Various Journeys to the Esquimaux Stations.--Preparations for the
Hecla's Return to England.--Remarkable Halos, &c.--Shooting Parties
stationed at Arlagnuk.--Journeys to Quilliam Creek.--Arrival of
Esquimaux from the Northward.--Account of a Journey to the Westward
for the purpose of reaching the Polar Sea.--The Esquimaux report
two Fishing-ships having been Wrecked.--A Journey performed to
Cockburn Island.--Discovery of Murray Maxwell Inlet.
About the first and second weeks in April, the Esquimaux were in the
habit of coming up the inlet, to the southward of the ships, to kill the
_neitiek,_ or small seal, which brings forth its young at this season,
and probably retires into sheltered places for that purpose. Besides the
old seals, which were taken in the manner before explained, the
Esquimaux also caught a great number of young ones, by fastening a hook
to the end of a staff, and hooking them up from the sea-hole after the
mother had been killed. Our large fishhooks were useful to them for this
purpose, and the beautiful silvery skins of these young animals were
occasionally brought to the ships as articles of barter: those of the
foetus of the _neitiek_ are more yellow than the others, and, indeed,
both in colour and texture, very much resemble raw silk.
The first ducks noticed by the Esquimaux were mentioned to us on the
16th, and a few days afterward immense flocks appeared, all of the
king-duck species, about the open water near the margin of the ice; but
our distance from this was so great, that we never saw any of them, and
the weather was yet too cold to station a shooting-party in that
neighbourhood. Dovekies were now also numerous, and a gull or two, of
the silvery species, had been seen.
On the 20th, after divine service, I took the opportunity of Captain
Lyon and his people being on board the Fury, to communicate to the
assembled officers and ships' companies my intentions respecting the
future movements of the expedition; at the same time requesting Captain
Lyon to furnish me with a list of any of the Hecla's men that might
volunteer to remain out, as it would be necessary to fill up, or,
perhaps, even to increase the complement of the Fury.
Our preparations were therefore immediately commenced, a twelvemonths'
provision and other stores being received by the Fury, and various
necessary exchanges made in anchors, cables, and boats; and, in the
course of a single fortnight, the whole of these were transported from
ship to ship without any exposure or labour to the men outside their
respective ships, our invaluable dogs having performed it for us with
astonishing ease and expedition. It was a curious sight to watch these
useful animals walking off with a bower-anchor, a boat, or a topmast,
without any difficulty; and it may give some idea of what they are able
to perform, to state, that nine dogs of Captain Lyon's dragged sixteen
hundred and eleven pounds a distance of seventeen hundred and fifty
yards in nine minutes, and that they worked in a similar way between the
ships for seven or eight hours a day. The road was, however, very good
at this time, and the dogs the best that could be procured.
The wind settling to the southward for a few days near the end of April,
brought an increased, and, to us a comfortable degree of warmth; and it
was considered an event of some interest, that the snow which fell on
the 29th dissolved as it lay on our decks, being the first time that it
had done so this season. We now also ventured to take off some of the
hatches for an hour or two in the day, and to admit some fresh air, a
luxury which we had not known for six months. The Esquimaux, about this
time, began to separate more than before, according to their usual
custom in the spring; some of them, and especially our Winter Island
acquaintance, setting off to the little islands called Oolglit, and
those in our neighbourhood removing to the northeast end of Igloolik, to
a peninsula called _Keiyuk-tarruoke_, to which, the open water was
somewhat nearer. These people now became so much incommoded by the
melting of their snow-huts, that they were obliged to substitute skins
as the roofs, retaining, however, the sides and part of the passages of
the original habitations. These demi-tents were miserable enough while
in this state, some of the snow continually falling in, and the floor
being constantly wet by its thawing.
