Press Edition

MY ATTAINMENT
OF THE POLE

Being the Record of the Expedition
that First Reached the Boreal Center,
1907-1909. With the Final Summary
of the Polar Controversy

By

DR. FREDERICK A. COOK

THIRD PRINTING, 60TH THOUSAND

NEW YORK AND LONDON
MITCHELL KENNERLEY

MCMXIII

By Special arrangements this edition is marketed by
The Polar Publishing Co., 601 Steinway Hall, Chicago

Copyright 1913
by
Dr. Frederick A. Cook

To the Pathfinders

[A]

THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE POLAR CONTROVERSY

DR. COOK IS VINDICATED. HIS DISCOVERY OF THE NORTH POLE
IS ENDORSED BY THE EXPLORERS OF ALL THE WORLD.

[vii]

PREFACE

This narrative has been prepared as a general outline
of my conquest of the North Pole. In it the scientific
data, the observations, every phase of the pioneer
work with its drain of human energy has been presented
in its proper relation to a strange cycle of events. The
camera has been used whenever possible to illustrate
the progress of the expedition as well as the wonders
and mysteries of the Arctic wilds. Herein, with due
after-thought and the better perspective afforded by
time, the rough field notes, the disconnected daily tabulations
and the records of instrumental observations,
every fact, every optical and mental impression, has
been re-examined and re-arranged to make a concise
record of successive stages of progress to the boreal
center. If I have thus worked out an understandable
panorama of our environment, then the mission of this
book has served its purpose.

Much has been said about absolute geographic
proof of an explorer’s work. History demonstrates that
the book which gives the final authoritative narrative is
the test of an explorer’s claims. By it every traveler
has been measured. From the time of the discovery of
America to the piercing of darkest Africa and the open[viii]ing
of Thibet, men who have sought the truth of the
claims of discovery have sought, not abstract figures,
but the continuity of the narrative in the pages of the
traveler’s final book. In such a narrative, after due
digestion and assimilation, there is to be found either
the proof or the disproof of the claims of a discoverer.

In such narratives as the one herewith presented,
subsequent travelers and other experts, with no other
interests to serve except those of fair play, have critically
examined the material. With the lapse of time
accordingly, when partisanship feelings have been
merged in calm and conscientious judgment, history has
always finally pronounced a fair and equitable verdict.

In a similar way my claim of being first to reach
the North Pole will rest upon the data presented between
the covers of this book.

In working out the destiny of this Expedition, and
this book which records its doings, I have to acknowledge
my gratitude for the assistance of many people.
First among those to whom I am deeply indebted is
John R. Bradley. By his liberal hand this Expedition
was given life, and by his loyal support and helpfulness
I was enabled to get to my base of operations at Annoatok.
By his liberal donations of food we were enabled to
live comfortably during the first year. To John R.
Bradley, therefore, belong the first fruits of the Polar
conquest.

A tribute of praise must be placed on record for
Rudolph Francke. After the yacht returned, he was
my sole civilized helper and companion. The faithful
manner in which he performed the difficult duties assigned
to him, and his unruffled cheerfulness during the[ix]
trying weeks of the long night, reflect a large measure
of credit.

The band of little people of the Farthest North
furnished without pay the vital force and the primitive
ingenuity without which the quest of the Pole would be
a hopeless task. These boreal pigmies with golden
skins, with muscles of steel, and hearts as finely human
as those of the highest order of man, performed a task
that cannot be too highly commended. The two boys,
Ah-we-lah and E-tuk-i-shook, deserve a place on the tablet
of fame. They followed me with a perseverance
which demonstrates one of the finest qualities of savage
life. They shared with me the long run of hardship;
they endured without complaint the unsatisfied hunger,
the unquenched thirst, and the maddening isolation, with
no thought of reward except that which comes from an
unselfish desire to follow one whom they chose to regard
as a friend. If a noble deed was ever accomplished,
these boys did it, and history should record their heroic
effort with indelible ink.

At the request of Mrs. Cook, the Canadian Government
sent its ship, the “Arctic,” under Captain Bernier,
with supplementary supplies for me, to Etah.
These were left under the charge of Mr. Harry Whitney.
The return to civilization was made in comfort,
by the splendid manner in which this difficult problem
was carried out. To each and all in this combination I
am deeply indebted.

With sweet memories of the warm hospitality of
Danes in Greenland, I here subscribe my never-to-be-forgotten
appreciation. I am also indebted to the
Royal Greenland Trading Company and to the United[x]
S. S. Company for many favors; and, above all, am I
grateful to the Danes as a nation, for the whole-souled
demonstrations of friendship and appreciation at
Copenhagen.

In the making of this book, I was relieved of much
routine editorial work by Mr. T. Everett Harry, associate
editor of Hampton’s Magazine, who rearranged
much of my material, and by whose handling of certain
purely adventure matter a book of better literary
workmanship has been made.

