IV. Outfit. — To encounter broken ice in the midst of darkness and at a temperature destructive to life, every thing depends upon your sledge. Should it break down, you might as well break your own leg: there is no hope for you. Our sledge then is made of well-tried oak, dovetailed into a runner shod with iron. No metal is used besides, except the screws and rivets which confine the sledge to its runners. In this intense cold, iron snaps like glass, and no immovable or rigidly-fastened wood-work would stand for a moment the fierce concussions of the drive. Every thing is put together with lashings of seal-skin, and the whole fabric is the skeleton framework of a sledge as flexible as a lady's work-basket, and weighing only forty pounds. On this we fasten a sacking-bottom of canvas, tightly stretched, like its namesake of the four-post bedstead, around the margin. We call this ticking the apron and cover; the apron being a flap of sixteen inches high, surrounding the cover, and either hanging loose at its sides like a valance, or laced up down the middle. Into this apron and cover you pack your cargo, the less of it the better; and then lace and lash the whole securely together.
V. The cargo may consist of: — 1, a blanket-bag of fur, if you can get it; but on our present sleigh-ride, buffalo being too heavy and our reindeer-skins all destroyed by wet, I take an eider-down coverlet, adding — 2, a pillow stuff'ed with straw or shavings, to be placed under the small of the back while sleeping; 3, an extra pair of boots; and, 4, a snow-saw.
"Superadd to these the ancient soup-pot, our soapstone kollopsut, one Esquimaux lamp, one lump of moss, one cup, and a tinder-box; all these for the kitchen; — a roll of frozen meat-biscuit, some frozen lady-fingers of raw hashed fox, a small bag of coff'ee, and twenty-four pieces of hard tack, (ship's bread,) for the larder; — our fire-arms, and no less essential ice-poles: — all these, no more nor less, and you have the entirety of our outfit, — the means wherewith we are to track this icy labyrinth, under a frozen sky, for an uncertain asylum some ninety-one miles off.
"In general, eight powerful wolf-like dogs will draw such a cargo like the wind: — I have but four wretched animals, who can hardly drag themselves.
"The clothing or personal outfit demands the nicest study of experience. Except a spare pair of boots, it is all upon the back. It requires the energies of tyrant custom to discipline a traveller into comfort under these Smith Sound temperatures; and, let him dress as he may, his drill will avail but little unless he has a windless atmosphere without and a heat-creating body within.
"Rightly clad, he is a lump of deformity waddling over the ice, unpicturesque, uncouth, and seemingly helpless. It is only when you meet him covered with rime, his face peering from an icy halo, his beard glued with frozen respiration, that you look with intelligent appreciation on his many-coated panoply against King Death.
"The Smith's Straits fox-skin jumper, or kapetah, is a closed shirt, fitting very loosely to the person, but adapted to the head and neck by an almost air-tight hood, the nessak. The kapetah is put on from below; the arms of the man pass through the arms of the garment, and the head rises through a slit at the top: around this slit comes up the hood. It is passed over the head from behind and made to embrace the face and forehead. Underneath the kapetah is a similar garment, but destitute of the hood, which is put on as we do an inner shirt. It is made of bird-skins chewed in the mouth by the women till they are perfectly soft, and it is worn with this unequalled down next the body. More than five hundred auks have been known to contribute to a garment of this description.
"So far the bust and upper limbs. The lower extremities are guarded by a pair of bear-skin breeches, the nannooke, — the characteristic and national vestiture of this strange people. They are literal copies, and in one sense fac-similes, of the courtly knee-buckled ones of our grandfathers, but not rising above the crests of the pelvis, thus leaving exposed those parts which in civilized countries are shielded most carefully.
"I regard these strange and apparently-inconvenient articles of dress as unique. They compressed the muscles, which they affected to cover, in a manner so ungrandisonian that I leave a special description of their structure to my note-book.
"The foot-gear consists of a bird-skin short sock, with a padding of grass nicely distributed over the sole. Outside of this comes a bear-skin leg, sewed with great skill to the natural sole of the plantigrade, and abundantly wadded about the foot with dry non-conducting straw.
"When this simple wardrobe is fully adjusted to the person, we understand something of the wonderful endurance of these Arctic primates. Wrangell called the Jacuti iron men, because they slept at — 50° opposite the fire, with their backs exposed. Now, they of Smith's Sound have always an uncovered space between the waistband of the nannooke and the kapetah. To bend forward exposes the back to partial nudity; and, no matter what the attitude, the entire chest is open to the atmosphere from below. Yet in this well-ventilated costume the man will sleep upon his sledge with the atmosphere 93" below our freezing-point.
"The only additional articles of dress are a fox's tail, held between the teeth to protect the nose in a wind, and mitts of seal-skin well wadded with sledge-straw.
"When I saw Kalutunah, who guided the return-party to the brig from Tesseusak, the temperature was below — 50°. He was standing in the open air, comfortably scratching his naked skin, ready for a second journey; which, in effect, he made eight hours afterward.
"We — I mean our party of American hyperboreans — are mere carpet-knights aside of these indomitable savages. Experience has taught us to follow their guidance in matters of Arctic craft; but we have to add a host of European appendages to their out-door clothing.
"Imagine me, then, externally clad as I have described, but with furs and woollens layer upon layer inside, like the shards of an artichoke, till I am rounded into absolute obesity. Without all this, I cannot keep up my circulation on a sledge; nor indeed without active exercise, if the thermometer is below — 54°, the lowest at which I have taken the floes. I have to run occasionally, or I should succumb to the cold."
So much for my resources of travel, as I have thrown them together from different pages of my journal. The apparent levity with which I have detailed them seems out of keeping with the date under which they stand. In truth, I was in no mirthful humor at any time during the month of January. I had a grave office to perform, and under grave responsibilities; and I had measured them well. I come back, after this long digression, to my daily record of anxieties : —
"January 19, Friday. — The declining tides allow the ice beneath the ship to take the ground at low-water. This occasions, of course, a good deal of upheaval and some change of position along the ice-tables in which we are cradled. Mr. Ohlsen reports a bending of our cross-beams of six inches, showing that the pressure is becoming dangerous. Any thing like leakage would be disastrous in the present condition of the party. Our cabin-floor, however, was so elevated by our carpenter's work of last fall that it could not be flooded more than six inches; and I hope that the under-bottom ice exceeds that height. At any rate we can do nothing, but must await the movements of the floe. March is to be our critical month.
"George Whipple shows swelled legs and other symptoms of the enemy; Riley continues better; Brooks weak, but holding his ground; Wilson no better; if any thing, worse. I am myself so disabled in the joints as to be entirely unfit to attend to the traps or do any work. I shall try the vapor-bath and sweat, Indian fashion.
"January 21, Sunday. — We have been using up our tar-laid hemp hawsers for nearly a week, by way of eking out our firewood, and have reduced our consumption of pitch-pine to thirty-nine pounds a day. But the fine particles of soot throughout the room have affected the lungs of the sick so much that I shall be obliged to give it up. I am now trying the Manilla; but it consumes too rapidly: with care we may make something of it.