Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/55

Rh have never felt it so cold; five men were frostbitten in the attempt to save stores; thermometer at 23. In less than two days everything about us was as firmly fixed as ever. But the whole topography of the ice was changed, and its new configuration attested the violence of the elements it had been exposed to. Nothing can be conceived more completely embodying inhospitable desolation. From masthead the eye traveled over a broad champagne of undulating ice, crowned at its ridges with broken masses, like breakers frozen as they rolled toward the beach. Beyond these you lost by degrees the distinction of surface. It was a great plain, blotched by dark, jagged shadows, and relieved only here and there by a hill of upheaved rubbish. Still further in the distance came an unvarying uniformity of shade, cutting with saw-toothed edge against desolate sky.

"At one time, on the 13th, the hummock ridge astern advanced with a steady march upon the vessel. Twice it rested, and advanced again a dense wall of ice, thirty feet broad at base and twelve feet high, tumbling huge fragments from its crest, yet increasing in mass at each new effort. We had ceased to hope, when a merciful interposition arrested it, so close against our counter that there was scarcely room for a man to pass between."

This expedition was in the Arctic regions for over a year.

Capt. Murdaugh was given a Victoria medal by the British government for his services in this expedition, which, however, he did not receive from the Navy Department, to whom it was sent for delivery, until after his disabilities were removed during the administration of President Cleveland. He also received a medal from the St. George's Society, of New York city, composed of British residents of that city, for the same service in search of Sir John Franklin.

From 1853 to 1856 he was on the steamer Water Witch; in 1857 and 1858 lighthouse inspector; 1859 flag lieutenant of the Brazilian squadron; in 1860 and 1861 on the United States frigate Sabine, and of his service on this ship I will quote from a paper written by him for this camp and read to it some time before his death. (Read pages I and 2, lower half of page 3 and part 4, lower part 6, 8, last of page 10):