The Last Secrets: The Final Mysteries of ExplorationBuchan, John
History
The Last Secrets: The Final Mysteries of Exploration
Buchan, John
Discoveries in geography; Explorers
Next morning they crossed the divide, partly shooting and partly
lowering their belongings over the 1,000-feet drop into the hollow.
They were no sooner across when another blizzard arrived, and they
were storm-bound for thirty-six hours. But their spirits were high.
For the time they were done with uphill climbs, and they saw that by
crossing a low pass at the head of another glacier they could reach
the great Muldrow Glacier, which had been known to the world since
1902. This glacier would take them into the very heart of the
mountain.
Without much difficulty they crossed the pass, and, descending to the
Muldrow moraine, they realized with joy that they were on the
northern side of the Alaskan range. It was now nearly the middle of
April, and they found themselves in the kind of country that hunters
dream of. There was a chance of fresh meat, and, to men who had been
seventeen days on the ice, the hope of a change in their menu and the
sight of vegetation were an intoxication. Mr. Belmore Browne went
out one morning, and fell in with a herd of white sheep (_Ovis
Dalli_). He secured three, and that night the camp feasted. "In
cold weather," he writes, "one has a craving for fat, and in the
wilderness one is less particular about the way meat is cooked. Our
desire for fat was so intense that we tried eating the raw meat, and
finding it good beyond words, we ate freely of the fresh mutton. I
can easily understand now why savage tribes make a practice of eating
uncooked flesh." The white sheep was not the only game. There was a
special variety of caribou; there was the Alaskan moose; there was an
occasional grizzly; and there were quantities of ptarmigan. The
travellers showed the most sportsmanlike spirit in refraining from
killing females or immature beasts.
From the Muldrow Glacier they turned westward and struck the McKinley
fork of the Kantishna River, which flows to the Yukon. Presently
they were in timber country, and realized that they had crossed the
Alaskan range "from wood to wood," and incidentally had added two new
glacier systems to the map. After snow and ice and pemmican they had
greenery and fresh meat, and, as they worked their way to the
lowlands, the first flush of spring. Above all, they had the
North-East ridges (of which there were three) above them to offer an
apparently possible route to the summit. They saw a glacier running
between the central and northern North-East ridges which they decided
would be their road. Mr. Belmore Browne went out to prospect, and,
climbing the head of a valley, found himself looking down upon the
upper Muldrow Glacier, which he now realized was split in two by the
central North-East ridge. He saw also that the northern branch of it
gave a road to the very base of the central peak.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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