United States or Sweden ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
These people were expert hunters who trekked weeks on end with just a pack of food on their backs, their travelling being done on snowshoes. After taking great pains, thirty-four fine dogs were collected, all used to hard sledge travelling, and these Meares shipped on board steamer which took him and his menagerie by river to Kharbarovsk. The journey to Vladivostock was by train.
A very windy night, dropping to gusts in morning, preceding beautifully calm, bright day. If September holds as good as August we shall not have cause of complaint. Meares and Demetri started for Hut Point just before noon. The dogs were in fine form. Demetri's team came over the hummocky tide crack at full gallop, depositing the driver on the snow. Luckily some of us were standing on the floe.
Leaving Meares in charge of the station with Demetri to help with the dogs, Lashly and Keohane to look after the ponies, and Nelson, Day and Forde to get some idea of the life and experience, the homeward party started on Friday morning. On this journey Scott, Wilson, Atkinson and Crean pulled one sledge, and Bowers, Oates, Cherry-Garrard and Hooper the other.
We got all news by telephone from Hut Point with reference to the state of the surface on the Great Ice Barrier, as Meares and Dimitri returned on October 15 from a flying journey to Corner Camp and back with depot stores. Meares's dogs on this trip covered the seventy statute miles, out and home, in thirty-six hours, including their resting time.
E. Evans, Gran and Forde, however, were to go and re-mark Corner Camp, and then Meares with his dogs was to carry as much fodder there as possible, while Bowers, Simpson, P.O. Evans and Scott were to 'stretch their legs' across the Western Mountains.
After these parties got away, Meares and Debenham started with a lantern to search to and fro over the surface of our promontory. Simpson and Oates went out in a direct line over the Northern floe to the 'Archibald' thermometer, whilst Ponting and Taylor re-examined the tide crack towards the Barne Glacier.
Spent the day preparing sledges, &c., for party to meet Bowers at Corner Camp. It was blowing and drifting and generally uncomfortable. Wilson and Meares killed three seals for the dogs. Friday, February 24. Roused out at 6. Started marching at 9. Self, Crean, and Cherry-Garrard one sledge and tent; Evans, Atkinson, Forde, second sledge and tent; Keohane leading his pony.
It is always rather dismal work walking over the great snow plain when sky and surface merge in one pall of dead whiteness, but it is cheering to be in such good company with everything going on steadily and well. The dogs came up as we camped. Meares says the best surface he has had yet. Monday, November 27. Camp 23. The surface very poor at start.
In one of the trial journeys the dogs pulled down a horse and nearly killed it before they could be beaten off. Some of them have a good deal of the wolf in their blood. A settlement of "fish-skin" Indians was visited in the dog search, and Meares told us of natives who dressed in cured skins of salmons.
"He sent to Denmark," says Pitscottie, "and brought home great horss and meares and put them in parks that their offspring might be gotten to sustein the warres when need was. Also he sent and furnished the country with all kinds of craftsmen such as Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Dutchmen, which ever was the first of their profession that could be had."
Word Of The Day