Note 5 — Chapter V · A Hard Struggle

“Sunday, April 21st. At 4 o’clock yesterday we got under way. During the night we stopped to have something to eat. These halts for dinner, when we take our food and crawl well down to the bottom of the bag, where it is warm and comfortable, are unusually cozy. After a good nap we set off again, but were soon stopped by the ugliest lane we have yet come across. I set off along it to find a passage, but only found myself going through bad rubble. The lane was everywhere equally broad and uncompromising, equally full of aggregated blocks and brash, testifying clearly to the manner in which, during a long period, the ice here has been in motion and been crushed and disintegrated by continual pressure. This was apparent, too, in numerous new ridges of rubble and hummocky ice, and the cracks running in all directions. I finally found a crossing, but when, after a long circuit, I had conveyed the caravan there, it had changed in the interval, and I did not think it advisable to make the attempt. But though I went ‘farther than far,’ as we say, I only found the same abominable lane, full of lumps of ice, grinning at one, and high pressure-ridges on each side. Things were becoming worse and worse. In several cases these lumps of ice were, I noticed, intermixed with earthy matter. In one place the whole floe, from which blocks had been pressed up into a ridge, was entirely dark-brown in color, but whether this was from mud or from organic matter I did not get near enough to determine. The ridges were fairly high in some places, and reached a height of 25 feet or so. I had a good opportunity here of observing how they assume forms like ice-mountains with high, straight sides, caused by the splitting of old ridges transversely in several directions. I have often on this journey seen massive high hummocks with similar square sides, and of great circumference, sometimes quite resembling snow-covered islands. They are of ‘palæocrystic ice,’ as good as any one can wish.5