hopes and cheery hearts that the long line of dog-drawn sledges followed
Mylius-Erichsen as they wended their way northward at the end of March,
1907. With ten sledges and nearly a hundred dogs much was to be done by
the resolute men who feared neither cold nor famine, the dangers of the
sea-ice, or the hardships of the trail.
[Illustration: Amdrup and Hazen Lands, Greenland.]
Their courage and strength were soon tested by difficulties and perils
of unexpected character, for they thought to find the ordinary ice-foot
along the shore, which could be followed inward or outward as the
character of the ice dictated. But there was no ice-foot. Along Glacier
Gulf for the distance of one hundred and forty miles the glacial
ice-cap of Greenland, known usually as the _inland ice_, moves summer
and winter--with unbroken vertical front, hundreds of feet in
height--slowly but unceasingly into the Greenland Sea. Between the
steady southward drift of the vast ice-fields from the Arctic Ocean and
the seaward march of the glacier the shore ice was found to be of almost
incredible roughness. Magnificent, and unequalled elsewhere in the
world, was the sight of this towering sea-face, but scores upon scores
of miles of ever-dominating ice-cliffs through their weeks of struggle
grew to be unwelcome, so that their end at Lambert Land was hailed with
joy.
Here came unexpected food, which did much to make the completion of the
survey possible. As they were crossing the smooth fiord ice, Broenlund's
keen and practised eye saw far shoreward tiny specks of moving animals,
and he shouted loudly "_Nanetok!_" (A bear!). They proved to be two
mother bears with cubs. In a trice the teams were stopped, the
trace-toggles slipped from the few dogs that were used to bear-hunting,
who started excitedly on the jump for the already fleeing game. Soon
catching up with the lumbering animals, slow-moving on account of the
cubs, the dogs, followed their usual tactics of nipping sharply the hind
legs of the bear, who stops to drive off the dog or stumbles forward
with the dog fast at his legs. Meantime Broenlund and Tobias, the two
Eskimo dog drivers, quickly threw off the sledge loads on the floe and
drove on with such speed that the hunters were soon within shot. The
bears skinned and the dogs fed, the northward march was renewed in high
spirits, for the slow travel had sadly reduced their food.
They were nearly in despair on reaching the south shore of Mount
Mallemuk, as the open sea made it impossible to pass around it. With
exhausting labor they finally were able to clamber up a projecting point
of the seaward-flowing glacier, but their first supporting sledge here
turned homeward.
Difficult as had been the ice and the glacier-scaling, they came to a
real danger when around Mallemuk they were driven far out on the ocean
in order to proceed northward, for the inland ice was impossible of
passage and great areas of open water gave way slowly seaward to new
ice. This was so thin that it bent and crackled as sledge after sledge
tried in separate and fearsome order a passage that threatened to engulf
them at any moment. Yet they came safely to Amdrup Land, 80 deg. 43' N.,
whence the last supporting party returned, charged to explore on their
homeward journey the unknown fiords to the north of Lambert Land, where
their spring discoveries of new lands had begun.
Pressing on after the return of the supporting sledges, Mylius-Erichsen
was surprised and disappointed to find that the coast continued to trend
to the northeast, and not to the northwest, as indicated by all charts
since Peary crossed the inland ice to Navy Cliff. This northeasterly
trend greatly increased the length of the journey needful to complete
the survey of the entire east coast. Their equipment had been planned
for the shorter distance, and it was evident that this forced detour
would soon leave them without food for themselves or for their dogs
unless more game should be found.
They thought that this extension would never end, but it was finally
reached at Cape Northeast, 82 deg. 30' N., 12 deg. W., no less than 22 deg. of
longitude to the eastward of Peary's location of the Greenland Sea in
his discoveries of 1892 and 1895. The new cape was half-way between Navy
Cliff and Spitzbergen, thus narrowing by one-half the largest connecting
waterway of the Arctic and the Atlantic Oceans. It was a magnificent
discovery, for which some of these explorers were to pay with their
lives.
Mylius-Erichsen and Koch counselled seriously together, and well they
might. They had been on the march more than a month; coming summer, with
a disintegrating ice-pack, and the dreaded Mallemuk mountain precipices,
sea-washed at their base, were to be faced on their homeward journey;
and to crown all they had provisions for only fourteen days.
