Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal: Or, Eighteen Months in the Polar Regions, in Search of Sir John Franklin's Expedition, in the Years 1850-51Osborn, Sherard
History
Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal: Or, Eighteen Months in the Polar Regions, in Search of Sir John Franklin's Expedition, in the Years 1850-51
Osborn, Sherard
Arctic regions; Franklin, John, 1786-1847
One halt was made to remove and change all leather boots, which, in
consequence of our late warm weather, had been taken into use, but were
now no longer safe; and then, with a rally, the piled-up floe around
the cliffs of Cape Walker was reached. Cold and hungry as we were, it
must have been a heavy barrier indeed to have stopped our men from
taking their sledges to the land; and piled as the floe was against the
Cape, full fifty feet high, we carried our craft over it in safety, and
just in time too, for the north-west wind rushed down upon us, as if to
dispute our right to intrude on its dominion. Hastily securing the
tents, we hurried in to change our boots, and to see whether our feet
were frost-bitten or not; for it was only by ocular proof that one
could be satisfied of their safety, sensation having apparently long
ceased. I shall not easily forget my painful feelings, when one gallant
fellow of my party, the captain of the sledge, exclaimed, "Both feet
gone, sir!" and sure enough they were, white as two lumps of ice, and
equally cold; for as we of the tent party anxiously in turn placed our
warm hands on the frost-bitten feet, the heat was extracted in a
marvellously short time, and our half-frozen hands had to be succeeded
by fresh ones as quickly as possible. With returning circulation the
poor fellow's agonies must have been intense; and some hours afterwards
large blisters formed over the frost-bitten parts, as if the feet had
been severely scalded. Sadly cramped as we were for room, much worse
was it when a sick man was amongst our number. Sleep was out of the
question; and to roll up in the smallest possible compass, and try to
think of something else than the cold, which pierced to the very marrow
in one's bones, was our only resource.
Next day, Tuesday, 22d April, wind N.W. blowing hard, and temperature
at 44 deg. below freezing-point, parties left the encampment under
Lieutenants Browne and Mecham, to look around for cairns, &c., and
report upon the trend of the land, whilst the rest of us secured a
depot of Halkett's boats, and built a cairn as a record of our visit.
As it is not my intention to give a detailed account of the operations
of the Southern Division, but merely to tell of those events which will
convey to the reader a general idea of the incidents connected with
Arctic travelling, I shall without further comment give them, leaving
to the curious in the minutiae of the journeys the amusement of reading
in the Admiralty Blue Books the details of when we eat, drank, slept,
or marched.
Cape Walker was found to form the eastern and most lofty extreme of a
land-trending to the south-west on its northern coast, and to the south
on its eastern shore. The cape itself, full 1000 feet in altitude, was
formed of red sandstone and conglomerate, very abrupt to the eastward,
but dipping with an undulating outline to the west.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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