I am closing the pages of this book with a good deal
of regret, for, in the effort to make the price of this
volume so low that it can go into every home, the need
for brevity has dictated the number of pages. My last
word to all—to friends and enemies—is, if you must
pass judgment, study the problem carefully. You are
as capable of forming a correct judgment as the self-appointed
experts. One of Peary’s captains has said
“that he knew, but never would admit, that Peary
did not reach the Pole.” Rear Admiral Chester
has said the same about me, but he “admits” it in big,
flaming type. With due respect to these men, in justice
to the cause, I am bound to say that these, and others of
their kind, who necessarily have a blinding bias, are not
better able to judge than the average American citizen.

If you have read this book, then read Mr. Peary’s
“North Pole.” Put the two books side by side. When
making comparisons, remember that my attainment of
the Pole was one year earlier than Mr. Peary’s claim;
that my narrative was written and printed months before
that of Mr. Peary; that the Peary narrative is such
that Rear Admiral Schley has said—”After reading[xi]
the published accounts daily and critically of both
claimants, I was forced to the conclusion from their
striking similarity that each of you was the eye-witness
of the other’s success. Without collusion, it would
have been impossible to have written accounts so
similar.”

This opinion, coming as it does from one of the
highest Arctic and Naval authorities, is endorsed by
practically all Arctic explorers. Captain E. B. Baldwin
goes even further, and proves my claim from the
pages of Peary’s own book. Governor Brown of
Georgia, after a critical examination of the two reports,
says, “If it is true, as Peary would like us to believe,
that Cook has given us a gold brick, then Peary has
offered a paste diamond.”

Since my account was written and printed first,
the striking analogy apparent in the Peary pages either
proves my position at the Pole or it convicts Peary of
using my data to fill out and impart verisimilitude to
his own story of a second victory.

Much against my will I find myself compelled to
uncover the dark pages of the selfish unfairness of rival
interests. In doing so my aim is not to throw doubt and
distrust on Mr. Peary’s success, but to show his incentive
and his methods in attempting to leave the sting of discredit
upon me. I would prefer to close my eye to a
long series of wrong doings as I have done in the
passing years, but the Polar controversy cannot be
understood unless we get the perspective of the man
who has forced it. Heretofore I have allowed others
to expend their argumentative ammunition. The questions
which I have raised are minor points. On the[xii]
main question of Polar attainment there is not now
room for doubt. The Pole has been honestly reached—the
American Eagle has spread its wings of glory over
the world’s top. Whether there is room for one or two
or more under those wings, I am content to let the
future decide.

Frederick A. Cook.        

The Waldorf-Astoria,
      New York, June 15, 1911.

[xiii]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[xix]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Pg 1]

My Attainment of the Pole

I.

THE POLAR FIGHT

On April 21, 1908, I reached a spot on the silver-shining
desert of boreal ice whereat a wild wave of joy
filled my heart. I can remember the scene distinctly—it
will remain one of those comparatively few mental
pictures which are photographed with a terribly vivid
distinctness of detail, because of their emotional effect,
during everyone’s existence, and which reassert themselves
in the brain like lightning flashes in stresses of
intense emotion, in dreams, in the delirium of sickness,
and possibly in the hour of death.

I can see the sun lying low above the horizon,
which glittered here and there in shafts of light like
the tip of a long, circular, silver blade. The globe of
fire, veiled occasionally by purplish, silver-shot mists,
was tinged with a faint, burning lilac. Through opening
cracks in the constantly moving field of ice, cold
strata of air rose, deflecting the sun’s rays in every
direction, and changing the vision of distant ice irregularities
with a deceptive perspective, as an oar blade
seen in the depth of still water.

Huge phantom-shapes took form about me; they
were nebulous, their color purplish. About the horizon[Pg 2]
moved what my imagination pictured as the ghosts
of dead armies—strange, gigantic, wraith-like shapes
whose heads rose above the horizon as the heads of a
giant army appearing over the summits of a far-away
mountain. They moved forward, retreated, diminished
in size, and titanically reappeared again. Above them,
in the purple mists and darker clouds, shifted scintillantly
waving flashes of light, orange and crimson, the
ghosts of their earthly battle banners, wind-tossed,
golden and bloodstained.

I stood gazing with wonder, half-appalled, forgetting
that these were mirages produced by cold air
and deflected light rays, and feeling only as though I
were beholding some vague revelation of victorious
hosts, beings of that other world which in olden times, it
is said, were conjured at Endor. It seemed fitting that
they should march and remarch about me; that the low
beating of the wind should suddenly swell into throbbing
martial music. For that moment I was intoxicated.
I stood alone, apart from my two Eskimo companions,
a shifting waste of purple ice on every side,
alone in a dead world—a world of angry winds, eternal
cold, and desolate for hundreds of miles in every direction
as the planet before man was made.

