The North Pole Part 6

If a death occurs in a tent, the poles are removed, and the tent is left on the ground to rot or blow away. It is never used again. If the death occurs in an igloo, the structure is vacated and not used again for a long time. The relatives of the dead observe certain formalities in regard to food and clothing, and the name of the lost one is never mentioned. If any other members of the tribe have the same name, they must take another until an infant is born to which the proscribed name can be given. This appears to remove the ban.

Eskimos are children in their grief, as in their pleasure; they weep for a dead friend a few days, then they forget. Even a mother who has been inconsolable at the death of her baby soon laughs again and thinks of other things.

In a country where the stars are visible for so many weeks at a time it is not strange perhaps that they receive much attention from the natives. The Eskimos are, within barbaric limits, astronomers. The princ.i.p.al constellations visible in northern lat.i.tudes are well known to them and they have given them their own names and descriptions. In the Great Dipper they see a herd of celestial reindeer. The Pleiades are to the Eskimos a team of dogs pursuing a solitary polar bear. Gemini they describe as two stones in the entrance of an igloo. The moon and the sun represent to the Eskimo, as to some of our North American Indian tribes, a fleeing maiden and her pursuing admirer.

Time is, of course, of small value to the Eskimo, so far as he is himself personally concerned, yet after the Eskimo has been trained to the ways of the white man he seems to absorb an excellent notion of the value of punctuality and will carry out orders with a surprising degree of promptness and despatch.

The strength and capacity for enduring hardships exhibited by this people is extraordinary and is not, I believe, exceeded by that shown by any other aboriginal race now in existence. It is true that the average size of the Eskimo is, judged by our own standards, small; but I could give the names of several of them who stand five feet ten inches and weigh 185 pounds. The popular idea that they are clumsily fashioned is not correct. That notion is merely another case of judging a man by the clothes he wears, and an Eskimo's garments are not precisely what we should call of fashionable cut.

To my mind, the skin canoe of these Northern aborigines is, with its hunting implements, one of the most complete and ingenious manifestations of intelligence to be found in any aboriginal tribe. Over a light framework, an almost infinite number of small pieces of wood deftly lashed together with sealskin thongs, is stretched the tanned skin of seals, the seams being neatly sewed by the women, and then rendered water-tight by an application of seal oil and soot from the native lamps. The result is a craft of great buoyancy, some grace, and especial fitness and effectiveness for the purposes for which it is intended, that is, to enable the hunter to creep softly and noiselessly upon seal, walrus, or white whale. This canoe, while varying somewhat with the size of the owner and maker, will average between twenty and twenty-four inches in width by sixteen or eighteen feet in length. It carries one man only. I may have helped the Eskimos a little in perfecting it, by giving them more suitable material for the framework, but the canoe is original with them.

It will scarcely be considered strange that I have grown to love this childlike, simple people, as well as to value their many admirable and useful qualities. For it must be borne in mind that for nearly a quarter of a century they have been more thoroughly known to me than any other group of human beings in the world. The present generation of able-bodied Eskimos has practically grown up under my personal observation. Every individual member of the tribe--man, woman, and child--is known to me by name and sight as thoroughly as the patients of an old-fashioned family physician are known to him, and perhaps the feeling existing between us is not so very different. And the knowledge of individuals gained in this intimate way has been priceless in the work of reaching the Pole.

Take, for example, the quartet of young Eskimos who formed a portion of the sledge party that finally reached the long-courted "ninety North."

The oldest of the four, Ootah, is about 34 years of age. This young man is one of the st.u.r.diest of the tribe. He stands about 5 feet 8 inches and is a fine hunter. When I first saw him he was a young boy. Egingwah, another of the group, is about 26 years old, a big chap weighing about 175 pounds. Seegloo and Ooqueah are about 24 and 20 respectively. All four of them have been brought up to regard me as the patron, protector, and guide of their people. Their capacities, peculiarities, and individual characteristics were perfectly known to me, and they were chosen out of the whole tribe for the final great effort because I knew them to be most perfectly adapted to the work in hand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DOG MARKET AT CAPE YORK]

