THE POLAR METEORITES
Eskimo Iron--A Mystery of 1818--Search and Failure--Peary and his
Huskies--The Secret revealed--An Eskimo Legend--At the Iron
Mountain--Removing the Trophies--A Massive Giant--Attack and
Defence--The Giant Objects--A Narrow Escape--Conquered.
When Captain Ross was in the Arctic regions in the year 1818, he
encountered, in Melville Bay, a tribe of Eskimos who lived near Cape
York, entirely cut off from communication with all other tribes, and who
had not, so far as he could learn, ever met white men before. He was,
therefore, astounded to find them in possession of iron implements.
These consisted of rudely made knives, the cutting edges of which were
fashioned out of very hard iron; harpoons and spears, tipped with iron
points. Questioning the natives as to how they had become possessed of
the iron, they explained that it had been obtained from what they termed
the "iron mountain" on the coast near the bay. Ross sought for the
mountain, and tried to induce the Eskimo to tell him exactly where it
was situated, but failed in each case. He secured some of the iron
knives and spear heads, and, on his return to Great Britain, the
articles were submitted to analysis, when the metal was found to contain
a percentage of nickel mixed with the iron.
Considerable curiosity was excited over the matter, and every succeeding
British exploration party proceeding to the Arctic kept a sharp lookout
for any trace of iron in the possession of Eskimo which could not have
been obtained from whalers or visiting ships, as well as making every
inquiry in order to ascertain where the mysterious iron mountain was
situated. In no instance were they successful, and the question where
the Cape York Eskimo had obtained their supply of iron became one of the
riddles of the North.
When Peary went to the neighbourhood of Cape York to establish the
station from whence he started on his brilliant march across the
ice-cap, he came closely in contact with the tribe of Eskimo living
there. The members of this tribe, isolated from the world and out of
communication with all their kindred tribes, were, he felt assured, the
descendants of those with whom Ross was associated earlier in the
century. In his successive visits to the place Peary became on very
friendly terms with the people, and gained their confidence in a way
that no other explorer had yet done. This is hardly to be wondered at,
when it is remembered that his presence among them, from time to time,
raised them from the stress of hardship and poverty, often starvation
itself, into a happy, well-to-do, and, for an Eskimo tribe, prosperous
community. When he first went among them, the man who owned a wooden
shaft for his harpoon was regarded as a rich man, while the woman who
had a steel sail-needle was an heiress for whose hand the bravest and
best strove in fierce rivalry. The possession of a gun was beyond the
wildest dreams of the most imaginative, just as the possession of a
steel knife was the highest glory to which ambition aspired. When Peary
left his encampment, at the end of his first visit, the timber of the
house and fittings left behind alone made the tribe wealthy, for they
believed the world must have been ransacked to bring so much wood
together; while the distribution of needles, knives, scissors, and such
like trifles, changed the whole status of the people and made them rich
beyond their fondest hopes.
On the next visit, Peary took some guns and ammunition for the leading
men of the tribe, and there was then nothing they were not prepared to
do for their benefactor. They worked, hunted, acted as guides,
porters--anything, in fact, the white men wanted them to do. It was at
this time Peary sought for information about the mysterious iron
mountain, and, as may be expected, got it.
First he was told the story of the origin of the iron, a story they had
had from their fathers, as those fathers, in their turn, had had it from
theirs. The iron lay across the bay where a high peak stood out against
the sky, pointing the way to the Saviksoahs. These--the "Iron
Ones"--rested on the mountain where they had fallen, ages and ages ago,
when they were thrown out of their village in the sky by Tornarsuk, the
enemy. There were three of them, a man, a woman, and a dog. The man was
deep in the ground, the woman partly so, and the dog lay on the surface.
As the woman fell, she sat up, and her head had first been seen. A
strange tribe came over the ice one year and, in greed, broke off the
head and sought to carry it away with them in their kayaks, so that they
should have a store of the iron always with them. But Tornarsuk would
not allow this to be, and as soon as the kayaks, lashed together to make
them strong enough to carry the head, were out in deep water, the head
plunged through them, sinking out of sight and smashing the kayaks so
that the men who were in them barely escaped with their lives. After
that no one tried to take away a larger supply of iron than they
actually wanted for knives and harpoon tips. Later, when whaler and
other ships came to the seas in the summer time, there was no need to go
to the Saviksoahs for iron, though all the tribes knew where they were.
In the spring of 1894 Peary induced one of the tribe to lead him to the
place where the Saviksoahs were. The journey led them to a hill, on the
summit of which there was an overhanging mass of rock which justified
the Eskimo description of it. Describing the discovery, Peary wrote:
"After passing some five hundred yards up a narrow valley, Tallakotteah
began looking about until a bit of blue trap-rock, projecting above the
snow, caught his eyes. Kicking aside the snow, he exposed more pieces,
saying this was a pile of the stones used in pounding fragments from the
iron mountain. He then indicated a spot four or five feet distant, as
the location of the long-sought object. Returning to the sledge for the
saw-knife, he began excavating the snow, and at last, after digging a
pit, some three feet deep and five feet in diameter, just at 5.30 Sunday
morning, May 27, 1894, the brown mass, rudely awakened from its winter
sleep, found, for the first time in its cycles of existence, the eyes of
a white man gazing upon it."
