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Title: David goes to Greenland
Author: David Binney Putnam
Contributor: Bob Bartlett
Illustrator: Kakutia
Release date: February 13, 2025 [eBook #75370]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1926
Credits: Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for Project Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND ***
DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND
BY
DAVID BINNEY PUTNAM
With a Foreword by
CAP’N BOB BARTLETT
ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, WITH DECORATIONS
FROM DRAWINGS MADE ESPECIALLY BY THE ESKIMO,
KAKUTIA, AT KARNAH ON WHALE SOUND
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1926
To
My Best Friend
WHO REALLY SHOULD
HAVE GONE TO GREENLAND
MOTHER
FOREWORD
David has asked me to write a foreword for his book, which I have seen
him working at during these last three months as we sailed northward.
Yesterday I read the manuscript which had just been typewritten from
those painstaking penciled pages of the boy’s.
As I read I thought more than ever how fortunate David is, first to go
with “Uncle Will” (Dr. Beebe) as far south as the Galápagos Islands on
the Equator last year, and now to North Greenland. For anyone, of
thirteen or thirty-nine, that’s a pretty fine spread and a great
experience.
I must confess that it was with some misgivings I thought of the
youngster going with us. While it was only a summer trip, almost
anything is likely to happen in the Arctic and there’s always a chance
of having a pretty rough time—hard, anyway, for a boy. But right here,
as the expedition is drawing to a close (and some of it was fairly
strenuous), I must say these misgivings did not materialize.
David is a thoroughbred and has a real sane idea of getting along. No
one who reads his bully story can fail to realize this. From start to
finish I have watched him closely and he has measured up handsomely to
all, and more, that any observer could require.
And David is still a boy. He has learned much on the Beebe trip and on
this one, things that will sink deep into his young soul. I believe in
the years to come he will reap well of what he has sown, and what has
been sown for him. School is fine and school must come first. But
surely if opportunity offers to combine such experiences as these with
“book learning,” it seems to me the grandest sort of education.
I have heard it said that this youngster is having no real boy’s life.
Anyone who feels that just doesn’t know David. They haven’t seen him
with lads of his own age, as I have, on the football field with his
friends at home or with young Eskimos on the Morrissey and ashore in
Greenland.
David is still a boy, but a boy who has happened to have a rather wide
experience. He’s not a paragon. He’s just plain B-O-Y. And for many
years to come he will remain young, with a young heart and the natural
unspoiled freshness and happiness of youth. And to me, who have not had
many boys around me as I’ve knocked about, it’s been a real pleasure to
have him along.
I wonder if many boys who read David’s simple story here, with its many
interesting incidents, won’t become jealous. I’m sure I should, if I
could turn the clock back more years than one likes to think about.
What youngster wouldn’t want to go hunting three thousand miles from
home, and see walrus and polar bear and narwhal and all the rest of it?
That’s really what this book should do. Not really make less lucky boys
jealous, you understand, but stir up their blood and make them realize
that there’s lots in life over the hill and beyond the horizon. A
stirring-up like that won’t hurt them. It’s good tonic for the
youngsters who are lounging away their youth and getting bad starts
fussing around dances and clubs and autos and all that sort of thing,
when they ought to be out getting their hands dirty, their muscles hard
and their minds cleaned out with the honest experiences of the sea and
far places.
I hope the boys who read their way to Greenland with David in this
little book (and their Dads, too) will become imbued with David’s
spirit and find for themselves worthwhile Ultima Thules.
Robert A. Bartlett.
On Board the Morrissey,
Baffin Bay,
September 5, 1926.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.—Off to Greenland 3
II.—Through the Straits of Belle Isle 16
III.—We Reach Greenland 30
IV.—Along the Greenland Coast 38
V.—Upernivik and the Duck Islands 49
VI.—Across Melville Bay 62
VII.—Shipwreck 72
VIII.—The Morrissey Repaired 88
IX.—Our First Narwhal 100
X.—Our Eskimo Artist 109
XI.—Walrus Hunting 116
XII.—Across to Jones Sound 125
XIII.—Nanook! 135
XIV.—At Pond’s Inlet 143
XV.—More Bears 156
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
Cap’n Bob Bartlett Frontispiece
“They Set Me to Work with a Paint Brush” 6
Will Bartlett, Mate; “Skipper Tom” Gushue, Bo’sun; Ralph
Spracklin; and Billy Pritchard, the Cook 7
David and His Corona 12
The Skipper Tells David About Taking Observations 13
David Tries Carrying Art Young Through the Mud 18
In the Cross Trees 19
The Morrissey in Jones Sound 26
A Baffin Bay Portrait of the Author 27
We Get a Basking Shark at Holsteinsborg 34
Carl Shows a South Greenland Youngster how to Use a Pathex
Motion Picture Camera 35
Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery 42
Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona 43
Robert Peary Tries a Kayak 52
Art Young Tries an Eider Duck Egg from the Eskimo Cache on
the Duck Islands 53
The King Dog of Governor Otto’s Team, with His Queen 56
Feeding the Dogs at Upernivik 57
In a Fjord Back of Upernivik 64
Tupiks, the Eskimo Summer Houses Made of Skins, at Karnah 65
The Morrissey on the Reef Off Northumberland Island 74
View from Shore of the Wrecked Morrissey 75
Where the Morrissey’s False Keel Ripped Off on the Rocks 80
When the Eskimos Came to Shipwreck Camp on Northumberland
Island 81
Art Shoots Ducks Among the Icebergs from the Dory with the
Johnson Engine 90
Dad Tries His Hand at Netting Dovekies 91
Carl and Art Try Swimming at the Foot of the Glacier 96
Up on the Glacier, where the Great Ice Cap Comes Down to the
Sea 97
Harry Raven, Zoölogist, Shows how to Clean a Narwhal Skull 106
Working on a Narwhal Skeleton 107
Kakutia of Karnah, the Eskimo Artist who Made the Sketches
Used in this Book, on the Morrissey in Whale Sound 112
Two Blond Eskimos! David and Nils 113
Pooadloona Throws His Harpoon at a Walrus 118
Walrus on Deck. All the Meat Went to the Eskimos, the
Skeletons and Hides to the Museum 119
“Halitosis,” the Baby Walrus Roped By Carl 122
Hoisting a Walrus on Board 123
Dressing a Walrus. Left to Right: Dan, Joe, Art, David and
Carl 130
Art and a Dead Walrus on an Ice Pan in Jones Sound 131
Enough for Several Fine Duck Messes 136
Enjoying Our Atwater Kent Radio 137
Kellerman “Shoots” Some Eskimos of Inglefield Gulf 140
Kudluktoo and Matak Show David the Right Way to Eat Narwhal
Hide, a Prized Eskimo Delicacy 141
Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head 150
Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet 151
The Polar Bears on the Iceberg 158
The Polar Bear and Her Two Cubs Swim Away from the Berg 159
Carl and One of the Polar Bear Cubs He Roped 164
Art Young and the Bear He Killed with Bow and Arrow 165
DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND
CHAPTER I
OFF TO GREENLAND
Last year I went on the Beebe trip to the Galápagos Islands on the
steamer Arcturus which was all fixed up especially for the journey.
This was a scientific expedition down to the Equator to get deep sea
specimens, some of them caught at a depth of nearly three miles. The
islands where we went are on the Equator six hundred miles west of
Ecuador in South America, and going down we passed through the Panama
Canal.
“Uncle Will”—that’s Mr. Beebe—let me go on the Pacific part of this
expedition as a sort of junior guest. We had many new experiences, some
of them pretty exciting. There was diving in a helmet away below the
surface of the water, and seeing volcanoes in eruption and lava streams
flowing into the sea, and harpooning a big devil fish. Although I was
the youngest member of the party—my twelfth birthday was down at Cocos
Island south of Panama—I was able to have a part in almost everything.
And of course it was great fun.
Captain Bob Bartlett is a great friend of Dad’s. It was Cap’n Bob, you
remember, who was with Admiral Peary when he first reached the North
Pole in 1909. Well, he and Dad often talked of a Greenland expedition,
which the Captain said could be about the finest kind of a trip, with
lots to do and see.
The American Museum of Natural History in New York wanted some things
from the North for its new Hall of Ocean Life, as well as Arctic birds.
So Dad said he would organize an expedition and get the specimens they
wanted. Among these are Narwhal, Greenland Brown Shark, walrus, all
kinds of seal and many birds. Of course we couldn’t get all we were
looking for, but even a part of it would make the trip worth while.
I was told that I could go on this trip to Greenland, and that as soon
as school was over I was to go down to the shipyard on Staten Island
where the Morrissey was being refitted, and that there would be plenty
for me to do there.
We are to go as far North as about seven hundred miles this side of the
Pole. In all we shall cover more than seven thousand miles and will be
back in October. Perhaps if we’re late Dad will send me down by train
from Sydney, for school. And we’re taking a couple of school books too,
which he says I’ll have to work at when there is time.
It is certainly exciting to look forward to the adventures which I hope
we will have. I’ve a Newton 2.56 rifle and a twenty-two rifle and I
hope to get a chance to do some shooting, although I think the most fun
will be helping in the scientific and taxidermy work, and in getting
the motion pictures. And part of my job is to write a record as we go
along, to make a little book later.
Last year Mother took me below the Equator. And this year I’m going
with Dad 780 miles north of the Arctic Circle—that is, if we have luck
with the ice. Anyway, I’m certainly a lucky thirteen year old boy!
School closed on Thursday afternoon. Friday I went to Dad’s office and
looked over some equipment. He and I had been working over the
equipment and making lists and generally getting ready, for weeks. In
the afternoon we went by ferry to West New Brighton on Staten Island to
McWilliams’ shipyard, where our boat, the Morrissey, was.
The Morrissey is a two masted Newfoundland fishing schooner. She is one
hundred feet long and has a twenty-two foot beam, and draws about
fourteen feet when heavily loaded. With us now she draws probably about
twelve. Her crew are all Newfoundlanders, wonderful sailors in fair
weather or foul. Captain Bartlett owns her, and Dad and some friends
refitted her, putting in an engine and making many changes to take care
of our party.
Jim is the tallest of the crew. He is over six feet and looks like a
cow puncher with small hips and broad shoulders. He is a fine ship’s
carpenter. Tom, the boatswain, is the oldest and most experienced. He
can make most anything that belongs on a sailing vessel. He was with
Peary on the Roosevelt on a couple of his trips to the North, including
his one to the Pole. Joe is the biggest man of the crew, and Ralph the
youngest.
Billy Pritchard is about the most important man on board, to my way of
thinking. He is the cook. Bill is pretty small, but he is a grand cook
and has had lots of experience at sea. He has been in the far north and
has been wrecked four times. When the Morrissey came down from
Newfoundland to get us, when the ship jumped in a heavy sea Billy got
thrown clean out of his bunk across the galley and on top of the stove.
Billy’s helper is Don, who is always very nice to me.
Our skipper is Robert A. Bartlett who was with Peary and has spent
years of his life in the Arctic and is about the most experienced ice
navigator living today. Cap’n Bob is most awfully nice to me and he and
his brother Will Bartlett, who is the mate, say they will help me learn
the names of the ropes and to box the compass and all that. You see,
I’ve never made a trip on a sailing vessel before, and there is lots to
learn.
Well, when I got to the ship, a paint brush was stuck in my hand and I
was told to start painting on the hull, as we were then in dry-dock
having a hole bored in the stern for the shaft for the new propeller.
That day I painted pretty near a quarter of the hull and all day
Saturday there was other painting—bunks, lockers, hatch covers, etc. We
had lots of fine Masury paint which had been given to the Expedition.
And there was plenty of cleaning-up work to do.
The Morrissey is divided into three different cabins. The fo’castle has
six bunks where the crew sleep. It is used for the galley also. You
know, on a ship the kitchen is called “galley.” Aft of that comes the
main cabin where most of us sleep. There is a big table in the middle
of the room which is used for eating, writing, working, etc. There are
twelve bunks and the wireless outfit in this cabin, and a large
skylight put in where the old cargo hatch used to be.
The wireless is a short wave outfit, run by Ed Manley, who is an
amateur who volunteered for the job and who just graduated from
Marietta College in Ohio. The fine big radio equipment, with which we
expect to be able to talk right to home even from north of the Arctic
Circle, was given to the Expedition by Mr. Atwater Kent and the
National Carbon Company who make the Eveready batteries.
Then comes the engine room which was once the after hold where they
stored fish and carried coal when the boat was used for freight. All
around the engine are stores, crowded in tight so they can’t possibly
shift when the boat rolls around in a storm. Some of them belong to
Knud Rasmussen and some to Professor Hobbs whom we will pick up at
Sydney. He is going to South Greenland to study the birth of storms on
the Ice Cap there. We are picking up Rasmussen at Disko Island on
Greenland and are taking these stores for him to his trading station at
Thule, near Cape York. Rasmussen is a great Danish explorer and an
expert on Eskimo.
Astern of the engine room comes the after cabin where the Captain, Dad,
Mr. Raven and Mr. Streeter sleep. There are six bunks, a table, a small
stove and the only chair on board. Over the table is a shelf of books
mostly about the Arctic and adventure. I have some special ones of my
own to read, including Two Years Before the Mast, Doctor Luke of the
Labrador, The Cruise of the Cachelot and Richard Carvel. And then Dad
has waiting for me a couple of school books, Latin and an English
grammar, which don’t sound quite so much fun.
Most of our own stores are in a special store room next to the galley
and stored in the run and lazarette away aft. On deck we have over
fifty barrels of fuel oil for our Standard Diesel engine which you
probably know burns oil and not gasoline.
We started on Sunday, June twentieth, from the American Yacht Club on
Long Island Sound. That’s at Rye, our home, and most of the men in our
party visited at home with us before we started.
It was a hot sunny day, and a great many people came out in launches
and inspected the Morrissey. There was a big lunch party at the Club
and Commodore Mallory gave Dad and Cap’n Bob the flag of the Club to
take North with us. At about a quarter to five we got clear of the
visitors and got the anchor up and started down the Sound. A great many
yachts and small boats were all around us, blowing horns and whistles
and giving us a grand send-off.
Grandpa’s yacht, the Florindia, took all the mothers and sisters and
wives of our crowd, with my Mother and my little brother June. They
went along with us as far as Sound Beach, Connecticut. And then, when
they had tooted their last salute, and we had answered on our fog horn,
we were actually off for the North.
Monday was a nice calm day which gave Art Young and myself a chance to
stow our stuff. He bunks just below me so we have to go half and half
on the lockers. Art is the bow and arrow expert who was in Africa
shooting lions. In America he has killed grizzly bear, moose and Kodiak
bear with his arrows. He hopes to try his luck with a polar bear and
walrus.
Monday morning, our first day out, we saw eighteen airplanes near Block
Island, at the eastern end of Long Island Sound, all headed for New
York. Perhaps they were going to welcome Commander Byrd, who was
expected back in a couple of days, coming home from England after
flying to the North Pole. Dad and Mr. Byrd are friends and he was at
our house a little before he started on his trip in the Chantier.
There was a fine wind and a pretty small sea running all day. It was
nice and sunny, but very cold, so that we all put on lots of sweaters
and coats. Everyone ate dinner and supper that day. As we were going up
through Vineyard Sound in the afternoon a submarine and a lot of Coast
Guard vessels passed us.
