Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/359

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to it. Cold, penetrating to the very sources of life, dangers from frost and dangers from heavy lifting, labors which have no end,—a heartless sticking in the mud, as it were, all the time; and then comes snow-blindness, cheerless nights, with imperfect rest in snow-huts, piercing storms and unsatisfying food. This the daily experience, and this the daily prospect ahead; to-day closing upon us in the same vast ice-*jungle as yesterday. My party have, I must own, good reason to be discouraged; for human beings were never before so beset with difficulties and so inextricably tangled in a wilderness. We got into a cul de sac to-day, and we had as much trouble to surmount the lofty barrier which bounded it as Jean Valjean to escape from the cul-de-sac Genrot to the convent yard. But our convent yard was a hard old floe, scarce better than the hummocked barrier.

I feel to-night that I am getting rapidly to the end of my rope. Each day strengthens the conviction, not only that we can never reach Grinnell Land, with provisions for a journey up the coast to the Polar Sea, but that it cannot be done at all. I have talked to the officers, and they are all of this opinion. They say the thing is hopeless. Dodge put it thus: "You might as well try to cross the city of New York over the house-tops!" They are brave and spirited men enough, lack not courage nor perseverance; but it does seem as if one must own that there are some difficulties which cannot be surmounted. But I have in this enterprise too much at stake to own readily to defeat, and we will try again to-morrow.

April 27th.

Worse and worse! We have to-day made but little progress, the sledge is badly broken, and I am