I. I. Hayes

“ My good and faithful friend Sonntag sits opposite to me at the table, reading. I write nestling among my furs, with my journal in my lap; and when I contrast this night with the night on the glacier summit, and listen now to the fierce wind which howls over the deck and through the rigging, and think how dark and gloomy every thing is outside and how light and cheerful every thing is here below, I believe that I have as much occasion to write myself down a thankful man, as I am very sure I do, for once at least, a contented one. ”

“ I have walked abroad in the darkness when the winds were roaring through the hills and crashing over the plain. I have strolled along the beach when the only sound that broke the stillness was the dull creaking of the ice-tables, as they rose and fell lazily with the tide. I have wandered far out upon the frozen sea, and listened to the voice of the icebergs bewailing their imprisonment; along the glacier, where forms and falls the avalanche; upon the hill-top, where the drifting snow, coursing over the rocks, sang its plaintive song ”

“ A dark cloud hangs to the northward, bringing the white slopes of Cape Alexander into bold relief. Over the cliffs roll great sheets of drifting snow, and streams of it pour down every ravine and gorge. Whirlwinds shoot it up from the hill-tops, and spin it through the air. The streams which pour through the ravines resemble the spray of mammoth waterfalls, and here and there through the fickle cloud the dark rocks protrude and disappear and protrude again. A glacier which descends through a valley to the bay below is covered with a broad cloak of revolving whiteness. ”

“ The ice was as closely unpacked behind us as before us. With marvelous celerity the scene had shifted. An hour later, and there was scarcely a patch of open water in sight from the deck, and the floes were closing upon the schooner like a vice. Utterly powerless within its jaws, we had no alternative but to await the issue with what calmness we could.
The scene around us was as imposing as it was alarming. Except the earthquake and volcano, there is not in nature an exhibition of force comparable with that of the ice-fields of the Arctic Seas. ”

“ And yet there is in the Arctic night much that is attractive to the lover of Nature. There is in the flashing Aurora, in the play of the moonlight upon the hills and icebergs, in the wonderful clearness of the starlight, in the broad expanse of the ice-fields, in the lofty grandeur of the mountains and the glaciers, in the naked fierceness of the storms, much that is both sublime and beautiful. ”

“ The swell has subsided, the storm clouds have cleared away, and the tide is scattering the ice out over the sea. We are fairly and truly afloat, and once more cannot leave the deck without a boat. It is just ten months to a day since we were locked up, during which time our little craft has been a house rather than a ship. We are glad to feel again the motion of the sea; and "man the boat" seems a novel order to give when one wants to go ashore. We await only a wind to send us to sea. ”

“ We all feel now that the veil of night is lifting, that the cloud is passing away, that the heavy load of darkness is being lightened. The people have exhausted their means of amusement; the newspaper has died a natural death; theatricals are impossible; and there is nothing new to break the weariness of the long hours.
But we shall soon have no need to give thought to these things. There will be ere long neither time nor occasion for amusements. The Arctic night will soon be numbered with the things of the past. We are eager that it shall have an end, and we long for the day and work. ”

“ GLACIER STREAM.
Pulling around to the west side of the glacier, I clambered up a steep declivity over a pile of mud and rock, which the expanding and moving ice had pushed out from its bed. Once at the top of this yielding slope, the eye was met by a perfect forest of spires; but it was not easy to get on the glacier itself. Along its margin, half in mud and rock and half in ice, a torrent of dirty water came tearing along at a furious pace, disclosing the laminated structure of the ice in a very beautiful manner ”

“ But after a while the bright sun will tear this sheet asunder, and will tumble it in gushing fountains to the sea, and will kiss the cold earth, and give it warmth and life; and the flowers will bud and bloom, and will turn their tiny faces smilingly and gratefully up to him, as he wanders over these ancient hills in the long summer. The very glaciers will weep tears of joy at his coming. The ice will loose its iron grip upon the waters, and will let the wild waves play in freedom. ”

“ Valleys do not interfere with its onward march, for the frozen stream enters them, and levels them with the highest hills. It heeds not the precipice, for it leaps over it into the plain below,—a giant, frozen waterfall. Winter and summer are to it alike the same. It moves ever forward in its irresistible career,—a vast, frozen tide swelling to the ocean. It pours through every outlet of the coast ranges, down every ravine and valley, overriding every impediment, grinding and crushing over the rocks ”

“ AT ANCHOR.
We reached the shore this morning at 3 o'clock, and anchored in four fathoms water. The stern of the schooner was swung round and moored with our stoutest hawser to a rock; but a squall fell upon us soon afterward with such violence that, although the sails were all snugly stowed, the hawser was parted like a whip-cord; and we now lie to our "bower" and "kedge," with thirty fathoms chain.
And now, in apparent security, the ship's company abandon themselves to repose. Weary and worn with the hard struggle and exposure, we were all badly in need of rest. ”

“ Nature is here exposed on a gigantic scale. Out of the glassy sea the cliffs rear their dark fronts and frown grimly over the desolate waste of ice-clad waters. The mountain peaks, glittering in the clear cold atmosphere, pierce the very heavens, their heads hoary with unnumbered ages. The glaciers pour their crystal torrents into the sea in floods of immeasurable magnitude. The very air, disdaining the gentle softness of other climes, bodies forth a loftier majesty, and seems to fill the universe with a boundless transparency ”

“ There was neither hill, mountain, nor gorge anywhere in view. We had completely sunk the strip of land which lies between the mer de glace and the sea; and no object met the eye but our feeble tent, which bent to the storm. 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 ”

