Chapter 51 Chapter 19 Going North

At dawn the next day, Hatteras gave the order to start.The dogs were harnessed to the sleds; they were well fed and well rested, and had had a winter in such favorable conditions that there was no reason why they should not work hard in the summer.They put on the saddles of travel without a word. These Greenland dogs are not bad beasts, their savage nature is gradually conquered, they lose their resemblance to wolves, and gradually approach the perfect example of Duck, and in a word, they become civilized. Duck played a part in their education by teaching them an easy-going disposition and setting an example; being an English breeder, he was very picky about "pleasures" and it took him a long time to get along with These "unintroduced" dogs became familiar, and generally speaking he did not speak to them; but, sharing the same danger, the same hunger, and the same fate, these different kinds of dogs gradually came to associate with each other.The kind-hearted Duck took the first step, and the whole quadruped quickly became friends.

The doctor petted the Greenlander, and Dak didn't feel jealous when he saw the caresses he gave to his fellow dog. Man is in no worse condition than a dog. If a dog pulls a sled well, a man can also walk smoothly. They set out at six o'clock in the morning, and the weather was fine; first round the bay, passing Cape Washington, Hatteras ordered to go straight north; at seven o'clock the travelers left the cone of the lighthouse and the citadel of God to the south . The voyage was smooth, especially better than the expedition to find coal in the cold winter: Hatteras left rebellion and despair on board the ship behind him, not very sure of what he was going to; The half-dead crew; he sets out with his companions weakened by the sufferings of the polar winter; he, who goes north, returns to the south!Now, on the contrary, he is surrounded by strong, healthy, tough, courageous, motivated friends, and he is going to the pole, which is the goal of his whole life!No one has ever been so close to honoring his country and himself!

Did he think of all this which was naturally inspired by the present situation?The doctor liked to speculate, and seeing him so agitated made him even less suspicious of it.Good-natured Croubney was happy in his friend's happiness, and since the two captains, his two friends, were reconciled, he became the happiest man, and the thought of hatred, envy, rivalry was foreign to him Yes, he is the luckiest of creations!What he will encounter, what the outcome of this expedition will be, he does not know, but in the end he is off to a good start.That's fine. The east coast of New America extends to the west through a series of bays beyond Cape Washington. In order to avoid such a sharp bend, travelers first climbed the slope of Bear Mountain and headed north by the plateau.This would save a great deal of travel, Hatteras thought, and the 350 nautical miles straight from God's Fortress to the Pole, provided such unexpected obstacles as mountains and straits did not object.

Travel is very convenient, the plateau is covered with a vast white carpet, the sledge equipped with sulfur-sprinkled skateboards slides briskly, and people wear snowshoes, walking steadily and quickly. The thermometer indicated at 3°C.The weather is not stable, sometimes sunny, sometimes foggy; but neither the cold nor the snow can stop the travelers who are moving forward. It is easy to find the way with a compass, as the needle becomes less inert as it gets farther from the pole, it does not hesitate; in fact, after passing the pole, it returns to that direction, so that for those who go north Guide, but this opposite direction will not cause any difficulty in calculation.

Moreover, the doctor thought of a very simple method of erecting a pole, thus avoiding the constant recourse to the compass; once the position was determined, the travelers set up a pole exactly two or three nautical miles in front of the north in clear weather. object; they walk toward it until they reach this goal; then they choose another landmark in the same direction, and so on.In this way, they hardly leave the straight road. In the first two days of the trip, they walked at a speed of 20 knots in 12 hours, and used the rest of the time to eat and rest; the tent was enough to keep out the cold while sleeping.

The temperature tends to rise. According to the different terrains, the snow has melted in some places, and the color of other places is still white; there are large puddles everywhere, sometimes turning into real ponds. would have mistaken them for lakes; the travelers sometimes joked about their legs half submerged in the water, and the doctor was delighted with the unexpected bath. "Water is not permitted to wet us much in this region," he said. "The element here has only solid and gaseous states; as for liquid, it is a luxury. Ice or vapor, there is plenty of water, forget it! "

Hunting was not forgotten as they marched, for it brought fresh food; Altamon and Bell did not go too far, scouting the deep ravines near by; Hare; these animals gradually passed from trust to fear, they became easy to fly away, difficult to approach, and without Duck, the hunters often had to waste their gunpowder. Hatteras told them not to go more than a nautical mile, because not even a day, not an hour, could be wasted, and there were only three months of good weather to count on. When a hard place comes up, some narrow valley, a sloping plateau; everyone should stay by the sled and find their place.Everyone hitched to or near the sledge, pulling, pushing, or propping it up; and more than once they unloaded it all, and that was not enough to avoid the impact, and the sled was damaged by it, and Bell repaired it as best he could.

On the third day, Wednesday, June 26, the travelers encountered a large lake, which was completely frozen because it faced the backlight, and the ice was relatively strong, which could withstand the traveler and the sled. weight.The ice seems to have begun in the long winter, for the lake, because of its position, will never thaw; it is a perfect mirror, on which the polar summer has left no trace; it seems to confirm this. What was observed was that its shore was covered with a layer of dry snow, and the snow layer below must have belonged to previous years. From this time the region declined markedly, from which the doctors judged that it was not very large in the north; moreover, it was probable that New America was but an island, not extending to the poles, and that the ground became more and more flat, with only a few mountains to the west. The low mountains are faintly in the distance, immersed in the light blue mist.

