadings of one Ik-wa, a youth lithe and brave, with brawn and sinews as resilient as rubber and strong as steel, handsome, dark, with flashing eyes, yet with a heart as cruel as the relentless wind and cold sea of the North. ”

“ The sun is constantly veiled by a bank of frozen mist which prevents our seeing its departing splendour, but there is an occasional break which offers us for a few seconds a view of his fading face. It is sad, cold, and expressionless. The accustomed heat is absent, and the light is a despairing gray glow which, on the surface ice, makes long blue shadows. Still, despondent as this seems in comparison to brighter days, it is the only source of direct light and heat which we now have. It is the only show of seeming cheerfulness in this gloomy world of blackness into which we are fast drifting. ”

“ My impression was that I was in a land of the sorrowful dead, some mid-strata of the spirit world, where, in this gray-green twilight, formless things in the distance moved to and fro.
There is, I believe, in the heart of every man, an instinctive respect for sorrow. With muffled steps, I left the igloo and paced the dreariness of ice, treading slowly, lest, in the darkness, I slip into some unseen crevasse of the open sea. ”

“ Both Christmas day and Christmas night are black. Only the stars keep their endless watch in the cold skies.
Standing outside my igloo on the happy night, I gazed at the Pole Star, the guardian of the goal I sought, and I remembered with a thrill the story of that mysterious star the Wise Men had followed, of the wonders to which it led them, and I felt an awed reverence for the Power that set these unfaltering beacons above the earth and had written in their golden traces, with a burning pen, veiled and unrevealed destinies which men for ages have tried to learn. ”

“ We have not behind us the winter storms and cold discomforts. We have not before us the evident joys of a coming summer; sweet smelling flowers, green fields, pretty girls in new bonnets, and the hundreds of [255] things which go to make up the accustomed pleasures of Easter are all far removed from us. We are on the verge of what promises to be the worst winter on record. The faint delights of summer are behind. The desperation, the despondency, the mystery of the unknown, impenetrable darkness, with its ceaseless frost, is on the horizon. ”

“ During the night the temperature falls, the fog, which always screens the ice in daytime, is congealed and deposited as snow; and, though the sky here at the edge of the pack generally remains dark at night, there is an incomprehensible metallic glow on the glassy surface of the water, and a sharp phosphoretic glitter from every spire and pan of ice. The night is a long twilight, and when the demons of storm are not hovering about it is a long, dreamy spell of joy. ”

“ Beyond the eighty-third parallel life is devoid of any pleasure. The intense objective impressions of cold and hunger assailing the body rob even the mind of inspiration and exhilaration. Even the best day of sun and gentle wind offers no balm.
One awakes realizing the wind has abated and sees the cheerless sun veering about the side of the ice shelter. One kicks the victim upon whom, that morning, duty has fixed the misfortune to be up first—for we tried to be equals in sharing the burdens of life. And upon him to whose lot falls this hardship there is a loss of two hours' repose. ”

“ Nature seemed to sing with exultation. Approaching a highland of emerald green and seal brown, I heard the wild shouting of hawks from the summit, and from below the shrill chattering of millions of auks with baby families. And nearer, from the life enraptured waters, the minor note of softly cooing ducks and mating guillemots. From the interior land of ice, rising above the low booming of a sapphire glacier moving majestically to the sea, rang the bark of foxes, the shrill notes of the ptarmigan, and from an invisible farther distance the raucous wolf howl of Eskimo dogs. ”