Imbued with the high Danish spirit, they duly weighed, with national
calmness, the pros and the cons, only asking each other how and what,
with their pitiful means, they could further do for the glory of
Denmark. The heroic loyalty of both men found full expression in the
decision that it was their bounden duty to go forward, and to finish the
survey with which they were charged, regardless of possible dangers and
personal privations. So Koch marched northward, while Mylius-Erichsen
turned westward toward Navy Cliff, nearly two hundred miles distant. The
westward explorations had been made much more important by the
unexpected easterly extension of Greenland, which left a great gap in
its northern shore-line that must at all hazards be surveyed. Starting
with Topographer Hagen and the Greenlander dog driver, Broenlund,
Erichsen reached a great inland fiord (Denmark), which he naturally took
for the one charted by Peary as bordering the Greenland Sea. Though this
detour carried him a hundred miles out of the direct route to Cape
Riksdag, it was not wholly without results. Twenty-one musk-oxen were
killed, which restored the strength of the dogs, whose gaunt frames
already alarmed the party.
Here with astonishment they saw signs not alone of the beasts of the
earth and the birds of the air, but everywhere were indications of their
master--man himself. As they skirted such scanty bits of land as the
inland ice had spared, they found along every bay or inlet proofs of
former human life. There were huts and household utensils,--left as
though suddenly,--circles of summer tents, fragments of kayaks and
sledges, stone meat-caches, fox-traps, and implements of land hunt and
sea chase, in which both reindeer and whales were in question. They were
mighty hunters, these children of the ice, men of iron who inhabited the
most northern lands of the earth, and had there lived where these white
voyagers of heroic mould were destined to perish.
The signs of human life continued beyond Denmark Fiord to the very
shores of Hagen Fiord, thus clearly establishing the route of migration
over which the Eskimo of Arctic America or of the Bering Strait region
had reached the east coast, and possibly West Greenland, coming from the
north.[27]
The turning-point of Erichsen's fortunes came at Cape Riksdag, where he
met Koch's party returning from the north. His discoveries and surveys
of southeastern Hazen Land (Peary), where he reached 83 deg. 30' N., and his
tales of game, encouraged Mylius-Erichsen to go on, though he had food
for eight days only for the men, eleven for the dogs, and a few quarts
of oil for cooking.
Another fiord (Hagen) was discovered, which proved fatal to the party,
as Mylius-Erichsen felt that Navy Cliff, reported as overlooking the
Greenland Sea, must surely be therein. He turned north on learning his
error, only to eat his last food on June 4. He felt obliged to cover his
mistake by going still to the west to Cape Glacier (Navy Cliff) yet 9 deg.
of longitude inland. Peary had there escaped starvation by large game,
and Erichsen went forward knowing that without game death awaited him.
Now and then they shot a polar hare, a bare mouthful for three starving
men and twenty-three ravenous dogs. June 14, 1907, Mylius-Erichsen
connected his surveys with Navy Cliff.[28] He had a right to a feeling
of pride and of exultation, for his magnificent series of discoveries,
covering 5 deg. of latitude and 22 deg. of longitude, completed the survey of
northeastern Greenland. Thus had these adventurous men given tangible
form to the hopes and aspirations that for so many years had stirred the
imagination of Danish explorers. These discoveries had involved outward
sledge journeys of more than seven hundred miles, although the party was
only outfitted for a distance of three hundred and thirty miles.
Lieutenant Trolle tells us how startlingly sudden was the change from
winter to summer at the _Danmark_, Cape Bismarck. "The temperature of
the snow had risen to zero (32 deg. Fahrenheit), and then in one day it all
melted. The rivers were rushing along, flowers budding forth, and
butterflies fluttering in the air. One day only the ptarmigan and raven,
the next the sanderling, the ringed plover, geese, ducks, and others."
Mylius-Erichsen and his comrade had a similar experience just as they
turned homeward. Almost in a day the snow-covering of the sea-floe
vanished, as if by miracle. Here and there water-holes appeared--the
dreadful fact was clear, the ice-floes were breaking up. Forced now to
the coast-land, it was plain that return to their ship was no longer
possible. They must summer in a barren, ice-capped land, and wait, if
they could live so long, until the frosts of early autumn should
re-form the great white highway of arctic travel.