So far, the journey was not tiring, and the travelers suffered only from the reflection of sunlight on the snow, which caused them inevitable snow blindness.At other times they would have avoided this disadvantage by traveling at night.But there is no night.Fortunately, snow has a tendency to melt, and as it melts into water, much of the glare is removed. On June 28, the temperature rose to 7°C.Travelers took it lightly, even rejoiced, that the rising temperature was accompanied by heavy rains, which hastened the melting of the snow; moccasins were changed, and the way of sledding was changed.The course was undoubtedly blocked, but, without serious hindrance, they kept on going.

Sometimes the doctor picked up round or flat stones on the road, which looked like cobblestones washed by waves, and he thought he was near a polar basin, but he still saw the endless plain. It bears no trace of habitation, no huts, no cairns, no igloos of the Eskimos, and the travelers were evidently the first to set foot in this new region; Been so far, but, in this country, the hunt would have been fruitful to the unfortunate who were always hungry; But there was no sign of attack; in the distance musk oxen and caribou appeared in droves, and the doctor would have caught the latter to share the load of his sled, but they were too easily frightened to be captured alive. .

On the 20th, Bell killed a fox, and Altamon, after having impressed his companions with calmness and wit, had the good fortune of hunting a musk ox of medium stature; an excellent hunter indeed. , the doctor is well aware of this and admires him very much.The cows were skinned, providing plenty of fresh meat. The occasional tasty, nutritious meal is always well received, and even the non-gluttonous can't help but cast approving glances at the fresh slices of meat.The doctor himself laughed, and he couldn't help but marvel at the huge amount of meat. "Never mind," he said, "eating is one of the most important things on a polar excursion." "Especially," Johnson said, "it depends on a shot fired by someone, sophisticated or not!" "You are right, my old Johnson," replied the doctor, "that people think less of eating when they know that vegetable and beef broth is always boiling on the kitchen stove." On the 30th, contrary to expectations, this area became undulating, as if it had just experienced a volcanic earthquake; the ice cones, with countless sharp cliffs, were extremely tall. The southeasterly wind blew up, and soon became a real hurricane, penetrating snow-covered rocks and icebergs, which shaped the ice mounds and ice floes all over the land; their appearance on the plateau seemed incredible, even The same goes for the doctor, although he can explain everything. The weather was hot and humid after the storm, and it was a real thaw, with the crackling of ice mixed with the sound of a huge avalanche, resounding in all directions. The travelers carefully avoid going down the mountain, not even talking aloud, because the sound would disturb the atmosphere and cause disaster; Momentary, it's not like an avalanche in Switzerland or Norway; there, a ball forms, small at first, but gets bigger and bigger with snow and rocks along the way, falling with acceleration, destroying forests, tearing down villages, and eventually It fell suddenly within a predictable period of time.But this is not so in the cold polar regions, where the movement of the ice is unexpected, like lightning; when it falls it begins, and whoever sees it swinging in a parabola is inevitably crushed by it; It's not that fast, nor is the lightning fast; splitting, falling, and crushing are just a process for an avalanche in the Arctic region; In the same way, in the eyes of the stunned beholder, real changes sometimes take place; the face of the region changes, the mountains become plains under the pull of a sudden thaw, and the rain seeps into the crevices of the gigantic boulders. Here, solidified in the cold of the night, it bursts through all obstacles, its irresistible expansion is stronger in the solid state than in the liquid state, and the whole phenomenon is completed in a terrifying moment. Happily no calamity threatened the sledge or its rider; all dangers could have been avoided had only prudent measures been taken.Moreover, this country, full of watersheds, ridges, hilltops, and icebergs, was not very large, and three days later, on July 3, the travelers came to the flatter plain. But before their eyes was another singular sight, which had long thrilled the scientists of both worlds; the little procession marched along a chain of mountains not more than fifty feet high, extending for several sea miles, However, its eastern slope is covered with snow, and it is all red snow. Everyone's surprise and exclamation can be imagined, although the long crimson curtain first gave the impression of horror.The doctor at once took comfort, if not comfort, at least informing his companions of his knowledge of this peculiar red snow and of the climatic analysis done on it by Wollaston, Candor, and Paul.He said that this kind of snow will be encountered not only in the polar regions, but also in Switzerland and the Alps. Saussure collected this specimen in the Pleven area in 1760. Later, Ross, Captain Sabina and other navigators The settlers also brought such specimens with them on their northern expeditions. Altamon asked the doctor about the properties of this particular substance, who said that the color could only result from the presence of cellular tissue; scientists had long wondered whether such cells belonged to animals or plants, but they finally confirmed that they belonged to The "spore" mushrooms that can only be seen with a microscope, Paul suggested called "snow spores". So the doctor picked up this snow with his iron rod, and showed his companions that the bright red snow layer was nine feet thick, and he asked them to calculate how many mushrooms there are in the space of several nautical miles, according to the statistics of scientists , there are 43,000 of them in an area of ​​one square centimeter. This color, according to the distribution of the slope, should be traced back to a long time ago, because these mushrooms did not disintegrate due to evaporation or melting of snow, and their color remained unchanged. This phenomenon, although explainable, does not lessen its strangeness, the color red rarely occurs in large expanses in nature; the reflection of sunlight produces a strange effect on this deep red carpet, which gives surrounding things, rocks, Man, animal A burning color, as if they were illuminated by the coals within; when the snow melted, as if the streams of this snow flowed down to the traveler's feet. The doctor didn't examine the substance when he saw it at Crimson-Cliff in Baffinsea, and here he can do as he pleases.He collected many bottles with great care. The red land, the "field of blood," as he called it, took three hours to pass, and everything returned to normal.