Part 27 (1/2)
On the 29th, Bell killed a fox and Altamont a musk-ox These supplies of fresh food were very acceptable, and even the Doctor surveyed, with considerable satisfaction, the haunches of ed to procure from time to time
”Don't let us stint ourselves,” he used to say on these occasions; ”food is no unimportant matter in expeditions like ours”
”Especially,” said Johnson, ”when a ht, Johnson; a man does not think soby the kitchen-fire”
On the 30th, they came to a district which seemed
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to have been upturned by some volcanic convulsion, so covered was it with cones and sharp lofty peaks
A strong breeze fro, which soon increased to a hurricane, sweeping over the rocks covered with snow and the huge s and huh on dry land
The teular thaw
On all sides nothing could be heard but the noise of cracking ice and falling avalanches
The travellers had to be very careful in avoiding hills, and even in speaking aloud, for the slightest agitation in the air ht have caused a catastrophe Indeed, the suddenness is the peculiar feature in Arctic
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avalanches, distinguishi+ng thement of a block of ice is instantaneous, and not even a cannon-ball or thunderbolt could be , the fall, and the crash happen almost simultaneously
Happily, however, no accident befel any of the party, and three days afterwards they caain
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But here a new pheno a subject of patient inquiry a chain of low hills which seemed to extend for ht red snow
It is easy to iine the surprise and half-terrified excla red curtain; but the Doctor hastened to reassure them, or rather to instruct them, as to the nature of this peculiar snow He told them that this same red substance had been found in Switzerland, in the heart of the Alps, and that the colour proceeded solely from the presence of certain corpuscles, about the nature of which for a long tiree They could not decide whether these corpuscles were of aniin, but at last it was settled that they belonged to the fanon of the species Uredo
Turning the snow over with his iron-tipped staff, the Doctor found that the colouring matter measured nine feet deep He pointed this out to his coht have some idea of the enor so e for being explained, for red is a colour seldom seen in nature over any considerable area
The reflection of the sun's rays upon it produced theup low, as if proceeding from some flame within When the snow melted it looked like blood, as the red particles do not decompose
It see a their feet
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The Doctor filled several bottles with this precious substance to exalimpse of the Crimson Cliffs in Baffin's Bay
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This Field of Blood, as he called it, took three hours to get over, and then the country resuestion torches were contrived--P199]