I felt in my heart the thrill which any man must
feel when an almost impossible but dearly desired work
is attained—the thrill of accomplishment with which a
poet must regard his greatest masterpiece, which a
sculptor must feel when he puts the finishing touch to
inanimate matter wherein he has expressed consummately
a living thought, which a conqueror must feel
when he has mastered a formidable alien army. Stand[Pg 3]ing
on this spot, I felt that I, a human being, with all
of humanity’s frailties, had conquered cold, evaded
famine, endured an inhuman battling with a rigorous,
infuriated Nature in a soul-racking, body-sapping
journey such as no man perhaps had ever made. I
had proved myself to myself, with no thought at the
time of any worldy applause. Only the ghosts about
me, which my dazzled imagination evoked, celebrated
the glorious thing with me—a thing in which no human
being could have shared. Over and over again I repeated
to myself that I had reached the North Pole,
and the thought thrilled through my nerves and veins
like the shivering sound of silver bells.

That was my hour of victory. It was the climacteric
hour of my life. The vision and the thrill, despite
all that has passed since then, remain, and will remain
with me as long as life lasts, as the vision and the thrill
of an honest, actual accomplishment.

That I stood at the time on the very pivotal pin-point
of the earth I do not and never did claim; I may
have, I may not. In that moving world of ice, of constantly
rising mists, with a low-lying sun whose rays
are always deflected, such an ascertainment of actual
position, even with instruments in the best workable
condition, is, as all scientists will agree, impossible.
That I reached the North Pole approximately, and
ascertained my location as accurately, as painstakingly,
as the terrestrial and celestial conditions and the best instruments
would allow; that I thrilled with victory,
and made my claim on as honest, as careful, as scientific
a basis of observations and calculations as any human
being could, I do emphatically assert. That any man,[Pg 4]
in reaching this region, could do more than I did to
ascertain definitely the mathematical Pole, and that any
more voluminous display of figures could substantiate
a claim of greater accuracy, I do deny. I believe still
what I told the world when I returned, that I am the
first white man to reach that spot known as the North
Pole as far as it is, or ever will be, humanly possible to
ascertain the location of that spot.

Few men in all history, I am inclined to believe,
have ever been made the subject of such vicious attacks,
of such malevolent assailing of character, of such
a series of perjured and forged charges, of such a widespread
and relentless press persecution, as I; and few
men, I feel sure, have ever been made to suffer so bitterly
and so inexpressibly as I because of the assertion
of my achievement. So persistent, so egregious, so
overwhelming were the attacks made upon me that for
a time my spirit was broken, and in the bitterness of my
soul I even felt desirous of disappearing to some remote
corner of the earth, to be forgotten. I knew that envy
was the incentive to all the unkind abuses heaped upon
me, and I knew also that in due time, when the public
agitation subsided and a better perspective followed,
the justice of my claim would force itself to the inevitable
light of truth.

With this confidence in the future, I withdrew from
the envious, money-waged strife to the calm and restfulness
of my own family circle. The campaign of infamy
raged and spent its force. The press lined up
with this dishonest movement by printing bribed, faked
and forged news items, deliberately manufactured by
my enemies to feed a newspaper hunger for sensation.[Pg 5]
In going away for a rest it did not seem prudent to
take the press into my confidence, a course which resulted
in the mean slurs that I had abandoned my cause.
This again was used by my enemies to blacken my character.
In reality, I had tried to keep the ungracious
Polar controversy within the bounds of decent, gentlemanly
conduct; but indecency had become the keynote,
and against this, mild methods served no good purpose.
I preferred, therefore, to go away and allow the
atmosphere to clear of the stench stirred up by rival
interest; but while I was away, my enemies were
watched, and I am here now to uncover the darkest campaign
of bribery and conspiracy ever forged in a strife
for honor.

Now that my disappointment, my bitterness has
passed, that my hurt has partly healed, I have determined
to tell the whole truth about myself, about the
charges made against me, and about those by whom the
charges were made. Herein, FOR THE FIRST
TIME, I will tell how and why I believed I reached the
North Pole, and give fully the record upon which this
claim is based. Only upon such a complete account of
day-by-day traveling and such observations, can any
claim rest.

Despite the hullabaloo of voluminous so-called
proofs offered by a rival, I am certain that the unprejudiced
reader will herein find as complete a story,
and as valuable figures as those ever offered by anyone
for any such achievement in exploration as mine.
Herein, for the first time, shall I answer in toto all
charges made against me, and this because the entire
truth concerning these same charges I have not suc[Pg 6]ceeded
in giving the world through other channels. Because
of the power of those who arrayed themselves
against me, I found the columns of the press closed to
much that I wished to say; articles which I wrote for
publication underwent editorial excision, and absolutely
necessary explanations, which in themselves attacked
my assailants, were eliminated.

Only by reading my own story, as fully set down
herein, can anyone judge of the relative value of my
claim and that of my rival claimant; only by so doing
can anyone get at the truth of the plot made to discredit
me; only by doing so can one learn the reason for all of
my actions, for my failure to meet charges at the time
they were made, for my disappearing at a time when
such action was unfairly made to confirm the worst
charges of my detractors. That I have been too charitable
with those who attempted to steal the justly
deserved honors of my achievement, I am now convinced;
when desirable, I shall now, having felt the
smarting sting of the world’s whip, and in order to
justify myself, use the knife. I shall tell the truth
even though it hurts. I have not been spared, and I
shall spare no one in telling the unadorned and unpleasant
story of a man who has been bitterly
wronged, whose character has been assailed by bought
and perjured affidavits, whose life before he returned
from the famine-land of ice and cold—the world of his
conquest—was endangered, designedly or not, by a
dishonest appropriation of food supplies by one who
afterwards endeavored to steal from him his honor,
which is more dear than life.