Favourable as the first part of the month of May had appeared with
respect to temperature, its close was by no means equally promising, and
on the first of June, at two A.M., the thermometer stood at +8°. This
unusually low temperature, much exceeding in severity anything we had
experienced at Melville Island at the same season, rendered it
necessary to defer for a time a journey which it was proposed that
Captain Lyon should undertake, across the land to the westward at the
head of Quilliam Creek, and thence, by means of the ice, along the
shores of the Polar Sea, in the direction towards Akkoolee. The object
of this journey, like that of most of the others which had been
performed in various directions, was to acquire all the information
within our reach of those parts of the continental coast to which the
ships were denied access; and it was hoped that, at the coming season,
some judgment might be formed of the probable state of the ice along
that shore in the summer, by which the future movements of the Fury
might be influenced. Captain Lyon was to be accompanied by two men, and
a complete supply of every kind for a month's travelling was to be drawn
on a sledge by ten excellent dogs, which he had taken great pains to
procure and train for such occasions. As I was desirous of ascertaining,
beyond any doubt, the identity of the _Khemig_, to which I had sailed in
the autumn, with that seen by Captain Lyon on his journey with the
Esquimaux, I determined to accompany the travellers on my sledge as far
as the head of Quilliam Creek, and by victualling them thus far on their
journey, enable them to gain a day or two's resources in advance.
Another object which I had in view was to endeavour to find a lake
mentioned by Toolemak; who assured me that, if I could dig holes in the
ice, which was five feet thick, plenty of large salmon might be caught
with hooks, an experiment which seemed at least well worth the trying.
On the 7th, the weather being more favourable than before, Captain Lyon
and myself set out to the westward at half past eleven A.M., and the ice
proving level, reached Khemig at half past five; when it was
satisfactory to find that the route followed by Captain Lyon on his
journey with Toolemak was precisely that which I had supposed, every
feature of the land, of which the fog had before scarcely allowed him a
glimpse, being now easily recognised, and every difficulty cleared up.
Proceeding at eight A.M. on the 8th, we soon met with numerous tracks of
deer upon the ice, which, together with the seals that lay in great
numbers near their holes, expedited our journey very considerably, the
dogs frequently setting off at full gallop on sniffing one of them.
Landing at the head of Quilliam Creek at half past one, we took up an
advantageous position for looking about us, in order to determine on the
direction of Captain Lyon's route over land, which all the Esquimaux
concurred in representing as a laborious one. We met with several
reindeer immediately on our landing; and, while in pursuit of them,
Captain Lyon discovered a lake two or three miles long and a quarter of
a mile broad, a short distance from the tents, which we concluded to be
that of which I was in search. As some of our party were suffering from
snow-blindness, and, what is scarcely less painful, severe inflammation
of the whole face, occasioned by the heat of the sun, we remained here
for the rest of this day to make our final arrangements.
At nine A.M. on: the 9th we struck the tents, and Captain Lyon set off
to the southward, while we drove over to the lake, which is one mile
N.N.W. of the head of the creek, and, after three or four hours'
labour, completed a hole through the ice, which was very dark-coloured,
brittle, and transparent, and, as Toolemak had said, about five feet
thick. The water, which was eleven fathoms deep, flowed up within a
couple of inches of the surface, over which lay a covering of snow
eighteen inches in depth. In confident hope of now obtaining some fish,
we proceeded exactly according to Toolemak's instructions; but, after
four-and-twenty hours' trial at all depths, not even a single nibble
rewarded our labour.
Coasting the south shore, on which I wished to obtain observations and
angles for the survey, we the next day entered a small bay, where we
pitched our tent; our whole party being now so snow-blind with
endeavouring to distinguish the land from the ice (so entirely were both
covered with snow), that we could literally no longer muster one eye
among three of us to direct the sledge. I found a handkerchief tied
close, but not too tightly, round the eyes for a whole night, to be a
more effectual remedy for this disagreeable complaint than any
application of eyewater; and my companions being induced to try the same
experiment, derived equal benefit from it. Reaching Arlagnuk towards
evening of the 13th, we found that our parties had each thirty or forty
ducks ready for the ships; and that the Esquimaux had lately altogether
deserted this station, owing to the scarcity of walruses, and had
removed to Ooglit, where these animals were said to be abundant at this
season. Leaving our people on the morning of the 14th, I returned on
board soon after noon, where I found that nothing worthy of particular
notice had occurred during my absence.
