The Voyage Of The Vega Round Asia And Europe Part 34

When this ice-house was ready and hourly observations began in it, life on board took the stamp which it afterwards retained in the course of the winter. In order to give the reader an idea of our every-day life, I shall reproduce here the spirited sketch of a day on the _Vega_, which Dr. Kjellman gave in one of his home letters:--

"It is about half-past eight in the morning. He whose watch has expired has returned after five hours' stay in the ice-house, where the temperature during the night has been about -16. His account of the weather is good enough. There are only thirty-two degrees of cold, it is half-clear, and, to be out of the ordinary, there is no wind. Breakfast is over. Cigars, cigarettes, and pipes are lighted, and the gunroom _personnel_ go up on deck for a little exercise and fresh air, for below it is confined and close. The eye rests on the desolate, still faintly-lighted landscape, which is exactly the same as it was yesterday; a white plain in all directions, across which a low, likewise white, chain of hillocks or _torosses_ here and there raises itself, and over which some ravens, with feeble wing-strokes, fly forward, searching for something to support life with. 'Metsc.h.i.n.ko Orpist,' 'metsc.h.i.n.ko Okerpist,' 'metsc.h.i.n.ko Kellman,' &c., now sounds everywhere on the vessel and from the ice in its neighbourhood. 'Orpist' represents Nordquist, 'Okerpist' again Stuxberg. It is the Chukches' morning salutation to us. To-day the comparatively fine weather has drawn out a larger crowd than usual, thirty to forty human beings, from tender sucking babes to grey old folks, men as well as women; the latter in the word of salutation replacing the _tsch_-sound with an exceedingly soft caressing _ts_-sound. That most of them have come driving is shown by the equipages standing in the neighbourhood of the vessel. They consist of small, low, narrow, light sledges, drawn by four to ten or twelve dogs. The sledges are made of small pieces of wood and bits of reindeer-horn, held together by sealskin straps. As runner-shoes thin plates of the ribs of the whale are used. The dogs, sharp-nosed, long-backed, and excessively dirty, have laid themselves to rest, curled together in the snow.

"The salutation is followed almost immediately to-day as on preceding days by some other words: 'Ouinga mouri kauka,' which may be translated thus: 'I am so hungry; I have no food; give me a little bread!' They suffer hunger now, the poor beings. Seal flesh, their main food, they cannot with the best will procure for the time. The only food they can get consists of fish (two kinds of cod), but this is quite too poor diet for them, they have fallen off since we first met with them.

"Soon we are all surrounded by our Chukch acquaintances.

The daily market begins. They have various things to offer, which they know to be of value to us, as weapons, furs, ornaments, playthings, fish, bones of the whale, algae, vegetables, &c. For all this only 'kauka' is now asked. To-day the supply of whales' bones is large, in consequence of our desire, expressed on previous days, to obtain them. One has come with two vertebrae, one with a rib or some fragments of it, one with a shoulder-blade.

They are not shy in laying heavy loads on their dogs.

"After the close of the promenade and the traffic with the natives, the gunroom _personnel_ have begun their labours.

Some keep in their cabins, others in the gunroom itself.

The magnetical and meteorological observations made the day before are transcribed and subjected to a preliminary working-out, the natural history collections are examined and looked over, studies and authors.h.i.+p are prosecuted.

The work is now and then interrupted by conversation partly serious, partly jocular. From the engine-room in the neighbourhood we hear the blows of hammers and the rasping of files. In the 'tweendecks, pretty well heated, but not very well lighted, some of the crew are employed at ordinary s.h.i.+p's work; and in the region of the kitchen the cook is just in the midst of his preparations for dinner. He is in good humour as usual, but perhaps grumbles a little at the 'mosucks' (a common name on board for the Chukches), who will not give him any peace by their continual cries for 'mimil' (water.)

"The forenoon pa.s.ses in all quietness and stillness.

Immediately after noon nearly all the gunroom people are again on deck, promenading backwards and forwards. It is now very lively. It is the crew's meal-time. The whole crowd of Chukches are collected at the descent to their apartment, the lower deck. One soup basin after the other comes up; they are immediately emptied of their contents by those who in the crowd and confusion are fortunate enough to get at them. Bread and pieces of meat and bits of sugar are distributed a.s.siduously, and disappear with equal speed. Finally, the cook himself appears with a large kettle, containing a very large quant.i.ty of meat soup, which the Chukches like starving animals throw themselves upon, baling into them with spoons, empty preserve tins, and above all with the hands.

Notwithstanding the exceedingly severe cold a woman here and there has uncovered one arm and half her breast in order not to be embarra.s.sed by the wide reindeer-skin sleeve in her attempts to get at the contents of the kettle. The spectacle is by no means a pleasant one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN EVENING IN THE GUNROOM OF THE "VEGA" DURING THE WINTERING. ]

"By three o'clock it begins to grow dark, and one after the other of our guests depart, to return, the most of them, in the morning. Now it is quiet and still. About six the crew have finished their labours and dispose of the rest of the day as they please. Most of them are occupied with reading during the evening hours. When supper has been served at half-past seven in the gunroom, he who has the watch in the ice-house from nine to two next morning prepares for the performance of his disagreeable duty; the rest of the gunroom _personnel_ are a.s.sembled there, and pa.s.s the evening in conversation, play, light reading, &c.

