by one into the apartment where the first portion of the sea-horses had
been conveyed, and which is always that of one of the men immediately
concerned in the killing of them. Here they obtained blubber enough to
set all their lamps alight, besides a few scraps of meat for their
children and themselves. From this time, which was nine o'clock, till
past midnight fresh cargoes were continually arriving, the principal
part being brought in by the dogs, and the rest by the men, who, tying
the thong which held it round their waist, dragged in each his separate
portion. Before the whole was brought in, however, some of them went out
three times to the scene of action, though the distance was a mile and a
half.
Every lamp now swimming with oil, the huts exhibited a blaze of light,
and never was there a scene of more joyous festivity than while the
operation of cutting up the walruses continued. I took the opportunity
which their present good humor afforded to obtain a perfect head and
tusks of one of these animals, which we had not been able to do before;
and indeed, so much were their hearts opened by the scene of abundance
before them, that I believe they would have given us anything we asked
for. This disposition was considerably increased, also, by their taking
it into their heads that their success was in some way or other
connected with, or even owing to, our having taken up our night's
lodging at the huts.
After viewing all this festivity for some time, I felt disposed to rest,
and wrapping myself up in my fur coat, lay down on one of the beds which
Illumea had given up for our accommodation, as well as her _keipik_,
or large deer-skin blanket, which she had rolled up for my pillow. The
poor old woman herself sat up by her lamp, and in that posture seemed
perfectly well satisfied to doze away the night. The singularity of my
night's lodging made me awake several times, when I always found some of
the Esquimaux eating, though after we lay down they kept quiet for fear
of disturbing us. Mr. Halse, who was still more wakeful, told me that
some of them were incessantly employed in this manner for more than
three hours. Indeed, the quantity of meat that they thus contrive to get
rid of is almost beyond belief.
Having at length enjoyed a sound nap, I found on awaking about five
o'clock that the men were already up, and had gone out to resume their
labors on the ice, so that several of them could not have rested more
than two or three hours. This circumstance served to correct a notion we
had entertained, that when once abundantly supplied with food they took
no pains to obtain more till want began again to stare them in the face.
It was now more pleasing to be assured that, even in the midst of
plenty, they did not indolently give themselves up to repose, but were
willing to take advantage of every favorable opportunity of increasing
their store. It is certain, indeed, that were these people more
provident (or, in other words, less gluttonous, for they do not waste
much), they might never know what it is to want provisions, even during
the most inclement part of the year. The state of the ice was to-day
very unfavorable for their purpose, being broken into pieces so small
that they could scarcely venture to walk upon it....
The morning of the 5th proved favorable for a journey I had in
contemplation to the distant huts, to which Iligliuk, who had come to
Winter Island the day before, promised to be my guide. At six o'clock I
set out, accompanied by Mr. Bushman and two of the men, carrying with us
a supply of bread-dust, besides our own provisions and blankets. As the
distance was too great for her son Sioutkuk to walk, we were uncertain
till the moment of setting out how this was to be managed, there being
no sledge at hand for the purpose. We found, however, that a man, whom
we had observed for some time at work among the hummocks of ice upon the
beach, had been employed in cutting out of that abundant material a neat
and serviceable little sledge, hollowed like a bowl or tray out of a
solid block, and smoothly rounded at the bottom. The thongs to which the
dogs were attached were secured to a groove cut around its upper edge;
and the young seal-catcher, seated in this simple vehicle, was dragged
along with great convenience and comfort.
The ice over which we travelled was a level floe that had never suffered
disturbance since its first formation in the autumn, and with not more
than an inch and a half of snow upon it. The path being distinctly
marked out by the people, sledges, and dogs that had before travelled
upon it, one might, without any great stretch of the imagination, have
almost fancied it a road leading over a level and extensive heath
towards a more civilized and substantial village than that which we were
now approaching. Iligliuk walked as nimbly as the best of us; and after
two hours and a half brisk travelling we arrived at the huts, and were
received by the women (for all the men were absent) with every
expression of kindness and welcome. Each was desirous of affording us
lodging, and we had speedily arranged matters so as to put them to the
least possible inconvenience.