On the 20th three or four other Esquimaux, strangers to us, arrived at
Igloolik from the northward, and we found from two young men who visited
us on the following day, that they came from _Too-n=o=o-nek_, a
place undoubtedly situated somewhere on the western coast of Baffin's
Bay, or about some of the inlets communicating with it, as they had
there seen several _Kabloona_ ships employed in killing whales. It is
not improbable, from the various accounts of the direction and distance
of Toonoonek, communicated by the Esquimaux through the usual medium of
their charts, that the part of the seacoast so named lies at no great
distance from Pond's Bay, in lat. 72-1/2°, which has lately become a
common rendezvous of our Davis's Strait fishermen. Of this fact we had,
in the course of the winter, received intimation from these people from
time to time, and had even some reason to believe that our visit to the
Esquimaux of the River Clyde in 1820 was known to them; but what most
excited our interest at this time was the sledge brought by the new
comers, the runner being composed of large single pieces of wood, one of
them painted black over a lead-coloured priming, and the cross-bars
consisting of heading-pieces of oak-buts, one flat board with a
hinge-mark upon it the upper end of a skid or small boat's davit, and
others that had evidently and recently been procured from some ship. On
one of the heading-pieces we distinguished the letters _Brea_--, showing
that the cask had, according to the custom of the whalers, contained
bread on the outward passage. The nature of all these materials led us
to suppose that it must have been procured from some vessel wrecked or
damaged on the coast; and this suspicion was on the following day
confirmed by our obtaining information that, at a place called
Akk=o=odneak, a single day's journey beyond Toonoonek, two ships
like ours had been driven on shore by the ice, and that the people had
gone away in boats equipped for the purpose, leaving one ship on her
beam ends, and the other upright, in which situation the vessels were
supposed still to remain.[004]
We observed on this occasion as on our first arrival at Igloolik, that
the new Esquimaux were obliged to have recourse to the others to
interpret to them our meaning, which circumstance, as it still appeared
to me, was to be attributed, as before, to our speaking a kind of broken
Esquimaux that habit had rendered familiar to our old acquaintance,
rather than to any essential difference in the true languages of the two
people.
Toolemak having some time before promised to accompany me to the
fishing-place, taking with him his wife, together with his sledge, dogs,
and tent, made his appearance from Ooglit on the 23d, bringing, however,
only the old lady and abundance of meat. Having lent him a tent and two
of our dogs, and hired others to complete his establishment, we set out
together at five A.M. on the 24th, my own party consisting of Mr.
Crozier and a seaman from each ship. Arriving at Khemig towards noon, we
found among the islands that the ice was quite covered with water,
owing, probably, to the radiation of heat from the rocks. The weather
proved, indeed, intensely hot this day, the thermometer in the shade, at
the ships, being as high as 51°, and the land in this neighbourhood
preventing the access of wind from any quarter. The travelling being
good beyond this, we arrived within four or five miles of the head of
Quilliam Creek at ten P.M., where we pitched the tents for the night. In
this day's journey ten dogs had drawn my sledge a distance of forty
statute miles since the morning, the weight on the sledge being about
twelve hundred pounds, and half of the road very indifferent. It is the
custom of the Esquimaux, even when meat is most abundant, to feed these
invaluable animals only once a day, and that in the evening, which they
consider to agree with them better than more frequent meals; we always
observed the same practice with ours, and found that they performed
their journeys the better for it.
On the morning of the 25th, while passing close to a point of land,
Toolemak suddenly stopped his sledge, and he and his wife walked to the
shore, whither I immediately followed them. The old woman, preceding her
husband, went up to a circle of stones, of which there were two or three
on the spot, and, kneeling down within it, cried most loudly and
bitterly for the space of two or three minutes, while Toolemak also shed
abundant tears, but without any loud lamentation. On inquiring presently
after, I found that this was the spot on which their tent had been
pitched in the summer, and that the bed-place on which the old woman
knelt had been that of their adopted son _Noogloo_, whose premature
death we had all so much regretted. The grief displayed on this
occasion seemed to have much sincerity in it, and there was something
extremely touching in this quiet but unaffected tribute of sorrow on the
spot, which so forcibly reminded them of the object of their parental
affection. I have much gratification in adding, in this place, another
circumstance, which, though trifling in itself, deserves to be noticed
as doing honour to these people's hearts. They had always shown
particular attachment to a dog they had sold me, and which bore the same
name as a young man, a son of their own, whom they had formerly lost. In
the course of this journey, the old woman would constantly call the dog
"Eerninga" (son), which the affectionate animal never failed to repay by
jumping up and licking her face all over, whenever his trace would allow
him; and at night, after Toolemak had fed his own dogs, he frequently
brought to our tent an extra piece of meat, expressly for
_Ann=owtalik_, to whom these poor people seemed to take a mournful
pleasure in now transferring their affection.
