CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE EXTREME NORTH.

1. Immediately after reaching Cape Schrötter, the east end of Hohenlohe Island, we ascended the summit of this Dolerite rock, which was quite free from snow, and covered with a sparse vegetation. We were surprised to find here the excrement of a hare. The prospect which lay before us convinced us of the necessity of our proposed temporary separation. The mountains of Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land, separated from us by an arm of the sea covered with level ice, were so high (about 3,000 feet) that we saw at once that we could pass over them only with the small dog-sledge. The walking powers, moreover, of two of my companions had greatly deteriorated, and for them rest was not an indulgence, but a necessity. Austria Sound appeared to stretch still further to the north, but its western coasts turned sharply to the left in the precipitous cliffs of Cape Felder and Cape Böhm. The blue jagged line of mountains, towering above snow-fields lying in the sun, stretched away to the north-west till they were lost in dark streaks on the horizon, which our experience led us to interpret as a water-sky above open spaces of the sea.

2. I was greatly delighted by Orel’s readiness, though he was suffering from inflamed eyes, to take part in the expedition to the extreme north; and it only remained for us to select the fittest among the party and to calm the apprehensions of those who were to remain behind. On our return to the foot of the rocks, where the tent was already pitched, we found the rest of the party sitting close to each other at the rocky wall on which the sun was shining, in order to warm themselves,—like crickets on the wall of a house. The success of an expedition like that we projected depends chiefly on the mutual good feeling among its members, and he who commands it, besides participating personally in all the labours to be endured, must show himself a sympathetic friend even in cases where strict duty does not enjoin it, so that confidence in him may grow into a kind of belief in his infallibility. There could not be more devoted or enduring men than those who were here lying in the sun, and whom we now joined, in order to decide the question of the hour. I explained to them the plans I meant to follow,—that I should be absent from five to eight days, that if I should not return to them within fifteen days they should march back to the ship with the sledge—sawn through the middle—and the stock of provisions which should be placed at their disposal would suffice for this emergency. I then asked each of them whether he could dismiss fear, and remain behind in this desolation. Sussich answered: “_Se uno de lori resta indietro, mi non go paura:_” so said the rest. By the expression, however, “uno de lori” they meant Orel or one of the two Tyrolese, and specially with an eye to the bears which might be prowling about. I left it free to Klotz and Haller to decide which of them was the fittest and most serviceable to accompany me: “You,” answered Haller, “you, Klotz, are the better man to drag the sledge and endure fatigue.” Accordingly Sussich and Lukinovich remained under Haller’s command. These three were ordered not to go more than 300 yards from Cape Schrötter, to remain on the defensive if attacked by bears, to spend their time in drying their clothes and repairing their torn boots, and to go about in wooden shoes to save wear and tear. Haller received as Governor of Hohenlohe Island a pocket-compass, a watch, an aneroid barometer, and a thermometer, and to them we left also our little medicine-chest. If Dr. Kepes had once tried to make a doctor of me in one hour, in now repeating the experiment on Haller I confined myself to ten minutes.

3. On the morning of the 10th of April (the thermometer standing at 5° F.) we divided the tent; one half was put on the dog-sledge, the other was pitched, with its open side close under the rock. Before a caravan takes the desert, the camels are watered, and we too, though in a very different kind of desert, exposed to the constant evil of thirst, would gladly have been treated in like fashion. But we had to content ourselves with a pint of boiling water, served out to each of us every morning, reminding us, indeed, of coffee, for 2 lbs. of it were boiled in 105 gallons of water in the course of thirty days. The provisions were divided, and enough for eight days was dealt out to the party starting to the north, Orel, Zaninovitch, Klotz, myself, and two dogs. The special requirements of our expedition, among which were a rifle and a revolver, raised the weight of our sledge to about 4 cwt., which it was the business of the dogs to draw without any assistance from us, and this they did over the level snow with such zeal, that we had some trouble in keeping up with them.

