North-Pole Voyages: Embracing Sketches of the Important Facts and Incidents in the Latest American Efforts to Reach the North Pole, from the Second Grinnell Expedition to That of the PolarisMudge, Zachariah Atwell
History
North-Pole Voyages: Embracing Sketches of the Important Facts and Incidents in the Latest American Efforts to Reach the North Pole, from the Second Grinnell Expedition to That of the Polaris
Mudge, Zachariah Atwell
Arctic regions; Arctic regions -- Discovery and exploration -- American; Discoveries in geography -- American
On the eleventh a mournful procession moved from the "Polaris" to the
place of burial. Though not quite noon it was Arctic night. A weird,
electric light filled the air, through which the stars shone
brilliantly. Captain Tyson walked ahead with a lantern, followed by
Commander Buddington and his officers, and then by the scientific corps,
which included the chaplain, Mr. Bryan; the men followed, drawing the
coffin on a sled, one of their number bearing another lantern. The
fitting pall thrown over the coffin was the American flag. Following the
sled were the Esquimo--last in the procession but not the least in the
depth and genuineness of their sorrow. At the grave, Tyson held the
light for the chaplain to read the burial service. As the solemn, yet
comforting words were uttered, "I am the resurrection and the life,
saith the Lord," all were subdued to tears. Only from the spirit of the
Gospel, breathing its tender influence through these words, was there
any cheerful inspiration. The day was cold and dismal, and the wind
howled mournfully. Inland over a narrow snow-covered plain, and in the
shadowy distance, were huge masses of slate-rock, the ghostly looking
sentinels of the barren land beyond. Seaward was the extended ice of
Polaris Bay, and the intervening shore strown with great ice-blocks in
wild confusion. About five hundred paces away was the little hut called
an observatory, and from its flag-staff drooped at half-mast the stars
and stripes.
Far away were his loved family and friends, whose prayers had followed
him during his adventures in the icy north, who even now hoped for his
complete success and safe return; and far away the Christian burial
place where it would have been to them mournfully pleasant to have laid
him. But he who had declared that he loved the Arctic regions, and to
whose ears there was music in its wailing winds, and to whose eyes there
was beauty in its rugged, icy barrenness, had found his earthly
resting-place where nature was clothed in its wildest Arctic features.
A board was erected over his grave in which was cut:--
"TO THE MEMORY OF
C. F. HALL,
_Late Commander of the North Polar Expedition._
Died November 8, 1871,
Aged fifty years."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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