To be doubted, and to have one’s honesty assailed,[Pg 7]
has been the experience of many explorers throughout
history. The discoverer of our own continent, Christopher
Columbus, was thrown into prison, and another,
Amerigo Vespucci, was given the honor, his name to
this day marking the land which was reached only
through the intrepidity and single-hearted, single-sustained
confidence of a man whose vision his own people
doubted. Even in my own time have explorers been
assailed, among them Stanley, whose name for a time
was shrouded with suspicion, and others who since have
joined the ranks of my assailants. Unfortunately, in
such cases the matter of proof and the reliability of any
claim, basicly, must rest entirely upon the intangible
evidence of a man’s own word; there can be no such
thing as a palpable and indubitable proof. And in the
case when a man’s good faith is aspersed and his character
assailed, the world’s decision must rest either upon
his own word or that of his detractors.

Returning from the North, exhausted both in body
and brain by a savage and excruciating struggle against
famine and cold, yet thrilling with the glorious conviction
of a personal attainment, I was tossed to the
zenith of worldly honor on a wave of enthusiasm, a
world-madness, which startled and bewildered me. In
that swift, sudden, lightning-flash ascension to glory,
which I had not expected, and in which I was as a bit of
helpless drift in the thundering tossing of an ocean
storm, I was decorated with unasked-for honors, the
laudations of the press of the world rang in my ears, the
most notable of living men hailed me as one great among
them. I found myself the unwilling and uncomfortable
guest of princes, and I was led forward to receive
the gracious hand of a King.[Pg 8]

Returning to my own country, still marveling that
such honors should be given because I had accomplished
what seemed, and still seems, a merely personal achievement,
and of little importance to anyone save to him
who throbs with the gratification of a personal success,
I was greeted with mad cheers and hooting whistles,
with bursting guns and blaring bands. I was led
through streets filled with applauding men and singing
children and arched with triumphal flowers. In a dizzy
whirl about the country—which now seems like a delirious
dream—I experienced what I am told was an ovation
unparalleled of its kind.

Coincident with my return to civilization, and while
the world was ringing with congratulations, there came
stinging through the cold air from the North, by wireless
electric flashes, word from Mr. Peary that he had
reached the North Pole and that, in asserting such a
claim myself, I was a liar. I did not then doubt the good
faith of Peary’s claim; having reached the boreal center
myself, under extremely favorable weather conditions, I
felt that he, with everything in his favor, could do as
much a year later, as he claimed. I replied with all candor
what I felt, that there was glory enough for two.
But I did, of course, feel the sting of my rival’s unwarranted
and virulent attacks. In the stress of any great
crisis, the average human mind is apt to be carried away
by unwise impulses.

Following Mr. Peary’s return, I found myself the
object of a campaign to discredit me in which, I believe,
as an explorer, I stand the most shamefully abused man
in the history of exploration. Deliberately planned,
inspired at first, and at first directed, by Mr. Peary from[Pg 9]
the wireless stations of Labrador, this campaign
was consistently and persistently worked out by a
powerful and affluent organization, with unlimited
money at its command, which has had as its allies dishonest
pseudo-scientists, financially and otherwise interested
in the success of Mr. Peary’s expedition. With
a chain of powerful newspapers, a financial backer of
Peary led a campaign to destroy confidence in me. I
found myself in due time, before I realized the importance
of underhand attacks, in a quandary which baffled
and bewildered me. Without any organization behind
me, without any wires to pull, without, at the time, any
appreciable amount of money for defence, I felt what
anyone who is not superhuman would have felt, a sickening
sense of helplessness, a disgust at the human
duplicity which permitted such things, a sense of the
futility of the very thing I had done and its little worth
compared to the web of shame my enemies were endeavoring
to weave about me.

One of the remarkable things about modern journalism
is that, by persistent repetition, it can create as a
fact in the public mind a thing which is purely immaterial
or untrue. Taking the cue from Peary, there was
at the beginning a widespread and unprecedented call
for “proofs,” which in some vague way were to consist
of unreduced reckonings. Mr. Peary had his own—he
had buried part of mine. I did not at the time instantly
produce these vague and obscure proofs, knowing, as all
scientists know, that figures must inevitably be inadequate
and that any convincing proof that can exist is to
be found only in the narrative account of such a quest. I
did not appreciate that in the public mind, because of[Pg 10]
the newspapers’ criticisms, there was growing a demand
for this vague something. For this reason, I did not
consider an explanation of the absurdity of this exaggerated
position necessary.