These huts, four in number, were in the mode of their construction exact
counterparts of those at Winter Island on our first visit, but, being
now new and clean, presented a striking contrast with the latter, in
their present disordered and filthy state. What gave a peculiarity, as
well as beauty also, to the interior appearance of these habitations,
was their being situated on the ice, which, being cleared of the snow,
presented a flooring of that splendid blue which is, perhaps, one of the
richest colors that nature affords. A seal or two having been lately
procured, every lamp was now blazing, and every _ootkooseek_
smoking with a hot mess which, together with the friendly reception we
experienced and a little warmth and fatigue from travelling, combined in
conveying to our minds an idea of comfort which we could scarcely
believe an Esquimaux hut capable of exciting.
On the arrival of the men, who came in towards evening, with two seals
as the reward of their labor, we were once more greeted and welcomed.
Arnaneelia in particular, who was a quiet, obliging, and even amiable,
man, was delighted to find that my quarters were to be in his apartment,
where Aneetka, his wife, a young woman of about twenty-three, had
already arranged everything for my accommodation; and both these poor
people now vied with each other in their attention to my comfort. The
other two apartments of the same hut were occupied by Kaoongut and
Okotook, with their respective wives and families, it being the constant
custom of these people thus to unite in family groups whenever the
nature of their habitations will allow it. Mr. Bushman being established
with Okotook, and the two men with Kaoongut, we were thus all
comfortably lodged under the same roof....
On the 22d a number of the Esquimaux came to the ships with a sledge,
and among the rest my late host Arnaneelia and his wife, the latter
having the front of her jacket adorned with numberless strings of beads
that we had given her, arranged with exact uniformity, to which, in the
fashion of their dresses and the disposition of their ornaments, these
people always rigidly adhere. Aneetka had scarcely reached the cabin
when she produced a little ivory comb and a pair of handsome mittens,
which she presented to Mr. Edwards, at the same time thanking him for
the attention he had shown her on an occasion when she had been taken in
a fit alongside the "Fury," from which she was recovered by bleeding.
This expression of gratitude, in which she was heartily joined by her
husband, was extremely gratifying to us, as it served in some degree to
redeem these people in our estimation from the imputation of ingratitude
which is indeed one of their greatest failings.
They stated having seen two reindeer the preceding day going over the
ice to the mainland. They spoke of this with great pleasure, and we were
ourselves not displeased with the prospect of changing our diet for a
little venison. They now became extremely urgent with us for wood to
make bows and arrows, most of their own having, with the childishness
that accompanied their first barterings, been parted with to our
officers and men. Having several broken oars which could be turned to
little or no account on board, we were enabled, at a small expense of
useful stores, to furnish them very abundantly with wood for this
purpose. Arnaneelia also informed us that Okotook, who had been unwell
for some days, was now much worse, and seemed, as he described it, to be
laboring under a violent pulmonary complaint. On the circumstance being
mentioned to Mr. Skeoch, he kindly volunteered to go to the village, and
accordingly took his seat on the sledge, accompanied also by Mr. Sherer.
They carried with them a quantity of bread-dust to be distributed among
the Esquimaux at the huts, their success in seal-catching having lately
been indifferent....
In digging up the piece of ground for our garden, we found an incredible
quantity of bones scattered about and concealed under the little soil
there was. They were principally those of walruses and seals, and had
evidently been left a long time before by Esquimaux, in the course of
their wandering visits to the island, being gradually covered by the
vegetable mould formed upon the spot which they helped to fertilize.
Afterwards, when the land became more clear of snow, this was found to
be the case to a much greater extent, every spot of ground upon the
southeast point, which was not absolutely a rock, being covered with
these relics. Some graves were also discovered, in one of which were a
human skull, apparently a hundred years buried, and some pieces of wood
that had probably been parts of spears or arrows almost mouldered to
dust. Knowing as we do the antiseptic properties of this climate, animal
or vegetable substances in this state of decay convey to the mind an
idea of much greater age than they would in any other part of the world.
[Escape from their winter quarters was not accomplished till the
1st of July, they having been for nine months frozen in the
ice.]
