KANE'S EXPEDITION (1854) 23 



thought I saw it too. but we were so drunken with cold 

 that we strode on steadily, and, for aught I know, without 

 quickening our pace. 



" Probably our approach saved the contents of the tent ; 

 for when we reached it the tent was uninjured, though the 

 bea,r had overturned it, tossing the buffalo-robes and pem- 

 mican into the snow : we missed only a couple of blanket- 

 bags. What we recollect, however, and perhaps all we 

 recollect, is, that we had great difficulty in raising it. 

 We crawled into our reindeer sleeping-bags, without 

 speaking, and for the next three hours slept on in a 

 dreamy but intense slumber. When I awoke, my long 

 beard was a mass of ice, frozen fast to the buffalo-skin : 

 Godfrey had to cut me out with his jack-knife. Four days 

 after our escape, I found my woollen comfortable with 

 a goodly share of my beard still adhering to it. 



" We were able to melt water and get some soup 

 cooked before the rest of our party arrived : it took them 

 but five hours to walk the 9 miles. They were doing 

 well, and, considering the circumstances, in wonderful 

 spirits. The day was most providentially windless, with 

 a clear sun. All enjoyed the refreshment we had got 

 ready : the crippled were repacked in their robes ; and 

 we sped briskly toward the hummock-ridges which lay 

 between us and the Pinnacly Berg. 



"The hummocks we had now to meet came properly 

 under the designation of squeezed ice. A great chain of 

 bergs stretching from north-west to south-east, moving 

 with the tides, had compressed the surface-floes ; and 

 rearing them up on their edges, produced an area more 

 like the volcanic pedragal of the basin of Mexico than 

 anything else I can compare it to. 



" It required desperate efforts to work our way over it, — 

 literally desperate, for our strength failed us anew, and we 

 began to lose our self-control. We could not abstain any 