Nor did I appreciate the relative effect of the
National Geographic Society’s “acceptance” of Mr.
Peary’s so-called “proofs” while mine were not forthcoming.
I did not know at the time, what has since been
brought out in the testimony given before the Naval
Committee in Washington, that the National Geographic
Society’s verdict was based upon an indifferent
examination of worthless observations and a few
seconds’ casual observation of Mr. Peary’s instruments
by several members of the Society in the Pennsylvania
Railroad Station at Washington. With many lecture
engagements, I considered that I was right in doing
what every other explorer, including Mr. Peary himself,
had done before me; that is, to fulfill my lecture
and immediate literary opportunities while there
was a great public interest aroused, and to offer a narrative
of greater length, with field observations and
extensive scientific data, later.

Following the exaggerated call for proofs, there
began a series of persistently planned attacks. So
petty and insignificant did many of them seem to me
that I gave them little thought. My speed limits were
questioned, this charge being dropped when it was found
that Mr. Peary’s had exceeded mine. The use by the
newspaper running my narrative story of photographs
of Arctic scenes—which never change in character—that
had been taken by me on previous trips, was held
up as visible evidence that I was a faker! Errors which[Pg 11]
crept into my newspaper account because of hasty preparation,
and which were not corrected because there
was no time to read proofs, were eagerly seized upon,
and long, abstruse and impressive mathematical dissertations
were made on these to prove how unscrupulous
and unreliable I was.

The photograph of the flag at the Pole was put
forth by one of Mr. Peary’s friends to prove on prima
facie evidence that I had faked. Inasmuch as the original
negative was vague because of the non-actinic light
in the North, the newspaper photographers retouched
the print and painted on it a shadow as being cast from
the flag and snow igloos. This shadow was seized upon
avidly, and after long and learned calculations, was
cited as showing that the picture was taken some five
hundred miles from the Pole.

A formidable appearing statement, signed by various
members of his expedition, and copyrighted by the
clique of honor-blind boosters, was issued by Mr.
Peary. In this he gave statements of my two Eskimo
companions to the effect that I had not gotten out of
sight of land for more than one or two “sleeps” on my
trip. I knew that I had encouraged the delusion of my
Eskimos that the mirages and low-lying clouds which
appeared almost daily were signs of land. In their ignorance
and their eagerness to be near land, they believed
this, and by this innocent deception I prevented
the panic which seizes every Arctic savage when he finds
himself upon the circumpolar sea out of sight of land. I
have since learned that Mr. Peary’s Eskimos became
panic-stricken near the Big Lead on his last journey
and that it was only by the life-threatening announce[Pg 12]ment
to them of his determination to leave them alone
on the ice (to get back to land as best they might or
starve to death) that he compelled them to accompany
him.

In any case, I did not consider as important any
testimony of the Eskimos which Mr. Peary might cite,
knowing as well as he did that one can get any sort of
desired reply from these natives by certain adroit questioning,
and knowing also that the alleged route on his
map which he said they drew was valueless, inasmuch as
an Eskimo out of sight of land and in an unfamiliar
region has no sense of location. I felt the whole statement
to be what it was, a trumped-up document in
which my helpers, perhaps unwittingly, had been
adroitly led to affirm what Mr. Peary by jesuitical and
equivocal questioning planned to have them say, and
that it was therefore unworthy of a reply.

RUDOLPH FRANCKE IN ARCTIC COSTUME

I had left my instruments and part of the unreduced
reckonings with Mr. Harry Whitney, a fact
which Mr. Whitney himself confirmed in published
press interviews when he first arrived—in the heat of the
controversy and after I left Copenhagen—in Sidney.
When interviews came from Mr. Peary insinuating
that I had left no instruments in the North, this
becoming a definite charge which was taken up
with great hue and cry, I bitterly felt this to be
a deliberate untruth on Mr. Peary’s part. I have since
learned that one of Mr. Peary’s officers cross-questioned
my Eskimos, and that by showing them Mr. Peary’s
own instruments he discovered just what instruments I
had had with me on my trip, and that by describing the
method of using these instruments to E-tuk-i-shook and
[Pg 13]
Ah-we-lah, Bartlett learned from them that I did take
observations. This information he conveyed to Mr.
Peary before his expedition left Etah for America, and
this knowledge Mr. Peary and his party, deliberately
and with malicious intent, concealed on their return.
At the time I had no means of refuting this insinuation;
it was simply my word or Mr. Peary’s.

MIDNIGHT—“A PANORAMA OF BLACK LACQUER AND SILVER.”

I had no extraordinary proofs to offer, but, such
as they were, I now know, by comparison with the
published reports of Mr. Peary himself, they were as
good as any offered by anyone. I was perhaps unfortunate
in not having, as Mr. Peary had, a confederate
body of financially interested friends to back me up, as
was the National Geographic Society.

