WE ARRIVE AT EAST CAPE
The next morning, April 19, we started off with the two sledges. I had
our own dogs harnessed in the team that drew the sledge on which I rode
and had with me the pemmican that we had left and other essentials, so
that about all that we finally left behind was our sledge. I should
have liked to keep the sledge and bring it all the way home with me,
but the Chukches liked the looks of it and they would find it useful
in travelling over the rough ice. I could get along without it, and I
was beginning now to feel the long strain and wanted to hurry on by the
fastest means possible.
As we travelled, two to each sledge, one man would ride while the
other walked. The sledges used by the natives, from Cape North east,
are about sixteen feet long, two-and-a-half feet wide and eight inches
high. The framework is light and rather crudely made. The runners are
four inches wide. When the snow is hard they do not use steel shoes;
instead they coat the runners with ice. They always keep a bottle of
water inside their clothing and carry a piece of bearskin with them.
At frequent intervals during the day they pour water on the bearskin
and rub it over the runners; it freezes quickly and forms a coating of
ice which reduces the friction, whereas a steel shoe in extreme cold
has a tendency to cling to the snow. When the weather gets warm enough
so that the snow is at the melting stage they use the steel shoes.
They seldom use a whip; instead they are more likely to use a stick
about three feet long with a heavy spear-point on the end. Along this
stick are several rings which jingle and rattle against each other and
make the dogs quicken their speed. They use this stick as a brake when
the sledge is going down hill, setting it up at the forward end and
letting the spear-point scratch along; in this way they keep the sledge
from running over the dogs. They have large teams of dogs and can get
over the ground rapidly. If all went well we should now be able to make
far greater progress than had been possible with our small number of
worn-out dogs.
We went back across the entrance to Koliuchin Bay to Cape Onman and
followed the bay shore to a point about fifteen miles from Mr. Olsen’s
place. About two hours before we reached the aranga where we were to
spend the night my guide stopped the sledge and informed me that he was
not going to East Cape with me. He said he would go on to the aranga
and the other man would take us on to Mr. Olsen’s place and then we
could go on by ourselves.
“How about the forty dollars?” I asked. “Don’t you want it?”
He had been thinking things over, he said, and he had decided that as
he had a lot of deerskins back in the country and must get them before
some one else did, the money I had agreed to pay him was not enough
to compensate him for the risk he would take, for if he went clear
through to East Cape he would get back too late. The fact was, as I
could easily see, that he knew that forty dollars was much too high a
price for the job he had undertaken, and he was afraid that if I got to
a place where I could talk with some white man about it, I would learn
that and refuse to pay. Apparently he had little confidence in a white
man’s word.
I listened to the explanation he offered about the deerskins and said,
“All right,—we will let it go at that.”
We came to our stopping-place on the western shore of Koliuchin Bay
late in the afternoon. The man who lived in the aranga came out and
asked me in. I saw to it that everything that I had on the sledge was
taken off and put in the aranga and that our five dogs were fed and
cared for. I was just pulling off my boots and stockings when the man
from Koliuchin Island came in and said, “Me want money to bring you
here.”
“Not a cent!” I answered. He was silent for some time. Then I decided
that I would show him that I could be a good sport, so I said I would
give him five dollars. I showed him the forty-five dollars that I
carried with me and said that if he had taken me to East Cape he would
have had the four ten-dollar bills. He said never a word but took the
five-dollar bill that I handed over to him and without waiting to thank
me started back over the road. And now we had no sledge.
That night I made a bargain with another native to get us to Mr.
Olsen’s place, giving him as pay a snow-knife, a small pickaxe and two
steel drills. We left at early dawn the next morning, travelling with
all our goods and chattels on the sledge. Our dogs were harnessed with
his, though they were so tired that they could barely keep up.
About noon we reached Mr. Olsen’s place. Mr. Olsen, I found, was a
naturalized American citizen, thirty-eight years old, a trader known
all up and down the coast. He was the agent of Mr. Olaf Swenson of
Seattle, who was later to play so important a part in the rescue of our
men.
The summer before he had learned of our expedition from Mr. Swenson and
others who had been up to Koliuchin Bay with supplies. It was a great
surprise to him to see me here now. His hospitality was unbounded;
everything he had was at our disposal. He made some tea for us at once,
and offered us bread, also made by himself, which was as good as any I
have ever eaten. I am ashamed to think of the amount of this bread that
I ate; no Christmas cake or plum pudding ever tasted better. After our
meal I enjoyed a smoke of his good tobacco and then we turned in. Mr.
Olsen made me take his own bunk and I had a refreshing sleep.
The man who had accompanied us here now went back, so the next morning,
after a good deal of trouble, Mr. Olsen got another man with a sledge
and a dog team. With the exception of Colt, our dogs were still very
tired. Most of the dogs belonging to the people at Koliuchin Bay were
away in various directions hunting. Mr. Olsen used his influence,
however, and we were able to get away in good season, with a good
sledge and a full dogteam. The driver and ourselves all took turns; two
of us would walk while the other rode.
During the day we passed Pitlekaj, the point where the _Vega_,
Nordenskiöld’s ship, on the voyage on which she made the Northeast
Passage, became frozen in the ice, on September 28, 1878, when only
a few days’ run from Bering Strait and scarcely six miles from open
water, and did not again get free until July 18, 1879. The _Vega_,
fortunately, encountered no such terrific gale as that which drove
the _Karluk_ westward in September, 1913, but her mishap in being
frozen in the ice was quite as unexpected and her situation quite as
uncontrollable.