Before taking up the story of our advance from Cape York, a word ought to be said about those remarkable creatures, the Eskimo dogs, for without their help success could never have crowned the efforts of the expedition. They are st.u.r.dy, magnificent animals. There may be larger dogs than these, there may be handsomer dogs; but I doubt it. Other dogs may work as well or travel as fast and far when fully fed; but there is no dog in the world that can work so long in the lowest temperatures on practically nothing to eat. The male dogs average in weight from eighty to one hundred pounds, though I had one which weighed one hundred and twenty-five pounds. The females are somewhat smaller. Their special physical characteristics are a pointed muzzle, great breadth between the eyes, sharp-pointed ears, very heavy coat underlaid with a thick, soft fur, powerful, heavy-muscled legs, and a bushy tail or brush similar to that of the fox. There is only one breed of Eskimo dogs, but they are variously marked and of different colors, black, white, gray, yellow, brown, and mottled. Some scientists believe that they are the direct descendants of the Arctic wolf, yet, as a rule, they are as affectionate and obedient to their masters as our own dogs at home. Their food is meat, and meat only. That they cannot live on any other food I know, for I have made the experiment. For water they eat snow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WHALE BOAT RETURNING TO THE SHIP FROM THE WALRUS HUNT]

The dogs are not housed at any season of the year; but summer and winter they are tied somewhere near the tent or igloo. They are never allowed to roam at large, lest they be lost. Sometimes a special pet, or a female that has young puppies, will be taken into the igloo for a time; but Eskimo puppies only a month old are so hardy that they can stand the severe winter weather.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KING ESKIMO DOG]

Enough has been said to give the reader a general idea of these strange people, that have been so valuable to me in my arctic work. But I want to say again, at the risk of being misunderstood, that I hope no efforts will ever be made to civilize them. Such efforts, if successful, would destroy their primitive communism, which is necessary to preserve their existence. Once give them an idea of real-estate interest and personal-property rights in houses and food, and they might become as selfish as civilized beings; whereas now any game larger than a seal is the common property of the tribe and no man starves while his neighbors are gorging themselves. If a man has two sets of hunting implements, he gives one of them to the man who has none. It is this feeling of good-fellowship which alone preserves the race. I have taught them some of the fundamental principles of sanitation and the care of themselves, the treatment of simple diseases, of wounds, and other accidents; but there I think their civilization should stop. This opinion is not based on theory or prejudice, but on eighteen years of intimate study and experience.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CAPE JESUP GRENADIERS]

CHAPTER VIII

GETTING RECRUITS

When on August 1 the _Roosevelt_ steamed out from Cape York, she had on board several Eskimo families which we had picked up there and at Salvo Island. We also had about one hundred dogs, bought from the Eskimos.

When I say "bought," I do not mean paid for with money, as these people have no money and no unit of value. All exchange between them is based on the principle of pure barter. For instance, if one Eskimo has a deerskin which he does not need, and another has something else, they exchange. The Eskimos had dogs which we wanted, and we had many things which they wanted, such as lumber, knives and other cutlery, cooking utensils, ammunition, matches, et cetera. So, as the Yankees say, we traded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEARY DISTRIBUTING UTENSILS TO WIVES OF HIS HUNTERS AT ETAH]

Steaming in a northwesterly course from Cape York, we pa.s.sed the "Crimson Cliffs," so named by Sir John Ross, the English explorer, in 1818. This vivid name was applied to the cliffs by reason of the quant.i.ties of "red snow" which can be seen from a ship miles out at sea.

The color is given to the permanent snow by the _Protococcus nivalis_, one of the lowest types of the single, living protoplasmic cell. The nearly transparent gelatinous ma.s.ses vary from a quarter inch in diameter to the size of a pin-head, and they draw from the snow and the air the scanty nourishment which they require. Seen from a distance, the snow looks like blood. This red banner of the Arctic has greeted me on all my northern journeys.

Sailing by these cliffs, which extend for thirty or forty miles, my thoughts were busy with the work before us. First and most necessary of all was the task of gathering our arctic personnel of Eskimos and dogs, already begun before we left Cape York.

Our next stop, after Cape York, was on August 3, at North Star Bay, Oomunnui, as the natives call it, on Wolstenholm Sound. Here I found the _Erik_, which had become separated from us in Davis Strait several days before during heavy weather. At Oomunnui we took on two or three families of Eskimos and more dogs. Ooqueah, one of my North Pole party, came aboard at this place; Seegloo had joined us at Cape York.

On the night of August 5, a clear and sunshiny night, between Hakluyt and Northumberland Islands I left the _Roosevelt_ and transferred to the _Erik_, taking Matt Henson with me, for a reconnaissance of the various Eskimo settlements on Inglefield Gulf and along the coast. This detour was for the purpose of picking up more Eskimos and dogs. The _Roosevelt_ was sent ahead to Etah, to get in shape for her coming battle royal with the ice in Kane Basin and the channels beyond.