At ten every one retires, and the lamps are extinguished.

In many cabins, however, lights burn till after midnight.

"Such was in general our life on the _Vega_. One day was very like another. When the storm howled, the snow drifted, and the cold became too severe, we kept more below deck; when the weather was finer we lived more in the open air, often paying visits to the observatory in the ice-house, and among the Chukches living in the neighbourhood, or wandering about to come upon, if possible, some game."

The snow which fell during winter consisted more generally of small simple snow-crystals or ice-needles, than of the beautiful snow-flakes whose grand kaleidoscopic forms the inhabitants of the north so often have an opportunity of admiring. Already with a gentle wind and with a pretty clear atmosphere the lower strata of the atmosphere were full of these regular ice-needles, which refracted the rays of the sun, so as to produce parhelia and halos.

Unfortunately however these were never so completely developed as the halos which I saw in 1873 during the sledge-journey round North-east Land on Spitzbergen; but I believed that even now I could confirm the correctness of the observation I then made, that the representation which is generally given of this beautiful phenomenon, in which the halo is delineated as a collection of regular circles, is not correct, but that it forms a very involved system of lines, extended over the whole vault of heaven, for the most part coloured on the sun-side and uncoloured on the opposite side, of the sort shown in the accompanying drawings taken from the account of the Spitzbergen Expedition of 1872-73.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REFRACTION-HALO. Seen on Spitzbergen in May 1873, simultaneously with the Reflection-halo delineated on the following page. ]

Another very beautiful phenomenon, produced by the refraction of the solar rays by the ice-needles, which during winter were constantly mixed with the atmospheric strata lying nearest the surface of the earth, was that the mountain heights to the south of the _Vega_ in a certain light appeared as if feathered with fire-clouds. In clear suns.h.i.+ne and a high wind we frequently saw, as it were, a glowing pillar of vapour arise obliquely from the summits of the mountains, giving them the appearance of volcanos, which throw out enormous columns of smoke, flame-coloured by the reflection from the glowing lava streams in the depths of the crater.

A blue water-sky was still visible out to sea, indicating that open water was to be found there. I therefore sent Johnsen the hunter over the ice on the 18th December to see how it was. In three-quarters of an hour's walking from the vessel he found an extensive opening, recently covered with thin, blue, newly frozen ice. A fresh northerly breeze blew at the time, and by it the drift-ice fields were forced together with such speed, that Johnsen supposed that in a couple of hours the whole lead would be completely closed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REFLECTION-HALO. Seen simultaneously with the Retraction-halo delineated on the preceding page, in the part of the sky opposite the sun. ]

In such openings in Greenland white whales and other small whales are often enclosed by hundreds, the natives thus having an opportunity of making in a few hours a catch which would be sufficient for their support during the whole winter, indeed for years, if the idea of _saving_ ever entered into the imagination of the savage. But here in a region where the pursuit of the whale is more productive than in any other sea, no such occurrence has happened. During the whole of our stay on the coast of the Chukch country we did not see a single whale. On the other hand, ma.s.ses of whales' bones were found thrown up on the beach.

At first I did not bestow much attention upon them, thinking they were the bones of whales that had been killed during the recent whale-fis.h.i.+ng period. I soon found however that this could not have been the case. For the bones had evidently been washed out of the sandy dune running along the beach, which had been deposited at a time when the present coast lay ten to twenty metres below the surface of the sea, thus hundreds or thousands of years ago, undoubtedly before the time when the north coast of Asia was first inhabited by man. The dune sand is, as recently exposed profiles show, quite free from other kitchen-midden remains than those which occur upon its surface. The whales' bones in question were thus _subfossil_. Their number was so great, that in the systematic examination of the beach in the immediate neighbourhood of the vessel, which I undertook during spring with the a.s.sistance of Dr. Kjellman and half a dozen of the sailors, thirty neck-bones and innumerable other bones of the whale were found in a stretch of from four to five kilometres. Of course ma.s.ses of bones are still concealed in the sand; and a large number of lower jaw-bones, ribs, shoulder-blades, and vertebrae had been used for runner-shoes, tent-frames, spades, picks and other implements. A portion, after being exposed for several years to the action of the air, had undergone decay. The bones are therefore found in greatest number at those places where the sand of the dune has been recently carried away by the spring floods or by the furious winds which prevail here, and which easily gain the ascendency over the dry sand, bound together only by widely scattered Elymus-stalks. The largest crania belonged to a species nearly allied to the _Balaena mysticetus_.

