AT POND’S INLET
On August twenty-eighth after a long time in very thick fog we at last
saw land only a little way off. For a couple of days we had been
working down the coast of Devon Island and Bylot Island, wanting to get
to Pond’s Inlet where there is a station of the Northwest Mounted
Police and also a post of the Hudson Bay Company.
Cap’n Bob had not been able to see land or to take any observations but
we knew pretty well from dead reckoning that we had reached the south
shore of Pond’s Inlet. “Dead reckoning,” you know, means finding out
where you are by the record of the number of miles the log shows the
ship has travelled. The log itself is a little instrument like a small
propeller which is let out on a long rope at the stern; it turns around
fast or slow according to the speed at which the boat travels, and the
revolutions it makes are recorded showing the number of knots, or sea
miles, covered.
While we were drifting around in the fog, barely in sight of the high
land which now and then showed through the fog, Dad and Dr. Rasmussen
paddled about a bit in a small boat shooting murres and dovekies. In
quite a short time Dad shot fifty-one, which made several meals for the
crowd.
Then later we put the dory over with the Johnson engine in it. It made
a good little boat to go ahead and see how deep the water was. One of
the sailors was in her using the lead and calling back to the Morrissey
the depths of water he found.
After a few miles of groping along that way we stopped near shore where
a little stream came down right beside a glacier. We only had a few
gallons of water left on board in the big tank, and nearly all the
casks were empty. While the crew took the casks ashore and filled them,
Bob Peary, Ed Manley and I went out rowing in the fog looking for seal.
We’d seen quite a few during the day. Of course we didn’t get out of
sight of land, but kept going down along the shore, so we could find
our way back. You really could see only about a hundred yards.
We shot at a couple of seal but missed them. They are pretty hard to
hit in the water. They come up just for a minute or even a few seconds
and take a look at you if you are close and then dive. We were just
going after another which seemed to be keeping pretty well on the
surface when we heard the fog horn on the Morrissey. That was a signal
that we should come back.
A little later we went ashore and on a rocky hillside found a whaler’s
grave. He was a harpooner on a famous whaler, the Diana, of Dundee,
Scotland, and was buried there in 1903. Some other whalers’ graves not
far away were a hundred years old, for there were many of them up here
as early as that. During some seasons, I was told, as many as a couple
of thousand men would be in these waters and some vessels wintered in
little harbors along the coast. Now the whales are about all gone and
the whalers are out of business.
The fog cleared up later in the day and we made our way to Albert
Harbor which was one of the old whaler’s headquarters. There are high
cliffs on all sides so it is wonderfully well protected and the water
is very deep. In the old days they used to bring the vessels right up
to the rock slides at the foot of the cliffs and put ballast on.
Then we went on further up the Inlet, which really is a broad sound
mostly a dozen miles wide to the place where the Hudson Bay Company’s
post is. Right next to the Post is the detachment of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police. The Police have a barracks and a store house, and the
H. B. C. about the same, with a store too. Then down along the beach
are a dozen little shacks and some sod houses, the homes of the natives
who live there. But most of the Eskimos in that part of the country
live far away from the post, in villages out where the hunting is
better.
There were six white men, three of the Police and three H. B. C.
Maurice Timbury was the constable in charge for the Police and George
Dunn is the factor at the H. B. C. Everyone was most awfully nice to us
and they gave us a grand time. We had dinner with the Police and then a
dance at the H. B. C. house, which was very lively and lots of fun. The
music was a Victrola and the Eskimos came in and danced. Also Nette,
the Greenland girl whom we are taking around to Holsteinsborg, was
quite the belle of the ball. She dances well and Dr. Rasmussen is a
great dancer.
The Eskimos here in Baffin Land seem to be much different from those in
Greenland. The women tattoo their faces and wear different sorts of
clothes. Just there at the Post, where they get lots of white men’s
things, the native clothing isn’t seen much and I don’t believe that so
much “store” food is so very good for them. Anyway, the crowd I saw
seemed sort of puny and soft compared with the fine husky fellows we
had been seeing on the other side of Baffin Bay. The kayaks over here
seemed bigger and wider than those of the Greenland Eskimos.
The meat from the walrus we had killed up on Jones Sound we brought to
Pond’s Inlet and gave it to the natives there. They seemed very
pleased, for it is fine dog food and they do not get walrus in those
waters any more. In return for our gifts some women came on board and
finished fleshing off the walrus and seal skins which we had not done
yet. Then they were salted some more and put in barrels and headed up
to go back to the Museum. It was a terrible job to get the grease off
the decks and for a few days after they were as slippery as a skating
rink.
