WE REACH GREENLAND
Our first sight of Greenland was on Monday, July fifth. It was very
pretty with the great lofty mountain peaks sticking up out of the fog
with snow on their tops. All afternoon we followed along the shore
northward, and pretty well out. We had come a long way over from the
other shore at the Straits of Belle Isle, and what with fog and
currents and the ice we had dodged through, it was hard to be sure
exactly where we were.
The next morning Captain Bartlett was worried because there was a
strong breeze blowing and we did not know whether we had passed our
port or not. We wanted to get in to Holsteinsborg. On account of the
fog and mists he had not been able to take observations.
We kept a constant lookout with the glasses and about nine o’clock saw
something like a big white flag being waved near some small huts on
shore. Probably it was a dried seal skin or something like that. Anyway
the Greenlanders were signalling us, and we stopped because we were
very anxious to get someone on board and find out exactly where we
were.
We put over a small boat, and Dad, Peary the engineer, the Mate and
Carl went ashore and brought the first man back to the boat. Three
kayaks came out to meet them. Carl spoke Norwegian to them and asked
where Holsteinsborg was. He didn’t understand so we showed him a chart
and named the place. He understood that and made motions that he would
show us the way there.
It was great fun to see him go up and down in the little kayak without
tipping over. The kayak is the native Eskimo boat, a sort of little
canoe made of seal skin stretched over a light frame of small wood. It
is decked over all except for a hole, or sort of cockpit where the man
gets in sticking his feet out forward out under the deck, where it is
only about six inches deep. They have a kind of skin covering that fits
over the opening of the cockpit and ties up around their waist tightly
so as to keep the water out entirely. The paddle is all one piece of
wood, with a blade on each end. They use it holding it in the middle
and dipping first one side and then the other. In South Greenland the
paddle usually has bone on the end and is smooth in the handle. The
northern Eskimo usually has no bone on the paddle, and has a couple of
notches cut for each hand hold.
Harry Raven drew pictures of Arctic animals and the Eskimo gave us
names for them in his language.
We arrived in Holsteinsborg about four o’clock. It has a very good
little harbor just inside the mouth of a fjord. A fjord is an
indentation in the land, like a long narrow bay or sound, and usually
the hills rise steeply on both sides. Dad says this Greenland scenery
is very much like Norway.
The houses are all different colors making a very gay sight. There was
a little red church on top of the hill, and all around the bottom was
the village, houses made mostly of wood with sods around them to keep
the cold out. Some of the native sod houses had tunnels leading into
them like the igloos of the North.
The place where we landed was a little dock with a cannery on one side
and a big sort of rack for kayaks belonging to the Eskimos on the
other.
I had great fun trading at Holsteinsborg. Three of the sailors, Jim,
Joe and Ralph, and myself went on shore with some old shirts and one
pair of old pants. We went into about ten or fifteen of the huts. There
were only about twenty-five huts in the town. They were one-roomed
houses with a raised sort of platform for a bed in the back of the
room. The cooking and everything was done in the same room. The whole
family sleep in one bed. The houses were very stuffy and smelt of skins
and dogs. The dogs were all over the place, even lying in the tunnels
so that you could hardly get through.
At nine o’clock that night we left for a fjord called Ikortok, to drop
Professor Hobbs and his party. We went inland about forty miles. We
tied three dories together making a raft to move his stuff in from the
boat. One trip the raft was a little too heavily laden and almost went
down when one of the dories partly filled up with water.
While the last part of the unloading was going on, Dad, Carl and I went
off to try the fishing, without any luck. On shore we saw a bird’s nest
that looked as if it might be a good specimen. We tried to get at it,
climbing up a cliff, but couldn’t.
When we went out from the land in our little boat we were in very
shallow water. The propeller of our Johnson engine hit the bottom and
the little engine jumped loose and fell overboard. Luckily we were able
to get it again. We rowed all the way back to the Morrissey, as the
engine was full of salt water and couldn’t be made to run. The tide was
coming in the fjord with great force and it was a hard row, about four
miles. When we came to a beach we pulled the boat up and worked on the
engine. I took our gun to try and get some birds for eating or for
specimens. By the time I was up at the other end of the beach they had
given up hope of drying the engine and started to row, calling out that
I was to walk back along the shore as that would make the rowing
easier. I didn’t like the idea much but I either had to walk or stay
there. I had on native skin boots called kamiks which made it pretty
hard to walk on rocks. I was afraid of dogs, too, because we had found
a litter of dog pups on shore not far from where the Morrissey was
anchored. And a mother dog in the North is apt to be as fierce as a
wolf when she has pups. I saw one a few hundred yards away so I sat
down behind a rock and waited for him to move on.
When I reached the shore near the boat they sent in a dory to take me
off.
The next day we stopped at some little villages along the fjord. The
Eskimos came out in small boats and kayaks, to trade with us and to see
the white men and their strange schooner. They brought out a porpoise
because we asked for any fish they had, for specimens.
That afternoon we arrived at a big bird rookery. It was a wonderful
sight. The whole side of the cliff was covered with thousands of
kittywakes nests. That is a sort of small gull which sometimes gets
down to New York in the winter. The birds were making a terrible noise,
chattering continuously.
We went up beside the cliff in dories and shot a few birds for
specimens and others for eating. We took movies of the birds flying
around the cliff. At a distance the flying birds, great clouds of them,
looked like a blizzard.
Then we started for Holsteinsborg to drop two men we had picked up
there. We arrived at three o’clock in the morning and instead of having
the Morrissey go in, we sent them in in the launch, as we wanted to go
on to Disko as fast as we could.