Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][merged small][merged small]

DOGS NOT APPROVED OF.

327

his progress was impeded about lat. 78° by the ice being elevated into prodigious mountains. This formation was most probably caused by the proximity of land. Here his journey was arrested, and his provisions falling short, his difficulties were greatly increased. However, some of his dogs having died from want, they became food for those remaining. On the 3rd of April following he arrived at the point from whence he had set out, after an absence of twenty-four days.

It was to no purpose we mentioned these facts to Professor Nordenskiold; he was prejudiced evidently against the use of dogs; and our other arguments respecting the wonderful inventions of modern days, which place us in a far better condition of economising space in a way utterly unknown some few years ago, were to him of no account. The clumsy appliances with which Markoff was forced to be content, weighed more than double, and offered less than half the necessaries, not to mention comforts, we could pack away for such a journey at the present day.

At this time our consultations were frequent and earnest as to the course we should adopt. The allabsorbing question was, whether we should linger for some days longer on the coast, exploring the many bays and fiords, in quest of such sport as should

present itself, and in collecting fresh stores of facts, such as we might find worthy of record, or to turn towards the south, and run for Norway, to visit the numerous ports of call along her coast, as we made for home. One weighty influence was ever present with us-the state of the weather, which, for some days, had been undergoing a frequent and steady change. The cold was setting in with unusual severity; the southerly wind was driving the ice nearer and nearer into the shallow bays, where the blocks were rapidly being cemented together by the formation of bay ice at their base; corners where, in ordinary years, the water would have remained open and free from drift ice, were now choked altogether. To such a cause may be attributed the general condition of the season in these remote regions in certain years; and, as an instance of its effects, the greater degree of warmth in some summers in Iceland, when contrasted with others, may fairly be traced to the influence of a strong and prevailing southerly wind; naturally the corresponding increase of cold on the west coast of Spitzbergen would follow, and the interior would equally suffer from the cold blasts of air carried over the land from the frozen fiords. Subsequent events have proved that our opinion was well founded. This year the winter in northern Europe has been unusually mild, while the

SHALL WE GO NORTH?

329

severe cold and protracted winter in America has testified to the correctness of our surmise.

It has been noticed also that when the wind in certain years has prevailed in the opposite direction, the results have been fatal to the harvests of the Icelanders. The state of the wind is therefore an object of the greatest solicitude to the inhabitants of that island. We are undecided then as to our next move. To go north has a kind of infatuation for us. We are quite unable to combat this inclination, and we are hardly willing to leave a coast so full of pleasurable recollections, though we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the risk of being caught and sealed up in some little out-of-the-way inlet by the formation of some strong barrier of ice in our rear, may happen at this season when we least expect it, so sudden is the change of temperature. While we are deliberating, therefore, on what is best to be done, a rapid and quite unlooked-for change in the wind sets all our doubts at rest. A north wind gently fills our sails, and in the direction of home. At once our meditated plans are thrown aside, and the ship's head is turned once again towards the south and England. At first the flutter of the breeze is hardly perceptible; then its gentle influence is more clearly felt as the sails fill, and the schooner begins to feel its pressure; soon the

« AnteriorContinuar »