The Great White North: The story of polar exploration from the earliest times to the discovery of the poleWright, Helen S. (Helen Saunders)
History
The Great White North: The story of polar exploration from the earliest times to the discovery of the pole
Wright, Helen S. (Helen Saunders)
Arctic regions; North Pole
“I take with me pemmican and bread and tea, a canvas tent, five by six,
and two sleeping-bags of reindeer skin. The sledge has been built on
board by Mr. Ohlsen. It is very light, of hickory, and but nine feet
long. Our kitchen is a soup kettle for melting snow and making tea,
arranged so as to boil with either lard or spirits.
“For instruments I have a fine Gambey sextant, in addition to my ordinary
pocket-instrument, an artificial horizon, and a Barrow’s dip-circle.
These occupy little room upon the sledge. My telescope and chronometer I
carry on my person.”
Ill equipped, enfeebled in health, discouraged by the failure of their
caches which had been broken into by bears, the little party struggled
on as long as strength and provisions lasted. “The most picturesque
portion of the North Greenland coast,” writes Dr. Kane, “is to be found
after leaving Cape George Russell and approaching Dallas Bay. The red
sandstones contrast most favorably with the blank whiteness, associating
the cold tints of the dreary Arctic landscape with the warm coloring
of more southern lands. The seasons have acted on the different layers
of the cliff so as to give them the appearance of jointed masonry, and
the narrow line of greenstone at the top caps them with well-simulated
battlements. One of these interesting freaks of nature became known to us
as the ‘Three Brother Turrets.’
“The sloping rubbish at the foot of the coast-wall led up, like an
artificial causeway, to a gorge that was streaming at noonday with the
southern sun; while everywhere else the rock stood out in the blackest
shadow. Just at the edge of the bright opening rose the dreamy semblance
of a castle, flanked with triple towers, completely isolated and defined.
These were the ‘Three Brother Turrets.’
“I was still more struck with another of the same sort, in the immediate
neighborhood of my halting ground beyond Sunny Gorge, to the north
of latitude 79°. A single cliff of green stone, marked by the slaty
limestone that once encased it, rears itself from a crumbled base of
sandstones, like the boldly chiselled rampart of an ancient city. At its
northern extremity, on the brink of a deep ravine which has worn its way
among the ruins, there stands a solitary column or minaret-tower, as
sharply finished as if it had been cast for the Place Vendome. Yet the
length of the shaft alone is four hundred and eighty feet; and it rises
on a plinth or pedestal itself two hundred and eighty feet high.”
[Sidenote: _GREAT GLACIER OF HUMBOLDT_]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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