Not satisfied with unjustly attacking my claim,
Mr. Peary’s associates proceeded to assail my past career,
and I was next confronted by an affidavit made
by my guide, Barrill, to the effect that I had not scaled
Mt. McKinley, an affidavit which, as I later secured
evidence, had been bought. A widely heralded “investigation”
was announced by a body of “explorers” of
which Peary was president. One of Colonel Mann’s
muck-rakers was secretary, while its moving spirit was
Mr. Peary’s press agent, Herbert L. Bridgman. In a
desperate effort to help Peary, a cowardly side issue was
forced through Professor Herschell Parker, who had
been with me on the Mt. McKinley trip but who had
turned back after becoming panic-stricken in the crossing
of mountain torrents. Mr. Parker expressed doubt
of my achievements because he differed with me as to the
value of the particular instrument to ascertain altitude
which I, with many other mountain climbers, used. I[Pg 14]
had offered all possible proofs as to having climbed the
mountain, as full and adequate proofs as any mountaineer
could, or ever has offered.

I resented the meddlesomeness of this pro-Peary
group of kitchen explorers, not one of whom knew the
first principles of mountaineering. From such an investigation,
started to help Peary in his black-hand effort
to force the dagger, with the money power easing
men’s conscience—as was evident at the time everywhere—no
fair result could be expected. And as to the
widely printed Barrill affidavit—this carried on its face
the story of pro-Peary bribery and conspiracy. I have
since learned that for it $1,500 and other considerations
were paid. Here was a self-confessed liar. I did not
think that a sane public therefore could take this underhanded
pro-Peary charge as to the climb of Mt. McKinley
seriously. Indeed, I paid little attention to it,
but by using the cutting power of the press my enemies
succeeded in inflicting a wound in my side.

I was thus plunged into the bewildering chaos
which friends and enemies created, and swept for three
months through a cyclone of events which I believe no
human being could have stood. Before returning, I felt
weakened mentally and physically by the rigors of the
North, where for a year I barely withstood starvation.
I was now whirled about the country, daily delivering
lectures, greeting thousands of people, buffeted by
mobs of well-meaning beings, and compelled to attend
dinners and receptions numbering two hundred in sixty
days. The air hissed about me with the odious charges
which came from every direction. I was alone, helpless,
without a single wise counsellor, under the charge[Pg 15]
of the enemies’ press, mud-charged guns fired from
every point of the compass. Unlimited funds were
being consumed in the infamous mill of bribery.

I had not the money nor the nature to fight in this
kind of battle—so I withdrew. At once, howls of execration
gleefully rose from the ranks of my enemies;
my departure was heralded gloriously as a confession
of imposture. Advantage was taken of my absence
and new, perjured, forged charges were made to blacken
my name. Far from my home and unable to defend
myself, Dunkle and Loose swore falsely to having
manufactured figures and observations under my direction.
When I learned of this, much as it hurt me, I
knew that the report which I had sent to Copenhagen
would, if it did anything, disprove by the very figures
in it the malicious lying document published in the New
York Times. This, combined with the verdict rendered
by the University of Copenhagen—a neutral verdict
which carried no implication of the non-attainment of
the Pole, but which was interpreted as a rejection—helped
to stamp me in the minds of many people as the
most monumental impostor the world has ever seen.

I fully realized that under the circumstances the
only verdict of an unprejudiced body on any such proofs
to such a claim must be favorable or neutral. The
members of the University of Copenhagen who examined
my papers were neither personal friends nor members
of a body financially interested in my quest. Their
verdict was honest. Mr. Peary’s Washington verdict
was dishonest, for two members of the jury admitted
a year later in Congress, under pressure, that in the
Peary data there was no absolute proof.[Pg 16]

By the time I determined to return to my native
country and state my case, I had been placed, I am
certain, in a position of undeserved discredit unparalleled
in history. No epithet was too vile to couple with
my name. I was declared a brazen cheat who had concocted
the most colossal lie of ages whereby to hoax an
entire world for gain. I was made the subject of cheap
jokes. My name in antagonistic newspapers had become
a synonym for cheap faking. I was compelled
to see myself held up gleefully as an impostor, a liar, a
fraud, an unscrupulous scoundrel, one who had tried to
steal honors from another, and who, to escape exposure,
had fled to obscurity.

All the scientific work which scientists themselves
had accepted as valuable, all the necessary hardships
and the inevitable agonies of my last Arctic journey
were forgotten; I was coupled with the most notorious
characters in history in a press which panders to the
lowest of human emotions and delights in men’s shame.
When I realized how egregious, how frightful, how undeserved
was all this, my soul writhed; when I saw
clearly, with the perspective which only time can give,
how I, stepping aside, in errors of confused judgment
which were purely human, had seemingly contributed to
my unhappy plight, I felt the sting of ignominy greater
than that which has broken stronger men’s hearts.

For the glory which the world gives to such an
accomplishment as the discovery of the North Pole, I
care very little, but when the very result of such a victory
is used as a whip to inflict cuts that mark my future
destiny, I have a right to call a halt. I have claimed
no national honors, want no medals or money. My feet[Pg 17]
stepped over the Polar wastes with a will fired only by
a personal ambition to succeed in a task where all the
higher human powers were put to the test of fitness.
That victory was honestly won. All that the achievement
ever meant to me—the lure of it before I achieved
it, the only satisfaction that remains since—is that it is
a personal accomplishment of brain and muscle over
hitherto unconquered forces, a thought in which I have
pride. From the tremendous ovations that greeted me
when I returned to civilization I got not a single thrill.
I did thrill with the handclasp of confident, kindly people.
I still thrill with the handclasp of my countrymen.

