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[ILLUSTRATION: THE PANTHER AMONG THE ICEBERGS.]
THE
LAND OF DESOLATION:
BEING A PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF
OBSERVATION AND ADVENTURE IN
GREENLAND.
By ISAAC I. HAYES, M.D.,
GOLD MEDALIST OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, LONDON, AND OF THE
SOCIÉTÉ DE GÉOGRAPHIE, PARIS; HONORARY MEMBER OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL
SOCIETIES OF BERLIN AND OF ITALY; AUTHOR OF “THE OPEN POLAR SEA,”
“AN ARCTIC BOAT JOURNEY,” “CAST AWAY IN THE COLD,” ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1872.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
Harper & Brothers,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
_Persons Represented._
_An Artist in search of the picturesque._
_An Assistant given to caricature._
_A Photographer, called “Colonel.”_
_Another, who was “Major.”_
_A Professor who made collections._
_A Prince who enjoyed himself._
_A great Hunter._
_A roaring, tearing tar of a Captain._
_A Mate with an inquiring turn of mind._
_A Sagaman who made history._
_A Parson._
_The Belle of a Ball in seal-skin pantaloons._
_Other Ladies in the same condition._
_Also a Boat’s Crew._
_Parliamentarians who smelled fishy._
_Others equally agreeable._
_The northernmost White Man and his family._
_Numerous Governors._
_Officers and Sailors unlimited._
_A Raven._
_An Antiquarian._
_A Witch._
_A Doctor._
_Two Enemies, called “Cook” and “Steward.”_
_A Cabin-boy who woke up once._
_Ladies from Denmark._
_A great many other People._
_Dogs, Polar Bears, and other Animals._
_A Devil’s Thumb._
PREFACE.
The following pages are a record of a visit to Greenland, made in the
summer of 1869, with a small party of friends, in the steam-yacht
of Mr. William Bradford, whose widely celebrated pictures of Arctic
scenery have received such deserved commendation; for, whether we
consider the difficulties of the subject which that artist has
undertaken, or the unusual exposures and hazards he has encountered,
his success has been commensurate with his zeal, talent, and
unflagging energy.
Since Mr. Bradford was desirous only of obtaining materials for his
easel, the voyage was a leisurely one, being mostly near the coast,
where halts were from time to time made at such places as presented
special attractions to the painter. The summer was therefore devoted
to the study of the picturesque rather than to the scientific;
yet numerous opportunities were afforded in the latter direction,
especially with respect to observing the formation of Greenland
glaciers and icebergs—subjects which have not hitherto received
much attention. Facilities never before enjoyed by Americans were
also obtained for visiting the site of the colonies of the ancient
Northmen, who occupied that country from the tenth to the fifteenth
centuries, and whose restless love of adventure led them even so far
from their native homes as our own shores, at least five hundred years
before the renowned voyage of Columbus.
Our range of the Greenland coast was more than a thousand miles,
terminating a good way beyond the last outpost of civilization on the
globe, in the midst of the much dreaded “ice-pack” of Melville Bay.
CONTENTS.
_PART THE FIRST._
RUINS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Ice and Breakers 17
CHAPTER II.
Free from Danger 20
CHAPTER III.
A hopeful Town in a hopeless Place 26
CHAPTER IV.
Eric the Red 39
CHAPTER V.
“The Arctic Six” 45
CHAPTER VI.
Up the Fiord in an Oomiak 51
CHAPTER VII.
The Ruins of Ericsfiord 62
CHAPTER VIII.
The Northmen in Greenland 71
CHAPTER IX.
The Northmen in America 77
CHAPTER X.
The Last Man 82
CHAPTER XI.
A Disconsolate Lover 92
CHAPTER XII.
The Church at Julianashaab 98
CHAPTER XIII.
A Greenland Parliament 101
CHAPTER XIV.
A Greenland Ball 112
_PART THE SECOND._
PALACES OF NATURE.
CHAPTER I.
Ice and Snow 125
CHAPTER II.
Glaciers and Icebergs 129
CHAPTER III.
The Solitary Hut of Peter Motzfeldt 137
CHAPTER IV.
The Glacier 146
CHAPTER V.
Crossing the Glacier 153
CHAPTER VI.
Speculations 166
CHAPTER VII.
Measurements of Glaciers 172
CHAPTER VIII.
The Birth of an Iceberg 175
CHAPTER IX.
A Narrow Escape 179
CHAPTER X.
Icebergs Critically Examined 186
CHAPTER XI.
Man _versus_ Mosquitoes 197
CHAPTER XII.
A Picnic on the Glacier 201
CHAPTER XIII.
Bound for the Arctic Circle 206
_PART THE THIRD._
UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN.
CHAPTER I.
Across the Arctic Circle 215
CHAPTER II.
Beyond Civilization 240
CHAPTER III.
Ice-Navigation 253
CHAPTER IV.
Hunting by Steam 263
CHAPTER V.
Among the Ice-fields of Melville Bay 284
CHAPTER VI.
The Last White Man 294
CHAPTER VII.
The Fiord of Aukpadlartok 309
CHAPTER VIII.
Upernavik 318
CHAPTER IX.
Disco Island 328
CHAPTER X.