Mylius-Erichsen hoped that the outlying valleys of his newly discovered
Denmark Fiord would afford enough game to enable them to live, at least
long enough to permit them to reach some one of their depots where they
could deposit the records of their surveys. They reached the fiord about
the end of July, but alas! the big game of the past spring was gone! Now
and then they killed a stray musk-ox and, like famishing creatures, men
and dogs ate for once their fill. Again and again food failed utterly,
but when death came too near they killed, with sad hearts, one of their
faithful dogs, until nine of them had been eaten.
In the recovered field-journal of Broenlund, under date of August 7, we
read: "No more food! It is impossible to travel and we are more than
nine hundred kilometres [five hundred and sixty miles] from the ship."
On the 8th Erichsen started for the southern end of the fiord, thinking
that in its ice-free valleys the chances of game would be increased. As
it was necessary to travel on the ice-floes they started across the ice,
changing from one floe to another when forced to do so. Unfortunately
they were driven offshore and found themselves adrift. Day after day,
kept seaward by wind and tide, they strove in vain to reach shore, but
it was sixteen days before this was accomplished. When they landed on
August 24, Broenlund writes: "We still have fourteen dogs, but no food.
We have killed one of these animals and eaten half of him; the other
half will serve as our food to-morrow. The half of a dog for three men
and thirteen dogs is not too much to digest, and after eating it we are
as hungry as before."
When land was reached Erichsen and Hagen applied themselves to hunting.
Hare after hare and ptarmigan after ptarmigan were pursued and killed.
But alas! the valleys were searched in vain for musk-oxen or reindeer,
and it was feared that the big game of the region was exterminated.
Throughout these awful days of suspense and of hunger neither
Mylius-Erichsen nor Hagen failed to maintain their courage and
cheerfulness. In the intervals of needed rest between the long,
exhausting hunting tramps, they kept on the even tenor of their way.
Erichsen wrote a little poem to distract the attention of his companions
from their present surroundings. Faithful to the last to his favorite
vocation, Hagen made with care and pride beautiful sketches of the
country traversed and of the lands newly discovered. Thus passed away
the brief polar summer, but further details are lacking since Broenlund's
journal has no entries from August 31 to October 19.
Meanwhile, Koch had made safely his homeward journey, and, although the
anxiety of the officers at the ship was somewhat lessened by the news
that game had been found in the far north, yet they were nevertheless
uneasy as to the dangers of Erichsen's home travel. Koch, it seems, had
found an open and impassable sea at Mount Mallemuk, so that he was
driven to the inland ice. He there found himself obliged to cross a
very narrow glacier, where its seaward slant was so nearly perpendicular
that a single slip would have precipitated men and dogs into the open
sea, hundreds of feet below.
Later it was decided to send a search party north, under mate Thostrup.
Nor was this autumnal march without danger, even apart from the perils
of travel along the coast, where the men nearly perished by breaking
through the new ice. At Jokel Bay Thostrup was driven to the inland ice,
the only possible route. At all times difficult, this travel was now
made especially dangerous by the fact that the old glacial surface was
not yet covered by the hard-packed winter drifts. Thostrup's whole
sledge party on several occasions barely escaped falling into the
fearful crevasses, seen with difficulty in the semi-darkness of the
sunless days. As it was, several of the dogs were lost when, a snow
bridge crumbling, the animals fell into a crevasse. Their seal-skin
traces breaking, the dogs dropped to the bottom of the ice-chasms, which
were sometimes two hundred feet or more deep. With kindly hearts the
Eskimo drivers tried to shoot the poor animals, and put them out of
their misery, but did not always succeed. As Erichsen had not reached
the coast the journey was without result. Thostrup found untouched the
caches of Lambert Land and Mount Mallemuk, and turned southward on
October 18, unconscious that a hundred miles to the westward his missing
shipmates, facing frost and famine, were valiantly struggling against
fate and death.