We went down to some old Eskimo winter houses, or stone igloos a mile
or so from the Station. They were very old and were used by a people so
many years ago that the present Eskimos don’t know anything about them
and believe that they were quite a different race. Dr. Rasmussen says
that from the things found in this old village, compared with others
that have been studied, the people lived there probably about a
thousand years ago and in some places even earlier and about the time
the Norsemen first came to Greenland in the year one thousand and
later.
These old Eskimo stone igloos are built in a circle, mostly about
fifteen feet or a little more across. There is a small outer room which
is the entrance hall, chiefly to keep the inner place warmer. It is so
low that they must have had to creep in on their hands and knees. After
creeping in there seems to be a kind of step up into the inner room.
The main room, I guess, was about five feet high, with a raised
platform all around it a couple of feet above the central floor which
is just a sort of small square in the middle.
In one corner of the raised part, usually near the door, the cooking
was done. The platform at the back was used for sleeping, and it is all
built up very neatly with flat stones, the walls made of stone and turf
and whale bone. The roof was flat rock and bone. In some places whale
ribs seem to have been used as rafters to support the walls and perhaps
the ceiling. They certainly must have been very warm and strong houses.
I forgot to say that they really are partly under ground, for the floor
level is usually a couple of feet lower than the level of the outer
ground.
We did some digging around these houses and at some of the old graves.
And the next day Dad and I and Dan went with Mr. Gall and his
assistant, Abraham Ford of Labrador, in their motor boat twelve miles
along the Inlet to some other old houses.
We found a few very nice things like spear heads and snow knives made
of bone and ivory, harpoon handles and a little cup or dish carved out
of bone. Later on Dad got from some of the white men the things they
had collected so that altogether we got together quite a fine lot of
very interesting things. And many of them really came from the “stone
age” of these people, when they made everything they had from stone,
like flint arrowheads, or from bone or ivory.
It is quite wonderful to know that with these very primitive weapons
which they made themselves they were able to kill the huge sperm
whales. Yet of course they did, for their houses are surrounded with
the bones. And in the old times these waters surely were just full of
whale, walrus, seal and narwhal.
Timbury and the two other constables, Murray and Dunn, went with us in
the afternoon hunting for Arctic hare. We saw one but couldn’t get near
enough because one of the dogs had followed and would chase it every
time we got in sight. Ed shot one duck and I shot two on a little lake
about two miles from the settlement. We didn’t know how to get them so
Ed took off his clothes and waded out in the icy water up to his
armpits and got them.
Here at Pond’s Inlet, by the way, is the most northerly radio station
in the world. Both the Police and H. B. C. have a short wave receiving
set, and the Police also have a low power sending set, which I guess
doesn’t work very well. In Mr. Gall’s house we were interested to see
our old friends the Eveready Batteries which he uses entirely. Dad
arranged with them to have a special program, for a few minutes anyway,
on the Eveready hour later in November, if it could be fixed up. That
is, he wanted to have part of a program of broadcasting in New York
arranged so that it would be directed right at Pond’s Inlet and they up
there could hear Dad in New York talking to them.
When we left the settlement it was so windy and rough that we stopped
at Albert Harbor again. Art and Ed and I went ashore on the steep rocky
island to look for hares. We climbed the first hill and saw a lot of
sign but no hares.
“There’s one!” All of a sudden Art called out. “Over there by the big
rock. Dave, you sneak over behind that pile of rocks and Ed and I will
stay here and attract his attention.”
I crept slowly toward the side of the hill and when I was out of sight
of the hare I ran for all I was worth and then slowed down and looked
carefully over the top. There he was, about sixty yards away, looking
at Art and Ed.
I aimed in a hurry and shot and he tumbled right over in his tracks.
The twenty-two bullet went right through his shoulders and into his
heart and out the other side. We saw that his back was a light greyish
color and that he was a lot bigger than the largest American rabbits.
In winter, I’m told, they get pure white.
We chased another all over the place and almost lost him. Just by luck
I had gone around the other way from the others and saw his ears
sticking up a long way off. I whistled to make him stand up, but when
he did I missed and he started running. I shot at him on the run and
with a lot of luck got him right through the hips and backbone. He was
larger than the first one, and pure white.
We tried some others but with no luck. It was about ten o’clock when we
got back to the boat, and almost dark. Beginning here at Pond’s Inlet
we have had our first real nights. The sun sets and for some hours it
gets dark.
Anyway, I asked Dad to send a radio message to Mother telling her that
I am fixing up a couple of nice Arctic hare skins for her, to make a
collar or something out of. And Fred is showing me how to make powder
puffs out of the tails.