4. The merits of our dogs I have hitherto left unnoticed, in order emphatically to assert that we owed the passing beyond the eighty-second degree of north latitude not to our own exertions, but to the endurance and courage of these animals. No kind of life among dogs is comparable for hardships with the life of a dog in an Arctic sledge. His tent is scarcely the pretext of a shelter, and his natural coat is generally covered by a thick rime. The snow when it drifts completely covers him, though he constantly but vainly seeks to shake it off. He draws his breath with difficulty, hunger gnaws at his bowels, and his wounded feet colour the snow with blood. Often, too, these poor animals amid the great cold must keep still; then they lift up their paws alternately, to prevent frost-bite. The two dogs, which accompanied us to the extreme North, were the noblest animals ever employed in a sledge expedition, and when I recall the great services they rendered us, both now and afterwards in the return to Europe, their sad end fills me with sincere sorrow. Jubinal and Torossy were dogs of remarkable size and strength, and escaped the epidemic diseases[46] which attacked the dogs of Hayes and Kane; and though it has been thought that the dogs of the Eskimo and of the Siberian people were alone adapted for Arctic expeditions, our experience with our own dogs most of them brought from Vienna, proves that they were not a whit less useful. Our dogs had only one defect: they had not been trained to sledge-drawing from their youth, but had been broken to it only during our expedition, and were therefore not always amenable to discipline. When left to themselves in dragging the sledge they went on, without turning to the right or left, from cape to cape, and if they found themselves on a wide plain of ice, and far from all striking landmarks, they ran either towards the sun or moon, or some remarkable star. It was against the grain with them to have to drag in the teeth of the wind, and if they had to push on amid hummocks of ice, they immediately began to growl. They were fed in the morning, and more particularly in the evening, and they showed a delicacy of taste in discriminating between bear’s flesh and the despised seal’s flesh. While they carefully avoided coming near us before our start, provided they were not very hungry, in order to escape being harnessed, yet when harnessed nothing could exceed their vigour and persistence in dragging.

5. As we approached the promontory on the south of Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land, we came upon innumerable icebergs, from one hundred to two hundred feet high, which made an incessant cracking and snapping sound in the sunshine. The Middendorf glacier, with an enormous sea-wall, ran towards the north to a great distance. Deep layers of snow and great rents in the sea-ice, the consequence of the falling-in of icebergs, filled the intervening spaces between them. Into these fissures we were continually falling, drenching our canvas boots and clothes with sea-water. But the aspect of these colossal fragments of glaciers engrossed us to such an extent, that we wandered a long time with unflagging interest among these pyramids, tables, and cliffs. It was only when I sent on Klotz to mark out by his footsteps a path by which we might ascend the Middendorf glacier, that we came to a more open region, and, all putting their strength to the work of dragging, we gained its summit, crossing in our progress many crevasses bridged over with snow. Three of these yawned across the lower part of the glacier, needing but a slight movement of the ice to detach them and transform them into icebergs. Further on, the glacier appeared smooth and free from crevasses, although its inclination amounted to several degrees. Towards the north it seemed as if it might be crossed without excessive exertion, if all took part in the work of dragging. But before we began this part of the day’s work we rested, and recruited ourselves with dinner, and setting up our little tent at about 400 paces above the edge of the glacier, we looked down with feelings of delight on its semi-circular terminal precipice and the gleaming host of icebergs which filled the indentations of the coast. While we were sitting in the tent Klotz made the fatal communication to me, that he was not the man he should be, that for some days his foot had swollen and ulcerated, so that he could walk only in shoes made of hide. However vexatious this mishap, there was nothing for it but to send him back to Hohenlohe Island. Laden with a sack and carrying a revolver, he set off, and soon disappeared from our eyes in the labyrinth of icebergs beneath us.

