ACROSS MELVILLE BAY
By the twentieth of July we were pretty nearly across Melville Bay.
That was just exactly a month from the time we started from home which
is most awfully good time. Of course we were very lucky for all the way
we had practically no real trouble with ice.
Melville Bay usually is about the most dangerous and hardest place in
the north. Lots of years it may take weeks to make the passage, and
sometimes there just isn’t any way to get by it. Later Dr. Rasmussen
told me that he has been drifting, frozen in the pack ice, for six
weeks solid while trying to get through to the north, and in mid-summer
at that.
After we left Duck Island I put in quite some time getting our things
ready for trading and for presents. Of course we weren’t going to do
any real trading, except for little personal things some of us wanted.
Most of the stuff was to give natives who helped us in the hunting and
collecting of specimens. One of my nice jobs was filling a lot of tin
cans with screw tops with candy and sugar. And we also sorted out some
gay sweaters and jerseys which Mr. Alex Taylor, who lives at Rye, had
given the expedition. (All our crew, by the way, now have Alex Taylor
sweaters and they certainly came in handy.)
We arrived at Cape York on the night of July 20th. Cape York is a big
cape which marks the northern end of Melville Bay and really is the
beginning of far North Greenland. The people living there and in the
few settlements further north are the Smith Sound tribe of Eskimos, who
live nearer the North Pole than any other people. About at this
latitude is further north than the most northerly points of the
mainland of any of the continents, North America, Europe, or Asia. So
we felt we really were beginning to get pretty far north.
The Cape itself is a high mountain which sort of spills right down into
the sea. The slopes, some of them, are quite red, and the snow is all
colored crimson too, from a sort of dust which seems to cover it. This
part is called the Crimson Cliffs, and they have been seen and
described by about every Arctic expedition. In behind the cape is a
great glacier which breaks off right into the water very conveniently.
Cap’n Bob put the Morrissey right up alongside the ice wall and men
jumped down on the glacier from the bowsprit and carried lines and
fastened the ship so she lay right alongside, as if the ice were a
wharf. Of course there was no wind and the water was quiet.
Then they took a hose and ran it up a way and put one end in one of the
many streams which were running down the top of the glacier, melted
snow water. There was enough slope to carry the water into our big tank
on deck. Also the sailors filled the barrels, using buckets. It was a
great way to get a full load of real ice water.
While we were working in the Eskimos came off in their kayaks. We
bought a fine kayak for a rifle and some ammunition. The very next day,
when we were ashore, we found that the owner of the traded kayak
already had a new one well started. I suppose in a few days more he was
all fixed up with a boat again. And with his really fine rifle he ought
to do most awfully well hunting. I certainly hope so. A kayak to an
Eskimo is about the most important thing in life. I imagine a rifle
would come next. Compared to an automobile with us, our auto is only a
luxury which we really could get along without.
About a mile from the little settlement of Cape York there is a “bird
mountain.” That’s what they call the places where they find the
dovkies, or little auks. These are small birds which live on mountain
sides where there are talus slopes—that is, big slides of loose rocks
all piled up. They make their nests down in the holes and cracks and
they are very hard to find.
An Eskimo went with us in the launch around to this bird mountain. We
climbed up the slope to a regular place they use where there was a sort
of rough blind made out of the loose stones. He carried a net with a
long handle. We sat down on the slope, partly hidden by the blind. Then
the birds would fly past, always in the same direction. They seemed to
be always on the move, getting up off the rocks and swinging around in
a great circle out over the sea and back again. There were thousands of
them.
As a bird would fly past us, almost near enough to touch sometimes, the
Eskimo would make a quick swoop with the net, and plop a dovkie would
be in it. Then he would quickly pull in the net, take the bird out,
kill it and be ready for another. This is chiefly the work for women
who are awfully good at it and catch hundreds and I guess thousands.
They are fine eating, and the skins are used for making bird feather
clothing, as lining to wear next the skin.
After our Eskimo friend Kaweah had showed us how to do it, I tried. It
looked awfully easy. But it wasn’t. I made a lot of misses.
Dad and Dan Streeter were looking on and taking pictures, and they
laughed as I swiped at the birds and missed them.
“Three strikes and out!” they’d call when I scored three misses.
But after a while I did catch a few, and some I just hit with the net
pole and knocked them down, sort of stunned, when we got them. Dad and
Dan also tried, but they didn’t break any records. A fellow with a
batting eye like Babe Ruth ought to do pretty well at this game.
Anyway, it was great fun, and was of course the first time I ever
caught birds with a net. Funnily, almost the next day I actually did
catch some others with a loop on a string.
Where the vessel lay that afternoon was right next a big lot of bay
ice, pans of ice with some water between them. In the distance here and
there we could see seal. They sit up in the sun, but almost always
right near a hole in the ice. And the minute they get frightened they
slide off and are gone. Even if you shoot them, unless death is very
quick, they are likely to flop off into the water, where they sink.
Dan and one of the Eskimos tried some stalking, crawling up on the seal
or pooeesee as the Eskimos call them. And he had pretty good luck,
hitting three, two of which they got. They also got pretty wet crawling
over the ice and through pools of water melted by the sun. Anyway, it
was our first game. The seal meat was fine, too.
The next morning we had moved northward to Parker Snow Bay. We were
anchored there when I woke up. It’s a beautiful place, a little bay
right on the coast, with a bit of flat land with a glacier coming right
down behind it and stretching up to the great ice cap. Two steep fine
mountains are on either side of the glacier, and one of them we named
Bartlett Peak. Along the shore one of these mountains has steep cliffs
which fall right down into the water. And there is a great bird
rookery, or loomery as the Newfoundland folks call it.
On the shore we saw a blue fox. And then after breakfast we went to
work at the rookery to get specimens. It was a beautiful calm sunny day
and we really had a grand time. Some of us were at it until afternoon
and sent back a dory to bring us some lunch.
We climbed up a cliff, getting at it on the easier side of a steep
little point. From there we could reach right down to some of the
nests. We could even touch some of the birds, both auks and kittywakes.
They were sitting on the nests, either with eggs or very young birds.
(Three weeks later when we came back there were many more young ones.)
It was here that I used a light line to catch several birds. I made a
slip noose in the end and let it a few feet over the edge of the cliff
so that it rested on a nest. Then when the bird came back, if she
settled down right, I pulled the noose suddenly. It worked quite well.
Bob Peary, who is very handy at getting around and climbing, put a rope
around himself and we let him down over the cliff to get eggs and
nests. Art Young and Carl were the “anchors” on the other end of the
rope. Once on his way down in one place Bob stepped on a loose rock and
knocked it out. When it fell it started a big bunch and they all went
tumbling down into the water with a great splash and crash.
The cliff was right straight up and down, with a sort of shelf sticking
out perhaps twenty feet from the water. After a while Bob went down
there, where he could stand and then Dad was let down with a small
movie camera to get some pictures. Later the launch went around below
them, and while the men at the very top held the line tight, the men in
the launch held it tight at the bottom and first Dad and then Robert
slid down it into the boat, after first letting down the bucket with
eggs and a box of nests and some little ones they had gathered up.