Then it began to get rougher with a stiff southerly breeze which was
fine for sailing. On the next afternoon we saw a lot of small whales,
about 25 feet long. Two or three of them jumped most out of the water,
and once about fifty yards ahead of our boat I saw one jump completely
out. He looked like a huge bullet.
That day almost all of our gang were sick, and even a couple of the
crew. I spent most of the time on deck, listening to Mr. Raven and Van
Heilner tell stories about spear traps and the way the Malay natives
made and set traps for animals.
We were rocking so hard and keeling over so much that often the water
would come in through both port and starboard scuppers. I was looking
through a scupper hole when we hit a big wave and all of a sudden the
water came right in and hit me in the face as I turned around from
watching Captain Bob slack the main sheet.
Ralph, one of the crew, has showed me how to make chafing gear from
rope. It is used to keep the sails from slapping and wearing out
against the steel cables. And Jim has taught me the names of the sails
and is starting on the ropes.
The last two days of the trip to Sydney were not so good, with a lot of
fog and some rain. Now and then we heard fog signals on the shore of
Nova Scotia, and when the fog lifted saw the shore and lighthouses. It
is great fun to go up in the crow’s nest.
CHAPTER II
THROUGH THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE
We arrived in Sydney on Thursday morning, a few minutes before two
o’clock, and I stayed up to see what happened. By good luck there was
no fog, which made things easier.
The first thing in the morning we cleaned up our cabin, and afterward
we all went ashore, to a little hotel where we had baths. Bathing on
the Morrissey is a very rare thing, although probably later on we will
use the big round washtub which was meant for clothes but which I
suppose can take us too. When Dad refitted the vessel, at the shipyard
down at Staten Island, they put on the deck a big steel water tank
which holds about 750 gallons. Then there are the water barrels too so
that we really are pretty well fixed.
Up North, Captain Bob tells me, when we get out of water we just go
alongside an iceberg and pump the water from pools on the berg over to
our tank. For this we have a little pump affair with a piece of garden
hose at each end. The melted water on the bergs is fresh, unless sea
spray has blown up into the pools.
That morning in Sydney I wrote some letters, to Mother and others. And
then in the afternoon Robert Peary, Art Young, Ed Manley, Fred
Linekiller and myself went over to the town of Sydney in our little
motor launch. Sydney is about five miles away across a big bay, and is
far larger than North Sydney where our ship lies.
Over there we saw a very big old square rigger with gun ports all along
her sides. She was once a frigate of the British Navy, I suppose about
the time of Old Ironsides. We went aboard and looked around to see if
we could find any loose belaying pins for my collection, but without
luck.
The next day Dad, Art Young, Carl, Mr. Kellerman and I went off to see
if we could find any trout fishing in one of the brooks which came down
to the bay a few miles from our anchorage. We left our boat on a sort
of beach and walked up the stream to try our luck. There wasn’t any.
After fishing for a while we went back to the boat, which we had
anchored a little off shore. But the tide had gone out and we found her
nearly high and dry in the mud.
We pushed and we shoved and pulled in mud up to our knees for quite a
time until finally we got her off. Art had no boots on so I tried to
carry him out but he was too heavy. Then we brought the boat pretty
close in and Dad tried to carry Art out. Dad had Art on his back—Art is
a big man and weighs I suppose 190 pounds—and was starting to come out
when the extra weight shoved his feet right down in the sticky mud over
his boots and when he tried to pull up his legs one boot came off and
they both lost their balance and fell into the mud and water. They took
it as a joke and had to walk nearly a mile before we found a place
where they could get aboard easily.
Over at another beach we ate our lunch which we had brought with us.
And near there Art and I got the first game of the expedition. After
sneaking up on it we charged in. And what do you think we found?
It was a big clam bed. Altogether we dug about a bushel and that night
we had a fine clam chowder. Not quite as exciting as getting a walrus,
but at least it was fun and we claimed the clams really were the first
game brought back to the Morrissey.
We saw Newfoundland for the first time on the twenty-eighth of June. It
was a very pretty sight, the mountains with snow on their sides that
had not melted away on account of the very late season. Dad says
wherever one goes it always seems that there is an unusual season. On
some of the hills the sun was shining and on others great shadows were
floating around. In some ways they looked much like the hills in
Montana, rolling and mostly bare.
We saw three little fishing schooners off the Bay of Islands, which is
a big bay on the western shore of Newfoundland. It took us from four
o’clock until eight to cross the bay. We passed one of these boats
about seven-thirty and heard someone playing the cornet, not very well.
It sounded queer to hear a sound like that come floating across these
far-away waters.
There was a beautiful sunset, so red that it looked like blood dripping
out of the sky. Ahead the weather looked fine, but astern was a big
black cloud with lightning darting out of it every once in a while. And
it sure did storm. It was so dark that we couldn’t see a thing. On deck
I fell two or three times, as it’s pretty hard to get around in the
dark on account of the deck cargo—barrels, dories, motor-boats and the
Hobbs canoes, beside lots of lumber and rope.
The wind was blowing like everything and the rain came down in
torrents. Art and myself put on our oilskins and boots and went on deck
to cover up the skylights that were leaking an awful lot. Skylights
never seem to work quite right, anyway. We put canvas and tarpaulins
over them. Water was breaking over our bows. But the Morrissey didn’t
seem to care a bit, and I think Cap’n Bob and Will really seemed to
sort of like it. Cap’n Bob is a wonder and is most awfully nice to me.
He seems to like having me work on the ropes and get into things as
much as I can about the vessel.
The lightning struck pretty near us once or twice and often the whole
sky was bright with forks of blinding lightning darting about wildly.
We saw our first icebergs on the twenty-ninth, and from noon on passed
about ten, four of them really big ones. One of them was about fifty
feet high and a hundred feet long. An iceberg is about one eighth above
water and seven eighths below. You can imagine how big the one I
described must really be; and of course later we saw bergs much bigger.
The smaller bergs and pieces of floating ice are called “growlers.”
Just a week ago we had reports that the Straits of Belle Isle were
frozen over from Labrador to Newfoundland, but the south wind of the
last few days seemed to have pretty well cleaned them out, and we went
through without any trouble. In the Straits we saw two steamers, which
like ourselves were probably making the first passage of this season.
After leaving the Straits we saw scattered bergs all day until about
four o’clock when we ran into our first real ice. There were lots and
lots of pieces in a huge bunch about three miles by one mile. There
were bergs as big as a good-sized house floating around by the
hundreds. I went aloft with Ed Manley and looked around on the
beautiful sight. The ice was blue on the top and a very pretty light
green underneath. When up in the crow’s nest you can see the bottom of
the bergs a way down.
In the morning it was pretty foggy and we came close to some big bergs.
Once when I was on deck we saw a berg not a hundred yards away that
looked like a small hotel, about a hundred and twenty feet high and
three hundred feet long.
For two days we were in the ice pretty nearly all the time. This was
the Labrador Pack, Cap’n Bob said. One morning I woke up from a jolt
when we hit a piece of ice. The bow of the boat goes out of the water
and comes down with all its force and breaks up the ice; or else we
sort of ride along on it a ways until it breaks loose. Anyway, it is
nice to know that the Morrissey is built of good solid oak, and that
there is that extra coating of greenheart sheathing around the outside
to protect her somewhat from the ice.
There was ice as far as we could see all day long, and some fog. Our
course had been zigzagging in and out and around the ice, and it seems
strange to come upon so much of it so suddenly when just the other day
there wasn’t a bit. It is smooth water where there is a lot of ice, so
we made pretty good time even with all our twisting about.
One night we had quite a party, to make the time go well. With our
little Pathex machine we had movies, and there was candy and our “foggy
dew” orchestra played between the reels, and Art Young played solos on
his funny cut-down violin which he has taken to Africa and all over on
his hunting trips. “Nanook of the North” was the picture, and Bob
Flaherty, who made it, is a great friend of ours and has told me lots
about the life of the Eskimos up in the Hudson Bay country. By the way,
Dad says that perhaps we will go up there next summer.
It was quite sunny at times during the day and Dad and Mr. Kellerman
took a great many pictures, both movies and stills. Mr. Kellerman would
go out on the bowsprit and get down on the stays, taking movies of the
prow cutting through the ice.
It is very exciting to see how the crew take the boat through the ice.
One man is in the crow’s nest, on the foremast. He calls out where to
go and then the man at the wheel repeats his words so as not to make a
mistake.
You hear the man aloft yell, “Starbo-ard!”
And then at the wheel the helmsman repeats, “Starbo-ard!”
Then the boat swings over to port, because when the tiller is drawn by
the wheel in one way the boat goes in the other.
Altogether for me a pretty interesting and exciting First of July. The
temperature was about 34, just a few degrees above freezing. And
usually at this time of year I am swimming at home!
One night Professor Hobbs of the University of Michigan gave us a
lecture on the Greenland Ice Cap. He believes that many of the Atlantic
storms start in Greenland. The country, as you probably know, is
practically all ice. There is just a little strip of land around the
shore, especially at the south, which is not covered with the Ice Cap.
It is thought that this may be a mile or more thick, but nobody knows
the exact measurement. The glaciers are tongues of the Ice Cap that
kind of ooze out to the ocean and then break off into icebergs. There
are about three hundred people in the part of Greenland where we are
going, up North. The Greenland Ice Cap and the Antarctic regions are
supposed to be the coldest places in the world, even colder than the
North Pole region.
When Peary crossed the northern part of Greenland he found that when he
climbed a hill of ice the wind was in his face; and when he went down a
slope the wind was on his back. In other words, that there always
seemed to be a wind coming down from the ice. Professor Hobbs and his
party, whom we are taking to Holsteinsborg, will study these winds, the
movements of the ice and other things.
One time about our second day in the ice when we were winding in and
out of the leads we saw a black something in the water. I yelled out to
the others to come and see the seal. It was the first northern one I
had seen outside of a zoo or circus. I happened to see this one because
I was out on the end of the bowsprit, with Robert Peary, our chief
engineer, with whom I play around a lot. He is the son of Admiral Peary
who discovered the North Pole. This is his first trip North. He and I
are great friends.
You probably have heard of Eric the Red. He was a Norwegian who
equipped a ship from Norway in the year 983 and set sail for a land
that had been discovered by one Gunbjorn to the west of Iceland. When
he got to this land he wondered how he could best get people to go
there to live, so he called it Greenland. That was the real beginning
of the present Greenland. After that cattle were brought and raised in
the southern parts.
Greenland is about fifteen hundred miles long from South to North and
about six hundred miles wide at the widest place.
We will pick up Knud Rasmussen at Disko Island where, I have read, lots
of fossils have been found. I hope to get some for my collection. At
home I have a small room which we call my museum, in which I am
gathering together quite a lot of really interesting things. Already I
have a lot there brought back from the Arcturus expedition, and things
given me by explorers and travellers who come to our house. One of my
best treasures is a bunch of pieces of the shell of a dinosaur egg,
given me by Roy Chapman Andrews, the man who first found these eggs in
Asia. They are ten million years old.
CHAPTER III
WE REACH GREENLAND
Our first sight of Greenland was on Monday, July fifth. It was very
pretty with the great lofty mountain peaks sticking up out of the fog
with snow on their tops. All afternoon we followed along the shore
northward, and pretty well out. We had come a long way over from the
other shore at the Straits of Belle Isle, and what with fog and
currents and the ice we had dodged through, it was hard to be sure
exactly where we were.
The next morning Captain Bartlett was worried because there was a
strong breeze blowing and we did not know whether we had passed our
port or not. We wanted to get in to Holsteinsborg. On account of the
fog and mists he had not been able to take observations.
We kept a constant lookout with the glasses and about nine o’clock saw
something like a big white flag being waved near some small huts on
shore. Probably it was a dried seal skin or something like that. Anyway
the Greenlanders were signalling us, and we stopped because we were
very anxious to get someone on board and find out exactly where we
were.
We put over a small boat, and Dad, Peary the engineer, the Mate and
Carl went ashore and brought the first man back to the boat. Three
kayaks came out to meet them. Carl spoke Norwegian to them and asked
where Holsteinsborg was. He didn’t understand so we showed him a chart
and named the place. He understood that and made motions that he would
show us the way there.
It was great fun to see him go up and down in the little kayak without
tipping over. The kayak is the native Eskimo boat, a sort of little
canoe made of seal skin stretched over a light frame of small wood. It
is decked over all except for a hole, or sort of cockpit where the man
gets in sticking his feet out forward out under the deck, where it is
only about six inches deep. They have a kind of skin covering that fits
over the opening of the cockpit and ties up around their waist tightly
so as to keep the water out entirely. The paddle is all one piece of
wood, with a blade on each end. They use it holding it in the middle
and dipping first one side and then the other. In South Greenland the
paddle usually has bone on the end and is smooth in the handle. The
northern Eskimo usually has no bone on the paddle, and has a couple of
notches cut for each hand hold.
Harry Raven drew pictures of Arctic animals and the Eskimo gave us
names for them in his language.
We arrived in Holsteinsborg about four o’clock. It has a very good
little harbor just inside the mouth of a fjord. A fjord is an
indentation in the land, like a long narrow bay or sound, and usually
the hills rise steeply on both sides. Dad says this Greenland scenery
is very much like Norway.
The houses are all different colors making a very gay sight. There was
a little red church on top of the hill, and all around the bottom was
the village, houses made mostly of wood with sods around them to keep
the cold out. Some of the native sod houses had tunnels leading into
them like the igloos of the North.
The place where we landed was a little dock with a cannery on one side
and a big sort of rack for kayaks belonging to the Eskimos on the
other.
I had great fun trading at Holsteinsborg. Three of the sailors, Jim,
Joe and Ralph, and myself went on shore with some old shirts and one
pair of old pants. We went into about ten or fifteen of the huts. There
were only about twenty-five huts in the town. They were one-roomed
houses with a raised sort of platform for a bed in the back of the
room. The cooking and everything was done in the same room. The whole
family sleep in one bed. The houses were very stuffy and smelt of skins
and dogs. The dogs were all over the place, even lying in the tunnels
so that you could hardly get through.
At nine o’clock that night we left for a fjord called Ikortok, to drop
Professor Hobbs and his party. We went inland about forty miles. We
tied three dories together making a raft to move his stuff in from the
boat. One trip the raft was a little too heavily laden and almost went
down when one of the dories partly filled up with water.
While the last part of the unloading was going on, Dad, Carl and I went
off to try the fishing, without any luck. On shore we saw a bird’s nest
that looked as if it might be a good specimen. We tried to get at it,
climbing up a cliff, but couldn’t.
When we went out from the land in our little boat we were in very
shallow water. The propeller of our Johnson engine hit the bottom and
the little engine jumped loose and fell overboard. Luckily we were able
to get it again. We rowed all the way back to the Morrissey, as the
engine was full of salt water and couldn’t be made to run. The tide was
coming in the fjord with great force and it was a hard row, about four
miles. When we came to a beach we pulled the boat up and worked on the
engine. I took our gun to try and get some birds for eating or for
specimens. By the time I was up at the other end of the beach they had
given up hope of drying the engine and started to row, calling out that
I was to walk back along the shore as that would make the rowing
easier. I didn’t like the idea much but I either had to walk or stay
there. I had on native skin boots called kamiks which made it pretty
hard to walk on rocks. I was afraid of dogs, too, because we had found
a litter of dog pups on shore not far from where the Morrissey was
anchored. And a mother dog in the North is apt to be as fierce as a
wolf when she has pups. I saw one a few hundred yards away so I sat
down behind a rock and waited for him to move on.
