The North Pole - Robert E. Peary (e book reader pdf .txt) 📗

to make her ready for the winter. The engine-room force was busy blowing down the boilers, putting the machinery out of commission, removing every drop of water from the pipes and elbows so the cold of winter should not burst them; and the crew was busy taking down the sails, slacking off the rigging, so the contraction from the intense cold of winter should not cause damage, with a thousand and one details of like character.

Before the sails were taken down, they were all set, that they might be thoroughly dried out by sun and wind. The ship was a beautiful sight, held fast in the embrace of the ice and with her cables out, but with every sail filled with wind like a yacht in a race.

While this work was going on small hunting parties of Eskimos were sent to the Lake Hazen region, but they met with little success. A few hares were secured, but musk-oxen seemed to have vanished. This troubled me, for it raised a fear that the hunting of the former expedition had killed off the game, or driven it away. The Eskimo women set their fox traps all along the shore for five miles or so each way, and they were more successful than the men, obtaining some thirty or forty foxes in the course of the fall and winter. The women also went on fishing trips to the ponds of the neighborhood, and brought in many mottled beauties.

The Eskimo method of fishing is interesting. The fish in that region will not rise to bait but are captured by cutting a hole in the ice and dropping in a piece of ivory carved in the shape of a small fish. When the fish rises to examine this visitor, it is secured with a spear. The Eskimo fish spear has a central shaft with a sharp piece of steel, usually an old nail, set in the end. On each side is a piece of deer antler pointing downward, lashed onto the shaft with a fine line, and sharp nails, pointing inward, are set in the two fragments of antler. When this spear is thrust down on the fish, the antlers spread as they strike the fish's back; he is impaled by the sharp point above him, and the sharp barbs on either side keep him from getting away.

The char (?) of North Grant Land is a beautiful mottled fish, weighing sometimes as much as eleven or twelve pounds. I believe that the pink fiber of these fish—taken from water never warmer than 35° or 40° above zero—is the firmest and sweetest fish fiber in the world. During my early expeditions in this region, I would spear one of these beauties and throw him on the ice to freeze, then pick him up and fling him down so as to shatter the flesh under the skin, lay him on the sledge, and as I walked away pick out morsels of the pink flesh and eat them as one would eat strawberries.

In September of 1900 with these fish a party of six men and twenty-three dogs were supported for some ten days, until we found musk-oxen. We speared the fish in the way the Eskimos taught us, using the regular native spear.

The new members of the expedition were naturally anxious to go sight-seeing. MacMillan had an attack of the grip, but Borup and Dr. Goodsell scoured the surrounding country. Hubbardville could not boast its Westminster Abbey nor its Arc de Triomphe, but there were Petersen's grave and the Alert and Roosevelt cairns, both in the neighborhood, and visible from the ship.

About a mile and a half southwest from our winter quarters was the memorial headboard of Petersen, the Danish interpreter of the English expedition of 1875-76. He died as the result of exposure on a sledge trip, and was buried there abreast of the Alert's winter quarters. The grave is covered with a large flat slab, and at the head is a board covered with a copper sheet from the boiler room of the Alert, with the inscription punched in it. There may be a lonelier grave somewhere on earth, but if so I have no knowledge of it. No explorer, not even the youngest and most thoughtless, could stand before that "mute reminder of heroic bones" without a feeling of reverence and awe. There is something menacing in that dark silhouette against the white snow, as if the mysterious Arctic were reminding the intruder that he might be chosen next to remain with her forever.

Not far away is the Alert's cairn, from which I took the British record in 1905, a copy of it being replaced by Ross Marvin, according to the custom of explorers. In view of his tragic end, in the spring of 1909, the farthest north of all deaths known to man, this visit of Marvin's to the neighborhood of Petersen's grave has a peculiar pathos.

The Roosevelt cairn, erected by Marvin in 1906, is directly abreast of the ship's location at Cape Sheridan in 1905-06 and about one mile inland. It is on a high point of land, about four hundred feet above the water. The record is in a prune can, at the bottom of the pile of stones, and was written by Marvin himself in lead-pencil. The cairn is surmounted by a cross, made of the oak plank from our sledge runners. It faces north, and at the intersection of the upright and the crosspiece there is a large "R" cut in the wood. When I went up to see it, soon after our arrival this last time, the cross was leaning toward the north, as if from the intentness of its three years' northward gazing.

On the 12th of September we had a holiday, it being the fifteenth birthday of my daughter, Marie Ahnighito, who was born at Anniversary Lodge, Greenland—the most northerly born of all white children. Ten years before, we had celebrated her fifth birthday on the Windward. Many icebergs had drifted down the channels since then, and I was still following the same ideal which had given my daughter so cold and strange a birthplace.