Insofar as the earthly glory and applause are concerned,
I should be only too glad to share them, with all
material accruements, to any honest, manly rivals—those
of the past and those of the future. But against
the unjust charges which have been made against me,
against the aspersions on my personal integrity, against
the ignominy with which my name has been besmirched,
I will fight until the public gets a normal perspective.

I have never hoaxed a mythical achievement.
Everything I have ever claimed was won by hard labor,
by tremendous physical fortitude and endurance, and
by such personal sacrifice as only I, and my immediate
family, will ever know.

For this reason, I returned to my country in the
latter part of 1910, as I always intended to do, after a
year’s rest. By this time I knew that my enemies
would have said all that was possible about me; the excitement
of the controversy would have quieted, and I
should have the advantage of the last word.

In the heat of the controversy, only just re[Pg 18]turned
in a weakened condition from the North, and
mentally bewildered by the unexpected maelstrom of
events, I should not have been able, with justice to myself,
to have met all the charges, criminal and silly,
which were made against me. Even what I did say
was misquoted and distorted by a sensational press
which found it profitable to add fuel to the controversy.
Sometimes I feel that no man ever born has been so
variedly, so persistently lied about, misrepresented,
made the butt of such countless untruths as myself.
When I consider the lies, great and small, which for
more than a year, throughout the entire world, have
been printed about me, I am filled almost with hopelessness.
And sometimes, when I think how I have
been unjustly dubbed as the most colossal liar of history,
I am filled with a sort of sardonic humor.

Returning to my country, determined to state my
case freely and frankly, and making the honest admission
that any claim to the definite, actual attainment of
the North Pole—the mathematical pin-point on which
the earth spins—must rest upon assumptions, because
of the impossibility of accuracy in observations, I found
that this admission, which every explorer would have
to make, which Mr. Peary was unwillingly forced to
make at the Congressional investigation, was construed
throughout the country and widely heralded as a “confession,”
that garbled extracts were lifted from the
context of my magazine story and their meaning distorted.
In hundreds of newspapers I was represented
as confessing to a fraudulent claim or as making a plea
of insanity. A full answer to the charges made against
me, necessary in order to justly cover my case, because[Pg 19]
of the controversial nature of certain statements which
involved Mr. Peary, was prohibited by the contract I
found it necessary to sign in order to get any statement
of a comparatively ungarbled sort before a public which
had read Mr. Peary’s own account of his journey.

I found the columns of the press of my country
closed to the publication of statements which involved
my enemies, because of the unfounded prejudice
created against me during my absence and because of
the power of Mr. Peary’s friends. It is almost impossible
in any condition for anyone to secure a refutation
for an unfounded attack in the American papers. With
the entire press of the country printing misstatements,
I was almost helpless. The justice, kindliness and generous
spirit of fair dealing of the American people,
however, was extended to me—I found the American
people glad—nay, eager—to listen.

It is this spirit which has encouraged me, after the
shameful campaign of opprobrium which well-nigh
broke my spirit, to tell the entire and unalterable truth
about myself and an achievement in which I still believe—in
fairness to myself, in order to clear myself,
in order that the truth about the discovery of the North
Pole may be known by my people and in order that
history may record its verdict upon a full, free and
frank exposition. I do not address myself to any
clique of geographers or scientists, but to the great
public of the world, and herein, for the first time, shall
I give fully whatever proofs there may be of my conquest.
Upon these records must conviction rest.

Did I actually reach the North Pole? When I
returned to civilization and reported that the boreal[Pg 20]
center had been attained, I believed that I had reached
the spot toward which valiant men had strained for
more than three hundred years. I still believe that I
reached the boreal center as far as it is possible for any
human being to ascertain it. If I was mistaken in
approximately placing my feet upon the pin-point
about which this controversy has raged, I maintain that
it is the inevitable mistake any man must make. To
touch that spot would be an accident. That any other
man has more accurately determined the Pole I do
deny. That Mr. Peary reached the North Pole—or
its environs—with as fair accuracy as was possible, I
have never denied. That Mr. Peary was better fitted
to reach the Pole, and better equipped to locate this
mythical spot, I do not admit. In fact, I believe that,
inasmuch as the purely scientific ascertainment is a
comparatively simple matter, I stood a better chance of
more scientifically and more accurately marking the
actual spot than Mr. Peary. I reached my goal when
the sun was twelve degrees above the horizon, and was
therefore better able to mark a mathematical position
than Mr. Peary could have with the sun at less than
seven degrees. Mr. Peary’s case rests upon three
observations of sun altitude so low that, as proof of a
position, they are worthless.