“ The top of the delicate red streak of alcohol stood at 31° below zero.
We crawled out in the open air at last, to try the sunshine. "I will give you the best buffalo-skin in the ship, Jensen, if the air outside is not warmer than in that den which you have left so full of holes." And it really seemed so. Human eye never lit upon a more pure and glowing morning. The sunlight was sparkling all over the landscape and the great world of whiteness; and the frozen plain, the hummocks, the icebergs, and the tall mountains, made a picture inviting to the eye. ”

“ The men are completely used up, broken down, dejected, to the last degree. Human nature cannot stand it. There is no let up - 317 - to it. Cold, penetrating to the very sources of life, dangers from frost and dangers from heavy lifting, labors which have no end,—a heartless sticking in the mud, as it were, all the time; and then comes snow-blindness, cheerless nights, with imperfect rest in snow-huts, piercing storms and unsatisfying food. This the daily experience, and this the daily prospect ahead; to-day closing upon us in the same vast ice-jungle as yesterday. ”

“ To this prolonged darkness the moon gives some relief. From its rising to its setting it shines continually, circling around the horizon, never setting until - 193 - it has run its ten days' course of brightness. And it shines with a brilliancy which one will hardly observe elsewhere. The uniform whiteness of the landscape and the general clearness of the atmosphere add to the illumination of its rays, and one may see to read by its light with ease, and the natives often use it as they do the sun, to guide their nomadic life and to lead them to their hunting-grounds. ”

“ The nautical cry of the sailors, intended to inspire unison of action, mingles with the loud and not always amiable commands of Jensen and Knorr, each urging on his fatigued and toil-worn dogs.
It would be difficult to imagine any kind of labor more disheartening, or which would sooner sap the energies of both men and animals. The strength gave way gradually; and when, as often happened, after a long and hard day's work, we could look back from an eminence and almost fire a rifle-ball into our last snow-hut, it was truly discouraging. ”

“ Recalling those chapters which recount the gloom and silence of the Arctic night,—the death-like quiet which reigned in the endless darkness,—the absence of every living thing that could relieve the solitude of its terrors,—he will perhaps hardly have been prepared to see, without surprise, the same landscape covered with an endless blaze of light, the air and sea and earth teeming with life, the desert places sparkling with green, and brightening with flowers,—the mind finding everywhere some new object of pleasure, where before there was but gloom. ”

“ ADIEU TO PORT FOULKE.
Moving out to sea under full sail, with a light wind from the eastward. We make little progress, but are able to pick our way among the loose ice. As we pass along, I see shoals of old tin cans, dead dogs, piles of ashes, and other débris of the winter, floating on ice-rafts upon the sea,—relics of the ten months which are gone, with all its dreary and all its pleasant memories. ”

“ This poor savage, who would not hesitate to attack single-handed the fierce polar bear, who has now voluntarily faced a danger than which none could be more dreadful, fleeing out into the darkness, over the mountains and glaciers, and through snow-drifts and storms, pursued by fear, lacks the resolution to face an imaginary harm from his fellow-men. It seems, indeed, to be a peculiarity of uninstructed minds to dread man's anger and man's treachery more than all other evils,—whether of wild beast or storm or pestilence. ”

“ We have thus seen that the iceberg is the discharge of the Arctic river, that the Arctic river is the glacier, and that the glacier is the accumulation of the frozen vapors of the air. We have watched this river, moving on in its slow and steady course from the distant hills, until at length it has reached the sea; and we have seen the sea tear from the slothful stream a monstrous fragment, and take back to itself its own again. ”

“ The dark water-sky to the northeast had followed us down the coast, the wind had acted upon the open places in the ice, and the little waves had eaten away their margins, and magnified them greatly, while many of the old floes had finally yielded to the immense pressure of the wind, and had moved in their winter moorings, tearing up the rotten ice about them. ”

“ He is a splendid whip, and drives his dogs superbly when the ice is reasonably smooth, and the sledge glides glibly over it with the dogs at a gallop; but this floundering through hummocks and deep snow-drifts, where the sledge has to be lifted and is often capsized, where the dogs are continually getting into a snarl,—their traces tangled, their tempers ruffled, and a general fight resulting,—is a very different sort of business, and is what he is not used to. To get through with it one requires an almost superhuman stock of enduring patience ”

“ We had some smooth ice, and got on briskly. Jensen's snow-blindness has disappeared, and our route having led us over old floes, his leg has not hurt him much and has improved. He is now digging a pit for our night shelter, and sings a Danish song as cheerily as the grave-digger in Hamlet. Knorr and McDonald are chopping up the cakes of desiccated beef for the dogs; and the wolfish brutes fill the air with the most hideous cries. ”

“ It stands forth as a frightful spectre, filling the mind with the overpowering consciousness of universal death,—proclaiming the end of all things, and heralding the everlasting future. Its presence is unendurable. I spring from the rock upon which I have been seated, I plant my feet heavily in the snow to banish its awful presence,—and the sound rolls through the night and drives away the phantom. ”

“ It seems strange to see the place so deserted and so quiet. In the early winter I never went out of the vessel on the ice without having the whole pack crowding around me, playing and crying in gladness at my coming; now their lifeless carcasses are strewn about the harbor, half buried in snow and ice, and, if not so fearful, they are at least hardly more sightly than were those other stiff and stark and twisted figures which the wandering poets found beneath the dark sky and "murky vapors" and frozen waters of the icy realm of Dis. ”

“ It was not without much difficulty that the tent was taken down and bundled upon the sledge. The wind blew so fiercely that we could scarcely roll it up with our stiffened hands. The men were suffering with pain, and could only for a few moments hold on to the hardened canvas. Their fingers, freezing continually, required active pounding to keep them upon the flickering verge of life. ”