When I reached the shore near the boat they sent in a dory to take me
off.
The next day we stopped at some little villages along the fjord. The
Eskimos came out in small boats and kayaks, to trade with us and to see
the white men and their strange schooner. They brought out a porpoise
because we asked for any fish they had, for specimens.
That afternoon we arrived at a big bird rookery. It was a wonderful
sight. The whole side of the cliff was covered with thousands of
kittywakes nests. That is a sort of small gull which sometimes gets
down to New York in the winter. The birds were making a terrible noise,
chattering continuously.
We went up beside the cliff in dories and shot a few birds for
specimens and others for eating. We took movies of the birds flying
around the cliff. At a distance the flying birds, great clouds of them,
looked like a blizzard.
Then we started for Holsteinsborg to drop two men we had picked up
there. We arrived at three o’clock in the morning and instead of having
the Morrissey go in, we sent them in in the launch, as we wanted to go
on to Disko as fast as we could.
CHAPTER IV
ALONG THE GREENLAND COAST
We hit bad weather going north to Disko and had to go in for shelter
behind some small islands about forty miles from Holsteinsborg. There
were no people there. We caught a few fish and shot some birds for
specimens.
On one island there were three deserted sod huts. They were all muddy
and full of fish and seal bones.
When we came back from the huts I went fishing with two of my friends,
Jim and Ralph. We went away outside in the dory where it was quite
rough—at least I thought so. We caught a few rock cod. Jim had a great
big halibut right alongside but the fish gave a flip as he was trying
to land him and got free from the hook just as he was hauling him over
the gunwale.
One night when some Eskimos came on board along the coast we showed
them movies of Eskimos harpooning walrus to see how it would strike
them. These movies were given in our little mid-ships cabin, where we
eat and most of us sleep, with our Pathex projector thrown on a small
screen Fred made from the table oilcloth.
When the harpooned walrus pulled the Eskimo hunter, our guests shouted
and grunted. It was very funny. They had heard of movies but had never
seen any. After the northern pictures we showed some from the South Sea
islands. The Eskimos had never seen people in swimming so they didn’t
know quite what to make of it. When they were asked by a friend of ours
who speaks Eskimo what they thought of it, they only said that they
liked them all very much, especially a picture showing lions playing
with an animal trainer. They had never seen any animal like a lion.
There isn’t a cat, for instance, in all Greenland, we were told.
It is great fun to see the boats come out and meet you and the Eskimos
that are entirely different from us and can’t speak a word of English
except for words like shirts or sugar or coffee that they have heard.
For such things as these they want to trade boots and purses and skins.
And in the south they make little kayaks and knives and pen holders and
such things out of the ivory of walrus tusks.
They have some very nice hats made of fur and eiderdown. One man
brought two little toy kayaks up to me with all the equipment on them,
even the little rack to hold the harpooning line, with a tiny model of
a man sitting in the kayak. I got one of these for my little museum at
home. For this one he wanted an old pair of pants, or some tobacco.
Even the women want chewing tobacco. I got some very pretty purses made
of seal flippers, with bone latches. It is hard to find trinkets for
all of one’s friends at home.
The Eskimos on the whole are very nice and honest. Most of them can
play the accordion, and they seem to be very musical and they certainly
love to dance.
We have lots of things on board for gifts and trading, especially to
give in return for help and labor. Money isn’t much good up here. Our
stores include axes, knives, beads, needles, tobacco, pipes, candy,
etc. Both men and women love gay colored cloths and small mirrors
always go well.
At one of the villages we saw a lot of dogs eating a decayed shark.
After the shark has been dead for a few weeks ammonia seems to form in
the meat. The dogs love it and after eating it they seem to get sort of
tipsy and can hardly walk.
Fred Linekiller, the taxidermist, is showing me how to skin birds. It
is very interesting to do it. The first thing to do when you shoot a
bird is to put cotton in the wounds and in the mouth so the blood will
not run out on the feathers. After that a needle is put through the
nostrils and the beak is sewed together, so the cotton won’t come out.
Then the feathers on the breast are parted and the skin cut from the
breast bone down to the soft part of the stomach.
Next cornmeal is poured in. It is used to keep the skin dry and to mop
up the blood and moisture. After that is done instead of pulling the
skin, it is pushed, so as not to stretch it. More cornmeal is added as
the skin is pushed off. When the legs are reached they are cut at the
knee joint so as to keep the bone to hold the foot in place. Just above
where the tail feathers end is cut and the skin turned inside out and
the skin pushed gently toward the head. It can be pushed as far up as a
little beyond the eyes. Then the head is scraped and a knife is put
between the jaw bone and the back of the head opening up the head so
that you get the brains out. Then the skin, inside out, is treated with
arsenic powder, and after that it is put right side out again and the
feathers fluffed out. Then it is ready to be taken back to the Museum
to be stuffed and mounted, or studied as it is.
When I woke up one morning I found that we were in a little but very
good harbor, Godhavn on Disko Island. Cap’n Bob has to be up most of
the time, especially, of course, when we are moving about. This time,
for instance, he was on deck all night, and Dad was with him. Disko is
a hard place to get into unless you know it awfully well.
There is a little coal mine near Godhavn. Getting the coal, and
fishing, is about all they do, with some hunting especially in the
winter. The women do most of the work and the men go fishing and
hunting. When we went ashore we saw the women with big baskets of coal
unloading a small boat and taking the coal to be weighed and stored
away in a big storehouse.
Carl, Mr. Streeter, Art Young and I went shark fishing with two Eskimos
out in the mouth of the bay. We fished from about one until four
o’clock but didn’t catch a thing. Later we traded some very nice little
toy kayaks, all equipped, and also some little sledges with whips and
rifles tied down with thongs.
At Godhavn we went all around with the Governor, Carl acting as our
interpreter. It is fine having him along as he speaks pretty good
Danish. He is an American, but his people are both Norwegian and in his
home out in Minnesota they talked Norwegian a lot, and it is pretty
much the same as Danish.
We went into the printing office where the only paper in Greenland is
published. It is a monthly paper, and the printing house is a small red
building with one little press. About three thousand papers in the
Eskimo language go out free to practically all the people in Greenland.
The Governor gave us a bound copy for our collection. Most of the stuff
in the paper is written by Eskimos up and down the coast, who send it
in.
The next morning about six-thirty we heaved anchor and left Godhavn.
When the anchor comes up all hands are called to the windlass which
works with iron bars like pump handles. If there is a lot of chain out
it takes a long time and is really hard work.
In the afternoon Dad asked me to fill a little bag with trading stuff
because we were going to stop at a village called Proven. We reached
there about seven. It was a very small harbor so the Morrissey could
not go in, and we used our launch and were greeted by the whole town at
the little wharf.
At the end of the dock were about eight sharks down in the water tied
up with ropes and still alive. Later Harry Raven got one for a specimen
that was ten feet long. Later he found the liver measured nearly six
feet.
While Dad and the others had tea with the Governor (all these little
hamlets in the south have a Dane in charge whom we call a Governor,
even though the average population may be only forty people) I went out
to trade for some kamaks or skin boot. These are a sort of double high
shoe or boot made of seal skin with the hair turned in and with a hairy
inner boot beneath which is put in grass to make it soft and warmer.
The Greenland hair seal is entirely different from the Alaskan fur
seal. It has no fur but just coarse hair and has no value except for
oil and its hide. I had a chance to get several pairs of kamaks but
they were all only about half the size of my foot. The Eskimos are very
small people and mostly the tallest only come up to about my shoulder.
And naturally they have very small feet.
At Proven I got two pairs of seal skin pants, one for a jacket and the
other in exchange for a box of candy and a sweater. I also got a kind
of necklace which is worn by the women for “dress up,” for a piece of
soap, a bar of chocolate and an army mirror, which was a good bargain,
because the necklaces are hard to make and hard to get.
We were going to get a kayak but it would be mean to take one because
the Eskimos are like children and would give away almost anything for
candy or pretty materials. The kayak is their main way of getting food,
and is to them dreadfully important. We always tried not to take
anything which was very necessary to the Eskimo, and to give them
something really helpful in exchange for important things. For
instance, later when we got some kayaks, we gave in exchange lumber and
materials from which they could make new ones. A very popular and
useful thing we had for gifts was Tetley’s tea put up in half pound
tins. This, often with a small bag or tin of sugar, was liked a lot
everywhere, while we on board always drank it.
CHAPTER V
UPERNIVIK AND THE DUCK ISLANDS
We left Proven about midnight, and as we started out from the little
harbor past some bare rocky islands Dad and some others went ashore to
try some shooting. When we came in we had seen a great many birds and
ducks flying around there.
They stayed ashore from one o’clock until five, while I was asleep.
Later Dad told me it was very beautiful, the water all grey and calm
like silver, with a sky sort of lead color with gay tints of orange and
yellow and lemon where the sun was low. They brought back tern, eider
ducks and some gulls, some to eat, others to be skinned for specimens.
The next day it was very foggy so we went slowly, dodging icebergs
which we could see only when we got very close to them. At about nine
the following morning we reached Upernivik, which is the last town that
amounts to anything in North Greenland and is I think the furthest
north town in the world. There is a Danish Governor there and a few
other Danes. His name is Governor Otto and he was awfully nice to us,
then and later on when we came back.
Upernivik is a nice little place built on an island. Where we landed
there was only a little wharf and some store houses and supplies. From
this harbor a little path or trail led over a steep hill to the real
town, which was down on the other side on a slope to the south, with a
grand view of Sanderson’s Hope, quite a big mountain a few miles away
and overlooking an open fjord which was no use as a harbor. The village
has a dozen wooden houses, including several that are very nice indeed,
chiefly the Governor’s house and one for the doctor who lives there,
which also is used for a hospital. And about the wooden houses are the
sod huts of the natives, most of whom seem to stick to their own style
of living. There is a fine new church on the hill just over the
village.
We had lunch with Governor Otto and his daughter Ruth, a girl about
twelve years old, at his house, and afterward in the harbor we took
some movies of an Eskimo turning over in his kayak. He didn’t seem to
have a hard time at all. He just kind of fell over on one side, sitting
right in his kayak or skin boat, and then came up on the other side
with just a twist of his paddle. Doing this he wore a watertight suit
of sealskin and a hood over his head, drawn tight about the neck. And
around his waist, where he sat in the hole or cockpit of the kayak,
there was a skin fastened tight about him so that no water could get
in.
Robert Peary thought he would try it so he changed into a sealskin
shirt, got into the Eskimo’s kayak—it was hard for him to squeeze in he
was so much larger than the Eskimo—and turned half way over. The kayak
was upside down and then his head stuck up on the other side and went
down again, sputtering. He just couldn’t manage to get up again, and
hung head down in the water, the boat upside down right over him. I
really thought he was drowning.
Then he came up a second time and yelled for help. Of course we were
close to him and right away Carl got there in a rowboat and he pretty
nearly fell in himself helping to get Robert straightened up. And you
should have seen the Eskimos laugh! They thought it was a great joke.
But Robert seemed to feel he had swallowed about all the ice water of
Baffin Bay that he wanted and he was so cold he went back to the ship
and changed his clothes. But I’ll bet that next summer at home in Maine
he learns the trick.
We had sent some natives out to catch sharks for specimens and Doc,
Ralph and myself went after them in the launch. They had caught four
big ones and had lost another overboard. These Greenland basking shark,
as they are called, are very slow and sluggish. They don’t fight at
all. They move very slowly and don’t seem to be savage or a bit like
the sharks I have seen caught in Florida.
The next morning Governor Otto took us over to see his dogs, which
during the summer he keeps on a bare rocky island about a mile away,
where they are entirely to themselves. About every three days during
the summer they are fed, mostly ducks which are taken out in a big
basket. Most of them seem to have been kept a pretty long time and
become pretty “ripe.” But the dogs certainly like them.
We went over to the island in our launch with the Governor and a couple
of Eskimos carrying the food. When they saw us coming the dogs, about a
dozen in number, crowded down to the shore and followed along as we
went by, yelping and barking crazily. They knew it was dinner time.
We landed and decided to give them the birds up a bit from the water,
where it was more level and Kellerman could get movies better. As the
Eskimos carried up a big basket of the birds, one of them had to keep
the dogs off the man with the basket. He used an oar and beat them. And
at that they jumped up and tried to get at the basket of meat on the
man’s shoulder whenever they got the slightest chance. I don’t doubt
they would have knocked him down if he had been alone.
Then the birds were thrown out to the dogs, a few at a time. In a
second they were torn to pieces and gobbled up. A dog will rip one up
in a flash and choke down everything but the feathers. There were many
fights. And all the time there was a great racket, with the dogs
howling and barking and yapping at each other.
It was very interesting to see the King Dog. Each team up in this
country has a head dog, the King, who is boss. He is usually the
heaviest and best looking dog, and certainly is the best fighter. I
believe he just fights his way up to the leadership. Certainly when he
“says” anything to one of the others, they do what they are told pretty
quickly. Or else they get a licking.
The King has a queen, and it is fun to see the way he looks out for
her. When the Queen got a duck or part of one, the King just sort of
looked on and saw to it that no other dog interfered. If one of them
got excited and started to move in on the Queen and her dinner, the
King gave a growl—and that ended it. Or if another dog had a bit of
duck, and the King came along, the other fellow just dropped what he
had, perhaps running off or sort of turning over on his back and
grovelling on the ground. There certainly was discipline on that
island.
When it was all over there was just a few feathers scattered around on
the rocks and the dogs were mostly with bloody mouths and heads where
they had torn up the meat. Anyway, they all seemed to have had a good
meal and for the first time settled down quietly, to wait for the next
dinner time three days later. In the winter they have their work, and
lots of it, and of course they are awfully important in the life of the
northern people. There are no horses and of course no automobiles or
anything like that. So everything is drawn on sleds, and the sleds are
moved by dogs.
The dog skins are especially fine. The fur is heavy and soft and
glossy. Dad bought some dog skins to have a coat made.
That afternoon we left Upernivik to go north across Melville Bay.
Everyone was on hand to see us off and the Governor fired the little
cannon up on the hill where they had the Danish flag hoisted. They gave
us a salute of three guns and we answered with three shots from a
rifle.
The Duck Islands are a few little rocky islands a dozen miles or so off
the mainland of Greenland just at the south side of Melville Bay. About
two o’clock the next afternoon we reached them, anchoring in a sort of
harbor between the two largest islands. The bigger one is I suppose
about two miles long and half a mile or so wide, very hilly and all
rocks. About the shores, where there is a little level land, the rocks
are covered with moss and there are stretches of bog and mud.
We went around a good deal on both islands and saw a great many eider
ducks which nest here in large quantities. In the old days when the
whalers came into Baffin Bay this was a headquarters and then they used
to gather duck eggs by the boat load.