There was a driving snowstorm that day, but Bartlett dressed the ship in all the flags, the full international code, and the bright colors of the bunting made a striking contrast to the gray-white sky. Percy, the steward, had baked a special birthday cake, and we had it, surmounted with fifteen blazing candles, on our supper table. Just after breakfast the Eskimos came in with a polar bear, a female yearling six feet long, and I determined to have it mounted for Marie's birthday bear. It should be standing and advancing, one paw extended as if to shake, the head on one side and a bearish smile on the face. The bear provided us with juicy steaks, and we had a special tablecloth, our best cups and saucers, new spoons, et cetera.

A day or two later we began to get the dogs made fast, in preparation for the first sledge parties. There was now sufficient snow to begin the transportation of supplies toward Cape Columbia, and Black Cliffs Bay was frozen over. The Eskimos tied the dogs, in teams of five or six, to stakes driven into the shore or holes cut in the ice. They made a fine picture, looking shoreward from the ship—nearly two hundred and fifty of them—and their barking could be heard at all hours.

It must be remembered that day and night were still determined only by the clock, as the ever-circling sun had not yet set. By reason of the industry of all hands on the upward voyage, everything was now ready for the fall work. The Eskimos had built the sledges and made the dog harnesses, and Matt Henson had finished the "kitchen boxes," which enclosed our oil stoves in the field, while the busy needles of the Eskimo women had provided every man with a fur outfit.

In the North we wear the regular Eskimo garments, with certain modifications. First of all, there is the kooletah, a fur jacket with no buttons, which goes on over the head. For summer wear the Eskimos make it of sealskin, but for winter it is made of fox or deerskin.

For our own use, we had jackets made of Michigan sheepskin. We took the skins up with us, and the women made the garments, but when it was very cold we wore the deerskin or foxskin jacket of the Eskimos. Attached to this jacket is a hood, and around the face is a thick roll made of fox-tails.

The ahteah is a shirt, usually of fawn skin, with the hair inside, and the Eskimos wear it even in summer. In some of the photographs of natives, the skilful piecing together of the skins in the shirt can be traced. The Eskimo women are more adept at this work than are any of the furriers of civilization. They sew the skins with the sinew taken from the back of the deer—the jumping muscle. It is absolutely unbreakable, and moisture does not rot it. For the coarser work of sewing boots, canoes, and tents, they use the sinew from the tail of the narwhal. The sewing is now done with the steel needles I have given them; but in former years they used a punch made of bone, passing the sinew through the hole, as a shoemaker uses a "waxed end." They do not cut the skins with shears, as that would injure the fur; but with a "woman's knife," similar to an old-fashioned mincemeat chopper.

The shaggy fur trousers are invariably made from the skins of the polar bear. Then there are stockings of hareskin, and the kamiks, or boots, of sealskin, soled with the heavier skin of the square-flipper seal. On the ship, on sledge journeys, and in all the field work of the winter, the regular footgear of the Eskimos was worn. Add the warm fur mittens, and the winter wardrobe is complete.

It may reasonably be inquired whether the close housing for so long a time of such a considerable number of human beings did not result in personal friction, due to the inevitable accumulation of a thousand and one petty irritations. To some extent it did. But the principal members of the expedition were men of such character that they were able to exercise an admirable self-restraint that prevented any unpleasant results of consequence. Practically the only trouble of a personal sort that was of any importance occurred between one of the sailors and an Eskimo whom we called Harrigan.

Harrigan acquired this sobriquet on account of his ear for music. The crew used to be fond of singing that energetic Irish air which was popular for some years along Broadway and which concludes ungrammatically with the words "Harrigan—that's me." The Eskimo in question seemed fascinated by this song and in time learned those three words and practised them with so much assiduity that he was ultimately able to sing them in a manner not wholly uncouth.

In addition to his musical leanings, Harrigan was a practical joker, and on one occasion he was exercising his humorous talents in the forecastle to the considerable discomfort of one of the crew. Ultimately the sailor, unable to rid himself of his persecutor in any other way, resorted to the use of his fists. The Eskimos, while good wrestlers, are far from adepts at the "manly art of self-defense," and the result was that Harrigan emerged from the forecastle with a well-blackened eye and a keen sense of having been ill used. He complained bitterly of his treatment, but I gave him a new shirt and told him to keep away from the forecastle where the sailors were, and in a few hours he had forgotten it like a school boy, so that the affair passed