CHRISTMAS ON THE ROOSEVELT
The four December field parties returned to the ship one after the
other. Captain Bartlett was the only one who had found any game, and he
got only five hares. During this trip the captain had an experience
which might have been decidedly uncomfortable for him, had it turned out
a bit less fortunately. He was up in the Lake Hazen region with his
Eskimos, and he had left them at the igloo while he looked around for
game. He had just found some deer tracks when the moon went behind a
bank of clouds and the night became suddenly black.
He waited an hour or two for the moon to come out that he might see
where he was, and meanwhile the two Eskimos, thinking he was lost, broke
camp and set out for the ship. As soon as there was light enough, he
started off to the south of the igloo, and after a time overtook his
companions. Had he gone even a little way to the north he would not have
met them, and would have had to walk back alone to the ship, without
supplies, a distance of seventy or eighty miles, with a storm brewing.
This party had bad weather nearly all the way home. The temperature was
comparatively mild, only ten or fifteen degrees below zero, and the sky
was overcast. The captain made the last march a long one,
notwithstanding the darkness. Of course he could not always keep the
trail. Sometimes he would be walking along over snow as level as a
floor, then suddenly the level would drop ten or fifteen feet, and,
walking right on in the dark, he would land on the back of his head with
such force that he saw stars which do not appear in any scientific
celestial map.
At one point in the journey they struck going so rough that it was
impossible to push ahead and drive the dogs without light. They had no
lantern, but Bartlett took a sugar tin, cut holes in the sides, and put
a candle in it. With this makeshift beacon he was able to keep somewhere
near the trail. But there was considerable wind, and he declared that he
used enough matches in relighting the candle on that march to keep an
Eskimo family cheerful throughout a whole winter.
The failure of these parties to obtain game was a serious matter. In
order to save food I had still further to reduce the number of dogs. We
overhauled them, and fourteen of the poorest--they would not have
survived the winter--were killed and used as food for the others.
I am often asked how the wild herbivorous animals, like the musk-ox and
the reindeer, survive the winter in that snow-covered land. By a strange
paradox, the wild winds that rage in that country help them in their
struggle for existence, for the wind sweeps the dried grasses and
scattered creeping willows bare of snow over great stretches of land,
and there the animals can graze.
December 22 marked the midnight of the "Great Night," the sun from that
day starting on the return journey north. In the afternoon all the
Eskimos were assembled on deck, and I went to them with my watch in my
hand, telling them that the sun was now coming back. Marvin rang the
ship's bell, Matt Henson fired three shots, and Borup set off some
flashlight powder. Then the men, women, and children formed in line and
marched into the after deck house by the port gangway, passing the
galley, where each one received, in addition to the day's rations, a
quart of coffee, with sugar and milk, ship's biscuit, and musk-ox meat;
the women were also given candy and the men tobacco.
After the celebration, Pingahshoo, a boy of twelve or thirteen, who
helped Percy in the galley, started confidently south over the hills to
meet the sun. After a few hours he returned to the ship, quite
crestfallen, and Percy had to explain to him that while the sun was
really on its way back, it would not get to us for nearly three months
more.
The next day after the winter solstice, our supply of water from the
Cape Sheridan River having failed, Eskimos were sent out to reconnoiter
the ponds of the neighborhood. The English expedition on the _Alert_ had
melted ice during their entire winter, and on the expedition of 1905-06
we had been obliged to melt ice for a month or two; but this year the
Eskimos sounded the ponds, and about fifteen feet of water was found in
one a mile inland from the _Roosevelt_. Over the hole in the ice they
built a snow igloo with a light wooden trap-door, so as to keep the
water in the hole from freezing too quickly. The water was brought to
the ships in barrels on sledges drawn by the Eskimo dogs.
As Christmas fell in the dark of the moon, all the members of the
expedition were on the ship, and we celebrated with a special dinner,
field sports, raffles, prizes, and so on. It was not very cold that day,
only minus 23°.
In the morning we greeted each other with the "Merry Christmas" of
civilization. At breakfast we all had letters from home and Christmas
presents, which had been kept to be opened on that morning. MacMillan
was master of ceremonies and arranged the program of sports. At two
o'clock there were races on the ice-foot. A seventy-five-yard course was
laid out, and the ship's lanterns, about fifty of them, were arranged in
two parallel rows, twenty feet apart. These lanterns are similar to a
railway brakeman's lantern, only larger. It was a strange sight--that
illuminated race-course within seven and a half degrees of the earth's
end.
The first race was for Eskimo children, the second for Eskimo men, the
third for Eskimo matrons with babies in their hoods, the fourth for
unencumbered women. There were four entries for the matrons' race, and
no one could have guessed from watching them that it was a running race.
