OUR FIRST NARWHAL
After crossing Melville Bay again for the third time, and without
stopping at Cape York, we arrived in Thule. Coming up, on the other
side of Melville Bay, I got entirely cheated out of one stop. It was
very early morning and I was sound asleep and they didn’t wake me.
As the boats came out to meet the Morrissey the men waved their hats in
greeting. But when they came near and saw that Rasmussen was aboard
they started shouting and cheering. The man running the engine in the
little power boat was so excited that he forgot to stop the motor and
ran the boat full speed and head on into the side of the vessel so hard
that most of the people in his craft fell down.
We brought Rasmussen to this trading station of his where he had not
been for five years and Dad had agreed to take away for him to New York
the fox skins they had traded from the Eskimos during the winter. Also
Mr. Rasmussen’s manager, who is also his cousin, had been promised that
he could go back to Denmark this year. He had been at Thule
continuously for six years. The first time we were there an apple Dad
gave him was the first he had eaten in all that time.
We also took from Thule a native girl called Nette, who has been
studying to be a nurse and is going back to Denmark to complete her
education, living with Mrs. Rasmussen there. We will take them to
Holsteinsborg where they will get a steamer for Denmark.
Hans Nielsen is Rasmussen’s manager and he of course is very pleased at
the chance to get away. He brought his own kayak on the Morrissey so
that he can help us in hunting.
While in Thule, early in the morning, Dad, Dan, Bob Peary and I went
out in the motor boat with two Eskimos to look for seal. We went up the
fjord about five miles inland to the foot of a glacier and saw about
six, but couldn’t get near enough to shoot them. We took several long
shots, without success.
We had to go back then, for as soon as Nielsen and Nette were ready we
were leaving for Whale Sound. During that morning while they were
packing up we had quite a dance outside in front of Mr. Nielsen’s
house. Kel took movies of the party. We had a pail of candy and when it
was passed around the Eskimos would dig in with both hands. But really
they are most awfully polite and these nice people in the North never
take anything without being asked first. And I think they never steal.
It’s interesting to know what Mr. Rasmussen tells me, that in the
Eskimo language there are no swear words. They just don’t use bad
language. The worst thing to call a man is to say he is lazy or a bad
hunter.
From Thule we took a bunch of Eskimos, including one older man who had
been with Peary and was very sick. He said to Cap’n Bob: “I wish for
the good days of Pearyarkshua when we had plenty to eat and to wear.”
Of course the Captain knew him well and told me that he used to be
about the strongest Eskimo of the whole lot they had and one of the
very best hunters. His name is Ahngmalokto. Doctor Heinbecker gave him
some medicine, and the skipper gave him tea and bread and jam, but he
wasn’t able even to eat that. It was very sad.
Thule itself is at the head of North Star Bay, on a rocky beach that
sweeps around like a crescent. Out at the sea end, on one side, is a
huge hill with a flat table-like top with steep walls at the top then
sloping down evenly in great rock slides which are called talus slopes.
It’s a lot like a mesa or tableland in our own west. The name of this
queer mountain is Oomunui. There are four frame buildings, the trading
station, the furthest north in the world. And about a mile away, across
the rock peninsula, is the native settlement, a scattered lot of
tupiks, the summer skin houses of the Eskimos, with the stone winter
houses nearby along the shore. I suppose there are about forty people.
Since 1910 Rasmussen has run this trading station. It is to help these
northern Eskimos, called the Smith Sound tribe. They are the furthest
north people in the world. Before, they never had any regular chance to
get things, or to trade their skins, except to whalers once in a while,
or explorers. Before Peary commenced coming about thirty years ago they
had no guns or steel or anything else except what they made and found
themselves. They used to make arrow heads out of meteorite chips, and
made fire from flint they found. And about all their weapons and knives
were made from ivory. The walrus tusk is very fine for this sort of
thing.
Even today they have very little, compared with the poorest people of
the world we know. But they are healthy and happy and very good natured
and kind. And of course they are great hunters. They have to be, to
live.
At Thule Rasmussen, and the Danish committee which works with him in
running the thing, have a regular kingdom. Dad calls it a benevolent
dictatorship, which means that Rasmussen is just about a king, but runs
everything for the good of the people. They have money of their own,
round pieces with holes in the middle, of three different values. The
Station pays with these for the furs, and then the Eskimos use them in
getting supplies from the store. Goods are sold at very low figures and
the idea is, Mr. Rasmussen says, to make the Station just pay its own
way. As I have said in another chapter, we brought up a lot of stores
from New York. And now we are taking back the fox skins of the winter’s
catch.
Early that afternoon, August 15th, we left Thule.
The next morning when I came on deck we were just off Northumberland
Island and I saw the very place where we had been wrecked and so nearly
spent quite a time at.
I was on the crosstrees on the lookout for walrus and saw some seals
and two that might have been walrus. When I got cold Bob Peary took my
place. Soon afterward we stopped running on account of fog, and most
everyone turned in to sleep, for with the all-the-time sunlight we
never seem to find time to get enough sleep.
I was down in the main cabin when Mr. Nielsen came down and said to
Carl, who speaks Danish, that there was a dead white whale near. I got
Dad and told him about it. In a few minutes they had a boat over and
went out to get him. When they reached the floating animal they called
back that it was a female narwhal, and not a white whale after all.
They towed it in and we put two or three tackles on it and started to
get it aboard. It was about fifteen feet long and weighed I suppose
over a ton. It had been dead quite a time and smelt pretty bad, so we
decided to open it as it hung beside the boat and get the intestines
out and some of the blubber off. The inner meat proved to be sound and
all right.
We fixed a rowboat alongside and Harry Raven and Fred got in it and did
the cutting up, with their oilskins on, for it was pretty messy. With
the narwhal Harry found a little one. And he wasn’t so little either.
He measured five feet seven inches. This was carefully embalmed. That
is, Harry pumped into its veins a fluid which preserves the flesh. It
is to be taken back to the Museum just exactly as it is. I think a baby
narwhal is a very rare specimen, and we all hope this one gets back in
good condition.