6. We had meanwhile again packed the sledge, harnessed the dogs, and fastened the traces round us, when, just as we were setting off, the snow gave way beneath the sledge, and down fell Zaninovich, the dogs, and the sledge, and from an unknown depth I heard a man’s voice mingled with the howling of dogs. All this was the impression of a moment, while I felt myself dragged backwards by the rope. Staggering back, and seeing the dark abyss beneath me, I could not doubt that I should be precipitated into it the next instant. A wonderful providence arrested the fall of the sledge; at a depth of about thirty feet it stuck fast between the sides of the crevasse, just as I was being dragged to the edge of the abyss by its weight. The sledge having jammed itself in, I lay on my stomach close to the awful brink, the rope which attached me to the sledge tightly strained, and cutting deep into the snow. The situation was all the more dreadful as I, the only person present accustomed to the dangers of glaciers, lay there unable to stir. When I cried down to Zaninovich that I would cut the rope, he implored me not to do it, for if I did, the sledge would turn over, and he would be killed. For a time I lay quiet, considering what was to be done. By and by it flashed into my memory, how I and my guide had once fallen down a wall of ice in the Ortler Mountains, 800 feet high, and had escaped. This inspired me with confidence to venture on a rescue, desperate as it seemed under the circumstances. Orel had now come up, and although he had never been on a glacier before, this gallant officer dauntlessly advanced to the edge of the crevasse, and, laying himself on his stomach, looked down into the abyss, and cried to me, “Zaninovich is lying on a ledge of snow in the crevasse, with precipices all round him, and the dogs are still attached to the traces of the sledge, which has stuck fast.” I called to him to throw me his knife, which he did with such dexterity, that I was able to lay hold of it without difficulty; and as the only means of rescue, I severed the trace which was fastened round my waist. The sledge made a short turn, and then stuck fast again. I immediately sprang to my feet, drew off my canvas boots, and sprang over the crevasse, which was about ten feet broad. I now caught sight of Zaninovich and the dogs, and shouted to him, that I would run back to Hohenlohe Island to fetch men and ropes for his rescue, and that rescued he would be, if he could contrive for four hours to keep himself from being frozen. I heard his answer: “Fate, Signore, fate pure!” and then Orel and I disappeared. Heedless of the crevasses which lay in our path, or of the bears which might attack us, we ran down the glacier back to Cape Schrötter, six miles off. Only one thought possessed us—the rescue of Zaninovich, the jewel and pride of our party, and the recovery of our invaluable store of provisions, and of the book containing our journals, which, if lost, could never be replaced. But even apart from my personal feeling for Zaninovich, I keenly felt the reproaches to which I should be exposed of incautious travelling on glaciers; and it gave me no comfort to think that my previous experiences in this kind of travelling over the glaciers of Greenland appeared to justify my proceedings. Stung with these reflections, I pressed on at the top of my speed, leaving Orel far behind me. Bathed in perspiration, I threw off my bird-skin garments, my boots, my gloves, and my shawl, and ran in my stockings through the deep snow. After passing the labyrinth of icebergs I saw the rocky pyramid of Cape Schrötter before me in the distance. The success of my venture depended on the weather. If snow-driving should set in, and footprints should be obliterated, it would be impossible to find Hohenlohe Island. All around me it was fearfully lonely. Encompassed by glaciers, I was absolutely alone. At last I saw Klotz emerge from behind an iceberg at some distance off, and though I continued to shout his name till I almost reached him, I failed to rouse him from his usual reverie. When at last he saw me breathlessly pushing on, scarcely clothed, and constantly calling, his sack slipped from his back, and he stared at me as if he had lost his senses. When the hardy son of the mountains came to understand that Zaninovich with the sledge was buried in the crevasse, he began to weep, in his simplicity of heart taking the blame of what had happened on himself. He was so agitated and disturbed, that I made him promise that he would do himself no mischief, and then, leaving him to his moody silence, I ran on again towards the island. It seemed as if I should never reach Cape Schrötter; with head bent down I trudged on, counting my steps through the deep snow; when I raised it again, after a little time, it was always the same black spot that I saw on the distant horizon. At last I came near it, saw the tent, saw some dark spots creep out of it, saw them gather together, and then run down the snow-slope. These were the friends we had left behind. A few words of explanation, with an exhortation to abstain from idle lamentation, were enough. They at once detached a second rope from the large sledge, and got hold of a long tent-pole. Meantime I had rushed upon the cooking-machine, quickly melted a little snow to quench my raging thirst, and then we all set off again—Haller, Sussich, Lukinovich, and myself—to the Middendorf glacier. Tent and provisions were left unwatched; we ran back for three hours and a half; fears for Zaninovich gave such wings to my steps, that my companions were scarcely able to keep up with me. Ever and anon, I had to stop to drink some rum. At the outset we met Orel, and rather later Klotz, both making for Cape Schrötter, Klotz to remain behind there, and Orel to return with us at once to Middendorf glacier. When we came among the icebergs under Cape Habermann I picked up, one by one, the clothes I had thrown away. Reaching the glacier, we tied ourselves together with a rope. Going before the rest, I approached with beating heart the place, where the sledge had disappeared four hours and a half ago. A dark abyss yawned before us; not a sound issued from its depths, not even when I lay on the ground and shouted. At last I heard the whining of a dog, and then an unintelligible answer from Zaninovich. Haller was quickly let down by a rope; he found him still living, but almost frozen, on a ledge of snow forty feet down the crevasse. Fastening himself and Zaninovich to the rope, they were drawn up after great exertion. A storm of greetings saluted Zaninovich, stiff and speechless though he was, when he appeared on the surface of the glacier. I need not add that we gave him some rum to stimulate his vital energies. It was a noble proof how duty and discipline assert themselves, even in such situations, that the first word of this sailor, saved from being frozen to death, was not a complaint, but thanks, accompanied with a request that I would pardon him if he, in order to save himself from being frozen, had ventured to drink a portion of the rum, which had fallen down in its case with the sledge to his ledge of snow. Haller again descended, and fastened the dogs to the rope. The clever animals had freed themselves from their traces in some inexplicable way, and had sprung to a narrow ledge, where Haller found them, close to where Zaninovich had lain. It was astonishing how quickly they discerned the danger of the position, and how great was their confidence in us. They had slept the whole time, as Zaninovich afterwards told us, and he had carefully avoided touching them, lest they should fall down deeper into the abyss. We drew them up with some difficulty, and they gave expression to their joy, first by rolling themselves vigorously in the snow, and then by licking our hands. We then raised Haller by the rope some ten feet higher than the ledge on which Zaninovich had lain, so that he might be able to cut the ropes which fastened the loading of the firmly wedged-in sledge. At this moment Orel arrived, and with his help we raised one by one the articles with which the sledge was loaded. It was ten o’clock before we were convinced that we had lost nothing of any importance in the crevasse.

