Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/328

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what it was in 1853-54. Then the coast ice was mainly smooth, and the hummocks were not met until we had gone from ten to twenty miles from the shore. Now there was no such belt. The winter had set in while the ice was crowding upon the land, and the pressure had been tremendous. Vast masses were piled up along the track, and the whole sea was but one confused jumble of ice-fragments, forced up by the pressure to an enormous height, and frozen together in that position. The whole scene was the Rocky Mountains on a small scale; peak after peak, ridge after ridge, spur after spur, separated by deep valleys, into which we descended over a rough declivity, and then again ascended on the other side, to cross an elevated crest and repeat the operation. The traveling was very laborious. It was but an endless clambering over ice-masses of every form and size.
 * ble. The condition of the ice was very different from

Kalutunah was much puzzled to understand my object. He had never heard of a journey into that region except to catch bears, and then only in great emergencies; and when bear-track after bear-track was crossed without our giving chase, he became even more and more concerned. He had a double motive,—to have the sport and to see the effect of our rifles; but none of the tracks were fresh, and the chase would have been too long to agree with my purposes. At length, however, we came to a trail evidently not an hour old, and which we might have pursued to a successful issue, for the tracks were made by a mother and a small cub. Kalutunah halted his team, and was loud in his pleadings for leave to make a dash. He argued for the sport, for the skin which would make