conditions, would be impossible. But in the dark the natives can espy
things invisible to white men. This owl-sight enables them to hunt, if
necessary, in almost pitch darkness, and to perform tedious feats of
hand skill which, in such dim light, an alien would bungle. I noticed,
with much curiosity, that when the natives inspected any photograph or
object which I gave them they always held it upside down. All objects,
as is well known, are reflected in the retina thus, and it is our
familiarity with the size and comparative relations of things which
enables the brain to visualize an object or scene at its proper angle.
This strange, instinctive act of the natives might form an interesting
chapter in optics.
Meanwhile, busy and interested in the beginning of our various pursuits,
the great crust which was to hold down the sea for so many months,
closed and thickened.
During the last days of brief sunshine the weather cleared, and at noon
on October 24 everybody sought the open for a last glimpse of the dying
day. There was a charm of color and glitter, but no one seemed quite
happy as the sun sank under the southern ice, for it was not to rise
again for one hundred and eighteen days.
Just prior to the falling of darkness, with that instinctive and forced
hilarity with which aboriginal beings seek to ward off an impending
calamity, the Eskimos engaged in their annual sporting event. It is a
curious sight, indeed, to behold a number of excited, laughing Eskimos
gathering about two champion dogs which are to fight. Although the zest
of betting is unknown, the natives regard dog fights with much the same
eager excitement as a certain type of sporting man does a cock
encounter. Sometimes the dogs do not fight fairly, a number of the
animals bunching together and attacking a single dog. Dogs selected for
the fight are, of course, the best of the teams. A dog which maintains
his fighting supremacy becomes a king dog, and when beaten becomes a
first lieutenant to the king.
After the forced enthusiasm of this brief period of excitement, the
Eskimos begin to succumb to the inevitable melancholia of nature, when
the sun, the source of natural life, disappears and darkness descends.
A gloom descends heavily upon their spirits. A subtle sadness tinctures
their life, and they are possessed by an impulse to weep. At this
season, hour by hour, the darkness thickens; the cold increases and
chills their igloos; the wind, exultant while the sun shines, now whines
and sobs dolorously--there is something gruesome, uncanny, supernatural,
in its siren sorrow. Outside, the snow falls, the sea closes. Its
clamant beat of waves is silenced. Sea animals mostly disappear; land
animals are rare. Their source of physical supply vanished, the Eskimos
unconsciously feel the grim hand of want, of starvation, which means
death, upon them. The psychology of this period of depression partly
lies, undoubtedly, in this instinctive dread of death from lack of food
and the natural depression of unrelieved gloom. Moreover, there is a
grief, born of the native superstition that, when the sea freezes, the
souls of all who have perished in the waters are imprisoned during the
long night. Too fierce is the struggle of these people with the
elemental forces to permit them, like many other aboriginal peoples to
be obsessed greatly with superstitions. Although their religion is a
very primitive and native one, it is usually only at the inception of
night that they feel the appalling nearness of a world that is
supernatural. As the last rim of the sun sank over the southern ice, the
natives entered upon a formal period of melancholy, during which the
bereavements of each family, and the discomforts and disasters of the
year, were memoralized.
I shall never forget that long, sad evening, which lasted many normal
days. The sun had descended. A sepulchral, gray-green curtain of gloom
hung over the chilled earth. In the dim semi-darkness could be vaguely
seen the outlines of the igloos, of the heaving curvatures of
snow-covered land, and the blacker, snake-like twistings of open lanes
of water, where the sea had not yet frozen. Sitting in my box-house, I
was startled suddenly by a sound that made my flesh for the instant
creep. I walked to the door and threw it open. Over the bluish,
snow-covered land, formed by the indentures and hollows, stretched
dark-purplish shapes--Titan shadows, sepulchral and ominous, some with
shrouded heads, others with spectral arms threateningly upraised.
Nebulous and gruesome shreds of blue-fog like wraiths shifted over the
sea. Out of the sombre, heavy air began to issue a sound as of many
women sobbing. From the indistinct distance came moaning, crooning
voices. Sometimes hysterical wails of anguish rent the air, and now and
then frantic choruses shrieked some heart-aching despair. My impression
was that I was in a land of the sorrowful dead, some mid-strata of the
spirit world, where, in this gray-green twilight, formless things in the
distance moved to and fro.
