GENERAL VIEW OF THE CAMP OF THE LICK OP.SERVATORY-CROCKER ECLIPSE EXPEDITION. OQj PUBLICATIONS OF THE Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Vol. XVII. San Francisco, California, December io, 1905. No. 105, THE LICK OBSERVATORY-CROCKER ECLIPSE EXPEDITION TO LABRADOR. By Heber D. Curtis. In accordance with the plans of Director Campbell (cf. Lick Observatory Bulletin No. 59) to utilize three stations as widely separated as possible for the study of problems of coronal motion and of possible intramercurial planets at the total solar eclipse of August 30, 1905, it was decided to place one of the three eclipse expeditions sent out by the Lick Observa- tory, University of California, through Mr. Wm. H. Crocker’s generosity, at some point on the coast of Labrador. The actual difference in time between the instants of totality on the coast of Labrador and at the Egyptian station was about two and a half hours, and the value of large-scale photographs of the corona separated by this interval of time from the eastern stations was felt to more than counterbalance the risk of unfa- vorable weather conditions which would undoubtedly be quite large in such a climate as that of Labrador. The Labrador party consisted of the writer and Dr. Joel Stebbins, formerly Fellow at the Lick Observatory and now Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of Illinois. Mrs. Curtis and Mrs. Stebbins accompanied the expedition^ which sailed from New York for St. Johns, Newfoundland, on July 8th, via the Red Cross Line steamer “Rosalind.” The only method of reaching the Labrador is by the little mail steamer “ Virginia Lake,” of the Reid-Newfoundland Company, which sails every two weeks or so from St. Johns. It was found on reaching Halifax that the somewhat elastic schedule of this steamer had been changed so as to leave St. Johns on the 13th of July, instead of on the 20th, as we had expected. 154:00 74 Publications of the This was the date of the arrival of the “Rosalind/’ so that it was necessary to make a very hurried transfer of freight at St. Johns and to forego, to the great regret of the party, the pleasure of a visit with Sir William MacGregor, Governor of Newfoundland, who had invited the four members of the expedition to be his guests at Government House during their stay in St. Johns. We are indebted to the Newfoundland Gov- ernment for the free entry of all our goods and instruments, and to Governor MacGregor for so expediting the customs formalities that we were not delayed in the slightest in our transfer to the Labrador steamer. To Mr. H. A. Morine, General Passenger Agent of the Reid-Newfoundland Company, we are greatly indebted for his consent to hold the “ Virginia Lake ” for the transfer of our freight. Had we missed this connection at St. Johns, we should not have reached our station till August 5th instead of on July 18th. The trip from St. Johns to Cartwright, Sandwich Bay, Labrador, occupied near- ly five days, and was full of novel experiences, though quite cold and with much rain and fog. Literally hundreds of ice- bergs were passed, one of them, an enormous mass, toward which we were steering through the thick fog of a dark night, being much too close for comfort. Considerable floating pan- ice was passed as well, and before the little steamer could reach her most northern ports of call, at the Moravian mission stations of Hopedale and Nain, she had to force her way through five miles of pack-ice. This was the first trip of the season in which she had been able to reach these northern points at all. Snow still lay in many of the gullies down to the water’s edge, for the Atlantic Labrador is much colder than the corresponding latitudes on the western coast of the continent, owing to the cold Arctic current which brings the bergs and pack-ice down from the north. The amount of ice brought down by the current this summer was declared by those of long experience on the coast to be unprecedented, and must be taken into account as one of the causes of the unusual amount of bad weather which the summer afforded. Every effort had been made before starting to select thr best location as regards weather conditions, and Cartwright , on Sandwich Bay, had been tentatively selected, subject to change, should evidence favor another location. Letters from > • Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 175 men of long experience on the coast spoke of the dangers from fog, and agreed that the harbor of Cartwright, somewhat sheltered and removed as it is from the open sea, was far more apt to be free from fog than more eastern and exposed spots. There are no meteorological data for this bleak coast save the rather general records of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Navigators of