Landing close to the head of the inlet on the south shore, we proceeded
with difficulty a couple of miles over land till we came to a river, the
limits of which the warmth of the weather was just rendering
discernible, and which, our guides informed us was to be our fishing
place. It was interesting to observe that, in every case of doubt as to
the situation of a place, the best route, or the most advisable method
of overcoming any difficulty, Toolemak invariably referred to his wife;
and a consultation of some minutes was held by these two before they
would determine on what was to be done, or even return an answer to our
questions respecting it. Pitching our tents upon the banks of the river,
we went upon the ice, which was still quite solid except close to the
shores, and soon made two or three holes for a hook and line, the
thickness of the ice in the middle being from six to seven feet. The
Esquimaux fishhook is generally composed of a piece of ivory, having a
hook of pointed iron, without a barb, let into it. The ivory they
consider useful in attracting the salmon, but they also bait the hook
with a piece of blubber well cleared of its oil by chewing, and securely
tied on with a thread of sinew, so as to cover nearly the whole of the
hook. A small piece of bone, reindeer's horn, or wood, serves as a rod,
and with this they keep the bait constantly in motion up and down, the
bait being from one to three feet below the surface of the ice.
Previous, however, to commencing the fishery, the old lady, who took the
principal part in this employment, muttered some words, to me altogether
incomprehensible, over the hole, to which Toolemak, in a formal manner,
added something about fish and _Kabloonas_; and the whole of this
preparatory ceremony seemed intended to propitiate the spirit to whose
department the salmon particularly belonged. The lady (for it seems she
is a female) did not, however, appear to lend a very favourable ear to
our wants or Toolemak's rhetoric; for, after many hours' patient trial
on this and the following day, only two fish were seen and one caught to
repay our labour.
On the 27th Toolemak and his wife went over to a small shallow lake, on
the opposite side of the river, where they caught three or four fish of
the salmon kind, but none more than one pound in weight. He then came
back to the tent, and made a small spear according to their own fashion;
but with this, to his great disappointment, he could not strike a single
fish. A sort of _fish-gig_, which we made out of four large hooks lashed
back to back at the end of a light staff, succeeded much better, the
bait being played in the usual manner to attract the fish, which were
then hooked up with great ease and certainty by this instrument. In this
manner we soon caught a dozen of the same kind as before; and the rest
of our party had in the mean time killed a deer.
Toolemak began now to be extremely impatient to return home, his
principal anxiety arising, I believe, from a childish desire to know
what I should give him for his trouble; and when, in writing a note to
Lieutenant Nias, I enumerated the articles I intended to present to him,
he expressed more delight than I had ever before seen escape him. Among
these was one of the rifle-guns supplied as presents, together with a
sufficient quantity of ammunition to last him one summer, after which
the gun would probably become useless itself for want of cleaning. It
was astonishing to see the readiness with which these people learned to
fire at a mark, and the tact they displayed in everything relating to
this art. Boys from twelve to sixteen years of age would fire a
fowling-piece, for the first time, with perfect steadiness; and the men,
with very little practice, would very soon become superior
marksmen.[005] As, however, the advantage they could derive from the
use of firearms must be of very short duration, and the danger to any
careless individuals very considerable, we did not, on any other
occasion, consider it prudent to furnish them in this manner.
On the morning of the 28th Toolemak had left us for the ships, carrying
with him our venison to be left there, and having first explained when
and where the Esquimaux catch the fish with which he had supplied us the
preceding summer; for it now appeared that they were not found in great
abundance, or of that magnitude, in the river, but at the mouth of a
very small stream about two miles lower down the creek on the same side.
Their method is, to place in the bed of the stream, which is quite
narrow, and seldom or never so deep as a man's middle, though running
with great force, two or three separate piles of stones, which serve the
double purpose of keeping off the force of the stream from themselves,
and of narrowing the passage through which the fish have to pass in
coming up from the sea to feed; thus giving the people an opportunity of
striking them with their spears, and throwing them on the shore without
much difficulty.
On the afternoon of the 1st of July we shifted our tents overland, and
down the creek as far as the salmon stream. In performing this short
journey over bare ground, I was enabled to form some conception of the
difficulties likely to be encountered by Captain Lyon and his
companions; for, even with our light load, the dogs could scarcely move
at times. One of the strongest of eleven fell down in a fit occasioned
by over exertion; the poor animal lay on his side, foaming at the mouth
for a minute or two, but soon recovered sufficiently to be able to walk;
and, being taken out of the sledge, was quite strong again the next day.