There is, I believe, in the heart of every man, an instinctive respect
for sorrow. With muffled steps, I left the igloo and paced the
dreariness of ice, treading slowly, lest, in the darkness, I slip into
some unseen crevasse of the open sea. A strange and eerie sight
confronted me. Along the seashore, bending over the lapping black water,
or standing here and there by inky, open leads in the severed ice, many
Eskimo women were gathered. Some stood in groups of two or three. Bowed
and disconsolate, her arms about them, with almost every hundred steps,
I saw a weeping mother and her children. Standing rigid and stark,
motionless graven images of despair, or frantically writhing to and fro,
others stood far apart in desolate places, alone.
The dull, opaque air was tinged with a strange phosphorescent green,
suggestive of a place of dead things; and now, like the flutterings of
huge death-lamps, along the horizon, where the sun had sunk, gashes of
crimson here and there fitfully glowed blood-red in the pall-like sky.
To the left, as I walked along, I recognized Tung-wingwah, with a child
on her back and a bag of moss in her hand. She stood behind a cheerless
rock, with her face toward the faint red flushes of the sun. She stood
motionless. Big tears rolled from her eyes, but not a sound was uttered.
To my low queries she made no response. I invited her to the camp to
have a cup of tea, thinking to change her sad thoughts and loosen her
tongue. But still her eyes did not leave that last distant line of open
water. From another, I later learned that in the previous April her
daughter of five, while playing on the ice-foot, slipped and was lost in
the sea. The mother now mourned because the ice would bury her little
one's soul.
A little farther along was Al-leek-ah, a woman of middle age, with two
young children by her side. She was hysterical in her grief, now
laughing with a weird giggle, now crying and groaning as if in great
pain, and again dancing with emotions of madness. I learned her story
from a chatter that ran through all her anguish. Towanah, her first
husband, had been drawn under the ice, by the harpoon line, twenty years
ago. And though she had been married three times since, she was trying
to keep alive the memory of her first love. I went on, marveling at a
primitive fidelity so long enduring.
Still farther along towards the steep slopes of the main coast, I saw
Ahwynet, all alone in the gloomy shadow of great cliffs. Her story was
told in chants and moans. Her husband and all her children had been
swept by an avalanche into the stormy seas. There was a kind of wild
poetry in the song of her bereavement. Tears came to my eyes. The rush
of the avalanche, the hiss of the wind, the pounding of the seas, were
all indicated. And then, in heart-breaking tones, came "blood of her
blood, flesh of her flesh, under the frozen waters," and other
sentiments which I could not catch in the undertone of sobs.
Cold shivers began to run up my spine, and I turned to retreat to camp.
Here was a scene that perhaps a Dante might adequately write about. I
cannot. I felt that I, an alien, was intruding into the realm of some
strange and mystic sorrow. I felt the sombre thrill of a borderland
world not human. These women were communicating with the souls of their
dead. To those who had perished in the sea they were telling, ere the
gates of ice closed above them, all the news of the past year--things of
interest and personal, and even of years before, as far back as they
could remember. Almost every family each year loses someone in the sea;
almost every family was represented by these weeping women, overburdened
with their own naive sorrow, and who yet strangely sought to cheer the
souls of the disconsolate and desolate dead.
Meanwhile, while the women were weeping and giving their parting
messages to the dead, the male members of the tribe, in chants and
dramatic dances, were celebrating, in the igloos, the important events
of the past year.
Inside, the igloos were dimly lighted with stone blubber lamps. These,
during the entire winter, furnish light and heat. The lamp consists of a
crescent-shaped stone with a concavity, in which there is animal oil and
a line of crushed moss as a wick. Lighted early in the season, for an
entire winter, these lamps cast a faint, perpetual, flickering light.
Shadows dance grotesquely about on the rounded walls. An oily stench
pervades the unventilated enclosure. In this weird, yellow-blackish
radiance the men engage in their fantastic dances. Moving the central
parts of their bodies to and fro, they utter weird sing-song chants.
They recite, in jerky, curious singing, the history of the big events of
the year; of successful chases; of notable storms; of everything that
means much in their simple lives. As they dance, their voices rise to a
high pitch of excitement. Their eyes flash like smoldering coals. Their
arms move frantically. Some begin to sob uncontrollably. A hysteria of
laughter seizes others. Finally the dance ends; exhausted, they pass
into a brief lethargy, from which they revive, their melancholia
departed. The women return from the shores of the sea; they wipe their
tears, and, with native spontaneity, forget their depression and smile
again.