FUGITIVES FROM THE ARCTIC SEAS.
ELISHA KENT KANE.
[Of all works of travel in the Arctic seas, none have attracted
more attention than Dr. Kane's "Arctic Explorations," an
attractively written journal of hardship and adventure that had
the interest of a romance to most readers. The expedition ended
in the enforced abandonment of the ship and a long boat journey
over the ice, in which the adventurers experienced many perils
and suffered much from hunger. We give the concluding incidents
of this journey.]
It was the 18th of July before the aspects of the ice about us gave me
the hope of progress. We had prepared ourselves for the new encounter
with the sea and its trials by laying in a store of lumme [an Arctic
bird], two hundred and fifty of which had been duly skinned, spread
open, and dried on the rocks as the _entremets_ of our bread-dust and
tallow.
My journal tells of disaster in its record of our setting out. In
launching the "Hope" from the frail and perishing ice-wharf on which we
found our first refuge from the gale, she was precipitated into the
sludge below, carrying away rail and bulwark, losing overboard our best
shot-gun, Bonsall's favorite, and, worst of all, that universal
favorite, our kettle,--soup-kettle, paste-kettle, tea-kettle,
water-kettle, in one. I may mention before I pass that the kettle found
its substitute and successor in the remains of a tin can which a good
aunt of mine had filled with ginger-nuts two years before, and which had
long survived the condiments that once gave it dignity. "Such are the
uses of adversity."
Our descent to the coast followed the margin of the fast ice. After
passing the Crimson Cliffs of Sir John Ross it wore almost the dress of
a holiday excursion,--a rude one, perhaps, yet truly one in feeling. Our
course, except where a protruding glacier interfered with it, was nearly
parallel to the shore. The birds along it were rejoicing in the young
summer, and when we halted it was upon some green-clothed cape near a
stream of water from the ice-fields above. Our sportsmen would clamber
up the cliffs and come back laden with little auks; great generous fires
of turf, that cost nothing but the toil of gathering, blazed merrily;
and our happy oarsmen, after a long day's work, made easy by the promise
ahead, would stretch themselves in the sunshine and dream happily away
till called to the morning wash and prayers. We enjoyed it the more, for
we all of us knew that it could not last.
This coast must have been a favorite region at one time with the
natives,--a sort of Esquimaux Eden. We seldom encamped without finding
the ruins of their habitations, for the most part overgrown with
lichens, and exhibiting every mark of antiquity. One of these, in
latitude 76 deg. 20', was once, no doubt, an extensive village. Cairns for
the safe deposit of meat stood in long lines, six or eight in a group;
and the huts, built of large rocks, faced each other, as if disposed on
a street or avenue.
The same reasoning which deduces the subsidence of the coast from the
actual base of the Temple of Serapis, proves that the depression of the
Greenland coast, which I had detected as far north as Upernavik, is also
going on up here. Some of these huts were washed by the sea or torn away
by the ice that had descended with the tides. The turf, too, a
representative of very ancient growth, was cut off even with the water's
edge, giving sections two feet thick. I had not noticed before such
unmistakable evidence of the depression of this coast: its converse
elevation I had observed to the north of Wostenholme Sound. The axis of
oscillation must be somewhere in the neighborhood of latitude 77 deg.
We reached Cape York on the 21st, after a tortuous but romantic travel
through a misty atmosphere. Here the land-leads ceased, with the
exception of some small and scarcely practicable openings near the
shore, which were evidently owing to the wind that prevailed for the
time. Everything bore proof of the late development of the season. The
red snow was a fortnight behind its time. A fast floe extended with
numerous tongues far out to the south and east. The only question was
between a new rest, for the shore-ices to open, or a desertion of the
coast and a trial of the open water to the west.
[They had at this time but thirty-six pounds of food per man
and fuel enough to last them three weeks.]
I climbed the rocks a second time with Mr. McGary, and took a careful
survey of the ice with my glass. The "fast," as the whalers call the
immovable shore-ice, could be seen in a nearly unbroken sweep, passing
by Bushnell's Island, and joining the coast not far from where I stood.
