A Diary and Journal from the Second Grinnell Expedition

[Header:] 9

This is a welcome [engrafting?] upon our seal meat.

Hans thinks that the open water seen last between Godsend Id. and Esquimaux Point has worked up nearer Bedevil= led Reach. The ice is quite unsafe off Sylvia Head, and seal lie by their Attuk between our brig and the shore.

Made arrangements for the disposition of our coal - reserving twenty kegs for our use should we make open water - and the remainder barely enough to last us for the present month. Separated for use. We have a store of wood but so much for Brooks and his coal. In oil we are again stocked. Our seal yield is an average of five gallons each. I sup= pose we have a barrel (32 gall) already tried out. Ten seal make a barrel as is the case at Uppernavik at this season. In the winter they use from ten to fourteen. The blubber occupies the same volume as is the oil subsequently boiled from it. A fact somewhat puzzling to those who remember the abundant cellular tissue which sustains the fat cells. It is explained by the increased expansion of the oil with change of climate & season.

[Margin:] Wednes June 14

By great exertion Hans was practised during the entire day with the sledge. In spite of the sneering prognostics of that poor devil Godfrey he learnt rapidly the main essential. The whip was already acquired by Hans in the childish games of [Fiskirnas?]. At 1. P.M. he started. Petersen and Hayes pilotted him to the land ice and thus I accomplished a substitute for my rennegade.

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dogs which became every moment more manifest extended to our own party. The instinct of a sledge dog makes him perfectly aware of unsafe ice and I know nothing more subduing to a man than the warnings of an unseen danger through a dumb beast.

We had to keep moving, for we could not camp in the gale now howling around as so that we could barely hold down the sledge, [when] but we moved with caution feeling one way with tent poles, which I had divided among our party. Slowly came to my ear a suspicion soon ripening to a certainty that a low murmur, which I had for some time heard was the sea. Hardly had I sung out "turn the dogs"! before a wreath of wet frost smoke swept over us and the sea with a great fringe of foam was seen about 1/4 of a mile ahead.

This told us well enough where we were but instead of a direct retreat I determined to run to the S.W. where I knew that the ice was firm and where Godsend Id would give as a shelter. The march was a frightful one, worse in my eyes than Von Wrangells "break up" off the River Kolyma. The seething boiling surf line so encroached on us that we could feel the undulation of the ice. Often we would run the gaunlet between lanes of closing ice the hummock walls closing on either side like the [sides] closing walls of the Vinition [Venetian] dungeon. Again we were painfully labouring over crushed ice areas : of miles in diam

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2. From Ten mile Ravine to Basalt Camp 6. m

3. From B. Camp to Helen River 10. (bottom of Bedevilled Reach)

4. Helen River to Devil's Jaws 9 (off Godsend Id inshore side)

5. Godsend Id to Anaotok. 4

Total travel 39

Anaotok to First Hummock Pass]3

Hummack Pass to Old ice South 7. Old ice & young to Second Pass 22 Across Second H. Pass to S. end of Littleton Id 8 S. End of Littleton to Point Salvation 2 Point Salvation to Esquimaux Huts 12 54

Total in miles 83 Temp = about -45° Range of same -40 to -60°

Resources. Five nearly starved dogs. Hans and Dr Kane. a light sledge and outfit.

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 is made of well tried oak, dove tailed into a runner shod with iron. No iron except [save] the screws and [riots?] which confine the sledge to its runners is used besides [throughout the structure]. In [such] this intense cold, iron snaps like glass and no immoveable or rigidly fastened woodwork would stand for a moment the fierce concussions of an arctic drive. Every thing is put together with lashings of seal skin, [tied securely in its place] and the whole fabric - seemingly a