Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/327

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were experiencing about the coldest temperature ever recorded. But this would have held good only in the profound calm with which we were favored. At such low temperature the least wind is painful and even dangerous, especially if the traveler is compelled to face it. It is also a singular circumstance that, while the sun's rays, penetrating the atmosphere, seem to impart to it so little warmth, they are powerful enough to blister the skin, so that in truth the opposite conditions of heat—positive and negative—are operating upon the unfortunate face at one and the same time.

The effect of these low temperatures upon the snow is very striking. It becomes hardened to such a degree that it almost equals sand in grittiness, and the friction to the sledge-runner is increased accordingly. The same circumstance was noted by Baron Wrangel, but it is not new to the Esquimaux. The sledge runs most glibly when the snow is slightly wet. To obviate in some measure the difficulty thus occasioned, the native covers the sole of his runner with moisture. Dissolving in his mouth a piece of snow, he pours it out into his hand and coats with it the polished ivory sole, and in an instant he has formed a thin film of ice to meet the hardened crystals. Kalutunah stopped frequently for this purpose; and, upon trying the experiment with my own sledge, I found it to work admirably, and to produce a very perceptible difference in the draft.

It would be needless for me to give from day to day the details of this journey. As I have said before, it was merely experimental, and it was continued until I had satisfied myself fully that the route northward by the Greenland coast was wholly impractica