The outside floes were large, and had evidently been not long broken;
but it cheered my heart to see that there was one well defined lead
which followed the main floe until it lost itself to seaward.
I called my officers together, explained to them the motives which
governed me, and prepared to re-embark. The boats were hauled up,
examined carefully, and, as far as our means permitted, repaired. The
"Red Eric" was stripped of her outfit and cargo, to be broken up for
fuel when the occasion should come. A large beacon-cairn was built on an
eminence, open to view from the south and west, and a red flannel shirt,
spared with some reluctance, was hoisted as a pennant to draw attention
to the spot. Here I deposited a succinct record of our condition and
purposes, and then directed our course south by west into the
ice-fields.
By degrees the ice through which we were moving became more and more
impacted, and it sometimes required all our ice-knowledge to determine
whether a particular lead was practicable or not. The irregularities of
the surface, broken by hummocks, and occasionally by larger masses, made
it difficult to see far ahead, besides which we were often embarrassed
by the fogs. I was awakened one evening from a weary sleep in my
fox-skins to discover that we had fairly lost our way. The officer at
the helm of the leading boat, misled by the irregular shape of a large
iceberg that crossed his track, had lost the main lead some time before,
and was steering shoreward, far out of the true course. The little canal
in which he had locked us was hardly two boats'-lengths across, and lost
itself not far off in a feeble zigzag both behind and before us; it was
evidently closing, and we could not retreat.
Without apprising the men of our misadventure, I ordered the boats
hauled up, and, under pretence of drying the clothing and stores, made
a camp on the ice. A few hours after the weather cleared enough for the
first time to allow a view of the distance, and McGary and myself
climbed a berg some three hundred feet high for the purpose. It was
truly fearful; we were deep in the recesses of the bay, surrounded on
all sides by stupendous icebergs and tangled floe-pieces. My sturdy
second officer, not naturally impressible, and long accustomed to the
vicissitudes of whaling life, shed tears at the prospect.
There was but one thing to be done: cost what it might, we must harness
our sledges again and retrace our way to the westward. One sledge
had been already used for firewood; the "Red Eric," to which it had
belonged, was now cut up, and her light cedar planking laid upon the
floor of the other boats, and we went to work with the rue-raddies as in
the olden time. It was not till the third toilsome day was well spent
that we reached the berg that had bewildered our helmsman. We hauled
over its tongue and joyously embarked again upon a free lead, with a
fine breeze from the north.
Our little squadron was now reduced to two boats. The land to the
northward was no longer visible, and whenever I left the margin of the
fast to avoid its deep sinuosities, I was obliged to trust entirely to
the compass. We had at least eight days' allowance of fuel on board; but
our provisions were running very low, and we met few birds, and failed
to secure any larger game. We saw several large seals upon the ice, but
they were too watchful for us; and on two occasions we came upon the
walrus sleeping, once within actual lance-thrust; but the animal charged
in the teeth of his assailant and made good his retreat.
[Illustration: WINTER IN THE FAR NORTH ]
On the 28th I instituted a quiet review of the state of things before
us. Our draft on the stores we had laid in at Providence Halt had been
limited for some days to three raw eggs and two breasts of birds a day,
but we had a small ration of bread-dust besides; and when we halted, as
we did regularly for meals, our fuel allowed us to indulge lavishly
in the great panacea of Arctic travel, tea. The men's strength was
waning under this restricted diet, but a careful reckoning up of our
remaining supplies proved to me now that even this was more than we
could afford ourselves without an undue reliance on the fortunes of the
hunt. Our next land was to be Cape Shackleton, one of the most prolific
bird-colonies of the coast, which we were all looking to, much as
sailors nearing home in their boats after disaster and short allowance
at sea. But, meting out our stores through the number of days that must
elapse before we could expect to share its hospitable welcome, I found
that five ounces of bread-dust, four of tallow, and three of bird-meat
must from this time form our daily ration.
So far we had generally coasted the fast ice; it had given us an
occasional resting-place and refuge, and we were able sometimes to
reinforce our stores of provisions by our guns. But it made our progress
tediously slow, and our stock of small shot was so nearly exhausted that
I was convinced our safety depended on increase of speed. I determined
to try the more open sea.