experience state that it is not infrequently clear in Sandwich Bay when thick outside. On the trip to the Labrador, also, no opportunity was lost to interview numbers of old fishermen of from twenty to fifty years’ experience on the coast, and their evidence was all to the same end; that the eastern and more exposed spots were much more subject to storm and fog than places to the north and west, particularly when somewhat removed from the open ocean. Spotted and Square islands, among the most easterly of the coast points, are stated to be extremely subject to fog. The interior, on the other hand, is subject to very rainy and stormy weather in summer. The Hudson’s Bay Company post at Northwest River, at the head of Hamilton Inlet, over one hundred miles from the sea, is almost centrally located on the path of the eclipse, but the records kept there show that the last week in August has been wet and stormy every year for the past ten years. The geography used in the Newfoundland schools states that “Cartwright is noted for its mild and pleasant climate as compared with the surrounding region.” Accord- ingly no evidence was found to change the tentative selection of Cartwright, which had been made before starting. Cartwright is pleasantly located on a landlocked arm of Sandwich Bay; its surroundings are not devoid of natural beauty, and consist of low mountains covered with stunted pines, a pleasant change from the uniformly cheerless, treeless, and rocky headlands of the coast. The scenery on the Labrador is often grand and impressive, but probably as bleak and deso- late as that of any coast on the globe. Cartwright is a post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and consists of but a few houses and huts, aside from the storehouses and other buildings of the company. It has a permanent population of about sixteen, a number which is swelled to fifty or sixty in summer, when the “ liveyeres ” come down from their winter quar- ters at the head of the bay to engage in salmon-fishing. 176 Publications of the We were fortunate enough to have had as fellow travelers on the “ Virginia Lake ” two men high in influence in the affairs of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Dr. A. Milne, Assist- ant Commissioner, of Winnipeg, and Mr. Peter MacKenzie, with a record of fifty years’ service in “ the silent places,” and now Chief Factor of the St. Lawrence and Labrador Dis- tricts. These gentlemen placed at our disposal the Company’s resources at Cartwright, and their general orders were most ably and willingly seconded by Mr. W. E. Swaffielp, the Hudson’s Bay Company Agent at this post. The winter quarters of the company’s servants were offered us by Mr. Swaffield. All tents, camp supplies, and pro- visions had been brought from New York. This little old house was a veritable treasure-trove, however, furnishing us with a kitchen, a combined pantry and dark-room, and a gen- eral storeroom. The great box stove formed the nucleus of our camp life during the cold, subarctic summer, though the heavily raftered ceiling was built so low, to economize heat against the winter temperatures of 6o° or 70° below zero, that the tallest member of the expedition had innumerable causes of temporary regret at his inches. The site for the camp was chosen directly behind and to the west of this house. Considerable difficulty was experienced at the start in pro- curing labor. The expedition reached Cartwright at the mid- dle of the salmon run. This is the main means of support for these fishermen, and most of them earn enough in the two or three weeks of the run to support them for the balance of the year, one hundred and twenty or one hundred and fifty dollars being quite fair annual wages, on the Labrador standard. It would have been impossible for the first week or two to have hired men for twenty-five dollars per day, as not infrequently more than this might be made on a favorable day of the run. Considerable of the work of establishing the camp and clearing off some of the timber was therefore done by the members of the expedition. Later two fishermen gave up their cod-fishing to work for the expedition, and a third was employed at intervals. A difficulty of quite another sort was found in the justly famous Labrador flies and mosquitoes. We had read much in advance about these pests, and the reception they gave us Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 177 was fully as vigorous as we had anticipated. The little black flies delight to crawl up the sleeves or under the clothing and bite out a small chunk. The “stout,” or “bull-dog,” is the size of a large horse-fly, and stops at nothing when hungry. The mosquitoes are most voracious and in numbers uncount- able. We spent some time in experimenting with