They came along four abreast, dressed in furs, their eyes rolling,
puffing like four excited walruses, the babies in their hoods gazing
with wide and half-bewildered eyes at the glittering lanterns. There was
no question of cruelty to children, as the mothers were not moving fast
enough to spill their babies. Then there were races for the ship's men
and the members of the expedition, and a tug of war between the men aft
and forward.
Nature herself participated in our Christmas celebrations by providing
an aurora of considerable brilliancy. While the races on the ice-foot
were in progress, the northern sky was filled with streamers and lances
of pale white light. These phenomena of the northern sky are not,
contrary to the common belief, especially frequent in these most
northerly latitudes. It is always a pity to destroy a pleasant popular
illusion; but I have seen auroras of a greater beauty in Maine than I
have ever seen beyond the Arctic Circle.
Between the races and the dinner hour, which was at four o'clock, I gave
a concert on the æolian in my cabin, choosing the merriest music in the
rack. Then we separated to "dress for dinner." This ceremony consisted
in putting on clean flannel shirts and neckties. The doctor was even so
ambitious as to don a linen collar.
Percy, the steward, wore a chef's cap and a large white apron in honor
of the occasion, and he laid the table with a fine linen cloth and our
best silver. The wall of the mess room was decorated with the American
flag. We had musk-ox meat, an English plum pudding, sponge cake covered
with chocolate, and at each plate was a package containing nuts, cakes,
and candies, with a card attached: "A Merry Christmas, from Mrs. Peary."
After dinner came the dice-throwing contests, and the wrestling and
pulling contests in the forecastle. The celebration ended with a
graphophone concert, given by Percy.
But perhaps the most interesting part of our day was the distribution of
prizes to the winners in the various contests. In order to afford a
study in Eskimo psychology, there was in each case a choice between
prizes. Tookoomah, for instance, who won in the women's race, had a
choice among three prizes: a box of three cakes of scented soap; a
sewing outfit, containing a paper of needles, two or three thimbles, and
several spools of different-sized thread; and a round cake covered with
sugar and candy. The young woman did hot hesitate. She had one eye,
perhaps, on the sewing outfit, but both hands and the other eye were
directed toward the soap. She knew what it was meant for. The meaning of
cleanliness had dawned upon her--a sudden ambition to be attractive.
The last time that all the members of the expedition ate together was at
the four o'clock dinner on December 29, for that evening Marvin, the
captain, and their parties started for the Greenland coast; and when we
met together at the ship after my return from the Pole there was one who
was not with us--one who would never again be with us.
Ross Marvin was, next to Captain Bartlett, the most valuable man in the
party. Whenever the captain was not in the field, Marvin took command of
the work, and on him devolved the sometimes onerous, sometimes amusing
labor of breaking in the new members. During the latter part of the
former expedition in the _Roosevelt_, Marvin had grasped more fully than
any other man the underlying, fundamental principles of the work.
He and I together had planned the details of the new method of advance
and relay parties. This method, given a fixed surface over which to
travel, could be mathematically demonstrated, and it has proved to be
the most effective way to carry on an arctic sledge journey.
The party that started for the Greenland coast, across the ice of
Robeson Channel, on the evening of December 29, consisted of Marvin, the
captain, nine Eskimos, and fifty-four dogs. They were all to go south
along the coast to Cape Union, then cross the channel to Cape Brevoort,
Marvin, with his men and supporting parties, going north to Cape Bryant
for a month of tidal observations, the captain and his men going south
along the ice of Newman Bay and on to the Polaris Promontory to hunt.
The following day, Dr. Goodsell and Borup, each with his party of
Eskimos and dogs, started by way of Cape Belknap, the doctor to hunt in
Clements Markham Inlet, Borup to hunt in the region of the first glacier
north of Lake Hazen. No such extensive field work had ever before been
attempted by any arctic expedition, the radius of territory covered
being about ninety miles in all directions from our winter quarters.
While distributing material for the spring sewing among the Eskimo women
in the forward deck house and in the box houses and snow igloos on
shore, I learned that some of the Eskimo men felt somewhat shaky about
going north again on the ice of the polar sea. They had not forgotten
the narrow escape we had had in recrossing the "big lead" on the return
journey from the "farthest north" of 1906. Though I felt confident of my
ability to handle them when the time came, still, I realized that we
might have trouble with them yet. But I would not permit myself to worry
about the outcome.