While I was interested in the curious spectacles presented, the sunset
of 1907 to me was inspiration for the final work in directing the
completion of the outfit with which to begin the conquest of the Pole at
sunrise of 1908. Fortunately, I was not handicapped by the company of
the usual novices taken on Polar expeditions. There were only two of us
white men, and white men, at the best, must be regarded as amateurs
compared with the expert efficiency of Eskimos in their own environment.
Our food supply contained only the prime factors of primitive
nourishment. Special foods and laboratory concoctions and canned
delicacies did not fill an important space in our larder. Nor had we
balloons, automobiles, motor sleds or other freak devices. We did,
however, I have said, have what was of utmost importance, an abundance
of the best hickory and metal for the making of the sleds upon which our
destinies were vitally to depend.
FIRST WEEK OF THE LONG NIGHT
HUNTING IN THE ARCTIC TWILIGHT--PURSUING BEAR, CARIBOU AND SMALLER GAME
IN SEMI-GLOOM
VII
THE GLORY OF THE AURORA
The sun had dropped below the horizon. The gloom continued steadily to
thicken. Each twenty-four hours, at the approximate approach of what was
the noon hour when the sun had been above the horizon, the sky to the
south of us glowed with marvelous, subdued sunset hues. By this time our
work had gone ahead by progressive stages. Furs, to protect us from the
cold of the uttermost North on my prospective trip, had been prepared
and were being made into clothing; meat and fat, for food and fuel, were
being dried and stored in numerous caches about Annoatok; several of the
sledges and part of the equipment were ready.
We still had need of large quantities of supplies, and, while some of
the natives were busy with their routine work, we planned that as many
others as possible should use the twilight days pursuing bear, caribou,
fox, hare and other game far beyond the usual Eskimo haunts. Before the
dawn of the sun's afterglow, on the morning of October 26, seven sledges
with sixty dogs were on the ice-foot near our camp, ready to start for
hunting grounds near Humboldt Glacier, a distance of one hundred miles
northward.[7]
While the teamsters waited for the final password the dogs chafed
fiercely. I could barely see the outlines of my companions in the gloom,
and it was difficult, in the irregular snow and tide-lifted ice
descending to sea level, to find footing.
The word to start was given. My companions took up the cry.
"_Huk! Huk! Huk!_" (Go! Go!) they shouted.
The dogs responded in leaps and howls.
"_Howah! Howah!_" (Right! Right!) "_Egh! Egh!_" (Stop! Stop!)
"_Aureti!_" (Behave!) came echoingly along the line of teams. Finally
the wild dash slackened, the dogs regulated their paces to an easy trot,
and we swept steadily along the frozen highway of the tide-made shelf of
the ice-foot. The sledges dodged stones and ice-blocks, edged along
dangerous precipices, in the depths of which I heard the swish of water,
and glided miraculously over crevices and along deep gorges. Jumping
about the sledges, guiding, pushing, or retarding their speed, cracking
their whips in the air, the natives, with that art which only aborigines
seem to have, picked the way and controlled the dogs, but a few
generations removed from their wolf progenitors, with amazing dexterity.
A low wind blew down the slopes and froze our breath in lines of frost
about our heads. The temperature was 35 deg. below zero. To the left of us
was Kane Basin, recalling its history of human strife northward. It was
filled with serried ranges of crushed ice, a berg here and there, all in
the light of the kindling sky, aglow with purple and blue. To the far
west I saw the dim outline of Ellesmere, my promised land, over which I
hoped to force a new route to the Pole; upon its snowy highlands was
poured a soft creamy light from encouraging skies. To the right was the
rugged coast of Greenland, its huge, ice-chiselled cliffs leaping
portentously forward in the gloom. Thrilling with the race, we made a
run of twenty miles and reached Rensselaer Harbor, where Dr. Kane had
spent his long nights of misfortune.
We pitched camp at the ice-foot at the head of the bay. Although we
found traces of hare and fox, it was too dark to venture on the chase.
The temperature had fallen to -40 deg., the wind pierced with a sharp sting.
For my shelter I erected a new tent which I had invented, and the
efficiency of which I desired to test. Taking the sledge frame work as a
platform, a folding top of strong canvas was fastened, and spread
between two bars of hickory from each end. The entrance was in front.