Several times during the day’s march we stopped at an aranga for tea.
At six o’clock we reached an aranga near Idlidlija Island. We were now
half way from Koliuchin Bay to Cape Serdze. For his services I paid
the old man who had accompanied us here a small spade, two packages
of tobacco and an order on Mr. Olsen for fifteen dollars’ worth of
supplies. I had now given away nearly all the things we had had with us
when we started from Wrangell Island.
After another restful night and a good meal of salmon, we left early
the next morning, April 22, for Cape Serdze. By a little bargaining I
had obtained the services of a native with his sledge and dogs and as
I found another native about to start on his way eastward at the same
time I got him to take Kataktovick along with him. This arrangement
gave us two men to each sledge, which would result in better progress.
It was a wonderful day. The temperature was only a little below the
freezing-point and the sun’s rays were distinctly warm. The sunlight,
in fact, coupled with the glare of the snow, was hard on my eyes.
At Koliuchin Island I had had an Eskimo woman make me a cap out
of Burberry cloth that we had with us, with a three-inch vizor of
sealskin, supported by copper wire around the rim. I wore my hood over
this cap and could adjust the vizor at any angle; this afforded some
relief to my eyes.
At three o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at Cape Serdze. Here
we were met by Mr. Wall, a Norwegian, of about forty, who was an
electrical engineer, by profession, had lived in the United States
and knew people in Boston and New York whom I knew. He lived in a
very comfortable aranga but there was sickness in the house so, with
apologies for his inability to entertain us, he sent us to an aranga
owned by a native who went by the name of Corrigan, the best-known
hunter in Siberia. Corrigan showed me some of the results of his
season’s hunting, which included fifteen or twenty fine polar-bear
skins and a large number of skins of the white fox. He was by far the
most prosperous native I had met. Mr. Wall sent me over some bread and
tea and milk, with some excellent griddle-cakes.
With Mr. Wall’s assistance I was able to obtain the services of
Corrigan to take us to East Cape, a distance of about ninety miles. I
left here everything that would be of no further use to us, for I knew
now that during the remainder of our journey we should be able to
get anything we needed. With the exception of the day when we got to
Koliuchin Island we had had fine weather all the way from Cape North;
now it was even better because every day the sun was getting higher and
its heat more perceptible.
From Cape Serdze eastward the water is deep near the shore and the
travelling in places along the sea-ice was rough, because the drift ice
came close to shore. We had a good many steep inclines to go down and
had exciting experiences, especially as we went along at top speed.
Corrigan, however, was a daring and capable dog-driver, and knew how
to steer the sledge as well as a man can steer a ship. He had sixteen
dogs, all of the very best quality, and where the going was good we
travelled very fast. Corrigan had a chum who went along with us with
some of Corrigan’s dogs and ours. Kataktovick travelled with this other
man.
At several points along the way we passed groups of arangas perched
on shelves projecting out from the face of the cliffs, a hundred feet
above the shore. In some cases it was hard to see how the natives could
climb up into them; they reminded me of pictures I had seen of the
homes of the cliff-dwellers. The natives live on these heights because
they want to be on the coast near the walrus and seal and can find no
other location for their arangas.
We made fifty miles during the day. It was light nearly all of the
twenty-four hours now and we were able to keep going until seven
o’clock in the evening, before stopping at a very comfortable aranga
for the night.
Sitting on the sledge so long, when I had not been used to it, made my
back ache and the pain was so great that I did not sleep at all; in
fact, I had a miserable night. The air in the aranga, too, was very hot.
The next day we got away shortly after daybreak. The going was rough in
many places and we had to travel close under the cliffs. It was a warm
day, with a temperature about freezing; where the sun’s rays struck the
angles of the cliffs water was dropping. There was, in fact, a good
deal of danger in passing along under the cliffs, for the heat of the
sun was releasing the boulders that the frost had dislodged during the
winter and now they came tearing down the face of the cliff without
warning straight across our path.
As we journeyed on the pleasant warmth of the sun’s rays made the
ride a rather more enjoyable excursion than we had been experiencing
before on our travels. At times Corrigan and I attempted conversation.
He could speak very little English and though I had picked up a few
phrases along the coast I could speak no native language that he could
understand. He was considered the dare-devil of northern Siberia and
had such a reputation for taking chances that it was said that when
Corrigan could not get a bear it was because bear were scarce and
it would not be worth while for any one else to try. Mr. Wall had
told Corrigan what I had said about our voyage and shipwreck and our
experiences since. Now, while we were riding along, Corrigan would
start in to tell me of his exploits. I knew just enough of the language
to recognize an occasional word when he described hunting the walrus
and polar bear and the narrow escapes he had had on the drift ice and
hunting whale in skin-boats with the harpoon. He would get more and
more excited, and finally I would cease to understand anything and
could do nothing but nod at frequent intervals, until he would become
aware of my total ignorance of what he was saying; then he would put
his hands to his head, with a gesture of despair. He became greatly
excited and irritated when he found that neither of us could relate his
adventures to the other. It was all very amusing to me, especially as
when I had first heard his name mentioned I had thought of him as an
Irishman.
Stopping at intervals along the way to have tea in the various
arangas that we passed, we finally reached Emma Town, a few miles to
the southwest of East Cape, at about six P.M. The second stage of our
journey from Wrangell Island was over. We had been thirty-seven days
on the march and probably had actually travelled about seven hundred
miles, all but the last part of the way on foot. There now remained
the question of transportation to Alaska, and the sooner I was able to
arrange for that the better.