various fly ointments, most disagreeable to use and at best but temporary in the relief afforded, and finally managed to work in comfort out of doors only by the use of leather gloves, wristlets, and rather elaborate head-nets of fine mesh, fastened to wide straw hats and tied tightly about the neck or shoulders. With these precautions we found it possible to work in comparative corii- tort in the midst of these buzzing swarms of insect pests. Work in the open was otherwise impossible. It was with considerable elation that we proved the possibility of taking sextant observations through the head-net. The work of installing the instruments was accomplished, with time to spare, in spite of the very heavy run of bad weather. The larger buildings of the Hudson’s Bay Company are arranged to catch the rain-water from the roofs, and so wet was the summer that Mr. Swaffield states that this was the first time in eight years that he had not had to import w'ater from a creek some distance from the post across the bay. All the water used at the camp after the first two weeks had to be imported in this fashion, by boat. It was early realized that the chances of a successful eclipse were very much poorer than had been anticipated, due to the unusual amount of bad weather, caused doubtless by the great quantity of ice coming down from the north. It had been hoped that the chances of success would be at least one in two, but the meteorological records which we kept show that the number of good eclipse days was in much smaller proportion. The following data give a brief summary of the weather conditions experienced. Number of days on which observations were taken, July i8th-September 6th 50 Number of days clear or nearly so at 8:06 a. m 13 Number of days on which a few results might have been secured 7 178 Publications of the Proportion of “good” eclipse days, about one in four. Maximum recorded temperature, 73 °. Minimum recorded temperature, 34 0 . (A little ice and much frost on several nights in August.) Governor MacGregor had planned a scientific expedition along the Labrador coast with the intention of making accurate determinations of the latitude and longitude of a number of reference-points in this poorly surveyed region. A battery of chronometers and a number of theodolites, chronographs, and other instruments were provided for this purpose, for which Governor MacGregor is particularly well fitted through the work he had already done in this line while in charge of the colonies of British New Guinea and of Lagos in the British West Africa Protectorate. The Governor and his assistants reached Cartwright on August 8th in the government yacht “ Fiona,” piloted by Dr. Grenfell, with the British cruiser “ Scylla,” under Commodore Sir Alfred Paget, as convoy. Governor MacGregor was favored with a clear night, and secured a complete and extended set of observations for lati- tude and longitude. The reductions of the latter coordinate have not yet reached the writer; that for the latitude is given below. We were glad also to have as visitors to the camp Secretary of State Elihu Root and party. It may not be gen- erally known that Mr. Root, as a young man, was member of an eclipse expedition in charge of the late Professor Peters, Director of the observatory at Hamilton College, of which institution Mr. Root is an alumnus. The coordinates of Cartwright, and the computed data for the eclipse, are as follows: — Longitude, 3 h 47 m 59 s W. (Admiralty chart). Latitude 53 0 42' 31" N. (Sir Wm. MacGregor). First contact, 7 h 3 m 12 s1 a. m., local mean time. Second “ 8 5 37 Third “887 Last “ 9 15 6 Sun’s apparent altitude at mid-eclipse, 25 0 44' 35". Duration of totality, 2 m 30 s . Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 1 79 With the four intramercurial cameras it was planned to take two plates with each camera, having an exposure time of about 65 s apiece, allowing twenty seconds for the change of plates at the middle of totality and the cessation of vibra- tion in the instrument caused thereby. This margin was more than enough, as the change was not infrequently made in the preliminary drills in ten seconds. For three of the cameras the plates used were sixteen by twenty inches ; and for the fourth, which pointed to the region of the sky nearest the horizon, the plates were fourteen by seventeen inches. The driving-clock was rated to solar time. The lenses were three inches in diameter, by eleven feet three inches focal length. The exposures for the large-scale photographs of the corona to be taken with the 41-foot lens were arranged as follows : — ^4 second 14 x 17 I “ 14x17 “Standardized” at Mt. Hamilton. 14 x 17 14 x 17 “ Standardized ” at Mt. Hamilton. l8 X 22 l8x22 “Standardized” at Mt. Hamilton. 