[Illustration: ESKIMO ARMS AND TOOLS.
(a) Bow with Strings and Arrows. (b) Knives with Walrus Handles. (c)
Lance for Walrus and Bear. (d) Harpoon for Sealing. (e) Stone Axe with
Bone Handle. (f) Snow Knife with Walrus Teeth.]
This was "the woman," a mass of meteoric iron weighing, as was
subsequently proved, three tons. Originally it was said to have been
twice that size, the removal of the "head" having considerably reduced
it, while in addition there had been generations of Eskimo chipping it
for knives and spear tips. The amount of iron which had been broken from
it in this way was shown by the pile of stones lying around it. The
Eskimo maintained that these stones had all been brought there by the
men who came for iron; but if that were true, the Saviksoah must have
been chipped for ages, judging by the accumulation of stones.
About thirty yards away from the "woman" there lay the "dog," a smaller
mass weighing only half a ton. The "man" was some miles away, as became
his dignity and size, for he was found to be a mighty mass, one hundred
tons in weight, rugged in form, and so intractable when attempts were
made to move him, that his removal forms a tale so full of romance as
almost to suggest fiction.
As it was late in the season when Peary's ship, the _Kite_, arrived,
there was only time to remove the "woman" and the "dog," the "man" being
located but untouched pending the return of another season. The removal
of the "dog" did not offer any great difficulty, and the "woman" was
levered out of the ground and conveyed to the ship on rollers without
giving more than the ordinary amount of trouble experienced in handling
heavy masses of inert material. Not so the "man."
With the two smaller meteorites safely conveyed to New York, a return of
the _Kite_ to Melville Island to effect the removal of the "man" was
arranged. Accompanied by a party of scientists and an engineer, Peary
sailed north the following year and immediately attacked the problem of
excavating and placing on the _Kite_ the largest of the three masses.
The exact size was not at the time known, but as soon as the work of
excavation commenced it was obvious that the task in hand was much
greater than was anticipated. The portion first revealed was found to be
four feet in length, two feet high, and one and a half feet broad. This,
however, was merely a fin-like excrescence on the main mass, which, as
the excavation proceeded, was shown to measure twelve feet long by eight
feet in width, on the upper face, while a trench three feet round it did
not reach to the base. It was then realised that the task of
transferring such a huge mass from the place where it lay in the ground
to the ship was one requiring great engineering skill and the use of
appliances of much greater strength than the _Kite_ had brought with
her. The mass was about three hundred yards from high-water mark and
eighty feet above it. A shelf of rock ran out into the sea immediately
below the spot where the meteorite reposed, and the water was
sufficiently deep alongside the shelf to make it a natural pier or wharf
where the ship could make fast for the mass to be loaded on board, when
it had been moved from its resting-place and conveyed to the edge of the
sea. While the rocky pier was all that could be desired from the point
of view of loading, it was entirely unprotected from the ice which, in
the early approach of winter, rapidly accumulated in the bay. It was
clear, therefore, that the removal and shipment of the mass must be
carried out with rapidity if all risk of disaster were to be avoided.
By the time the mass had been excavated and its full dimensions were
revealed, the season was too far advanced for any serious attempt being
made to get it on board the ship. It was estimated to weigh not less
than one hundred tons, while the rugged and angular form it presented
made it an extremely difficult object to handle. All the time available
was devoted to making the preliminary arrangements for the definite work
of removal in the following season, and, as soon as the ice began to
gather in the bay, the _Kite_ sailed back to the south. The meteorite
being so much larger than was anticipated, a larger vessel than the
_Kite_ was required to convey it to New York; it was also necessary to
have still heavier appliances wherewith to handle it.
The following year, on board the _Hope_, Peary returned to the attack
and set to work to carry off his treasure. With the aid of the male
members of the Eskimo tribe, in addition to the men he had with him and
the crew of the steamer, the plan of operations was commenced. As Peary
wrote, in describing the experience: "The first thing to be done was to
tear the heavenly visitor from its frozen bed of centuries, and, as it
rose inch by inch under the resistless lift of the hydraulic jacks,
gradually displaying its ponderous sides, it grew upon us as Niagara
grows upon the observer, and there was not one of us unimpressed by the
enormousness of this lump of metal. The expressions of the Eskimo about
the Saviksoah (Great Iron) were low but earnest, and it, and the other
wonderful 'Great Irons' (the jacks) which could tear it from its bed,
awed them to the utmost."
