CHAPTER VI

 THROUGH THE ARCTIC WINTER 

     The three of us who had remained at the camp where the Frithjof landed, had plenty to do. Well do I remember the day we began our strange life in this remote region. It was August 2, 1898. The steamer was to start for Norway in the morning. This, therefore, was letter day, and every man of us was writing to family and friends at home. It is not often one sits down to write the last words that can be dispatched for at least a year; and it is astonishing how many people one wishes to write to at such a moment, and what a lot he has to say to certain persons. 

     Anything but a joyful moment was it that morning when we stood upon the windswept plateau of Cape Tegetthoff, and watched the Frithjof steam away. To go with her meant return to home, family, friends, all the comforts of life. To stay meant a long struggle against cold, darkness, and storm, lonely hours, weary tramps through slush and snow, yet not one of us wished to be upon the ship. Already we were under the influence of the Arctic spell. Its glamour was in our eyes, its fever in our blood. We were in the mood to appreciate the beauties which nature had lavishly strewn about our future home. 

     This far-off northern world was bathed in the most brilliant sunlight, glistening upon sea and icebergs and glaciers, and illumining the somber cliffs of the mountains. None of us had ever seen a more entrancing picture than the immense glacier of McClintock Island, fifteen miles to the west. It rose from the ice-strewn, shimmering sea a perfect sheen of purest white, studded with billions upon billions of refracting crystals, to a height of some 2000 feet. At the crest two eminences appeared, side by side, each in its way characteristic of this region; one, bold, rugged, and black, as if by a mighty effort the rocks had shaken themselves loose from the grip of the ice-king, standing forth in sullen independence, a landmark for forty miles around; the other more graceful, submissive, but still proud, lifting its head toward the sky, erect and majestic, though wearing the white robes of its frigid conqueror to the very summit. 

     In the foreground were the cliffs of Cape Tegetthoff, showing black where the snow and frost had fallen from their precipitate sides; and the glaciers debouching into the little valleys, melting in the heat of this mid-summer sun, and pouring musically-gurgling streams down to the sea. Out over the waters were to be seen a number of low, rounded, white islands, and near the southern margin of one of them we knew the exploring ship Tegetthoff had a quarter of a century before been abandoned by the Aus­trians, who, through the accident of an ice-bound, aimless drift, had discovered this land. To the northeast several capes rose darkly from the marble-sheeted land, guide-posts along our route to the unexplored regions beyond. 

     The task of house building was at once begun, and in four or five hours we ate our first meal in the most northerly inhabited house in the world, and, in fact, the most northerly of all habitable dwellings, excepting only two—the Greely house in Grinnell Land, and the hut which the Wellman expedition of 1894 erected out of the timbers of the ice-crushed steamer, the Ragnvald Jarl, at Walden Island, Spitz­bergen. 

     This was about the queerest sort of house that human beings ever passed an Arctic winter in. It was made in England, in sections all ready to be fitted together. For three years it had stood at Cape Flora, where the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition had used it as a storehouse, and Mr. Jackson had said it was not fit for human occupation. It really was a poor thing in comparison with the Russian-built loghouse in which he had passed his three winters. The Russians know how to build for cold weather. In Archangel we had seen the richest citizens living in great massive houses, like our "frame" structures in America, but each one surrounded by tight walls of dressed and closely matched logs, with an air-space left between the inner and outer shells. 

     We proceeded to borrow one idea from the Russians. Indeed, our collapsible house was designed upon the same principle, but its two walls were very thin, merely three-quarter inch boards. There were ten sections of these boards, all fitting together with bolts, and they also matched the floor, which was likewise in ten pieces. Over this structure of decagonal shape were stretched two thicknesses of oiled canvas, again with the highly desirable air-space between them. 

     Though fairly good for a summer house, we knew it would never do in that condition for an Arctic winter. So we proceeded to build another shell around it by means of planks, well braced and converging round the stovepipe at the apex of the roof. Thus we had three walls with two airspaces around us, and as the art of keeping warm, whether in house or clothing, is not to keep the cold out, but to hold the heat within, we extended this principle in two ways; first, we stretched over the roof an old mainsail, which had been discarded from the Windward, the Jackson-Harmsworth ship, afterward presented to and used by Peary, giving us three layers of cloth and two air-spaces over head; second, we built a snow wall around the entire structure. 