7. We now left the glacier and the icebergs, and by midnight had reached Cape Habermann. Here we slept, and the dogs with us, as uncomfortably as possible. On the morning of the 11th of April (the thermometer marking 3° F.), we started at an hour when we would much rather have continued to sleep. Our thirst was so great that we felt ourselves equal to drinking up a stream. Haller, Sussich, Lukinovich had during the night returned to Cape Schrötter. Before they started Haller earnestly besought me to come back as soon as possible; for the recent event, he said, had not been without its disquieting effects on the men. On the whole, we might congratulate ourselves on being able to continue our journey, without having received any serious damage, though no longer over the treacherous glacier.

8. A sharp turn to the left brought us to the west coast of Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land, along which we pursued our route northwards. When we reached Cape Brorock, where by an observation we found our latitude at noon to be 81° 45′, the weather became wonderfully bright, and the warm sunlight lay on the broken summits of the Dolerite mountains, which, though covered with gleaming ice, were free from snow. To the north-west we saw at first nothing but ice up to the horizon; even with the telescope of the theodolite I could not decide for the existence of land, which Orel’s sharp eye discovered in the far distance. In the Arctic regions, it often happens that banks of fog on the horizon assume the character of distant ranges, for the small height to which these banks rise in the cold air causes them to be very sharply defined. It is very common also to make the same mistake in the case of mists arising from the waste water of enormous glaciers. We marched on northward close under the land, and for the first time over smooth undulating ice, in high spirits at the increasing grandeur of the scenery and at the happy issue of our adventure of yesterday. Thirst compelled us frequently to halt in order to liquefy snow;[47] sometimes we melted it as we marched along, and our sledge with smoke curling up from the cooking-machine then resembled a small steamer.