When it was out of the nest where it had rested so long, the method
adopted was to tilt it up from one side, by means of the jacks and steel
cables, until it stood on end, and then to force it over until its own
weight made it fall forward. The spectacle, as it fell, brought home to
the onlookers the enormous power it represented. As it slowly moved, the
stones lying immediately under it were ground into powder, and, as it
lurched forward, the hard masses of rock were rent and split, while a
shower of sparks burst from the meteorite itself wherever it came in
contact with a more than usually hard piece of rock. The irregularities
in its form added to the difficulties, for it was almost impossible to
secure firm holds for the jacks, and anything approaching a slip on the
part of the mass was tantamount to death or destruction to any one
within reach of it. Day and night the struggle went on, the mass seeming
to resist every inch of the way, settling itself into awkward corners
and crevices; cutting its way, as it fell, through the baulks of timber
set to form a bed for it; bending and notching steel rails, when they
were substituted for the wood; and generally giving as much trouble as
it was possible to give, almost to the extent of suggesting conscious
design. Hard as every one worked to win, the meteorite proved too much
for them, and it was only conveyed as far as the rocky pier where the
ship lay ready to take it on board when the ice came drifting into the
bay, and for another winter the meteorite had to be left in its frozen
habitat.
"It was the last night of our stay at the island," Peary wrote, "a night
of such savage wildness as is possible only in the Arctic regions....
The wild gale was howling out of the depths of Melville Bay through the
_Hope's_ rigging and the snow was driving in horizontal lines. The white
slopes of the hill down which the meteorite had been brought showed a
ghastly grey through the darkness; the fire, round which the fur-clad
forms of the Eskimo were grouped, spread its bright red glare for a
short distance; a little to one side was a faint glow of light through
the skin wall of a solitary tupik. Working about the meteorite was my
own little party, and, in the foreground, the central figure, the
_raison d'etre_ of it all, the 'Saviksoah,' the 'Iron Mountain,'
towering above the human figures about it and standing out, black and
uncompromising. While everything else was buried in snow, the Saviksoah
was unaffected. The great flakes vanished as they touched it, and the
effect was very impressive. It was as if the giant were saying, 'I am
apart from all things; I am heaven-born, and still carry in my heart
some of the warmth of those long-gone days before I was hurled upon
this frozen desert.' To strengthen this fancy that the meteorite still
held some of its celestial fire and feeling, if a sledge, ill aimed in
the darkness at wedge or block, chanced to strike it, a spouting jet of
scintillating sparks lit the gloom, and a deep note, sonorous as a bell,
a Polar tocsin, or the half-pained, half-enraged bellow of a lost soul,
answered the blow."
Yet another year--1897--saw Peary again at work, this time with the
meteorite ready alongside the natural wharf. It was the month of August
that the _Hope_ made fast opposite the meteorite, but already the ice
had begun to drift into the bay, as though even that were going to
dispute the right of man to carry off the mighty trophy. Without loss of
a day, work was commenced and a bridge of huge timbers was constructed
along which to warp the mass from the shore on to the ship. The bridge
completed, forty-eight hours were consumed in getting the mass on to it.
The pressure of its enormous weight put so great a strain on the
woodwork that it visibly gave as the mass came on to it, and more than
once a collapse seemed imminent. Once a slip of less than an inch upset
the equilibrium of everything to such an extent that the stays and
supports were apparently within an ace of giving way. It was a curious
coincidence that this single slip occurred at a moment and a place
where, had anything given way, there was nothing to prevent the mass
rolling over the edge of the rock and sinking, presumably for ever,
into deep water. As it turned out, the slip was taken up in time to
avert disaster, and thereafter the mass was forced, slowly but surely,
on to the deck of the ship.
The Eskimo were greatly disturbed at the spectacle of the meteorite
passing from the shore to the ship. They all left the vessel, saying
that even if it was forced on to the deck, directly it arrived there it
would smash its way through the vessel and plunge into the sea, carrying
the ship and all on board with it. From the time work was recommenced on
the task of removing the mass, storms and gales had persisted and the
sun had not been seen. The Eskimo were, therefore, deeply impressed
when, just as the Saviksoah reached the planking arranged for it above
the main hold and the tackles were cast loose, the sun shone out, a ray
falling from behind a cloud directly on the meteorite and changing it
from the dull brown-hued mass into a gleaming bronze.
As though it had yielded itself to the inevitable, the meteorite gave no
further trouble. It was gradually lowered into the hold and wedged so
tightly into position that it was impossible for it to move, however
much the ship rolled or pitched. Fortunate it was this work was so well
done, for when the return journey was commenced the _Hope_ had to fight
her way through a series of the most severe gales and storms that any on
board had experienced. The meteorite had yielded, but the Spirit of the
Arctic evidently had serious objections to it being carried off. But the
years of persistent effort had won. The mysterious source of the ancient
Eskimo iron had been discovered, and, at the same time, the greatest
meteorite the world was known to contain was revealed. It was a fitting
result that the trophy should be carried from the darkness of the Arctic
into the light of civilisation.