Jacobshavn 339
CHAPTER XI.
A Week at Godhavn 348
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
The “Panther” among the Icebergs _Frontispiece_.
View of Julianashaab 27
The Oomiak and Crew 46
View of the Old Norse Ruins 63
Ground-plan of Ruins 67
Concordia at the Picnic 93
A Greenland Parliament in Session 104
Concordia Dressed for the Ball 119
Front View of the Glacier 147
Crossing the Crevasse on an Ice-bridge 160
Map of the Glacier 162
The Glacier of Sermitsialik 167
Vertical Section of Glacier 170
The Kryolite Mine at Arsut Fiord 207
The Peak of Kresarsoak 221
Entering the Fiord 224
The Lumme of the Arctic Sea 226
Shooting Lumme 228
Esac 231
Esac’s Hut 233
The Governor and Family 238
View of Upernavik and Kresarsoak 241
Eider-ducks 246
The Polar Bear 254
Seals 256
The Devil’s Thumb 261
The Panther after the Bears 268
The Captain after the Bear 278
Moored to a Floe in Melville Bay 287
The Iceberg Castle 291
We Steam away from the Midnight Sun 295
The most Northern House on the Globe 299
Jensen and his Family 303
An Arctic Witch 307
We go through an Iceberg to call on Philip 310
Philip, the Hunter, and his Sons 312
The Raven 317
Hans and his Family 322
The Great Auk 337
Iceberg in Jacobshavn Fiord 346
“Out upon time! it will leave no more
Of the things to come than the things before!
Out upon time! who forever will leave
But enough of the past for the future to grieve
O’er that which hath been, and o’er that which must be;
What we have seen our sons shall see—
Remnants of things that have passed away,
Fragments of stone, reared by creatures of clay.”
Byron’s _Siege of Corinth_.
THE LAND OF DESOLATION.
_PART THE FIRST._
RUINS.
CHAPTER I.
ICE AND BREAKERS.
On a gloomy night in the month of July, 1585, the ship _Sunshine_,
of fifty tons, “fitted out,” as the old chronicles inform us, “by
divers opulent merchants of London, for the discovery of a north-west
passage, came, in a thick and heavy mist, to a place where there was
a mighty roaring as of waves dashing on a rocky shore.” The captain
of this ship was brave old John Davis, who, when he had discovered
his perilous situation, put off in a boat, and thereby discovered
that his ship was “embayed in fields and hills of ice, the crashing
together of which made the fearful sounds that he had heard.” The
ship drifted helplessly through the night, and when the morning
dawned, “the people saw the tops of mountains white with snow, and of
a sugar-loaf shape, standing above the clouds; while at their base
the land was deformed and rocky, and the shore was everywhere beset
with ice, which made such irksome noise that the land was called ‘The
Land of Desolation.’”
On a gloomy night in the month of July, 1869, the ship _Panther_, of
three hundred and fifty tons, fitted out for a summer voyage by a
party in pursuit of pleasure, came in like manner, through a thick
and heavy mist, to a place where there was a mighty roaring as of
waves dashing on a rocky shore. The captain of this ship was John
Bartlett, who, when he had discovered his perilous situation, put
off in a boat, and returned with the knowledge that the _Panther_,
like the _Sunshine_ of old, was embayed in “fields and hills of ice,”
the crashing together of which made the fearful sounds that he had
heard; and then, when the morning dawned, “the people saw the tops
of mountains white with snow, and of a sugar-loaf shape, standing
above the clouds; while at their base the land was deformed and
rocky,” and the shore was everywhere beset with ice, which made such
“irksome noise,” that the people knew their ship had drifted to the
self-same spot where the _Sunshine_ had drifted nearly three hundred
years before, and that the land before them was Davis’s “Land of
Desolation.”
A mysterious land to them, and one around which clung many marvellous
associations. Its legends had been the wonder of their boyhood; its
grandeur was now their admiration. They had heard of it as a land
of fable; tradition had peopled it with dwarfs and giants; history
recorded that a race of men once occupied it whose fleets of ships
traversed the waters in which their own vessel was now so grievously
beset, bearing merchandise to hamlets of peace and plenty. Their eyes
naturally sought a spot whereon to locate the home of this ancient
people; but nothing could they discover save sterile rocks and desert
wastes of ice. They saw dark cliffs which rose threateningly above
them abruptly from the sea, and beyond these their eye wandered away
into the interior, which the snows of centuries had converted into
a vast plain of desolate whiteness. Returning from this limitless
perspective, the eye fell upon the troubled waters. There were no
signs of life anywhere: desolation frowned on every side. Yet the
spectacle was sublime; and, as if to render that sublimity the more
complete, there was added soon an aspect of the terrible. This came
in the form of a gale of wind, which speedily rose to a tempest.
Rain, hail, and snow swept down upon the ship, and every distant
object was hidden except when the storm-curtain was occasionally
rent asunder, and a mountain peak was exposed, with the clouds
breaking against its sides. The creaking and groaning ice was around
them everywhere, and an occasional iceberg of enormous magnitude
broke through the gloom, and, while moving on through the angry and
troubled waters, received with cold indifference the fierce lashings
of the sea.