9. By and by we came to more snow, and the ice, through which many fissures ran, became gradually thinner, but when we reached the imposing headland, which we called Cape Auk, the ice lay in forced-up barriers. A strange change had come over the aspect of nature. A dark water-sky appeared in the north, and heavy mists rolled down to the steep promontories of Karl Alexander Land; the temperature rose to 10° F.,[48] our track became moist, the snow-drifts collapsed under us with a loud noise, and if we had previously been surprised with the flight of birds from the north, we now found all the rocky precipices of Rudolf’s Land covered with thousands of auks and divers. Enormous flocks of birds flew up and filled the air, and the whole region seemed alive with their incessant whirring. We met everywhere with traces of bears and foxes. Seals lay on the ice, but sprang into the water before we got within shot of them. But notwithstanding these signs of a richer animal life, we should not be justified in inferring, from what we saw in a single locality, that life increases as we move northwards. It was a venial exaggeration, if amid such impressions we pronounced for the nearness of an open Polar sea, and without doubt all adherents of this opinion, had they come with us to this point and no further, would have found in these signs fresh grounds to support their belief. In enumerating these observations, I am conscious what attractions they must have for every one who still leans to the opinion that an open ocean will be found at the Pole; subsequent experience, however, will show how little is their value in support of this antiquated hypothesis.

10. Our track was now very unsafe; it was only the icebergs which seemed to keep the ice in the bays. A strong east wind would certainly have broken it up and cut off our return, at least with the sledge. There were no longer the connected floes of winter, but young ice only, covered with saline efflorescence, dangerously pliable, and strewn over with the remains of recent pressures. The ice was broken through in many places by the holes of seals. It was expedient therefore to tie ourselves together with a long rope, and each of us, as he took his turn in leading, constantly sounded the ice. Passing by Cape Auk, which resembled a gigantic aviary, we followed the line of Teplitz Bay, into which a stream of glaciers, descending from the high mountains in the interior, discharged itself. Icebergs lay along the terminal glacier wall which formed its shore. Ascending one of these masses, we found granite erratics on its surface and saw the open sea stretching far to the west. There seemed to be ice only on the extreme horizon. As the ice-sheet over which our track lay became thinner and more pliable, and constantly threatened to give way under us, the height and length of its piled-up barriers increased also, and because the high glacier walls made it impossible to travel over the land, we had no other resource than to open up a track through the hummocky ice by pick and shovel. At last even this expedient failed to help us; our sledge, constantly damaged, and as constantly repaired, had to be unloaded, the dogs unharnessed, and everything transported separately. Evening had now arrived; ahead of us lay the two rock-towers, which we called Cape Säulen, and open coast-water here began.

11. Beautiful and sublime was this far-off world. From a height we looked over a dark “ice-hole,” studded with icebergs like pearls, and over these lay heavy clouds through which the sunbeams fell on the gleaming water. Right over the true sun shone a second, though somewhat duller sun; the icebergs of Crown-Prince Rudolf’s Land, appearing enormously high, sailed through the still region amid rolling mist and surrounded by vast flocks of birds. Close under Cape Säulen (the Cape of Columns) we came upon the steep edge of the glaciers and dragged up our baggage with a long rope. While Orel got ready our encampment for the night in the fissure of a glacier, and completed as usual his meteorological observations and soundings, I ascended a height to reconnoitre our track for the next day. The sun was setting amid a scene of majestic wildness; its golden rays shot through dark banks of mist and a gentle wind, playing over the “ice-hole,” formed ever-widening circles on its mirror-like surface. Land was no longer visible towards the north, it was covered with a dense “water-sky.” A bird flew close past me; at first I took it for a ptarmigan, but it was probably a snipe. It ought to be remarked that during the two days which we spent near this “ice-hole” we never once saw a whale. As soon as with half-closed eyes we had eaten our supper, we fell fast asleep, for our longing to sleep was yet greater than our exhaustion and our thirst. The dogs availed themselves of this opportunity to devour several pounds of bear’s flesh and empty a tin of condensed milk, which, however, did not prevent them from barking impudently the next morning for more.

