A CHANGE OF BASE.--BUILDING A SNOW-HUT.--THE VIEW FROM THE BERG.--A STRANGE MEETING.
Breakfast over, all decided to remove at once to the higher ice of the vast floe occupied by the seals. There were a number of reasons why this place was chosen, but the principal ones were, that it would be likely to be sought by sealers, would supply them for a long time with food and fire, and would stand almost any pressure and a heavy sea, without "breaking up."
The boat was accordingly loaded with the weapons, tools, and bedding, and run over the intervening ice with very little difficulty, although it took a good half hour to ascend the ice-slopes, which were steep and slippery. Returning, the party took each a seal-skin, with the hair side down, and loading them with the remaining decoys, fragments of wood, the Esquimaux lamp and its chimney, and a part of the fir boughs, returned again to their new location.
Some convulsion of the ice, had strewed the shores of this field with piles of young field-ice about a foot thick, and with this material Regnar at once commenced operations. While Peter rapidly split off cakes about a foot wide and two or three long, La Salle and Waring slid them along the ice to Orloff, who, furnished with the other axe and a pail of water, rapidly built them into walls a foot thick and eight feet square. A dash of water soon froze the blocks together, and as the material was near at hand, in the course of the forenoon walls five feet in height, with a single narrow entrance, had been raised. At this height the blocks were ordered to be made two feet square, and of but half the thickness.
These were laid flatways, with their edges not quite plumb with the outside edge of the wall, and being frozen into place, left an uncovered space about five feet six inches square. Returning to the old berg, the party took down the shooting-box from the top of the cave, and filling it with the remaining boughs, and a part of the seal-skins, blubber, &c., regained the floe, and unloading the box, placed it as a roof on the new dwelling. A single layer of "ice-bricks," as Waring termed them, was placed around its edge, and being thoroughly wetted, formed a strong and weather-proof joining; and shoveling the _débris_ from the interior, the lamp was set up and lighted, the twigs spread thickly over the icy floor, and bringing in their few household goods, the party, tired and hungry, sat down to a lunch of hard bread and weak coffee.