We had scarcely arrived at the stream, when Toolemak's account was very
satisfactorily confirmed by our finding on the ice near its mouth part
of two fine salmon, above two feet in length, that had been thrown up by
the force of the torrent, and a similar one was seen in the water. Our
provisions being now out, we prepared for returning to the ships the
following day; and I determined in a short time to send out Mr. Crozier
with a larger party, well equipped with everything necessary for
procuring us both fish and deer. We therefore left our tent, spare
ammunition, and various other articles that would be required here,
buried under a heap of stones near the stream, and on the morning of the
2d set out for the ships. The change which one week had made upon the
ice it is quite impossible to conceive, the whole surface being now
checkered with large and deep pools of water, where not a symptom of
thawing had before appeared. This continued the whole way to the ships,
which we reached at eight P.M., finding Captain Lyon and his party
returned, after a laborious but unsuccessful endeavour to penetrate
overland to the westward. On my arrival at the ships I found several
new Esquimaux on board, who, to the number of twenty, had lately
arrived from _Toon=o=onee-r=o=ochiuk_, a place situated to the
westward and northward of Igloolik, and somewhere upon the opposite
coast of Cockburn Island. This party confirmed the former account
respecting the two ships that had been forced on shore; and, indeed, as
an earnest of its truth, one man named _Adloo_, who was said to have
actually seen them in this state, was a day or two afterward met by our
people at Arlagnuk, while travelling to the southward, and having on his
sledge a great deal of wood of the same kind as that before described.
This information having excited considerable interest, Lieutenant
Hoppner, who had taken great pains to ascertain the facts correctly,
volunteered his services to accompany some of the Esquimaux, who were
said to be going northward very shortly, and to obtain every information
on this and other subjects which might be within the scope of such a
journey. On the night of the 4th, having heard that a party of the
Esquimaux intended setting out the following morning, Lieutenant Hoppner
and his people went out to their tents to be in readiness to accompany
them. We were surprised to find the next day, that not only Lieutenant
Hoppner's intended guide, but the whole of the rest of these people, had
altogether left the island, and, as it afterward proved, permanently for
the summer. We were now, therefore, for the first time since our arrival
here, entirely deserted by the natives, only two or three of whom again
visited the ships during the remainder of our stay. It appears probable,
indeed, that these wandering people are in the habit of residing at
their various stations only at particular intervals of time, perhaps
with the intention of not scaring the walruses and seals too much by a
very long residence at one time upon the same spot. What made this
appear still more likely was the present state of their winter
habitations at Igloolik, which, though offensive enough at about the
same time the preceding year, were then wholesome and comfortable in
comparison. Besides quantities of putrid walrus flesh, blubber, and oil,
carcasses of dogs, and even of human beings recently deceased, were now
to be seen exposed in their neighbourhood. What remained of the corpse
of Keim=o=oseuk was of course wholly uncovered; a second, of a
child, on which the wolves had feasted, was also lying about; and a
third, of a newly-born infant, was discovered in the middle of a small
lake by Mr. Richards, who caused them all to be buried under ground.
Our stock of meat for the dogs being nearly expended, and no seahorses
having yet been seen near the shore, I sent Mr. Ross with a sledge to
Tern Island on the 13th, in expectation of being supplied by the
Esquimaux. Mr. Ross returned on the 14th without success, the whole of
the natives having left the island after plundering the birds' nests, as
they had done the preceding year.
Finding that our valuable dogs must be now wholly dependant on our own
exertions in providing meat, a boat from each ship was carried down to
the neighbourhood of the open water, and shortly afterward two others,
to endeavour to kill walruses for them. This was the more desirable from
the probability of the Fury's passing her next winter where no natives
were resident, and the consequent necessity of laying in our stock for
that long and dreary season during the present summer. Our people,
therefore, pitched their tents near the old Esquimaux habitations; and
thus were four boats constantly employed, whenever the weather would
permit, for the three succeeding weeks.
On the 16th Lieutenant Hoppner and his party returned to the ships,
having only been enabled to travel to the south shore of Cockburn
Island, on account of their guides not yet proceeding any farther. Two
of the Esquimaux accompanied our travellers back to Igloolik, and, being
loaded with various useful presents from the ships, returned home the
following day.