There was for me a strange mingling of pleasure and sadness in this gathering together of our brown-skinned helpers, for I felt that it was for the last time. The business consumed several days. I went first to Karnah, on the Redcliffe Peninsula, thence to Kangerdlooksoah and Nunatoksoah, near the head of the gulf. Returning on our course, we came back to Karnah, then went south to the neighborhood of the Itiblu Glacier, then northwest again by a devious course around the islands and the points to Kookan, in Robertson Bay, then to Nerke, on C. Saumarez, then on to Etah, where we joined the _Roosevelt_, having obtained all the Eskimos and dogs we needed,--two hundred and forty-six of the latter, to be exact.

There was no intention of taking to the far North all the Eskimos taken aboard the _Erik_ and the _Roosevelt_--only the best of them. But if any family wanted transportation from one settlement to another, we were glad to accommodate them. It is to be doubted if anywhere on the waters of the Seven Seas there was ever a more outlandishly picturesque vessel than ours at this time--a sort of free tourist steamship for traveling Eskimos, with their chattering children, barking dogs, and other goods and chattels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ESKIMO DOGS OF THE EXPEDITION (246 IN ALL) ON SMALL ISLAND, ETAH FJORD]

Imagine this man-and-dog-bestrewn ship, on a pleasant, windless summer day in Whale Sound. The listless sea and the overarching sky are a vivid blue in the sunlight--more like a scene in the Bay of Naples than one in the Arctic. There is a crystalline clearness in the pure atmosphere that gives to all colors a brilliancy seen nowhere else--the glittering white of the icebergs with the blue veins running through them; the deep reds, warm grays, and rich browns of the cliffs, streaked here and there with the yellows of the sandstone; a little farther away sometimes the soft green gra.s.s of this little arctic oasis; and on the distant horizon the steel-blue of the great inland ice. When the little auks fly high against the sunlit sky, they appear like the leaves of a forest when the early frost has touched them and the first gale of autumn carries them away, circling, drifting, eddying through the air. The desert of northern Africa may be as beautiful as Hichens tells us; the jungles of Asia may wear as vivid coloring; but to my eyes there is nothing so beautiful as the glittering Arctic on a sunlit summer day.

On August 11 the _Erik_ reached Etah, where the _Roosevelt_ was awaiting her. The dogs were landed on an island, the _Roosevelt_ was washed, the boilers were blown down and filled with fresh water, the furnaces cleaned, and the cargo overhauled and re-stowed to put the vessel in fighting trim for her coming encounter with the ice. About three hundred tons of coal were transferred from the _Erik_ to the _Roosevelt_, and about fifty tons of walrus and whale meat.

Fifty tons of coal were cached at Etah for the _Roosevelt's_ expected return the following year. Two men, boatswain Murphy and Pritchard, the cabin boy, with full provisions for two years, were left in charge.

Harry Whitney, a summer pa.s.senger on the _Erik_, who was ambitious to obtain musk-oxen and polar bears, asked permission to remain with my two men at Etah. The permission was granted, and Mr. Whitney's belongings were landed.

At Etah, Rudolph Franke, who had come north with Dr. Cook in 1907, came to me and asked permission to go home on the _Erik_. He showed me a letter from Dr. Cook directing him to go home this season on a whaler.

An examination by Dr. Goodsell, my surgeon, showed that the man suffered from incipient scurvy, and that he was in a serious mental state, so I had no alternative but to give him pa.s.sage home on the _Erik_. Boatswain Murphy, whom I was to leave at Etah, was a thoroughly trustworthy man, and I gave him instructions to prevent the Eskimos from looting the supplies and equipment left there by Dr. Cook, and to be prepared to render Dr. Cook any a.s.sistance he might require when he returned, as I had no doubt he would as soon as the ice froze over Smith Sound (presumably in January) so as to enable him to cross to Anoratok from Ellesmere Land, where I had no doubt he then was.

On the _Erik_ were three other pa.s.sengers, Mr. C. C. Crafts, who had come north to take a series of magnetic observations for the department of terrestrial magnetism of the Carnegie Inst.i.tution in Washington, Mr.