12. The 12th of April was the last day of advance in a northerly direction. Though the weather was not clear, yet it was clearer than it had been for some time. When we started we buried our baggage in the fissure of the glacier where we had slept, in order to protect it from bears, which roamed about on all sides. Our march lay over snowy slopes to the summits of the coast range—from 1,000 to 3,000 feet high. The masses of mist lying on the horizon had retreated before the rays of the morning sun, and all the region with its lines of ice-forms was bathed in light; and southward, open water stretched to the shores of Cape Felder. As we followed this lofty coast range, mountains with glaciers sloping down their sides towards the sea seemed to rise before us. An hour before noon we reached a rocky promontory 1,200 feet high, afterwards called Cape Germania. Here we rested, and from a meridian observation we found our latitude to be 81° 57′. Following the coast as it trended towards the north-east, we came on a glacier with a steep inclination and frequent crevasses, which compelled us to leave the sledge behind before we attempted to cross it. But the increasing insecurity of our track over fissures, our want of provisions, and the certainty that since noon we had reached 82° 5′ N. L. by a march of five hours, at last brought our advance northward to a close. With a boat we might certainly have gone some miles further.

13. We now stood on a promontory about 1,000 feet high, which I named Cape Fligely, as a small mark of respect and gratitude towards a man of great distinction in geographical science. Rudolf’s Land still stretched in a north-easterly direction towards a cape—Cape Sherard Osborne—though it was impossible to determine its further course and connection. The view we had from this height was of great importance in relation to the question of an open Polar sea. Open water there was of considerable extent and in very high latitudes: of this there could be no question. But what was its character? From the height on which we stood we could survey its extent. Our expectations had not been sanguine, but moderate though they were, they proved to be exaggerated. No open sea was there, but a “Polynia” surrounded by old ice, within which lay masses of younger ice. This open space of water had arisen from the action of the long prevalent E.N.E. winds. But of more immediate interest than the question of an open Polar sea was the aspect of blue mountain-ranges lying in the distant north, indicating masses of land, which Orel had partially seen the day before, and which now lay before us with their outlines more defined. These we called King Oscar Land and Petermann Land; the mountainous extremity on the west of the latter lay beyond the 83rd degree of north latitude. This promontory I have called Cape Vienna, in testimony of the interest which Austria’s capital has ever shown in geographical science, and in gratitude for the sympathy with which she followed our wanderings, and finally rewarded our humble merits.

14. Proudly we planted the Austro-Hungarian flag for the first time in the high North, our conscience telling us that we had carried it as far as our resources permitted. It was no act asserting a right of possession in the name of a nation, as when Albuquerque or Van Diemen unfurled the standards of their country on foreign soil, yet we had won this cold, stiff, frozen land with no less difficulty than these discoverers had gained those paradises. It was a sore trial to feel our inability to visit the lands lying before us, but withal we were impressed with the conviction that this day was the most important of our lives, and ever since the memory of it has recurred unbidden to my recollection.

15. The Dolerite of this region was of a very coarse-grained character, and its rocks rose in terraces from out of the white mantle of snow; _Umbilicaria arctica_, _Cetaria nivalis_, and _Rhyzocarpon geographicum_ were the sole ornaments of its scanty vegetation. The following document we inclosed in a bottle and deposited in a cleft of rock:—

“Some members of the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition have here reached their highest point in 82·5° N. L., after a march of seventeen days from the ship, lying inclosed in ice in 79° 51′ N. L. They observed open water of no great extent along the coast, bordered by ice, reaching in a north and north-westerly direction to masses of land, whose mean distance from this highest point might be from sixty to seventy miles, but whose connection it was impossible to determine. After their return to the ship, it is the intention of the whole crew to leave this land and return home. The hopeless condition of the ship and the numerous cases of sickness constrain them to this step.

“Cape Fligely, _April 12th, 1874_.

“(Signed)

“ANTONIO ZANINOVICH, _Seaman_. “EDWARD OREL, _Midshipman_, “JULIUS PAYER, _Commander_.”