For the first two days the experiment was a failure. We were surrounded
by heavy fogs; a southwest wind brought the outside pack upon us, and
obliged us to haul up on the drifting ice. We were thus carried to the
northward, and lost about twenty miles. My party, much overworked, felt
despondingly the want of the protection of the land-floes.
Nevertheless, I held to my purpose, steering south-southwest as nearly
as the leads would admit, and looking constantly for the thinning out of
the pack that hangs around the western water.
Although the low diet and exposure to wet had again reduced our party,
there was no apparent relaxation of energy, and it was not until some
days later that I found their strength seriously giving way.
It is a little curious that the effect of a short allowance of food does
not show itself in hunger. The first symptom is a loss of power, often
so imperceptibly brought on that it becomes evident only by an accident.
I well remember our look of blank amazement as, one day, the order
being given to haul the "Hope" over a tongue of ice, we found she would
not budge. At first I thought it was owing to the wetness of the
snow-covered surface in which her runners were; but, as there was a
heavy gale blowing outside, and I was extremely anxious to get her on to
a larger floe to prevent being drifted off, I lightened her cargo and
set both crews upon her. In the land of promise off Crimson Cliffs such
a force would have trundled her like a wheelbarrow: we could almost have
borne her upon our backs. Now with incessant labor and standing hauls
she moved at a snail's pace.
The "Faith" was left behind and barely escaped destruction. The outside
pressure cleft the floe asunder, and we saw our best boat with all our
stores drifting rapidly away from us. The sight produced an almost
hysterical impression upon our party. Two days of want of bread, I am
sure, would have destroyed us; and we had now left us but eight pounds
of shot in all. To launch the "Hope" again, and rescue her comrade or
share her fortunes, would have been the instinct of other circumstances;
but it was out of the question now. Happily, before we had time to
ponder our loss a flat cake of ice eddied round near the floe we were
upon; McGary and myself sprang to it at the moment, and succeeded in
floating it across the chasm in time to secure her. The rest of the crew
rejoined her only by scrambling over the crushed ice as we brought her
in at the hummock-lines.
Things grew worse and worse with us; the old difficulty of breathing
came back again, and our feet swelled to such an extent that we were
obliged to cut open our canvas boots. But the symptom which gave me most
uneasiness was our inability to sleep. A form of low fever which hung by
us when at work had been kept down by the thoroughness of our daily
rest; all my hopes of escape were in the refreshing influences of the
halt.
It must be remembered that we were now in the open bay, in the full line
of the great ice-drift to the Atlantic, and in boats so frail and
unseaworthy as to require constant baling to keep them afloat.
It was at this crisis of our fortunes that we saw a large seal
floating--as is the custom of these animals--on a small patch of ice,
and seemingly asleep. It was an ussuk, and so large that I at first
mistook it for a walrus. Signal was made for the "Hope" to follow
astern, and, trembling with anxiety, we prepared to crawl down upon him.
Petersen, with the large English rifle, was stationed in the bow, and
stockings were drawn over the oars as mufflers. As we neared the animal
our excitement became so intense that the men could hardly keep stroke.
I had a set of signals for such occasions which spared us the noise of
the voice; and when about three hundred yards off the oars were taken
in, and we moved in deep silence with a single scull astern.
He was not asleep, for he reared his head when we were almost within
rifle-shot; and to this day I can remember the hard, careworn, almost
despairing expression of the men's thin faces as they saw him move;
their lives depended on his capture.
I depressed my hand nervously, as a signal for Petersen to fire. McGary
hung upon his oar, and the boat, slowly but noiselessly sagging ahead,
seemed to me within certain range. Looking at Petersen, I saw that the
poor fellow was paralyzed by his anxiety, trying vainly to obtain a
rest for his gun against the cut-water of the boat. The seal rose on
his fore-flippers, gazed at us for a moment with frightened curiosity,
and coiled himself for a plunge. At that instant, simultaneously with
the crack of our rifle, he relaxed his long length on the ice, and, at
the very brink of the water, his head fell helpless to one side.