Crania of a species of Rachianectes are also found along with some bones of smaller varieties of the whale. No complete skeleton however has been found, but we brought home with us so large a quant.i.ty of the loose bones that the collection of whales' bones alone would have formed a full cargo for a small vessel. These bones will be delineated and described by Professor. A.W. MALM in _The Scientific Work of the Vega Expedition_. Special attention was drawn to a skeleton, belonging to the _Balaena mysticetus_, by its being still partially covered with skin, and by deep red, almost fresh, flesh adhering to those parts of it which were frozen fast in the ground. This skeleton lay at a place where the dune sand had recently been washed away and the coa.r.s.e underlying sand uncovered, the whale-_mummy_ also I suppose coming to light at the same time. That the whale in question had not stranded in the memory of man the Chukches a.s.sured me unanimously. In such a case we have here a proof that even portions of the flesh of gigantic sea-animals have been protected against putrefaction in the frozen soil of Siberia--a parallel to the mammoth-_mummies_, though from a considerably more recent period.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SECTION OF THE BEACH STRATA AT PITLEKAJ.

1. Hard frozen coa.r.s.e sand.

2. The sea.

3. Beach of fine dry sand with ma.s.ses of bones of the whale.

4. Coast-lagoon. ]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRISTMAS EVE ON THE "VEGA." ]

Christmas Eve was celebrated in the usual northern fas.h.i.+on. We had indeed neglected, as in the Expedition of 1872-73, to take with us any Christmas tree. But instead of it Dr. Kjellman prevailed on our Chukch friends to bring with dog-sledges willow-bushes from the valleys lying beyond the mountains to the south. By means of these a bare driftwood stem was converted into a luxuriant, branchy tree which, to replace the verdure, was clothed with variegated strips of paper, and planted in the 'tweendecks, which after our enclosure in the ice had been arranged as a working room, and was now set in order for the Christmas festivities, and richly and tastefully ornamented with flags. A large number of small wax-lights, which we had brought with us for the special purpose, were fixed in the Christmas tree, together with about two hundred Christmas boxes purchased or presented to us before our departure. At six o'clock in the afternoon all the officers and crew a.s.sembled in the 'tweendecks, and the drawing of lots began, now and then interrupted by a thundering polka round the peculiar Christmas tree. At supper neither Christmas ale nor ham was wanting. And later in the evening there made their appearance in the 'tweendecks five punchbowls, which were emptied with songs and toasts for King and Fatherland, for the objects of the Expedition, for its officers and men, for the families at home, for relatives and friends, and finally for those who decked and arranged the Christmas tree, who were the sailors C.

Lundgren and O. Hansson, and the firemen O. Ingelsson and C.

Carlstrom.

The other festivals were also celebrated in the best way, and at midnight before New Year's Day the new year was shot in with sharp explosive-sh.e.l.l firing from the rifled cannon of the _Vega_, and a number of rockets thrown up from the deck.

[Footnote 249: Equal to 6.64 English miles. ]

[Footnote 250: When it had become evident that we could make no further advance before next year, Lieut Brusewitz occasionally measured the thickness of the newly formed ice, with the following results:--

THICKNESS OF THE ICE.

1 December, 56 centimetres. 1 May. 154 centimetres 1 January, 92 ,, 15 ,, 162 ,, 1 February, 108 ,, 1 June, 154 ,, 15 ,, 120 ,, 15 ,, 151 ,, 1 March, 123 ,, 1 July, 104 ,, 1 April, 128 ,, 15 67 ,, (full of holes).

15 ,, 139 ,, 18 ,, The ice broke up. ]

[Footnote 251: Low brush is probably to be met with in the interior of the Chukch peninsula at places which are protected from the cold north winds. ]

[Footnote 252: According to H. Wild's newly-published large work, "_Die Temperatur Verhaltnisse des Russischen Reiches_, 2e Halfte, St. Petersburg, 1881," the Old World's cold-pole lies in the neighbourhood of the town Werchojansk (67 34' N.L. 133 51' E.L. from Greenwich). The mean temperature of the different months and of the whole year is given in the note at page 411. If the data on which these figures rest are correct, the winter at Werchojansk is immensely colder than at the _Vega's_ winter station. ]

[Footnote 253: 1 lb.=100 ort=425.05 gram. 1 kanna=100 cubic inches=2.617 litres. ]

[Footnote 254: To carry animals for slaughter on vessels during Polar expeditions cannot be sufficiently recommended. Their flesh acts beneficially by forming a change from the preserved provisions, which in course of time become exceedingly disagreeable, and their care a not less important interruption to the monotony of the winter life. ]

[Footnote 255: I give here an extract from the Vocabulary, that the reader may form some idea of the language of the north-east point of Asia:--

_Tnaergin_, heaven.

_Tirkir_, the sun.

_Yedlin_, the moon.

_Angatlingan_, a star.

_Nutatschka_, land.

_angka_, sea.

_Ljedljenki_, winter.

_edljek_, summer.

_Edljongat_, day.

_Nekita_, night.

_ayguon_, yesterday.

_ietkin_, to-day.

_Ergatti_, to-morrow.

_Gnunian_, north.

_Emnungku_, south.

_Nikayan_, east.

_Kayradljgin_, west.

_Tintin_, ice.

_atljatlj_, snow.

_Yeetedli_, the aurora.

_Yengeen_, mist.

_Tedljgio_, storm.