The condition of the arctic Crusoes of Denmark Fiord, though there were
doubtless days of cheer and hope, grew gradually worse, and by the
middle of October had become terrible, if not hopeless. Although the
autumnal ice was now forming, Mylius-Erichsen knew that in their state
of physical weakness the long journey of five hundred miles to the ship,
around Cape Northeast, could never be made. Hagen agreed with him that
the single chance of life, feeble though it was, lay in crossing the
ice-capped mountain range, direct to the depot on Lambert Land. Of
course, the height of the ice-cap, the character of its surface, and the
irregularities of the road were all unknown quantities.
The state of their field outfit for the crossing of the inland ice
betrayed their desperate condition. In general, their equipment had
practically disappeared under stress of travel and of hunting. To the
very last they had carried their scientific outfit and instruments.
It was a sad day when they recognized that the only way of repairing
the great rents in their skin boots was through the use of the
sole-leather case of the theodolite. Even that had quite gone, and
without needle, thread, or leather, they could only fold wraps around
their boots, now in shreds, and tie them on with such seal-skin
thongs as had not been eaten. The tent was badly torn, and, with the
sleeping-gear--on which had been made sad inroads for dog-food and
patches for clothing--afforded wretched shelter against storm and cold.
For transportation there were four gaunt dogs--the last that ravenous
hunger had spared--to haul the remnants of a disabled sledge. The winter
cold had set in, with almost unendurable bitterness to the enfeebled,
shivering men. The weak arctic sun, now skirting the southern sky at
mid-day, was leaving them for the winter, so that the dangers of
crevasses and the difficulties of glacier-travel must be met either in
total darkness, or, at the best, in feeble, uncertain twilight.
Discarding everything that could be spared, they reached the inland ice
on October 19, the day the sun went for the winter, and barefooted they
travelled across this glacial ice-cap one hundred and sixty miles in
twenty-six days. Their shipmate, Lieutenant A. Trolle says: "When I
think of the northerly wind and the darkness, when I consider that every
morning they must have crawled out of their dilapidated sleeping-bags,
though they could have had one desire, one craving--that of sleeping the
eternal sleep--then my mind is full of sorrow that I shall never be able
to tell them how much I admire them. They _would_ go on, they _would_
reach a place where their comrades could find them and the _results of
their work_. Then at last came the end, the death of Mylius-Erichsen and
Hagen a few miles from the depot, and the last walk of Broenlund,
crawling along on frozen feet in the moonshine. With the sure instinct
of the child of nature, he found the depot, ate some of the food,
wrapped himself up in his fur, and died."
By Broenlund's body was found Hagen's chart of their discoveries, and his
own field-journal in which the final entry runs: "I perished in 79 deg. N.
latitude, under the hardships of the return journey over the inland ice
in November. I reached this place under a waning moon, and cannot go on
because of my frozen feet and the darkness. The bodies of the others are
in the middle of the fiord. Hagen died on November 15, Mylius-Erichsen
some ten days later."
The courage and self-sacrifice of Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen for the
advancement of the glory of their country were based on conditions
readily understood. Officials of high ideals, long in public service,
honored with important duties, they possessed those heroic qualities
which throughout the ages have impelled chosen men to subordinate self
to the common weal. Of such has been said:
"Gone? In a grander form they rise!
Dead? We may clasp their hands in ours,
And catch the light of their clearer eyes,
And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers."
These young explorers instinctively knew that their deeds of daring
would give them fitting and enduring fame. Their faith in their country
was justified by the tribute that Denmark promptly erected.
But with Joergen Broenlund, Greenlander, it was quite another tale. The
virtues of self-sacrifice and of fidelity unto death are practically
ignored in the traditional myths and tales of Greenland, which represent
the literature, the religion, the history, and the poetry of the Eskimo
people.[29]
Broenlund had long foreseen the outcome, as appears from his journal
entry: "We are all dead!" From this early acceptance of his coming fate,
and from the Eskimo racial trait of calm acquiescence in destiny, it
would be natural that in the field the native would have first
succumbed.
But, charged with a solemn, vital mission, evidently receiving the
commands of his leader as the voice of God, this Inuit was faithful even
over fear of death, and by his heroic efforts, freezing and starving,
insured the fame of his comrades and so added to the glory of his
distant fatherland (Greenland is a colony of Denmark), unknown to him.