The first of the January hunting parties, Dr. Goodsell's, came in on the
11th. They had had no luck, though they had seen fresh tracks of
musk-oxen. Borup came in the next morning with eighty-three hares, and
an interesting story. They were right up against the glacier when they
came across a whole colony of the little white arctic animals. He said
there must have been nearly a hundred of them. The arctic hares are not
wild; they will come so near to the hunter that he can almost grasp them
with his hand. They have not learned the fear of man, because in their
wilds man is practically unknown. Borup and the Eskimos surrounded the
hares, until finally they got so near to them that instead of using any
more ammunition they knocked the creatures over the heads with the butts
of their rifles.
One day, during this hunting trip, Borup and his Eskimos became confused
and were unable to find their igloo for twenty-four hours. The
saw-knives, essential in constructing a snow igloo, had been left
behind, and none of the men had even an ordinary knife which might have
been used as a substitute. There was a gale of wind, the moon was
obscured, the air was full of whirling snow, and it was very cold. They
spent most of the time walking to and fro to keep warm. At last, when
they were exhausted, they turned the sledges on their sides, the Eskimos
worked out with their feet snow blocks which reinforced the shelter, and
they were able to snatch a little sleep. When the weather cleared, they
found themselves half a mile from their igloo.
The day following Borup's return, the captain came in with his men and
Marvin's supporting party of four. We were just beginning to be worried
about them, as the ice of Robeson Channel in the dark of winter is not
the safest road for a sledge party. The captain reported that they had
been only six hours in crossing the channel; but, though he had
reconnoitered the whole plain of the Polaris Promontory, he had seen no
musk-oxen.
By the end of January we could see a faint redness in the south at noon,
and the twilight was increasing. The last moon of the winter was now
circling in the sky, and I wrote in my diary: "Thank Heaven, no more
moons!" No matter how many dark winters a man may have gone through in
the Arctic, the longing for the sun does not grow less intense.
In the February moon Bartlett went to Cape Hecla, Goodsell moved more
supplies from Hecla to Cape Colan, and Borup went to Markham Inlet on
another hunting trip. Before leaving, the doctor completed a record of
the approximate mean temperatures for the season, which showed that
every month except October had been colder than three years before. For
December the mean was eight degrees lower.
Marvin was still at Cape Bryant, but the last of the February parties
came in on the 9th, and from that time on we were all busy preparing for
the great and last journey. On Sunday night, February 14, I had a brief
talk with the Eskimo men, telling them what we proposed to do, what was
expected of them, and what each man who went to the farthest point with
me would get when he returned: boat, tent, Winchester repeater, shotgun,
ammunition, box of tobacco, pipes, cartridges, numerous knives,
hatchets, et cetera.
Their fears of the "big lead" took flight at the prospect of what to
them was untold riches; and when it came to the point of making up my
sledge parties, only one Eskimo, Panikpah, would admit any fears. They
had seen me return so many times that they were ready to take their
chances with me this one time more.
Bartlett left the ship on Monday, February 15, with instructions to go
straight through to Cape Columbia, then put in two or three days hunting
for musk-oxen in the neighborhood. The three divisions following
Bartlett had instructions to go to Cape Columbia with their loads; then
return to Cape Colan, where there was a cache, and take full loads from
there to Cape Columbia. Goodsell's division started on Tuesday, on
Wednesday it was stormy, and MacMillan and Henson got away on Thursday.
They were all to meet me at Cape Columbia on the last day of February.
Marvin and his party had come in from Cape Bryant about six o'clock on
Wednesday night. They were all well. Borup's division left the ship on
Friday, Marvin's division got away on Sunday, the 21st, and I was left
alone on the ship for one day.
That last day was one of perfect quiet and rest, free from interruption.
The morning I devoted to going over carefully the details of the work
already done, to see that no slenderest necessary thread had been
overlooked, and to considering again, point by point, the details of the
coming journey.
[Illustration: CRANE CITY, CAPE COLUMBIA, AT THE TIME OF DEPARTURE
March 1st, 1909]
When I had satisfied myself (as I had not been able to do during the
bustle and constant interruptions of the last two weeks) that everything
was in its place and every possible contingency provided for, I had a
few hours in which to look the situation squarely in the face, and to
think of those other times, when, as now, I was on the eve of departure
into the void and unknown North.
When at last I turned in for a few hours' sleep before the morning
start, it was with the consciousness that so far as my knowledge and
ability went, everything had been done, and that every member of the
party, as well as myself, would put into his efforts all there was in
him of will and sinew and vitality. This being settled, the outcome
rested with the elements--the vagaries of the arctic pack, and the
quality and amount of our own physical and mental stamina.
[Illustration: FACE OF THE LAND ICE, "GLACIAL FRINGE," OFF CAPE
COLUMBIA]
This was my final chance to realize the one dream of my life. The
morning start would be the drawing of the string to launch the last
arrow in my quiver.
[Illustration: PINNACLE NEAR THE SHORE]