Inside was a space eight feet long and three and one-half feet wide,
with a round whaleback top. Inside this a supplementary wall was
constructed of light blankets, offering an air space of an inch between
the outer wall as a non-conductor to confine the little heat generated
within. As there was ample room for only two persons, Koo-loo-ting-wah,
my leading man, was invited to share the tent. The natives had not
provided themselves with shelter of any kind. They had counted on either
building an igloo or seeking the shelter of the snows, as do the
creatures of the wilds.
Inside my tent I prepared a meal on the little German stove, burning the
vapor of alcohol. The meal consisted of a pail of hot corn meal, fried
bacon and a liberal all-round supply of steaming tea. To accomplish
this, which included melting the snow, heating the water, and cooking
everything separately, required about two hours. As I considered eating
outside with any degree of comfort impossible, my companions were
invited to crowd inside the tent. The vapor of their breath and that of
the cooking soon condensed into snow, and a miniature snowstorm covered
everything within. After this was swept out, the Eskimos were invited to
enter again. All partook of the meal ravenously, and then emerged to
reconnoiter the surroundings. Tracks of ptarmigan, hare and foxes were
found, and as we moved about with seeking, owl eyes, ravens shouted
notes of welcome.
We then retired to rest. As there was no snow about that was
sufficiently hard to cut blocks with which to erect snow houses, the
natives placed themselves in semi-reclining positions on their sledges
and slept in their traveling clothes. After a few hours they awoke and
partook of chopped frozen meat and blubber; two hours later, they made a
fire in a tin can, with moss and blubber as fuel, and over this prepared
a pot of parboiled meat. A crescent-shaped wall of snow was built to
break the wind; in the shelter of this they sat, grinning delightedly,
and eating savagely, with much smacking of the lips, the steaming broth
and walrus meat. All this I studied with intense interest. I desired on
this trip not only to test my tent, but to learn more of the native
arts of the Eskimo, knowing that I, on my Polar trip, must, if I would
be successful, adapt myself to just such methods of living.
This was my first winter experience of camping out in the night season
for this year, and, with only a diet of meal and bacon, I was miserably
cold. I was now testing also for the first time the new winter clothing
with which I and all my companions were dressed. Our shirts were made of
bird skins. Over these were coats of blue fox or caribou skins; our
trousers were of bear, our boots of seal, and our stockings of hare
skins. This was the usual native winter costume, but under it I had
added a suit of underwear.
Retiring again for rest, I left instructions to be called for an early
start. It seemed that I had hardly settled comfortably in my sleeping
bag when the call for action came.
We hastily partook of tea and biscuits, harnessed our teams and started
through the dark. The Eskimos, having eaten their fill of fat and frozen
meat, to which I must yet accustom myself, were thoroughly comfortable.
I was miserably cold.
By running behind my sledge I produced sufficient bodily heat after
awhile to feel comfortable. My face suffered severely from the cutting
slant of the winds. We passed the perpendicular walls of Cape Seiper at
dawn. We ran along the long, straight coast into Bancroft Bay during the
six hours of twilight. The journey was continued to Dallas Bay by a
forced march of fifty miles before we halted.
The scene displayed the rare glory of twilight charms as it had the day
before, but the snow was deeper, the temperature lower. The wind
steadily increased and veered northward. We made several efforts to
cross the bay ice, but cracked ice, huge uplifted blocks and deep snows
compelled a retreat to the ice-foot.
The ice-foot along Smith Sound is a superb highway, where otherwise
sledge travel would be quite impossible along the coast.
Along Dallas Bay we found a great deal of grass-covered land in
undulating valleys and on low hills, which offered grazing for caribou
and hare. The preceding glimmer of the new moon, which was to rise a few
days hence, offered sufficient light to search for game.
We now fed our dogs for the first time since leaving Annoatok. After a
liberal drink of snow water, we started to seek our luck in the chase.
In the course of an hour my companions returned with four hares which,
when dressed, weighed about forty-eight pounds. Two of these were
cached. The others were eaten later.
Before dawn of the day-long twilight the wind increased to a full gale.
The sky to the north, smoky all night, now blackened as with soot. The
wind came with a howl that brought to mind the despairing cries of the
dying explorers whose bleached bones were strewn along the shore. The
gloomy outline of the coast remained visible for awhile; but soon the
air thickened and came weighted with snow that piled up in huge drifts.