We saw many ducks nesting. The nest is just a little fluffy round mass
of the soft feathers, right on the ground. They pull the feathers out
of their breasts, so that when you get the female ones they look as if
someone had plucked a handful of down from their undersides. This is
what is called eider down, and is used in very fine mattresses and
pillows. It is very warm and is also quite valuable. The Eskimos
collect the eider down from the nests and from the birds, and it, with
skins of foxes and seal, and a few other articles like walrus ivory and
narwhal tusks, is one of the chief ways they have of trading with the
outer world.
The male and female eider ducks are very different. The female is all
brown, while the male is brown only a little on his breast and belly,
and with a lot of white on his back and neck, and feathers that are
dark grey or nearly black. The female moves very slowly and is very
tame and easy to get close to and to kill. We got a good many for
eating, and they are kept hung in the rigging to be used as Billy the
cook wants them. The male is much wilder and flies faster and is pretty
hard to shoot. There were very few male at Duck Island. While the
females are nesting the males seem to go off by themselves. Later we
saw a good many up in the fjords back of Upernivik. Both are very big
and heavy birds, and awfully good eating.
Back in 1850 and on for thirty years or so there was much whaling in
these waters. Many of the ships came from Scotland. On the hill or
small mountain at Duck Island there is a whaler’s cairn, and also a
walled-in place where they had their lookout. In that cairn, by the
way, in 1888 Peary left a record. We could find nothing. Probably the
Eskimos had cleaned out everything long ago.
In one piece of lowland near the water, where there was a little dirt,
we found the graves of some whalers. They were covered over with stones
and only one head board with a name, was left. It said: “In memory of
William Stewart, A.B., S. S. Triune of Dundee, June 11, 1886. Aged 24.”
Art took me shooting with my sixteen-gauge shotgun, but I didn’t do so
well. I haven’t tried shooting on the wing much and I’m pretty bad at
it. Shooting with the twenty-two rifle seems easier. Art himself is a
grand shot, with either rifle or shotgun.
We found many eggs, and Dad and some of the others, on the other
island, found great caches of eggs, hundreds of them evidently gathered
by Eskimos who had visited the islands earlier in the season and left
them there to get them later. They were put away in a sort of hole with
rocks piled up around and over them so that they were perfectly
protected, and with the chinks of the rock packed up with moss. They
also found the skull of a polar bear.
We found three eggs with little ducks just hatching out. These we
brought back to the boat. I put one under a mother duck which I had
found alive in an Eskimo trap and the other two behind the galley stove
where it was nice and hot. Two of them lived quite a while and then
they were killed, painlessly, and put away for specimens. We got some
nests for the Museum and I got one for my own collection.
CHAPTER VI
ACROSS MELVILLE BAY
By the twentieth of July we were pretty nearly across Melville Bay.
That was just exactly a month from the time we started from home which
is most awfully good time. Of course we were very lucky for all the way
we had practically no real trouble with ice.
Melville Bay usually is about the most dangerous and hardest place in
the north. Lots of years it may take weeks to make the passage, and
sometimes there just isn’t any way to get by it. Later Dr. Rasmussen
told me that he has been drifting, frozen in the pack ice, for six
weeks solid while trying to get through to the north, and in mid-summer
at that.
After we left Duck Island I put in quite some time getting our things
ready for trading and for presents. Of course we weren’t going to do
any real trading, except for little personal things some of us wanted.
Most of the stuff was to give natives who helped us in the hunting and
collecting of specimens. One of my nice jobs was filling a lot of tin
cans with screw tops with candy and sugar. And we also sorted out some
gay sweaters and jerseys which Mr. Alex Taylor, who lives at Rye, had
given the expedition. (All our crew, by the way, now have Alex Taylor
sweaters and they certainly came in handy.)
We arrived at Cape York on the night of July 20th. Cape York is a big
cape which marks the northern end of Melville Bay and really is the
beginning of far North Greenland. The people living there and in the
few settlements further north are the Smith Sound tribe of Eskimos, who
live nearer the North Pole than any other people. About at this
latitude is further north than the most northerly points of the
mainland of any of the continents, North America, Europe, or Asia. So
we felt we really were beginning to get pretty far north.
The Cape itself is a high mountain which sort of spills right down into
the sea. The slopes, some of them, are quite red, and the snow is all
colored crimson too, from a sort of dust which seems to cover it. This
part is called the Crimson Cliffs, and they have been seen and
described by about every Arctic expedition. In behind the cape is a
great glacier which breaks off right into the water very conveniently.
Cap’n Bob put the Morrissey right up alongside the ice wall and men
jumped down on the glacier from the bowsprit and carried lines and
fastened the ship so she lay right alongside, as if the ice were a
wharf. Of course there was no wind and the water was quiet.
Then they took a hose and ran it up a way and put one end in one of the
many streams which were running down the top of the glacier, melted
snow water. There was enough slope to carry the water into our big tank
on deck. Also the sailors filled the barrels, using buckets. It was a
great way to get a full load of real ice water.
While we were working in the Eskimos came off in their kayaks. We
bought a fine kayak for a rifle and some ammunition. The very next day,
when we were ashore, we found that the owner of the traded kayak
already had a new one well started. I suppose in a few days more he was
all fixed up with a boat again. And with his really fine rifle he ought
to do most awfully well hunting. I certainly hope so. A kayak to an
Eskimo is about the most important thing in life. I imagine a rifle
would come next. Compared to an automobile with us, our auto is only a
luxury which we really could get along without.
About a mile from the little settlement of Cape York there is a “bird
mountain.” That’s what they call the places where they find the
dovkies, or little auks. These are small birds which live on mountain
sides where there are talus slopes—that is, big slides of loose rocks
all piled up. They make their nests down in the holes and cracks and
they are very hard to find.
An Eskimo went with us in the launch around to this bird mountain. We
climbed up the slope to a regular place they use where there was a sort
of rough blind made out of the loose stones. He carried a net with a
long handle. We sat down on the slope, partly hidden by the blind. Then
the birds would fly past, always in the same direction. They seemed to
be always on the move, getting up off the rocks and swinging around in
a great circle out over the sea and back again. There were thousands of
them.
As a bird would fly past us, almost near enough to touch sometimes, the
Eskimo would make a quick swoop with the net, and plop a dovkie would
be in it. Then he would quickly pull in the net, take the bird out,
kill it and be ready for another. This is chiefly the work for women
who are awfully good at it and catch hundreds and I guess thousands.
They are fine eating, and the skins are used for making bird feather
clothing, as lining to wear next the skin.
After our Eskimo friend Kaweah had showed us how to do it, I tried. It
looked awfully easy. But it wasn’t. I made a lot of misses.
Dad and Dan Streeter were looking on and taking pictures, and they
laughed as I swiped at the birds and missed them.
“Three strikes and out!” they’d call when I scored three misses.
But after a while I did catch a few, and some I just hit with the net
pole and knocked them down, sort of stunned, when we got them. Dad and
Dan also tried, but they didn’t break any records. A fellow with a
batting eye like Babe Ruth ought to do pretty well at this game.
Anyway, it was great fun, and was of course the first time I ever
caught birds with a net. Funnily, almost the next day I actually did
catch some others with a loop on a string.
Where the vessel lay that afternoon was right next a big lot of bay
ice, pans of ice with some water between them. In the distance here and
there we could see seal. They sit up in the sun, but almost always
right near a hole in the ice. And the minute they get frightened they
slide off and are gone. Even if you shoot them, unless death is very
quick, they are likely to flop off into the water, where they sink.
Dan and one of the Eskimos tried some stalking, crawling up on the seal
or pooeesee as the Eskimos call them. And he had pretty good luck,
hitting three, two of which they got. They also got pretty wet crawling
over the ice and through pools of water melted by the sun. Anyway, it
was our first game. The seal meat was fine, too.
The next morning we had moved northward to Parker Snow Bay. We were
anchored there when I woke up. It’s a beautiful place, a little bay
right on the coast, with a bit of flat land with a glacier coming right
down behind it and stretching up to the great ice cap. Two steep fine
mountains are on either side of the glacier, and one of them we named
Bartlett Peak. Along the shore one of these mountains has steep cliffs
which fall right down into the water. And there is a great bird
rookery, or loomery as the Newfoundland folks call it.
On the shore we saw a blue fox. And then after breakfast we went to
work at the rookery to get specimens. It was a beautiful calm sunny day
and we really had a grand time. Some of us were at it until afternoon
and sent back a dory to bring us some lunch.
We climbed up a cliff, getting at it on the easier side of a steep
little point. From there we could reach right down to some of the
nests. We could even touch some of the birds, both auks and kittywakes.
They were sitting on the nests, either with eggs or very young birds.
(Three weeks later when we came back there were many more young ones.)
It was here that I used a light line to catch several birds. I made a
slip noose in the end and let it a few feet over the edge of the cliff
so that it rested on a nest. Then when the bird came back, if she
settled down right, I pulled the noose suddenly. It worked quite well.
Bob Peary, who is very handy at getting around and climbing, put a rope
around himself and we let him down over the cliff to get eggs and
nests. Art Young and Carl were the “anchors” on the other end of the
rope. Once on his way down in one place Bob stepped on a loose rock and
knocked it out. When it fell it started a big bunch and they all went
tumbling down into the water with a great splash and crash.
The cliff was right straight up and down, with a sort of shelf sticking
out perhaps twenty feet from the water. After a while Bob went down
there, where he could stand and then Dad was let down with a small
movie camera to get some pictures. Later the launch went around below
them, and while the men at the very top held the line tight, the men in
the launch held it tight at the bottom and first Dad and then Robert
slid down it into the boat, after first letting down the bucket with
eggs and a box of nests and some little ones they had gathered up.
CHAPTER VII
SHIPWRECK
On Monday July twenty-sixth we struck a hidden rock off Northumberland
Island which is at the mouth of Whale Sound away up at Latitude 77
degrees and twenty minutes north, on the east side of Baffin Bay. We
were cruising around the island trying to locate some Eskimo whom we
wanted to get on board to help us hunt. We were just getting into the
good game territory. The evening before we saw seventeen walrus from
the deck.
Captain Bob had been told back at Cape York that certain Eskimo were at
places where they usually lived, but when we got in sight of them the
tupiks were deserted. These people move about a lot following up where
the hunting is best, and probably the fact that the ice had gone out of
the fjords and bays unusually early had made them change about
unexpectedly.
Anyway, we were pretty close in shore, examining four sod houses on a
point. A big wall of rock stuck out of the mountain behind, coming down
toward the water. It is what geologists call a “dyke”—harder rock which
stands up under the rain and snow, like a wall, with the softer stuff
sloping down from it on either side, sort of washed away.
Well, this “dyke” evidently stuck well out underneath the surface of
the water. Afterward we found there was deep water on both sides of it,
right close up. But we managed to hit the very outer knob of it, about
ten feet or so below the surface.
It was about twelve thirty in the morning when we hit, broad daylight
of course, with the sun shining brightly and fortunately no wind or sea
running. It was very, very exciting. I was almost thrown out of my bunk
when we hit. There was a jar and a jolt and then everything stopped. We
had often hit into light ice, which jarred the vessel a bit, but never
anything like this.
As quick as I could I put on my pants and was just getting on my
stockings when Dad called down from the skylight for all hands to get
on deck and never mind dressing. I woke up Bob Peary and Doc and we all
rushed on deck.
We moved oil casks for half an hour from the after part of the ship to
the bow so as to take the strain off the stern where the vessel had
struck and was sticking on the rocks. It was just high tide when we
hit. We raised the foresail, jib and jumbo and had the engine going
full speed, but she didn’t budge. Then, as the tide began to leave us,
we took a lot of stores ashore in our dories and started in to do what
we could for the next tide.
The Morrissey was listing on her port side at an angle of forty-five
degrees or worse, and everything was in a dreadful mess on board. You
just couldn’t stand even on the dry deck and where it was slimy with
oil, as most of it was, the only possible way to get around was to hang
on to a rope. And at that, what with moving around the heavy oil drums
there were plenty of bad spills. Cap’n Bob cut his hand badly and Doc
bandaged it up right away. Down in the cabins everything was in a heap.
It was funny to see the clothes hanging on hooks from the ceiling stand
right out crazily at a wild angle from the walls, like drunken men.
The tide went down leaving the vessel high and dry, except for the bow
which was in the water, tipped down at a bad angle and the stern up on
the rocks. Cap’n Bob lashed ten empty oil drums on either side close to
the keel at the stern, to help raise her when the water came in.
We just had to be ready for any emergency in case the Morrissey proved
to be hurt so badly she couldn’t float, or especially if a storm came
up which would have broken her to pieces quickly and made landing stuff
very hard and perhaps impossible. And you must remember we were nearly
one thousand miles from the nearest Danish settlement and more than
2000 miles from Sidney, the nearest big place.
One thing we put ashore at once and very carefully was the emergency
low power radio set with which Ed Manley, our radio operator, could
keep in touch with the world in case our big outfit on board was lost.
That little set which might have been so awfully important was given us
by the National Carbon Company who make the Eveready batteries.
And then the noon tide came and we were dreadfully disappointed. For
the water didn’t rise to within about three feet of the midnight tide
when we struck, so we were left with no hope of getting off until the
next tide. And that was pretty bad, because all that listing and
pounding was dreadfully hard on a vessel, and would surely break one up
less strong than the good old Morrissey, which is built of oak and is
unusually sturdy.
But the water did get high enough to wash in over the deck on the low
port side, even if the vessel couldn’t raise. There was a bad leak
strained in her side and she leaked so badly we all had to help bail
with pails lowered with ropes through the skylight into the mid-ships
cabin. We couldn’t use the pumps because she had such a bad list, and
tip forward, that they didn’t get at the water.
My bunk and two others filled up with water all mixed with oil, and my
things, especially in the locker underneath, got pretty well spoiled.
Luckily someone lifted out my bedclothes.
The stove in the galley and in the after cabin had to be put out, as
there was danger they would spill over and set the ship on fire. The
big galley stove was braced up with seal hooks to keep it from sliding.
Billy the cook moved in to shore and kept making coffee there so the
men had something hot to help keep them going. Before it was all over
most everyone had been working continuously more than forty hours. I
was at it more than twenty-five, and was pretty dead tired.
The Captain ordered all the food put ashore and there was a lot more to
do, lashing more casks and trimming the cargo and moving gasoline to
land, for the motor boat in case we got stuck, and kerosene for the
primus stoves. Then, too, they put out the big heavy anchor, taking it
in the dories quite a way from the ship and dropping it, so that we
could haul on it with the windlass.
While the tide was down there was a lot of work to do on the banged-up
bottom of the vessel. The false keel, which is a big timber on the very
bottom below the real keel, was pretty well ripped off aft of the
mainmast, and a lot of oakum was loosened out of the garboard seam.
Lying down on the wet rocks we filled in a lot of oakum, which is a
sort of fibre like shredded bagging or say potato sacking, with
caulking tools, which is a blunt kind of chisel and a mallet or hammer
to pound the stuff into the seams or cracks.
Then we got a lot of Billy’s dish washing soft soap and mashed it up
with a hammer and worked it in our hands into a kind of pasty putty. We
put this in on top of the oakum. We worked in the water until the tide
got up around our boots, and then climbed the ladder up on deck. I was
able to help quite a bit on this job, and afterward there was plenty to
do bailing.