     Then we put up a storehouse of planks at one side of the decagonal structure, and added a vestibule outside that. We built double doors, "chinked" the walls with moss, and covered the whole with layers of "Arctic marble," as we called the slabs of frozen snow, which were sawed out of an old drift and to any desired shape or size. When the storms came later in the fall, the whole camp, livingroom, storeshed, vestibule and all, was hurled under a snow drift. The windows were closed with five-foot walls of snow, and as winter came on, about all one could see reminding him of a human habitation was the dark little hole in the snow bank, through which we crawled when going in and out, and the diminutive black stovepipe, working away for dear life at the top of the white peak. 

     In this house we passed a comfortable winter. Our stove was a small one, only fifteen inches in diameter, and it never burned more than fifty pounds of coal in a day ; but we sank it through the floor to lower the firebox, and so got all the heat out of it that was possible. True, the temperature often sank below zero in our living apartment, and frost formed not only upon the ceiling, but upon the walls against which we reclined with our backs, as we sat each in his own "corner." But in such a life men speedily accustom themselves to slight inconveniences of that sort. 

    Indeed, familiarity breeds contempt of cold. At home we used to think it cold out of doors if the temperature dropped below 'the freezing point, and heavy overcoats and warm gloves were in order, while Americans think they cannot endure a temperature lower than sixtyfive degrees in their houses. But up here at Cape Tegetthoff we habitually wrote letters, sewed at our clothing, played cards, read books, and ate our meals in temperatures hovering about the freezing point. When the temperature outside was no lower than 15 or 20 minus, and not much wind blowing, we let the fire go out after supper, in order to save coal. 

     We had our regular baths, too, even in the coldest weather. As one of the few rules of the house was "no bathing indoors," on account of the condensation of moisture, the bather took his tub of warm water out into the storehouse, stripped to the skin, and enjoyed himself, even though the temperature out there was usually from 15 to 25 below. This we did without taking cold. In fact, such a thing as a cold, the writer has never had in the Arctic regions.     

One day in early December I had been hard at work for an hour or two, testing the traction of various sledges, pulling a two hundred pound load up the hill and through the deep snow. Perspiring at every pore, it occurred to me to make a test of whether or not it was possible to take cold up there. Though attired in ordinary clothing, such as one wears at home in mild winter weather, I sat down in the snow for thirty minutes by the watch, and woolly dogs came and climbed all over me in excess of affection. The temperature was really thirty below, and though it did grow a bit chilly before the half hour was up no "cold" was taken. In order to inure my­self to cold, I always washed face and hands in snow before breakfast, no matter how great the cold, and have often washed my feet in the same way, outdoors, in low temperatures. It is refreshing, but in amusing himself this way one must look sharp or he may get a frost-nip—our pampered feet are so sensitive to cold. 

     Wool is far and away the best fabric for Arctic wear. Even wool will gather moisture, but it is infinitely better than fur. Wool permits the moisture of the body to pass through the fabric and congeal outside, where it can be brushed or shaken off, while furs retain it within. Two, three, or more thicknesses of wool are better than one of equal weight. I used to wear two pairs of woolen mittens; the outer pair was stiff with frost, while the inner pair was nearly dry and quite warm. But one had to be careful what he did with his mittens, when he took them off, for in a few moments they would freeze so stiff that it was torture to put them on again. 

     Of course, one needs plenty of clothing in the far north, but wool is the thing. Upon our dash northward, in temperatures of from 10 to 48 below zero, I had nothing except a pair of reindeer skin moccasins upon my feet. But within these moccasins, I had from three to five pairs of thick woolen stockings; and outside the stockings was loose, dry grass, to absorb the moisture. I never once had cold feet, and even after I had met with an accident which practically stopped all circulation of the blood below the knee, in my in­jured leg, I suffered no frostbites. Upon my body I wore four suits of woolen underclothing and a jacket outside. In this attire I was warmer than my Norwegian companions in big cumbersome "kooletahs" of reindeer skin.