Both through the dictates of his noble soul, and also inspired by his
leader, he rose to sublime heights of heroic action. All must indeed
die, but he would to the last moment of his life be true to his
sledge-mates, Erichsen and Hagen. Without doubt their last words
were a charge not to fail to place in the cache at Lambert Land the
field-charts and his own journal, so that Denmark might know that her
sons had fulfilled their allotted duty.
They mistook not their man, and the fame of Denmark's officers was
insured by the heroic efforts and unfailing fidelity of their humble
subordinate, the Inuit dog driver, Joergen Broenlund--Greenlander.
Among the striking features of the beautiful city of Copenhagen are
statuary by the famous Thorwaldsen and other great sculptors, which
proclaim the fame and preserve the memory of kings and statesmen, of
authors and admirals--men great in war and in peace, in civic worth and
in learning. It is to the honor of the city that lately there has arisen
a unique and striking memorial to commemorate worth and fidelity in
fields far beyond the sunset, remote from commercialism and from
civilization. Thus Denmark keeps fresh in the hearts and in the minds of
her people the heroic struggle unto death of Mylius-Erichsen and of
Hagen, and of the Danish Eskimo Broenlund. Such steadfast sense of duty
and heroic powers of accomplishment are not the heritage of Denmark
alone, but of the nobler men of the wide world.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] The discoveries of Lieutenant (now General) Greely around Lake
Hazen, of Lockwood and Brainard in northwest Greenland and Hazen Land,
prove that the route followed was via Greely Fiord, past Lake Hazen,
across Kennedy Channel, over Hall Land, probably through the upper
valley of Nordenskioeld Inlet, and along the shores of Peary Channel to
Denmark Fiord.
[28] According to the lately published report of the gallant Danish
explorer, Mikkelsen, the recovered records of Mylius-Erichsen show that
the insularity of Greenland was not discovered by Peary at Navy Cliff.
Peary Channel is only a fiord indenting northeastern Greenland, which
extends northward as shown in the attached map of Amdrup Land.
[29] Among two hundred Eskimo tales and traditions given by Rink and
Rasmussen there does not appear to be a single one wherein the qualities
of self-sacrifice and absolute fidelity are the essential or main ideas.
THE WIFELY HEROISM OF MERTUK, THE DAUGHTER OF SHUNG-HU
"Deeper devotion
Nowhere hath knelt;
Fuller emotion
Heart never felt."
--GOETHE (_Dwight's translation_).
Rarely, if ever, has there been recorded in history a more varied and
adventurous life than that of Mertuk, wife of Hans Hendrik, who came
into literature through the magical pen of Elisha Kent Kane as the
"pretty daughter" of Shung-hu, an Etah Eskimo. She was born (and reared)
as a veritable Child of the Ice, being one of the members of the
northernmost tribe of the world,--a people, in the last century, of
absorbing interest as a surviving offshoot of the Stone Age.
Mertuk married Hans Hendrik, an Eskimo of Moravian faith from Danish
West Greenland, who was practically a deserter from Kane. This northern
idyl was the reverse of Ruth of the Bible, since for the sake of Mertuk,
Hans abandoned his family and his country, willingly separating himself
from the comforts and certainties of civilized life for the vicissitudes
and inconveniences of an archaic environment. Despite a lovely wife,
Hans soon discovered the wretched discomforts and unwelcome methods of
life on the Etah coast, where hunger and physical sufferings were not
infrequent attendants on even the most skilful and active hunter.
When the polar expedition of Dr. Isaac I. Hayes touched in 1860 at Cape
York, Hans joined the doctor's forces taking his wife and child with
him; next year they emigrated to Danish Greenland when Hayes sailed
south.
Ten years later Hans, with Mertuk and three children, joined Hall's
north-polar expedition, which made a ship's record for the world. At
Thank-God Harbor was born Mertuk's youngest child, Charles Polaris,
nearer the pole than any other known infant. With undaunted courage and
uncomplaining fortitude she endured, with her four children (one a babe
of three months), the fearful vicissitudes of the Polaris drift, set
forth in another sketch, "The Marvellous Ice-Drift of Captain Tyson,"
carrying her babe in her seal-skin hood while dragging a heavy sledge
over rough ice.