On shore we put up one of our small tents and took in most of our
things, like sleeping bags, blankets, guns and ammunition. Everybody as
best they could threw their things together to land. It was exciting,
and exactly as if we were abandoning the ship. And awfully sad, too, to
see our fine Morrissey all soaked with water and oil, and everything
thrown about so terribly.
After the unloading work, and after the men had had a mug of coffee and
hardtack and whatever Billy could dig out of the cans, it was pretty
nearly high tide again, along about eleven o’clock at night. The sun,
of course, was always about the same distance above the horizon, only
at a different point, so it seemed always a sort of bright afternoon.
We were terribly lucky not to have it stormy.
All hands were called on board and while three men worked the pumps the
others manned the windlass. We had the big anchor and a small one out,
to pull on with the windlass.
There was a good wind coming up so we had to get her off then or she
would surely break up and leave us there. After working for an hour or
so we were just about to give up when the wind freshened more. Cap’n
Bob ordered all sails hoisted. Everyone got on the halyards and pulled
as hard as they could. The wind flattened out the sails and the engine
went full speed ahead. But for a good many minutes she held fast and we
were most awfully discouraged.
Then all at once there was an extra big wave and a puff of wind, and
suddenly she gave a sort of groan and slid free of the rocks. After
twenty-five hours we were off! We sure were glad.
Dad, Carl and myself went ashore to get the stores in order in case it
rained, while the Morrissey was taken around to leeward some place
where they could care for her better and see how things were. She
seemed to be leaking a lot, and the plan was, in case of the water
getting away from the pumps, to beach her.
We turned in right away, at about half-past two, I suppose. And when we
woke up it was two in the afternoon! We were pretty tired, I reckon.
And then, too, Carl had been quite sick and had had a pretty hard time
to keep going at all.
The Morrissey had disappeared. Of course we didn’t have any idea where
she was, but there was nothing to do but wait and fix things up as best
we could. The next day, in the fog Carl and Dad went out in the motor
launch to try to locate the crowd, but they did not find the vessel.
So we built a sort of house, the craziest house you ever thought of.
Robinson Crusoe never saw a funnier one. It had three walls, all made
of food, mostly, with a big sail pulled over for a roof and some tarps
to help out. The strongest wall, where the wind blew from, was built of
flour sacks laid up on boxes of tinned vegetables. There were bags of
potatoes, crates of onions, barrels, dunnage bags, hams and bacons in
those walls. Anyway, we felt we had plenty to eat for quite a time. We
were especially glad to have a fine lot of specially made Armour
pemmican, presented by Dad’s friend, Herman Nichols.
We had two big bear skins and these we put on the damp ground with a
tarp for a sort of floor. With a primus stove, which works with
kerosene, we were quite comfortable even though the wind did blow the
sails nearly off the roof. We weighted them down with big rocks, and
tied heavy hams that Mr. Swift had given us by ropes at the sides.
I got quite sick and had to keep in my sleeping bag about the whole
time we were at “Shipwreck Camp.” It was pretty cold with no fire at
all to give heat, but we got along first rate. Dad explained that by
that time almost surely word would have gotten through from our
wireless that the vessel was off the rocks. The trouble was that the
water, at the time of the accident, put our wireless out of commission.
It took Ed Manley a couple of days to get it going right again.
The third day about noon, when Carl was cooking up some tea on the
primus, he glanced out of the door of our hut and saw four Eskimos
coming toward us a long way off on the side of the mountain. As they
got nearer we could see they all were carrying big packs.
When they got to the tent the man threw off a little baby he had been
carrying in a sling on his back. The mother had a bag of empty cans in
her sack, which we recognized as coming from the Morrissey. With the
few words we could understand, and a lot of motions and grinning—they
are always awfully good-natured and nice—our friends told us they had
been aboard the vessel and had been helping pump. She was at anchor on
the other side of the island. It seemed she was only a few miles away.
So after we had given them a feed, mostly a big can of peas which they
loved, Carl and Dad started to find the ship, leaving me to sleep. I
forgot to say that we gave the Eskimo some ham, which looked good and
they showed us they would like a taste. But they did not like it at
all. It was too salty. They use no salt in their meat, and can’t
understand us liking it. “Nagga piook” they said, making funny faces.
Which means, “No good.”
About midnight, eight hours or so later, I heard a yell and woke up to
see the Morrissey out in the bay beyond where she had run aground. Dad
and Carl were on board, and as the wind had gone down they had come
around to get the stores.
I was sent aboard and Doc told me to go right to bed and keep as warm
as possible. As my bunk was still pretty damp where it had been drowned
out, I turned in to Dad’s bunk in the aft cabin, where the fire was
going.
When I woke up we were under way and headed south. We planned to go
back to Upernivik and beach the vessel there and make repairs. With so
many on board it seemed better to Cap’n Bob and Dad not to risk trying
to make any repairs on the north side of Melville Bay, which is apt to
be a very dangerous place to cross.
If the Morrissey had struck on a rising tide everything would have been
all right. One often goes aground up here where hundreds of rocks and
reefs aren’t shown on the charts and where all the information for
sailors is terribly incomplete. But of course things like that always
happen at the wrong time. It was just hard luck. When the wind came up
it was either break up or get off.
I have written this in the after cabin as we cross Melville Bay going
down to Upernivik. The boat has been in a terrible mess, but is pretty
well straightened out now. And everyone has about caught up on sleep.
Around my bunk and Mr. Kellerman’s the boards are crushed in. That’s
from the great strain put on the frame and beams when the boat laid on
her side, so that when she moved or gave a little the light inner
framework of the bunks snapped.
Dad just asked me if I’d like to go again on another northern trip. And
of course I said I would. Really my answer was “I’d like to go anywhere
with Cap’n Bob.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE MORRISSEY REPAIRED
On Tuesday the third of August we arrived in Upernivik again, with
Melville Bay safely behind us. And we knew that our trip would have to
end right there as we could not fix the leaks in the Morrissey. Coming
down she had been leaking about ten gallons a minute. That in itself
wasn’t so bad, but the danger was that at any minute it might get
worse, especially if any strain came or we hit ice or anything else.
It was my turn at the pumps when we came in. When the engine was not
running we had to pump almost continually, for the engine itself used
up water from the bilge in its cooling system with a rig Robert Peary
fixed up, which helped the pumping a lot.
At once we got some Eskimos on board to do the pumping. Cap’n Bob went
ashore to see how deep the water was on the beach and what the slope
was, to see if he could beach the Morrissey. Later in the afternoon the
Governor and his assistants told us that there was a place about ten
English miles (the Danish mile is about four of ours) up a fjord from
Upernivik where the vessel could be beached easily. It was a place they
used for their own vessels to get at their bottoms.
We left right away and it took about two hours and a half to get there.
On the way over we went through a kind of natural gate in the rocks
that seemed about as wide as the length of the ship. It was very, very
deep because there was a mountain on either side with sheer cliffs
going straight down for probably a great many fathoms.
They anchored the boat to wait for a big tide while Cap’n Bob got
things ready to try and get her out so work could be done on the
bottom. The trouble was that the damage was on the very bottom of the
keel so that just to keel her over on her side did no good. From
Upernivik Dad had arranged to take up with us a dozen Greenlanders to
help with the heavy work, like shifting ballast. Also we borrowed from
the Governor his blacksmith and some tools.
The next day some of us took the Governor back to Upernivik in our
launch. Doctor Heinbecker and I stayed there, visiting Dr. Rasmussen,
the woman doctor who lives there and visits all around at the little
settlements. She makes these trips in her own little power boat, with a
couple of Eskimos to run it for her. She is a Dane, and most awfully
nice. She is very big and strong, and they tell grand stories about how
she drives her dog team in the winter and can tire out men who try to
keep up to her. All the time we were at Upernivik she let us sleep in
comfortable beds in her little hospital, and in every way treated us
splendidly. While visiting there we had some interesting things to eat,
like seal meat, auks, duck and ducks’ eggs.
That afternoon Dr. Rasmussen got a message that someone was sick in a
little village called Augpilagtok, only a few miles from where the
Morrissey was. The others returned to the Morrissey and Doc and I went
with the Lady Doctor to this village, asking that they send over there
to get us. We went in her little boat which was built in Denmark. It is
very sturdy and good in the ice, ploughing along just as if there was
no ice at all.
In Augpilagtok there was a tiny store in a little room joined to the
house of the head man. His name was Imik and later he went with Dad on
a three days trip, to the glaciers and the ice cap. In the store they
sold lead for the bullets which they made in crude moulds, and also
caps and powder. Their rifles shoot both shotgun shells and rifle
bullets, and they make all the ammunition themselves. Here the Eskimos
have money which they use in the store to buy biscuit, sugar, tobacco
and other things. These are weighed out on funny little scales the
weights of which were two old brass hinges.
After a while our launch came with Dad and some of the others and we
all went back to the Morrissey, through lots of ice. Most of the way
the Lady Doctor’s boat, the Mitik, which is very broad in the beam,
ploughed through the ice in front, with our launch trailing along
behind.
When we arrived at the Morrissey the Captain wanted to get rid of some
of us, to make things easier for Billy, the cook, who had the big bunch
of Eskimos on his hands. Also, they were moving ballast and getting
ready to put the vessel over on her side which would mean putting out
the fires and having everyone camp on shore. The Lady Doctor invited
our Doc, Harry Raven and myself to go to town with her, which we did.
We went back to Upernivik in the Lady Doctor’s boat, reaching there
about four o’clock in the morning—broad daylight, of course, and with
the sun shining brightly, for all this time we were very lucky to have
fine weather and really quite warm. I suppose the temperature was about
sixty at the warmest and never got below forty.
During lunch, at two o’clock that afternoon we heard another great
yelling from the natives.
“Umiaksoah!” they yelled. That is the word for ship. (I have spelled it
the way it sounds to me.)
To our great surprise we saw a battleship coming into the harbor. It
proved to be the Islands Falk, meaning the Iceland Falcon, the Danish
patrol ship. It had heard by radio of our trouble while it was away
down in south Greenland and at once had started north to rescue us. The
first report, relayed to them by radio from an American vessel in the
north, said we had entirely lost the Morrissey and were all on shore.
Just why such a report was sent we could not imagine, as of course we
had sent out no word of that kind.
Anyway, later on Captain West of the Falcon got another word from the
Canadian ship Boethic which was over on the Canadian side. The Boethic
had had wireless word with us, and told Captain West the real facts,
which were that we were working south to Upernivik to make repairs. So
the Falcon came to Upernivik to help us.
I got a small boat and rowed out to the battleship and went aboard. To
my great surprise I was greeted by Dr. Knud Rasmussen who had come up
on the Falcon from Disko where we had been supposed to meet him. But
his ship from Denmark had been very late and he failed to connect with
us there. I told him about what had happened to us.
Then Captain West, Commander Riis-Carstensen, Dr. Rasmussen and others
went up to the Morrissey to offer help. In the end they sent a fine lot
of men up there with a diver and boats and everything. The diver worked
for about six days, while the Danish officers and sailors lived aboard
and camped ashore. It proved that with the diver it was possible to get
the leaks just about stopped. But I think that without him we would
have had pretty serious trouble. The hard part was to get at the
damaged place, which was on the very bottom of the vessel. And at the
beaching place where they sent us it turned out there was not enough
tide to get the bottom clear out of water.
We certainly were very grateful to the Danish officials for all they
did for us. No one could possibly have been nicer or more generous. And
I never saw a finer lot of men. It was great fun for me to be with them
on the ship and around town. Most of the sixty men aboard were from all
over Denmark, fine younger men who were doing their one year of
compulsory naval service. In Denmark every man has to serve in the army
or navy for about a year of training. And I think they all love to get
on this Greenland trip, it is so different.
While they were working on the boat we moved into Upernivik, Doc, Harry
and I. Dad took three men up to the glacier, where they got pictures
and collected some bird specimens.
It was a very gay time for Upernivik, probably about the most exciting
they ever had. For not only was the Morrissey there but also the Falcon
with a crew of sixty, most of whom were ashore much of the time. There
was a dance in a big warehouse near the wharf every night, which always
lasted until morning. In fact, there just wasn’t any night. In the
summer when a boat comes to those far away towns, they forget all about
sleeping. Everyone stays up all the time. For the people in the boats
it really is pretty hard, for the people ashore at least can go to
sleep when the boat leaves, while it is just then that the work starts
for the travellers.
At Upernivik is the farthest north church in the world, they told me. A
new building had just been completed, and on the Sunday we were there
it was opened. There was a great crowd, and the Governor wore his high
hat and everything. Of course we all went, and to the native wedding
that afternoon. The hymns were sung in Eskimo, and there was a long
Eskimo sermon. The first church in Upernivik was built away back in
1780.
On the evening of August tenth the Morrissey came back to the harbor.
The diver had fixed her up finely. Captain West gave Captain Bartlett a
letter saying she was quite seaworthy. So we were very happy, as it
meant we could keep on with our trip, which had come so near to ending
in disaster. And we decided to go north again, taking Knud Rasmussen to
Thule.
The night before we left they gave us a grand party at Governor Otto’s.
All the shutters were closed so the house would be dark. Then, to make
it pretty, they lit many candles. Eighteen people crowded into the
little dining-room, and there were speeches and quite a fine
celebration. I went to bed pretty early but the older people, I think,
did not turn in until seven in the morning.
On the Iceland Falcon, the last night, there was another farewell
party, Cap’n Bob and Dad dining with Captain West. They loaded on the
Morrissey the stores of Dr. Rasmussen and his baggage. He was going
back with us all the way to New York, so he had a good deal of clothes
and the like.
As we up-anchored and got under way we dipped our flag and fired our
biggest rifle three times in salute. Then the Falcon answered with
three shots from one of her big guns, and the people on shore fired
another salute with their small cannon. Altogether it was a very gay
send-off. The Governor was out in his big rowboat, waving good-bye to
us. Certainly Upernivik could have treated us no better, and we all
appreciated it.
And then we headed north again, with Dr. Rasmussen. And we felt mighty
lucky to be on our way again, instead of retreating south. Before us
lay our third crossing of Melville Bay, which is quite a record for one
season.
Dr. Rasmussen, for instance, has crossed it about forty times. Probably
he has travelled up here more than any other living man. He told me
that once it took six weeks to get just across Melville Bay, his boat
being frozen in solid in the pack ice, and just drifting. How lucky we
have been to get across three times with practically no ice at all.
CHAPTER IX
OUR FIRST NARWHAL
After crossing Melville Bay again for the third time, and without
stopping at Cape York, we arrived in Thule. Coming up, on the other
side of Melville Bay, I got entirely cheated out of one stop. It was
very early morning and I was sound asleep and they didn’t wake me.
As the boats came out to meet the Morrissey the men waved their hats in
greeting. But when they came near and saw that Rasmussen was aboard
they started shouting and cheering. The man running the engine in the
little power boat was so excited that he forgot to stop the motor and
ran the boat full speed and head on into the side of the vessel so hard
that most of the people in his craft fell down.
We brought Rasmussen to this trading station of his where he had not
been for five years and Dad had agreed to take away for him to New York
the fox skins they had traded from the Eskimos during the winter. Also
Mr. Rasmussen’s manager, who is also his cousin, had been promised that
he could go back to Denmark this year. He had been at Thule
continuously for six years. The first time we were there an apple Dad
gave him was the first he had eaten in all that time.