4 8 64 16 8 “ 14x17 2 “ 14x17 The Sunday and Monday preceding the eclipse were the best days we had seen on the Labrador; the seeing was par- ticularly good. Tuesday, the 29th, however, opened with the worst gale of the season ; the wind was so high that anxiety was felt for the safety of the tower of the 41 -foot camera. The “ Scylla ” had returned to Cartwright on the 28th, and it was feared that the “ Fiona ” and Dr. Grenfell in his “ Strath - cona ” might not be able to reach the harbor, but they did. Rain fell nearly all the night of the 29th, but there was a lull in the storm on the morning of the 30th, the wind shifting from north to west, and affording a fleeting view of the crescent Sun about half an hour before totality. But at the time of the total eclipse the densest of clouds covered the Sun, so that not a vestige of the eclipse could be seen. The storm sprang up again in the afternoon and lasted for five days after the eclipse. Data from all possible sources indicate that this gale was of great extent, and that stormy conditions were the rule all over the coast and far inland from the 29th i8o Publications of the of August to the 5th of September. The slight break in this gale, however, which came on the morning of the 30th, was sufficient to afford a view of the eclipse at several Labrador points. Fishermen saw it through a rift in the clouds at Paradise, twenty miles southwest. It was clear, at the time of totality, at Indian Tickle, on the coast some twenty-five miles east of Cartwright. At Northwest River, one hundred miles inland, where the English and Canadian parties were located, it was raining at the time of the eclipse. So, aside from the magnetic results secured at the stations established by the Carnegie Institution, the scientific results from Labra- dor were nil. The personnel of the camp at the time of the eclipse was as follows : — Forty-one foot camera — Dr. Joel Stebbins, Assistant Professor of Astronomy, University of Illinois ; Mr. W. Taylor Reed, formerly Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Princeton University. Intramercurial cameras — Mr. E. F. Harvey, of St. Johns, at the exposing screen; Camera No. 9, Sir Alfred Paget, R. N., K. C. B. etc., Commodor9 H. M. S. “ Scylla ” ; Camera No. 10, Professor E. R. Marle, B. Sc. (Lond.), F.'C. S., Sci- ence Master, Methodist College, St. Johns; Camera No. 11, Dr. W. T. Grenfell, Labrador Deep Sea Mission ; Camera No. 12, Mr. W. E. Swaffield, Hudson’s Bay Company Agent at Cartwright. Time-counter — Sub-Lieutenant Viney, R. N., H. M. S. “ Scylla.” Times of contact and visual observations — Sir William MacGregor, M. D., C. B., K. C. M. G., etc., Governor of New- foundland; Mr. A. C. Cleminson; Captain G. H. Elgee, F. R. G. S. ; Mr. Henry Reeve, C. M. G. ; Lieutenant Reinold, R. N., H. M. S. “ Scylla.” Shadozv-bands — Mr. A. R. House. To all the above our heartiest thanks are due, and par- ticularly to Dr. Joel Stebbins, whose skilled assistance and fertility of resource were of great value to the expedition. This opportunity is taken to express our thanks also to Captain Parsons and officers of the “ Virginia Lake,” to the Hud- son’s Bay Company and Mr. Swaffield, its Agent at Cart- THE FORTY-ONE-FOOT TELESCOPE AND THE INTRAMERCURIAL CAMERA, AT CARTWRIGHT, LABRADOR. » Astronomical Society of the Pacific . 1 8 1 wright, and to the officials of the Red Cross Line and Reid- Newfoundland Companies. The four intramercurial lenses were loaned to the Lick Observatory by the Harvard College Observatory, and the five-inch lens of forty-one feet focal length by the Princeton Observatory. Through the courtesy of Governor MacGregor and Com- modore Paget, all the assistants were enabled to leave for St. Johns immediately after the eclipse on either the “ Scylla ” or the “ Fiona,” so that by n o’clock of the eclipse "morning Mrs. Curtis and the writer were the only outsiders left in Cartwright. The “ Virginia Lake ” was so delayed by fog and stormy weather that it was sixteen days after the eclipse, on September 15th, before we finally left Cartwright. The first snow of the winter was then lying on its hills. The limits of a scientific article forbid more than a mention of the novel and interesting features of life on the Labrador, the packs of wolfish Eskimo dogs, the simple “ liveyeres ” with their soft and pleasant speech in the quaint dialect of Devon, the sturdy fishermen from Newfoundland, and the great work which Dr. Grenfell is doing for his chosen people on this cruel coast. Of all these and of the workings of the great two-hundred-year-old Company, whose history is that of the whole Northland, we saw and learned much, and closed our two months’ sojourn with nothing but regret at leaving the pleasant associations formed while on the Labrador.