George S. Norton, of New York, and Mr. Walter A. Larned, the tennis champion. The _Roosevelt's_ carpenter, Bob Bartlett, of Newfoundland (not related to Captain Bob Bartlett), and a sailor named Johnson also went back on the _Erik_. That vessel was commanded by Captain Sam Bartlett (Captain Bob's uncle), who had been master of my own ship on several expeditions.

At Etah we took on a few more Eskimos, including Ootah and Egingwah, who were destined to be with me at the Pole; and I left there all the remaining Eskimos that I did not wish to take with me to winter quarters in the North. We retained forty-nine--twenty-two men, seventeen women, ten children--and two hundred and forty-six dogs. The _Roosevelt_, as usual, was loaded almost to the water's edge with the coal that had been crowded into her, the seventy tons of whale meat which we had bought in Labrador, and the meat and blubber of nearly fifty walruses.

We parted company from the _Erik_ and steamed north on the 18th of August, an intensely disagreeable day, with driving snow and rain, and a cutting wind from the southeast which made the sea very rough. As the two ships separated, they signaled "good-by and good luck" with the whistles, and our last link with civilization was broken.

Since my return I have been asked if I did not feel deep emotion on parting with my companions on the _Erik_, and I have truthfully replied that I did not. The reader must remember that this was my eighth expedition into the Arctic, and that I had parted from a supply ship many times before. Constant repet.i.tion will take the edge from the most dramatic experience. As we steamed north from the harbor of Etah, my thoughts were on the condition of the ice in Robeson Channel; and the ice in Robeson Channel is more dramatic than any parting--save from one's nearest and dearest, and I had left mine three thousand miles below at Sydney. We had some three hundred and fifty miles of almost solid ice to negotiate before we could reach our hoped-for winter quarters at Cape Sheridan. I knew that beyond Smith Sound we might have to make our slow way rod by rod, and sometimes literally inch by inch, b.u.t.ting and ramming and dodging the mountainous ice; that, if the _Roosevelt_ survived, I should probably not have my clothes off, or be able to s.n.a.t.c.h more than an hour or two of sleep at a time, for two or three weeks. Should we lose our ship and have to make our way over the ice southward from anywhere below Lady Franklin Bay, or possibly beyond there--it was good-by to my life's dream and probably to some of my companions.

CHAPTER IX

A WALRUS HUNT

The walrus are among the most picturesque and powerful fauna of the far North. More than that, their pursuit and capture, a process by no means devoid of peril, is an important part of every serious arctic expedition, for on every expedition of mine these huge creatures, weighing as they do all the way from 1,200 to 3,000 pounds, are hunted for the purpose of obtaining the maximum of meat for dog food in a minimum of time.

Wolstenholm and Whale Sounds, which are pa.s.sed before reaching Etah, are favorite haunts of the walrus. The hunting of these monsters is the most exciting and dangerous sport in the arctic regions. The polar bear has been called the tiger of the North; but a contest between one or two, or even three, of these animals and a man armed with a Winchester repeating rifle is an entirely one-sided affair. On the contrary, a contest with a herd of walrus,--the lions of the North,--in a small whale-boat, will give more thrills to the minute than anything else I know of within the Arctic Circle.

On the last expedition I did not go after walrus myself, leaving that exhilarating labor to the younger men. I have seen so much of it in the past that my first vivid impression is somewhat blunted. I have therefore asked George Borup to write for me an account of walrus-hunting, as it appears to a novice, and his story is so vivid that I give it to the reader in his own words, graphic with the keen impressions of a young man and picturesque with college slang. He says:

"Walrus-hunting is the best sport in the shooting line that I know.

There is something doing when you tackle a herd of fifty-odd, weighing between one and two tons each, that go for you whether wounded or not; that can punch a hole through eight inches of young ice; that try to climb into the boat to get at or upset you,--we never could make out which, and didn't care, as the result to us would have been the same,--or else try to ram your boat and stave holes in it.

"Get in a mix-up with a herd, when every man in the whale-boat is standing by to repel boarders, hitting them over the head with oars, boat-hooks, axes, and yelling like a cheering section at a football game to try to scare them off; with the rifles going like young Gatling guns, and the walruses bellowing from pain and anger, coming to the surface with mad rushes, sending the water up in the air till you would think a flock of geysers was turned loose in your immediate vicinity--oh, it's great!

"When we were walrus-hunting, the _Roosevelt_ would steam along, with all hands on the watch. Then suddenly a keen-eyed Eskimo would sing out, 'Awick soah!' or, possibly, 'Awick ted.i.c.ksoah!' ('Walruses! A great many walruses!')