We also took from Thule a native girl called Nette, who has been
studying to be a nurse and is going back to Denmark to complete her
education, living with Mrs. Rasmussen there. We will take them to
Holsteinsborg where they will get a steamer for Denmark.
Hans Nielsen is Rasmussen’s manager and he of course is very pleased at
the chance to get away. He brought his own kayak on the Morrissey so
that he can help us in hunting.
While in Thule, early in the morning, Dad, Dan, Bob Peary and I went
out in the motor boat with two Eskimos to look for seal. We went up the
fjord about five miles inland to the foot of a glacier and saw about
six, but couldn’t get near enough to shoot them. We took several long
shots, without success.
We had to go back then, for as soon as Nielsen and Nette were ready we
were leaving for Whale Sound. During that morning while they were
packing up we had quite a dance outside in front of Mr. Nielsen’s
house. Kel took movies of the party. We had a pail of candy and when it
was passed around the Eskimos would dig in with both hands. But really
they are most awfully polite and these nice people in the North never
take anything without being asked first. And I think they never steal.
It’s interesting to know what Mr. Rasmussen tells me, that in the
Eskimo language there are no swear words. They just don’t use bad
language. The worst thing to call a man is to say he is lazy or a bad
hunter.
From Thule we took a bunch of Eskimos, including one older man who had
been with Peary and was very sick. He said to Cap’n Bob: “I wish for
the good days of Pearyarkshua when we had plenty to eat and to wear.”
Of course the Captain knew him well and told me that he used to be
about the strongest Eskimo of the whole lot they had and one of the
very best hunters. His name is Ahngmalokto. Doctor Heinbecker gave him
some medicine, and the skipper gave him tea and bread and jam, but he
wasn’t able even to eat that. It was very sad.
Thule itself is at the head of North Star Bay, on a rocky beach that
sweeps around like a crescent. Out at the sea end, on one side, is a
huge hill with a flat table-like top with steep walls at the top then
sloping down evenly in great rock slides which are called talus slopes.
It’s a lot like a mesa or tableland in our own west. The name of this
queer mountain is Oomunui. There are four frame buildings, the trading
station, the furthest north in the world. And about a mile away, across
the rock peninsula, is the native settlement, a scattered lot of
tupiks, the summer skin houses of the Eskimos, with the stone winter
houses nearby along the shore. I suppose there are about forty people.
Since 1910 Rasmussen has run this trading station. It is to help these
northern Eskimos, called the Smith Sound tribe. They are the furthest
north people in the world. Before, they never had any regular chance to
get things, or to trade their skins, except to whalers once in a while,
or explorers. Before Peary commenced coming about thirty years ago they
had no guns or steel or anything else except what they made and found
themselves. They used to make arrow heads out of meteorite chips, and
made fire from flint they found. And about all their weapons and knives
were made from ivory. The walrus tusk is very fine for this sort of
thing.
Even today they have very little, compared with the poorest people of
the world we know. But they are healthy and happy and very good natured
and kind. And of course they are great hunters. They have to be, to
live.
At Thule Rasmussen, and the Danish committee which works with him in
running the thing, have a regular kingdom. Dad calls it a benevolent
dictatorship, which means that Rasmussen is just about a king, but runs
everything for the good of the people. They have money of their own,
round pieces with holes in the middle, of three different values. The
Station pays with these for the furs, and then the Eskimos use them in
getting supplies from the store. Goods are sold at very low figures and
the idea is, Mr. Rasmussen says, to make the Station just pay its own
way. As I have said in another chapter, we brought up a lot of stores
from New York. And now we are taking back the fox skins of the winter’s
catch.
Early that afternoon, August 15th, we left Thule.
The next morning when I came on deck we were just off Northumberland
Island and I saw the very place where we had been wrecked and so nearly
spent quite a time at.
I was on the crosstrees on the lookout for walrus and saw some seals
and two that might have been walrus. When I got cold Bob Peary took my
place. Soon afterward we stopped running on account of fog, and most
everyone turned in to sleep, for with the all-the-time sunlight we
never seem to find time to get enough sleep.
I was down in the main cabin when Mr. Nielsen came down and said to
Carl, who speaks Danish, that there was a dead white whale near. I got
Dad and told him about it. In a few minutes they had a boat over and
went out to get him. When they reached the floating animal they called
back that it was a female narwhal, and not a white whale after all.
They towed it in and we put two or three tackles on it and started to
get it aboard. It was about fifteen feet long and weighed I suppose
over a ton. It had been dead quite a time and smelt pretty bad, so we
decided to open it as it hung beside the boat and get the intestines
out and some of the blubber off. The inner meat proved to be sound and
all right.
We fixed a rowboat alongside and Harry Raven and Fred got in it and did
the cutting up, with their oilskins on, for it was pretty messy. With
the narwhal Harry found a little one. And he wasn’t so little either.
He measured five feet seven inches. This was carefully embalmed. That
is, Harry pumped into its veins a fluid which preserves the flesh. It
is to be taken back to the Museum just exactly as it is. I think a baby
narwhal is a very rare specimen, and we all hope this one gets back in
good condition.
CHAPTER X
OUR ESKIMO ARTIST
Karnah is an Eskimo settlement on Whale Sound north of Thule and just
inside Northumberland Island where we were wrecked. The last time we
were not able to get in on account of ice. We headed for there now, to
get hunters, the Whale Sound territory being fine for walrus and
narwhal. Also some white whales are caught just to the north.
When we were about three miles from Karnah a kayak came alongside. A
man climbed out who grinned from ear to ear when he saw Rasmussen. He
proved to be the missionary at Karnah, named Olsen, an old friend of
Rasmussen’s. Seeing the masts he had come out to meet us. We were, of
course, the only vessel of the year. He showed us the way in to Karnah,
where there was plenty of good water for the vessel.
By the time the anchor was down there were a dozen or more men on
board. Soon Rasmussen and Dad went ashore and arranged for hunters to
go out after narwhal. Very soon after we got there great processions of
the narwhal began to move up and down the sound in front of the
village. Several times we saw a kayaker practically on top of one,
ready to throw the harpoon, but something happened and he didn’t get
it. Another man came in, who had got a harpoon into a narwhal, and told
us his line had broken.
A narwhal seems to jump just about the same as a porpoise, only he runs
larger. He is very pretty, with a mottled skin like castile soap with
blotches of white and lead color. The male has a big tusk sticking out
of his head, on the left side and straight out in front. It is ivory,
with a twisting spiral surface. The biggest tusk I’ve seen is about ten
feet long. They have been called “Unicorns of the Sea.” The biggest
narwhal we got was fifteen feet long, and I expect they run up to
twenty feet.
We spent most of the night at Karnah, visiting and getting narwhal
skulls, while the hunters were out. It was decided that Rasmussen would
take Bob Peary and the big dory with the Johnson engine and go up the
fjord to try and get a couple of narwhal.
Later I learned that just after Dad had turned in at three-thirty two
hunters got their narwhal near by. In the morning when I came on deck
there was a fine big narwhal with a tusk. He was fifteen feet long, not
counting the tusk, which was about seven or eight feet long. Later a
small female was brought in, about nine feet long.
All day Fred and Harry worked on these narwhal. Because the narwhal
were so heavy, to get them on board we had to use the two throat
halyards. Fred took plaster casts of the heads and tails and fins.
Photos were taken from all angles, and measurements and strips of skin
were taken, so that a whole narwhal model can be constructed at the
Museum. After this work was done we started in to clean the meat off
the bones. Most of us wore rubber boots so as not to mind walking in
the blood, but the Eskimos didn’t mind at all. They, of course, get the
meat for themselves. While we would flounder around and have to cut two
or three times the Eskimos would go ahead very quickly and skillfully,
as they have done this sort of thing so many times. The skeletons were
completely stripped in a few hours.
From Karnah we took with us six hunters with their kayaks to help us
get walrus. Four of them used to be with Peary and their names are
Etukashuk, Pooadloona, Kudluktoo and Kesingwah. The last named was one
of the Eskimos who came back with Captain Bob from 87 degrees 47
minutes north, only a few miles from the North Pole when he was with
Peary in 1909, who went on to the Pole itself.
They are all fine looking men and although they speak very little
English they catch on to things very quickly and are awfully nice
people to be with.
There are two fine boys. One is Pooadloona’s son, Matak. The other is
Nils, who is sixteen. He has very light hair, about the color of mine,
and blue eyes. He comes from South Greenland, and his father, I guess,
is a Dane. He is awfully good in a kayak and built solid all around.
While three years older than I am he doesn’t come quite to my shoulder.
Of course all these people are very small. Very few of the men, I
think, are over five feet five inches, but they are built like oxes
usually with short legs and thick bodies and a little fat although
hard. This boy Nils has killed seal and narwhal all by himself.
Also we took on board a nice Eskimo called Kakutia, which means
something like “He of the Quiet Voice.” He is a fine artist and loves
to make drawings of the weapons they use, of the animals and things
like that.
We gave him paper and pencils and during two days he worked along and
made a fine lot of drawings. Some of them will be used as decorations
in the book that will be made from this. It’s great fun to think that
my little book about Greenland is to be illustrated, partly, by a real
Eskimo, and that the pictures themselves actually were made in the
cabin of the Morrissey, here with me and Dad, right in Whale Sound in
latitude seventy-eight north.
Later on I found out that Kakutia is the son of Panikpah, whom Captain
Bob knows very well. He was one of the Peary men and was an artist too.
A number of his sketches are used in different Peary books. It’s
interesting to see this being able to draw inherited by the son from
the father.
We are giving Kakutia a big roll of paper, some pads, pencils and a
fine lot of lovely crayons, most of them Crayola given me by Grandpa
Bub. He is delighted with all this and I expect will have a lot of fun
this winter drawing and coloring pictures. And of course we gave him
also useful things, for he has been fine to me. I hope later, by
Rasmussen or in some way, to send him copies of the book, for Dad says
his name is to appear on the title-page as the one who made the
decorations.
CHAPTER XI
WALRUS HUNTING
At about six-thirty in the evening of August 16th a little way off
Northumberland Island we saw a herd of walrus. They were moving along
in the water quite fast, diving now and then and rising up a lot like
porpoises. They get their food from the bottom mostly, eating clams and
things like that.
By the way, Captain Bob does a lot of dredging—that is, we drag a sort
of net along the bottom to bring up the sea life there—and here in
Whale Sound his hauls are the richest yet. There are clams and great
numbers of shrimp. Which of course is why the walrus like it here.
In a few minutes the Eskimos were in their kayaks and out after them.
It was very interesting to watch. One Eskimo would go ahead of the herd
and make a lot of noise to attract their attention. Then the other
hunter would come in behind very slowly and quietly and try to get
within perhaps a dozen feet and then throw his harpoon with all his
force into the walrus. There would be a very loud puff, like steam
escaping, as he took breath and then a flip of his tail and he would
disappear. The man in the kayak would back off quickly so the walrus
wouldn’t come up under him. Then they would watch the float, which is
an inflated sealskin, attached to the end of the harpoon line to see
which way the harpooned walrus would go.
As the float moved off, or was drawn under water by the diving animal,
they would follow. It was all very dangerous, and many Eskimos are hurt
and killed when angry walrus turn on their frail little boats which one
toss of a walrus’ tusks would smash to bits. In attacking the walrus
lifts his head and comes down on the thing he is attacking with the end
of his sharp tusks, ripping things terribly. I saw them attack several
floats that way.
When the walrus came up, and the men could get close, the same sort of
performance was gone through with again. Only this time they would try
to get close with their lance, to stick it into the animal to kill him.
The other animals in the herd often would stay close to the wounded
one, barking and roaring something like a cow mooing, and puffing and
blowing water. It is very noisy and very exciting. When the others come
close, the Eskimos would bang their paddles on the paddle rest in front
of them and yell, to scare off the other walrus who otherwise might
attack them. Sometimes when scaring the walrus away they get within
three or four feet of them.
In a short time there were four walrus harpooned, three of them lanced
and dead and ready to be picked up by the Morrissey. We had the launch
fast to one of them that was only wounded. We did not want to shoot
him, as he had a fine head and the bullet is apt to break the bone
structure and hurt it for use as a specimen.
Art, Dad and Captain Bob went out in the launch to get him. The Captain
wanted to lance him, himself. He told Art to do the shooting with his
bow and arrows. Art shot at him seven times, all striking in the neck.
He was bleeding badly and getting pretty mad. He would have died from
the arrows, but they wanted to finish him as quickly as possible.
He pulled so hard that he turned the Morrissey around. He was fast to
the ship by a native line made of the hide of the bearded seal, or
ugsug. Its wonderful strength is shown by its power to pull the vessel
about.
At last he gave up trying to get away and made a rush right at the
launch. He sort of got on his back and put a flipper on each side of
the bow of the little boat and tore furiously with his tusks at the
bottom. We were watching from the deck of the Morrissey, only thirty
feet or so away, and we could see the splinters fly. He put two holes
right through the boat.
The Eskimos were in their kayaks and they and Captain Bob succeeded in
lancing the big bull, who once came right up under a kayak which really
almost slid right off his back as the kayaker paddled desperately away.
After he was dead we hooked the two throat halyards on him and hoisted
him on board, which was quite a job. Then we went around to get the
other walrus which the hunters had killed. In all there were seven and
a little one I will tell about in a minute.
A nice thing about this kind of hunting is that not a pound of meat is
wasted. As a matter of fact it is a blessing for the Eskimos. Every bit
of it is taken by them and used for their own food and for dog food.
Our coming just helped them get their supplies. I suppose in all they
got four or five tons of meat, what with the walrus and the narwhal.
After that Dad, Dan and myself went out in the little rowboat and
followed along after two hunters in kayaks. They went right into a herd
of about forty and harpooned one and motioned for us to come up and
shoot it. There was a good-sized herd within fifty yards of us,
puffing, grunting and barking. Now and then stray animals would come up
right close to the boat. They look awfully funny with their whiskered
faces popping up on the surface and glaring at you like cross old men.
Then they give a grunt and a spray of steam and down they go.
When they were excited like this they formed sort of a circle with the
tusks of all the old bulls facing out toward the hunters. I can’t
imagine a more exciting sport. I wish that some day I could learn to
use a kayak really well and try getting a walrus myself.
When we were pretty close Dad fired five bullets, four of which, I
think, hit him in the head and neck. But the rifle is only a 256, not a
very big bore, and it didn’t do the work. Then Dan fired a shot with
his big high-powered rifle and hit him in the back of the neck and he
dropped instantly. This one floated. Many of them sink the minute they
are dead.
We went back to one that Doc and Kellerman had shot after we picked up
the others. Two hunters in kayaks were waiting there. This was a big
cow walrus. But most interesting was that beside her in the water were
two young walrus. The older was a bull calf, a yearling I suppose.
We wanted to get these young ones alive so Carl went for his lasso. Dad
rowed Carl out in the little boat. Carl stood up swinging his lasso all
ready to throw when he got the chance. They went right up alongside the
old cow, who was floating partly out of water.
When the tusked calf came up Carl threw the rope, but the first throw
slipped off. Then it was evident that the smaller calf, which had no
tusks, was easier to get, seeming to be less wild. So Carl went after
him and about the third throw got the rope around him, which was quite
a job because his head was small and slippery and he dove quickly.
