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 animals, their savage nature is gradually conquered, they lose their resemblance to wolves, and gradually approach the perfect model of Duck, in a word, they become civilized. The 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 polite words and it took him a long time to get along with them. Dogs not introduced to him became familiar, and he generally 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, and rivalry were foreign to him. , 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.That would save a lot of walking, Hatteras thought, and three hundred and fifty 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 three degrees Celsius.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 conceived 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 ahead 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. During the first two days of the trip, they traveled at a pace of twenty knots in twelve hours, and spent the rest of the time eating and resting; while sleeping, the tent was sufficient to keep out the cold.

The temperature tends to rise, and depending on the terrain, the snow has melted in some places, while others remain white; there are large puddles here and there, sometimes turning into real ponds, which the imaginative will imagine. They were lakes; the travelers joked sometimes with their legs half submerged in the water, and the doctor was very pleased with the unexpected bath. Water is not much permitted to wet us in this region, he said, and the element here has only solid and gaseous states; as for the liquid state, it is a luxury.It's all ice or water vapor, if there's water, don't even think about 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 exceed one nautical mile, because a day and an hour cannot be wasted, and there are 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.

The third day was Wednesday, June 26th. The travelers came across a large lake. Since it faced the backlight, it was completely frozen. The ice was relatively strong and could withstand the travelers and sledges. the weight of.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 level, 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 seven degrees Celsius.Travelers took it lightly, even rejoiced, that the rising temperature was accompanied by heavy rains, which hastened the melting of the snow; moccasin boots were needed, and the way the sledges were run 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; and they would sometimes see bears trailing the little procession downwind in the distance musk oxen and reindeer appeared in droves, which the doctor would have seized to share the load of his sled, but they were too easily frightened to be captured alive. .

On the twenty-ninth Bell killed a fox, and Altamont, after having impressed his companions with his coolness and wit, was lucky enough to hunt a musk ox of medium size; The hunter, the doctor knows 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 says, eating is a big deal on a polar excursion. In particular, says Johnson, it relies 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 soup is boiling as usual 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 unusually high. The southeasterly wind blew up, and soon became a real hurricane, and it penetrated the snow-covered rocks and icebergs, which shaped the ice mounds and ice floes all over the land; 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; It is different from an avalanche in Switzerland or Norway; there, a ball forms, small at first, but grows larger with snow and rocks along the way, falling with acceleration, destroying forests, tearing down villages, and finally A sudden drop 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, ridge branches, hilltops, and icebergs, was not very large, and three days later, on the third of July, the travelers came to the flatter plain. But before their eyes again was a strange sight which had long thrilled the scientists of both worlds; the little procession advanced along a chain of mountains not fifty feet high, which stretched for several seas. 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 not only be encountered in the polar regions, but also in Switzerland and the Alps. Saussure collected this specimen in the Pleven area in 1760. Later, Captain Ross and Sabina and other voyagers 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 be derived from the presence of cellular tissue; scientists had long wondered whether such cells belonged to animals or plants, but they finally determined that they The spore-like mushrooms that can only be seen under a microscope are called snow spores by Paul. 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 could be in a space of several nautical miles, according to scientists According to statistics, there are 43,000 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. Although this phenomenon can be explained, it does not reduce its strangeness. Red rarely appears in large areas in nature; the reflection of sunlight on this deep red carpet produces a strange effect, which endows the surrounding things, rocks, people, The animals were a burning color, as if they were lit by the coals within; when the snow melted, it was as if streams of this snow flowed down to the traveller's feet. The doctor at Crimson in Baffinhai | Cliff didn't examine the substance when he saw it, here he can do as he pleases.He collected many bottles with great care. This red land, as he said, this field of blood, took three hours to pass, and everything returned to normal.