The Eskimos took a few of their favorite dogs and sought shelter to the
lee of the tent, where drift covered their blankets with snow. Breathing
holes were kept open over their faces. Buried in snow drifts, they were
imprisoned for twenty-eight hours. But this tent sled sheltered
Koo-loo-ting-wah and myself. When the rush of the storm had abated we
began digging our way out. In this effort we dug up men and dogs like
potatoes from a patch. The northern sky had paled, the south was
brightening. The pack was lined with long lines beyond each hummock; the
snow was covered with a strong crust. But the ice-foot was a hopeless
line of drifts which made travel over it quite impossible.
The work of pounding snow from the dogs and freeing the sledges brought
to our faces beads of perspiration which rolled off and froze in lines
of ice on our furs. We were none the worse as a result of the storm, and
although hungry as wolves, time was too precious to stop for a full
meal.
We now pushed out of the bay, on to the sea ice. At this point the dogs
scented a bear and soon crossed its track. Rested and hungry, they were
in condition for a desperate chase. Their sharp noses pointed keenly
into the huge bear foot-prints, their little ears quivered, while, with
howls, they started onward in a mad rush.
Neither our voices nor the whips made an impression on their wild speed.
We crossed banks and ridges of snow and swirled about slopes of ice,
gripping sledges violently. Now we were thrown to one side, again to the
other, dragging resistlessly beside the sleds. Rising, we gripped the
rear upstanders with fierce determination.
Just how we escaped broken limbs, and our sledges utter destruction, is
a mystery to me. After a run of an hour we sighted the bear. The animal
had evidently sighted us, for he was galloping for the open water
toward the northwest. We cut the fleetest dogs loose from each team.
Freed, they rushed over the snow like race-horses. But the bear had an
advantage. As the first dog nipped his haunches he plunged into the
black waters. We advanced and waited for him to rise. But this bruin had
sense enough to emerge on the opposite shore, where he shook off the
freezing waters vigorously, and then sat down as if to have a laugh at
us.
I knew that to plunge into the waters would have been fatal to dog or
man and equally fatal to a boat, as ice, in the intense cold, would form
about it so rapidly that it could not be propelled.
The dogs sat down and howled a chorus of sad disappointment. For miles
about, the men sought fruitlessly for a way to cross. Outwitted, we
returned to continue our journey Northward.
Advance Bay and its islands were in sight. Among these, we aimed to
place our central camp. The light was fading fast, and a cold wind came
from Humboldt Glacier, which at this time was located by a slight
darkening of the sky. Many grounded icebergs were about, and the sea ice
was much crossed. The hummocks and the snow were not as troublesome as
farther south.
Two ravens followed us, their shrill cries echoing from berg to berg.
The Eskimos inferred from their presence that bears were near, but we
saw no tracks.
The cries of the ravens were nearly as provoking to the dogs as the bear
tracks, and we moved along rapidly to Brook's Island. This was rather
high, with a plateau and sharp cliffs. Bonsall Island near by was
rounded by glacial action. Between them we found a place to camp
somewhat sheltered from the wind.
While eating our ration of corn meal and bacon, howls of the dogs rose
to a fierce crescendo. I supposed they were saluting the coming of the
moon, as is their custom, but the howls changed to tones of increasing
excitement. We went out to inquire, but saw nothing. It was so dark that
I could not see the dogs twenty feet away, and the cold wind made
breathing difficult.
"_Nan nook_" (Bear), the Eskimos said in an undertone. I looked around
for some position of defense. But the dense night-blackness rendered
this hopeless, so we took our position behind the tent, rifles in hand.
The bear, of an inquisitive turn of mind, deliberately advanced upon us.
"_Taokoo! taokoo! igloo dia oo-ah-tonie!_" (Look! look! beyond the
iceberg!) said the Eskimos. Neither the iceberg nor the bear was
visible. After a cold and exciting wait, the bear turned and hid behind
another iceberg. We separated a few of the best bear dogs from each
other. Bounding off, they disappeared quietly in the darkness. The other
dogs were fastened to the sledges, and away we started.
I sat on To-ti-o's sledge, as he had the largest team. We jumped
crevasses, and occasionally dipped in open water.
The track of the bear wound about huge bergs which looked in the
darkness like nebulous shadows. The dogs, of themselves, followed the
invisible line of tracks.