There was a great splashing and goings on. The little walrus wasn’t so
very little. He weighed about 150 pounds and was as strong as a young
bull. Carl hauled the rope in over the stern and finally got more of it
around the walrus and sort of hogtied him. Finally they dragged him
over to the Morrissey and he was hauled up on deck with a burton, which
is a tackle used to raise and lower the dories. In the meantime the
other young walrus had disappeared.
I suppose that perhaps this is the first time that a walrus ever has
been captured with a rope. Anyway, it’s certainly the first time this
particular cowboy has roped one. I know that polar bears have been
roped before.
We kept the little walrus on board for two days. Dad called him
Halitosis. He didn’t smell so sweet. We tried feeding him milk, and he
seemed to take a little, through a hose. He would bark fiercely at
everyone. But the really sad thing was to see him when he first came
aboard. The bodies of the other walrus were in a great heap on deck. At
once he smelled around and found his mother and the poor little fellow
got right over to her and sort of snuggled up close to her, quiet as
could be.
Later Harry killed him painlessly with chloroform and he was embalmed
to be taken back just as he was to the American Museum of Natural
History.
CHAPTER XII
ACROSS TO JONES SOUND
We dropped all our hunters at Karnah after a day there, during which we
visited around and settled up what we owed the Eskimos for the work
they had done for us. Of course all the walrus meat went to them, and
also the meat from two more narwhal which had been captured while we
were away, thanks to Dr. Rasmussen, who saw to it that everyone did all
they could to get the specimens we wanted.
There really were three more narwhal, but one of them was a little one
which Harry Raven preserved whole, embalming it. The skeletons and
skulls of the others were taken. Also Kellerman made some interesting
movies showing the work of landing the dead narwhal on the beach and
cutting them up. This was at night, when it was cloudy and not bright
enough for pictures. So some of the men lit bright flares which
Kellerman had, which lit up the beach with a queer bright light that
was almost blinding.
When the narwhal were landed Kudluktoo and the others cut off great
strips of the skin which they all love. These were handed around and
all hands gobbled up the stuff in great shape. The way they eat this
sort of thing is to put a big sliver in their mouth until it is stuffed
full, and then cut off the end outside their lips with a knife. Why
they don’t sometimes cut their noses or lips I don’t know. Anyway, it
looked awfully funny and ought to be good in the picture.
I tried narwhal skin myself and don’t like it much. It’s sort of tough
and seems to be swallowed without chewing. I think an auto tire inner
tube would be about the same, only it would smell better.
Pooadloona and another hunter we took over to Northumberland Island.
That afternoon we got some more walrus but while we were fooling around
taking some movies we lost two of the animals. I think this discouraged
the Eskimos who couldn’t understand why the foolish white men would let
good meat get away when they really had it killed, instead of trying
crazy stunts for a man who looked into a machine and turned a crank.
Anyway, there was one big walrus whose meat we took to Keate, the
little town where we left these hunters. It was only a little way from
the place where we had been wrecked.
In the evening we started across Baffin Bay to go to Jones Sound on the
Canadian side. We had intended to go further north to Etah, which was
only about sixty miles away. But it was getting pretty late in the
season and the Morrissey was giving Cap’n Bob a good deal of worry.
While she was well patched up, she still leaked a bit and lots of
places were sprung. For instance, the forward deck leaked so badly that
when the walrus meat was piled on deck the blood dripped right down
into our cabin and got on the table and especially into Bob Peary’s
bunk. It just wasn’t possible to fix the deck, which had to be
recaulked all over, until the vessel got to a shipyard.
Anyway, it seemed better not to go much further north. Also, we had to
go back to Holsteinsborg on the Greenland side to get the Hobbs party.
If it wasn’t for that Captain Bob would have gone to Etah.
After a day of fine going with some hours of a pretty stiff wind and
rather rough sea, we arrived at the mouth of Jones Sound where we were
greeted with a thick fog that put ice on all the rigging. After going
quite a way up Jones Sound, hoping to get to the lower land where there
might be musk-oxen, we were stopped by thick pan ice. Also new ice was
forming in the night. Evidently winter was just around the corner.
We turned around and went out again toward the mouth and then waited
for the fog to clear up. There was lots of pan ice all around us and of
course it wasn’t safe to risk getting caught by the ice too far in. A
sudden change in the wind, for instance, might jam it all around us and
keep us from getting out at all.
In the early afternoon the fog disappeared and we went in to Craig
Harbor, on the north shore of the sound on Ellesmere Land. Dad,
Rasmussen, Doc and Joe the sailor went ashore and reported that the
station was closed. This is the most northerly police post in the
world, occupied most of the time by the famous Northwest Mounted
Police.
Much to our disappointment there was nobody at the station. We learned
later they had moved to a new station further north on Ellesmere Land.
We left a note saying that we had been there. There were two main
buildings, a barracks and a store house, with oil barrels and sacks of
coal piled up around. It all looked very neat. The buildings themselves
were locked.
When we left Craig Harbor we saw two big bearded seal on the ice quite
a distance away. When the Morrissey got quite close to one Art Young
shot him dead with a rifle with a beautiful shot right through the
neck, and then he turned around and shot at the other. He hit him all
right but he wriggled off the ice pan and most likely sank.
When they were getting the first seal Jim, the sailor, who is used to
killing seal on the spring Newfoundland seal hunts, jumped on the pan
and cracked the seal over the head with a heavy seal hook. This broke
the skull and injured the specimen for scientific use. So I was told to
keep a watch out for more as we very much wanted to get a perfect
specimen.
We were not sure that there were any walrus in Jones Sound. But soon
Doc and I saw what we supposed were three big seals on pans of ice
about a mile ahead of us. We were in the lookout with glasses. And our
seal turned out to be walrus, and big ones, too.
We headed right for them and Carl and Doc and Cal and Dad got in the
bow with their guns. When they were pretty near they shot and hit the
walrus, but they didn’t kill him. It is pretty hard to kill one, and if
they have any life left they slide off the ice into the water. The poor
big walrus lifted himself on his flippers and looked around to see
where the noise came from and what it was all about.
In the water they seem pretty fierce and getting at them is quite a
job. But on the ice they seem very stupid and sort of pitiful and
lumbering, like a huge big sleepy cow. Only of course those tusks are
mighty dangerous, and I believe there isn’t an animal that can fight
with a walrus, even a polar bear. But they certainly can’t hear or see
very well. And when they are asleep on the ice in the sun, if the water
is quiet so the ice doesn’t rock and disturb them, it’s very easy
indeed to get awfully close to them.
This big walrus, although hit three times, started to get off the ice.
Then Carl finished him with Dan’s heavy rifle. So we left him dead on
that pan and moved over to the other pan where two more were asleep.
Both of them were hit with the first shots, but both managed to get
into the water. Carl drove my harpoon, from the ship, into one of them,
but the other sank, although Nielsen, Rasmussen’s man with us on this
part of the trip almost got his harpoon into that one. It was a shame
to lose him.
We all hate to kill anything and have it wasted. As a matter of fact I
thought I was going to be awfully excited about killing things, but
while it’s exciting all right I don’t think I care an awful lot about
it. Getting animals for food or for museums is all right. But I don’t
believe I want any trophies just to look at. It seems fairer to get the
fun of seeing them alive and to let them keep on up here. From what Dad
says, and Cap’n Bob and the others, there must have been a great deal
more game up here some years ago than there is now, and certainly other
expeditions killed an awful lot. Also of course the Eskimos, now that
they have rifles, kill a lot. And after a while, I suppose, the game
will be all gone just as it is in most of our own west.
We saw another walrus not far off. The Morrissey got very close to him
and Art put two arrows in his neck, shooting from the bowsprit so that
a picture could be taken. The arrows might have killed him, for they
certainly got in a long way and caused a lot of bleeding. But that
would have taken some time, so the walrus was shot.
None of these animals was wasted. Harry Raven took the brains for the
Museum and the heads were kept by members of the expedition. While our
crowd, I think, have had a pretty good time and certainly plenty of
excitement, they have not had much real hunting. I know that Dad had
hoped that the men who volunteered and came and have done lots of work
would be able to get more fun out of it. So he is glad when there is a
chance for them to get something to take back with them. The meat was
saved for the Eskimos at Pond’s Inlet, where we were going.
CHAPTER XIII
NANOOK!
That night in Jones Sound, after getting the walrus, was very
beautiful. There was a great big full moon and a very pink and golden
sunset. The sun really went down that night, although of course it
stayed quite light. And it was the first time we had seen the moon for
a long time. Both the sunset and the moon, one in the west, the other
in the east, lasted all the night, reflected over a very thin coat of
silvery new ice.
Dad and I stayed up all night. Dad shot a bearded seal on a pan, a
pretty good shot getting him right through the head. Then Ralph got out
on the pan and put a strap around the seal and we hoisted him on board
with a burton and were off again. A little while later we saw another
big one on a pan and Dad tried a long shot and missed, shooting high.
On the second shot he hit him, but the seal wriggled off and came to
the surface in a few minutes. Dan and Dad went out in the skiff and
tried to get him but they would go close to the place where he was and
he would go down and come up at another place. There was no use
shooting him unless they got close enough to put a seal hook in him,
for he would just sink.
After a while they gave up and started back. Then three seal came right
up near them, popping out of the water to see what it was all about.
But they dodged back too quick for a shot.
The new ice was forming quickly and the barometer was dropping. So we
began to move out to the mouth of the Sound, as Cap’n Bob wanted to get
out of there before we might have trouble with the ice in case of a
storm. Of course if it had been earlier in the season we would have
liked to stay in Jones Sound, where there certainly was good hunting.
We watched and watched, but saw nothing more. We were working easterly
following along the edge of big fields of floe ice, that is, floating
pans, some of them just little pieces a few yards square, and others
perhaps a hundred feet or more, or a number of pans floating about
together, partly joined by new ice. You could almost see this new ice
forming. The thermometer I suppose was about 25 degrees, or perhaps
colder. Little crystals gathered together in the quiet water and then
there was a thin sheet of rubbery ice. As the boat moved through it the
surface held with a lot of strength. It would wave as the ripples from
the bow worked out under it, and took a lot of pressure before it
actually broke.
It was just about four o’clock in the morning and I was going to turn
in. I was cold. But it had been fun staying up and I don’t think I ever
saw anything so beautiful as that light on the ice and the calm grey
water, with the snowy mountains and dark cliffs and white glaciers on
both sides of the sound.
Dan was still working, cleaning up his walrus head. Dad was at the bow.
Ralph was at the wheel, and Jim on lookout.
“Bear! Bear!”
Suddenly Ralph called that out, in a low voice.
Jim rang for the engine to stop and at once the Captain, who was below
getting a nap after being up about twenty-four hours, came on deck.
From where we were all that could be seen of the bear was a small
yellow spot away over on the other side of a big pan. I was told to go
aloft and keep my eyes on him and to yell if he went into the water. If
a bear gets into the water it is pretty easy to get him, for he doesn’t
swim too fast to catch. But if he gets to land he is likely to get
away. Cap’n Bob was afraid he might start across the big pan one way,
as we went round the other.
Anyway, the Morrissey went around the pan and nosed up, very quietly,
to within about thirty yards of him. The bear held his nose high in the
air and then came toward the ship making a very pretty jump across some
young ice. He seemed not a bit afraid, only very interested in this
strange new huge animal that had come to bother him.
Cap’n Bob wanted to be sure for us to get this first bear, so several
took a shot together. The rifles of Dad and Dan and Doc all blazed out
together and later we found that each shot hit and that any one of them
apparently would have been fatal.
Jim and Ralph jumped out on the ice from the bowsprit and made a line
fast to the dead bear and he was hoisted aboard and laid up forward,
the rest of the deck being pretty full of walrus meat and skins and
heads. About that time we looked pretty messy and like a butcher shop,
but right away, as the barometer was falling and it felt like snow, all
hands went to work and kept at it until breakfast, by which time things
were pretty shipshape.
After that, by the way, we had a wonderful assortment of meat. There
was walrus heart and meat, and bear meat hanging in the rigging and a
big bunch of auks and murres hanging in the shrouds, and also some fine
seal meat. Some of this seal we ate at dinner that next day, boiled not
very much, and it certainly was fine. So for some time we had a pretty
fine meat diet.
Right away, too, Billy boiled out a couple of bottles of bear oil for
Dad and Rasmussen. This is great stuff for shoes and leather.
And speaking of bear, I now have two complete outfits of Eskimo
clothing. The northern kind has nanookies, or bear pants. Nette made
these on board from a part of a skin Dr. Rasmussen gave Dad, and at
Karnah when we stopped the Eskimo women there chewed it up in their
teeth so that the hide became very soft and easy to work. Then there
are sealskin boots with rabbit fur inside and a sealskin netcha or
jacket with a hood to go over the head. It is a wonderfully warm and
comfortable rig, this northern outfit.
This bear of ours, they said, was a four-year-old. He measured seven
feet and four inches long and they guessed he weighed close to six
hundred pounds. Later on Fred fixed up the skin and the head to be
taken back and made into a rug. I worked on the skull, which takes
quite a lot of work to clean all the flesh off.
So that made a pretty exciting finish to a really wonderful day. We
were sorry for just one thing. There wasn’t enough light at that time
of the morning or late night to get any pictures of the bear. Anyway,
in about eight hours we had got walrus and bearded seal and then the
pride of it all, Nanook the bear.
And a funny part of it is that just the night before, Dad had sent a
radio to Mother saying that pretty soon he hoped to find a bear on one
of the ice pans, and that his skin was mortgaged to make a rug for my
little brother June to play on in front of the fire this winter.
Then so soon after that we got the bear and the rug for Junie!
CHAPTER XIV
AT POND’S INLET
On August twenty-eighth after a long time in very thick fog we at last
saw land only a little way off. For a couple of days we had been
working down the coast of Devon Island and Bylot Island, wanting to get
to Pond’s Inlet where there is a station of the Northwest Mounted
Police and also a post of the Hudson Bay Company.
Cap’n Bob had not been able to see land or to take any observations but
we knew pretty well from dead reckoning that we had reached the south
shore of Pond’s Inlet. “Dead reckoning,” you know, means finding out
where you are by the record of the number of miles the log shows the
ship has travelled. The log itself is a little instrument like a small
propeller which is let out on a long rope at the stern; it turns around
fast or slow according to the speed at which the boat travels, and the
revolutions it makes are recorded showing the number of knots, or sea
miles, covered.
While we were drifting around in the fog, barely in sight of the high
land which now and then showed through the fog, Dad and Dr. Rasmussen
paddled about a bit in a small boat shooting murres and dovekies. In
quite a short time Dad shot fifty-one, which made several meals for the
crowd.
Then later we put the dory over with the Johnson engine in it. It made
a good little boat to go ahead and see how deep the water was. One of
the sailors was in her using the lead and calling back to the Morrissey
the depths of water he found.
After a few miles of groping along that way we stopped near shore where
a little stream came down right beside a glacier. We only had a few
gallons of water left on board in the big tank, and nearly all the
casks were empty. While the crew took the casks ashore and filled them,
Bob Peary, Ed Manley and I went out rowing in the fog looking for seal.
We’d seen quite a few during the day. Of course we didn’t get out of
sight of land, but kept going down along the shore, so we could find
our way back. You really could see only about a hundred yards.
We shot at a couple of seal but missed them. They are pretty hard to
hit in the water. They come up just for a minute or even a few seconds
and take a look at you if you are close and then dive. We were just
going after another which seemed to be keeping pretty well on the
surface when we heard the fog horn on the Morrissey. That was a signal
that we should come back.
A little later we went ashore and on a rocky hillside found a whaler’s
grave. He was a harpooner on a famous whaler, the Diana, of Dundee,
Scotland, and was buried there in 1903. Some other whalers’ graves not
far away were a hundred years old, for there were many of them up here
as early as that. During some seasons, I was told, as many as a couple
of thousand men would be in these waters and some vessels wintered in
little harbors along the coast. Now the whales are about all gone and
the whalers are out of business.
The fog cleared up later in the day and we made our way to Albert
Harbor which was one of the old whaler’s headquarters. There are high
cliffs on all sides so it is wonderfully well protected and the water
is very deep. In the old days they used to bring the vessels right up
to the rock slides at the foot of the cliffs and put ballast on.
Then we went on further up the Inlet, which really is a broad sound
mostly a dozen miles wide to the place where the Hudson Bay Company’s
post is. Right next to the Post is the detachment of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police. The Police have a barracks and a store house, and the
H. B. C. about the same, with a store too. Then down along the beach
are a dozen little shacks and some sod houses, the homes of the natives
who live there. But most of the Eskimos in that part of the country
live far away from the post, in villages out where the hunting is
better.
There were six white men, three of the Police and three H. B. C.
Maurice Timbury was the constable in charge for the Police and George
Dunn is the factor at the H. B. C. Everyone was most awfully nice to us
and they gave us a grand time. We had dinner with the Police and then a
dance at the H. B. C. house, which was very lively and lots of fun. The
music was a Victrola and the Eskimos came in and danced. Also Nette,
the Greenland girl whom we are taking around to Holsteinsborg, was
quite the belle of the ball. She dances well and Dr. Rasmussen is a
great dancer.
The Eskimos here in Baffin Land seem to be much different from those in
Greenland. The women tattoo their faces and wear different sorts of
clothes. Just there at the Post, where they get lots of white men’s
things, the native clothing isn’t seen much and I don’t believe that so
much “store” food is so very good for them. Anyway, the crowd I saw
seemed sort of puny and soft compared with the fine husky fellows we
had been seeing on the other side of Baffin Bay. The kayaks over here
seemed bigger and wider than those of the Greenland Eskimos.
The meat from the walrus we had killed up on Jones Sound we brought to
Pond’s Inlet and gave it to the natives there. They seemed very
pleased, for it is fine dog food and they do not get walrus in those
waters any more. In return for our gifts some women came on board and
finished fleshing off the walrus and seal skins which we had not done
yet. Then they were salted some more and put in barrels and headed up
to go back to the Museum. It was a terrible job to get the grease off
the decks and for a few days after they were as slippery as a skating
rink.
We went down to some old Eskimo winter houses, or stone igloos a mile
or so from the Station. They were very old and were used by a people so
many years ago that the present Eskimos don’t know anything about them
and believe that they were quite a different race. Dr. Rasmussen says
that from the things found in this old village, compared with others
that have been studied, the people lived there probably about a
thousand years ago and in some places even earlier and about the time
the Norsemen first came to Greenland in the year one thousand and
later.
These old Eskimo stone igloos are built in a circle, mostly about
fifteen feet or a little more across. There is a small outer room which
is the entrance hall, chiefly to keep the inner place warmer. It is so
low that they must have had to creep in on their hands and knees. After
creeping in there seems to be a kind of step up into the inner room.
The main room, I guess, was about five feet high, with a raised
platform all around it a couple of feet above the central floor which
is just a sort of small square in the middle.
In one corner of the raised part, usually near the door, the cooking
was done. The platform at the back was used for sleeping, and it is all
built up very neatly with flat stones, the walls made of stone and turf
and whale bone. The roof was flat rock and bone. In some places whale
ribs seem to have been used as rafters to support the walls and perhaps
the ceiling. They certainly must have been very warm and strong houses.
I forgot to say that they really are partly under ground, for the floor
level is usually a couple of feet lower than the level of the outer
ground.
We did some digging around these houses and at some of the old graves.
And the next day Dad and I and Dan went with Mr. Gall and his
assistant, Abraham Ford of Labrador, in their motor boat twelve miles
along the Inlet to some other old houses.
We found a few very nice things like spear heads and snow knives made
of bone and ivory, harpoon handles and a little cup or dish carved out
of bone. Later on Dad got from some of the white men the things they
had collected so that altogether we got together quite a fine lot of
very interesting things. And many of them really came from the “stone
age” of these people, when they made everything they had from stone,
like flint arrowheads, or from bone or ivory.
It is quite wonderful to know that with these very primitive weapons
which they made themselves they were able to kill the huge sperm
whales. Yet of course they did, for their houses are surrounded with
the bones. And in the old times these waters surely were just full of
whale, walrus, seal and narwhal.
Timbury and the two other constables, Murray and Dunn, went with us in
the afternoon hunting for Arctic hare. We saw one but couldn’t get near
enough because one of the dogs had followed and would chase it every
time we got in sight. Ed shot one duck and I shot two on a little lake
about two miles from the settlement. We didn’t know how to get them so
Ed took off his clothes and waded out in the icy water up to his
armpits and got them.
Here at Pond’s Inlet, by the way, is the most northerly radio station
in the world. Both the Police and H. B. C. have a short wave receiving
set, and the Police also have a low power sending set, which I guess
doesn’t work very well. In Mr. Gall’s house we were interested to see
our old friends the Eveready Batteries which he uses entirely. Dad
arranged with them to have a special program, for a few minutes anyway,
on the Eveready hour later in November, if it could be fixed up. That
is, he wanted to have part of a program of broadcasting in New York
arranged so that it would be directed right at Pond’s Inlet and they up
there could hear Dad in New York talking to them.
When we left the settlement it was so windy and rough that we stopped
at Albert Harbor again. Art and Ed and I went ashore on the steep rocky
island to look for hares. We climbed the first hill and saw a lot of
sign but no hares.
“There’s one!” All of a sudden Art called out. “Over there by the big
rock. Dave, you sneak over behind that pile of rocks and Ed and I will
stay here and attract his attention.”
I crept slowly toward the side of the hill and when I was out of sight
of the hare I ran for all I was worth and then slowed down and looked
carefully over the top. There he was, about sixty yards away, looking
at Art and Ed.
I aimed in a hurry and shot and he tumbled right over in his tracks.
The twenty-two bullet went right through his shoulders and into his
heart and out the other side. We saw that his back was a light greyish
color and that he was a lot bigger than the largest American rabbits.
In winter, I’m told, they get pure white.
We chased another all over the place and almost lost him. Just by luck
I had gone around the other way from the others and saw his ears
sticking up a long way off. I whistled to make him stand up, but when
he did I missed and he started running. I shot at him on the run and
with a lot of luck got him right through the hips and backbone. He was
larger than the first one, and pure white.
We tried some others but with no luck. It was about ten o’clock when we
got back to the boat, and almost dark. Beginning here at Pond’s Inlet
we have had our first real nights. The sun sets and for some hours it
gets dark.
Anyway, I asked Dad to send a radio message to Mother telling her that
I am fixing up a couple of nice Arctic hare skins for her, to make a
collar or something out of. And Fred is showing me how to make powder
puffs out of the tails.
CHAPTER XV
MORE BEARS
September second we were working down the eastern coast of Baffin
Island, intending to cross over Baffin Bay toward Holsteinsborg to get
the Hobbs party. There was no ice to speak of, only a few scattered
bergs, and the weather continued to be pretty nice, sunny and quite
warm, which was very unusual for this time of year.
Just at seven o’clock in the morning Dad woke me up and said that there
were three bears on a small berg near us. Ralph and Jim, the same watch
that discovered the first bear, had seen them. All hands turned out so
we would not miss the fun.
Carl was getting his rope ready while Art got out his bow and arrows
for the hunt. No guns were to be used. Dad wanted to have this entirely
a stunt for the bow and the roping, and for motion pictures. Kellerman
had his two big motion picture cameras on deck, and a good many of the
crowd were using their still cameras. Also Bob Peary had a small movie
camera but he was on watch in the engine room so I ran it for him the
best I could!
The Morrissey went right up close to the berg and we got a lot of
pictures. There was a big mother bear and two cubs which had been born
about February, they told me. They were pretty big and husky and
weighed probably more than 150 pounds each. It was queer to see the
bear away out here in the water, nearly twenty miles from land. But
later Mr. Rasmussen told us often they travel hundreds of miles almost
all the way in the water. Swimming seems to be about as easy for them
as walking. Cap’n Bob has found them swimming away down off the
Labrador.
As we got close the old bear walked right down to the water’s edge with
the two cubs following. We headed away from the berg and swung around
to leeward to let them calm down. That seemed to satisfy them. Perhaps
they thought the ship was just a big dirty piece of ice.
Anyway, they went back up on the ice and settled down. The two cubs lay
down close to the mother, and Harry, looking through the glasses, said
he could see that they were getting their breakfast.
When we came close again for Art to get a bow and arrow shot the old
bear got really worried and made for the water. They swam off in a row
that looked like three butter balls, the old one first and the two
little ones trailing. They are not really quite white, but seem to be
sort of yellowish, almost butter color, especially when just their
heads show in the water. Their black noses show out more than anything
and their eyes.
We came within thirty feet of them in the Morrissey two or three times,
taking pictures. The mother bear would turn around and growl at us, and
sort of grunt to the children to hustle along and get away from this
strange creature that was following them.
We wanted to get them back on the berg, if possible, so we put a dory
over with Carl in it and rowed by Ralph and Joe, to try to herd them
toward the ice again. Several times after a lot of trouble they got
them headed back near the ice but they wouldn’t go up on it again. It
was a queer game of tag.
In the meantime Jim on board was working on a rough cage for the cubs
because Dad had decided to get them alive if it were possible to take
them home to the Bronx Zoo at New York. At first they were going to let
me shoot one as I did want to get a bear quite by myself. But I agreed
that it would be a lot better to get them alive if possible. It happens
that in 1910 Cap’n Bob up right near here captured the huge polar bear
that has been at the Zoo ever since, “Silver King.” He died last year.
Art got out on the bowsprit with his bow and arrows and a file with
which he gave the big two-inch steel blades of the arrows a last
sharpening.
Kellerman, at his camera, asked Art if he was ready. Art said he was
all ready. So Cap’n Bob took the vessel right up close to them again.
The first time Art couldn’t shoot because one of the cubs was swimming
almost on top of the big bear. So we made another circle and came up on
them again. It was a lot of trouble, because there was quite a rough
swell and for the camera fixed up at the bow on the starboard side you
had to get the vessel into position pretty exactly.
Art fired his big bow. By the way, it’s got about a ninety-five pound
pull which means it’s all a very strong man can do to even get the
string back and the bow bent, far less aim it and all that. I can’t
even bend the bow half way. I’ve seen Art put the arrows through
two-inch planks of soft wood.
The first two arrows hit the big bear in the back. It was a hard mark,
just the neck and a bit of body showing in the water, and Art standing
in a mean place on the bowsprit, and the boat rolling a good deal.
The bear turned around and roared and sort of cuffed at one of the cubs
who was close. On the next circle Art used two more arrows and I guess
one went into her pretty deep. She bled a lot and her head went under
the water. Then she came up and kind of rubbed noses with the cubs and
then her head dropped again. She was dead. And I guess it was the first
time a polar bear ever has been killed with a bow and arrow, certainly
since the days when the Eskimos used primitive weapons.
The cubs stayed around the body until Carl in the dory came up close.
Then they swam off, barking like a whole kennel of dogs. We hoisted the
big bear on board and covered her with a tarp. Then we started after
the cubs, and it was about the most exciting thing I think I have ever
seen, and an awful lot of fun.
Carl sort of wedged himself up in the bow of the dory, which was
bobbing around a lot in the swell, and the men rowed him towards the
cubs as the Morrissey worked in close where Kel could get the pictures.
The very first shot Carl got his bear. He swung his rope about his head
in the air and let it go. The noose fell as fine as could be right
around the cub’s head. It was a great show. The folks back in
Pendleton, Oregon, who sent us that rope for Carl would have been
tickled to death. And right there Dad said we would call one of the
cubs “Cowboy.” The first one was to be named “Cap’n Bob.”
The little bear didn’t know what had happened until they began pulling
him in. Then he commenced growling and snarling and barking. When Carl
got him alongside the dory he chewed at the rope and scratched and tore
at the boat and at Carl and tried to climb aboard. He certainly was
full of fight. One clean swipe from his claw would be enough to rip an
arm off, I suppose. Carl wore heavy gloves and leather wristlets.
When the bear tried to climb in Carl would bat him in the face with his
hand or pry his paws off the gunwale. He bit at Carl and was real
snooty. It was a great party. After a while, when he had towed the dory
about a bit, Carl managed to get a rope sling down around his body
behind his shoulders, and with this he was hoisted aboard with a
tackle.
Coming up and on deck he bit everything he could get at and tried to
tear the sails he reached, and generally raised Ned. We hoisted him up
in the air and with a smaller rope sort of led and dragged him forward
to the cage which was on the port side of the ship by the bow. We had
to lift him over the jumbo and lower him on the other side into the
entrance of his cage.
On the way he knocked down the galley stove pipe. Then we put a line
around one of his front paws and then put the line under the bottom of
the cage and pulled down on it for all we were worth. We got his head
down in that way and then we all had to push his hind quarters. After
about half an hour we had him in the cage.
Then Carl went out and roped the other cub, who had swam away about a
quarter of a mile. This one we got over on top of the cage all right
but then when Will was standing up leaning on the jumbo boom the bear
jumped right up at him and Will just got away in time. The bear landed
just where he had been. It was very close. We got him in the cage the
same as the other one.
We gave them a duck and to our surprise they ate it all up in a minute.
It is very unusual for an animal to eat so soon after he is in
captivity. They must have been pretty hungry on that berg. We thought
we would see how they liked the dog food we had on board, in cans. It’s
called Ken-l-Rations and is pretty good stuff even for men. The Eskimos
North liked it a lot. Well, our bears just loved it. They actually will
bite chunks of it off a big spoon which Carl holds through the side of
the cage. Dad has asked him to look after “Cap’n Bob” and “Cowboy.”
And that really ended the expedition. Of course there was plenty more,
and it was a month before we got home.
After getting the bear cubs we went across Baffin Bay to Holsteinsborg
and picked up the Hobbs party. Then we started home. And the first day
out we dropped our tail shaft and propeller, a third of the way across
Davis Strait. That meant we had to go the rest of the distance to
Sydney without any engine. We made those 1400 miles with sails alone,
and we had a couple of grand gales and a real hard time getting through
Belle Isle Straits and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, what with fogs and
head winds. It took 15 days of sailing. But it was sort of a fine way
to finish up a trip on a vessel which was really meant for sails alone
before we put in the engine.
And this, now that I’m back from Greenland, I’m writing on the
Morrissey as we’re in sight of Cape Breton Island. And it all will be
sent down by railroad from Sydney and perhaps the little book will be
about ready by the time we’re back home—which is a pretty good place to
be!
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