Besides taking observations, which, as I shall explain
in due course in my narrative, cannot be adequate,
I also ascertained what I believed to be my approximate
position at the boreal center and en route by measuring
the shadows each hour of the long day. Inasmuch as
one’s shadow decreases or increases in length as the sun
rises toward the meridian or descends, at the boreal[Pg 21]
center, where the sun circles the entire horizon at practically
the same height during the entire day, one’s
shadow in this region of mystery is of the same length.
In this observation, which is so simple that a child may
understand it, is a sure and certain means of approximately
ascertaining the North Pole. I took advantage
of this method, which does not seem to have occurred to
any other Arctic traveler, and this helped to bring
conviction.

I shall in this volume present with detail the story
of my Arctic journey—I shall tell how it was possible
for me to reach my goal, why I believe I attained that
goal; and upon this record must the decision of my people
rest. I shall herein tell the story of an unfair and
unworthy plot to ruin the reputation of an innocent
man because of an achievement the full and prior credit
of which was desired by a brutally selfish, brutally unscrupulous
rival. I shall tell of a tragedy compared
with which the North Pole and any glory accruing to
its discoverer pales into insignificance—the tragedy of
a spirit that was almost broken, of a man whose honor
and pride was cut with knives in unclean hands.

When you have read all this, then, and only then,
in fairness to yourself and in fairness to me, do I ask
you to form your opinion. Only by reading this can
you learn the full truth about me, about my claim and
about the plot to discredit me, of the charges made
against me, and the reason for all of my own actions.
So persistent, so world-wide has been the press campaign
made by my enemies, and so egregious have the
charges seemed against me, so multitudinous have the
lies, fake stories, fake interviews, fake confessions been,[Pg 22]
so blatant have rung the hideous cries of liar, impostor,
cheat and fraud, that the task to right myself, explain
myself, and bring the truth into clean relief has seemed
colossal.

To return to my country and face the people in
view of all that was being said, with my enemies exultant,
with antagonistic press men awaiting me as some
beast to be devoured, required a determined gritting of
the teeth and a reserve temperament to prevent an
undignified battle.

For against such things nature dictates the tactics
of the tiger. I faced my people, I found them fair and
kindly. I accused my enemies of their lies, and they
have remained silent. Titanic as is this effort of forcing
fair play where biased abuse has reigned so long, I am
confident of success. I am confident of the honesty
and justice of my people; of their ability spiritually to
sense, psychically to appreciate the earmarks of a clean,
true effort—a worthy ambition and a real attainment.

[Pg 23]

INTO THE BOREAL WILDS

THE YACHT BRADLEY LEAVES GLOUCESTER—INVADES THE
MAGIC OF THE WATERS OF THE ARCTIC SEAS—RECOLLECTION
OF BOYHOOD AMBITIONS—BEYOND THE
ARCTIC CIRCLE—THE WEAVING OF THE POLAR SPELL

II

Over the Arctic Circle

On July 3, 1907, between seven and eight o’clock
in the evening, the yacht, which had been renamed the
John B. Bradley, quietly withdrew from the pier at
Gloucester, Massachusetts, and, turning her prow
oceanward, slowly, quietly started on her historic journey
to the Arctic seas.

In the tawny glow of sunset, which was fading in
the western sky, she looked, with her new sails unfurled,
her entire body newly painted a spotless white, like
some huge silver bird alighting upon the sunshot waters
of the bay. On board, all was quiet. I stood alone,
gazing back upon the picturesque fishing village with
a tender throb at my heart, for it was the last village of
my country which I might see for years, or perhaps ever.

Along the water’s edge straggled tiny ramshackle
boat houses, dun-colored sheds where fish are dried, and
the humble miniature homes of the fisherfolk, in the[Pg 24]
windows of which lights soon after appeared. On the
bay about us, fishing boats were lazily bobbing up and
down; in some, old bearded fishermen with broad hats,
smoking clay and corncob pipes, were drying their
seines. Other boats went by, laden with wriggling,
silver-scaled fish; along the shore I could still see tons
of fish being unloaded from scores of boats. Through the
rosy twilight, voices came over the water, murmurous
sounds from the shore, cries from the sea mixed with
the quaint oaths of fisherfolk at work. Ashore, the boys
of the village were testing their firecrackers for the morrow;
sputtering explosions cracked through the air.
Occasionally a faint fire rocket scaled the sky. But no
whistles tooted after our departure. No visiting crowds
of curiosity-seekers ashore were frenziedly waving us
good-bye.

An Arctic expedition had been born without the
usual clamor. Prepared in one month, and financed by
a sportsman whose only mission was to hunt game
animals in the North, no press campaign heralded our
project, no government aid had been asked, nor had
large contributions been sought from private individuals
to purchase luxuries for a Pullman jaunt of a large
party Poleward. For, although I secretly cherished the
ambition, there was no definite plan to essay the North
Pole.

At the Holland House in New York, a compact
was made between John R. Bradley and myself to
launch an Arctic expedition. Because of my experience,
Mr. Bradley delegated to me the outfitting of the
expedition, and had turned over to me money enough
to pay the costs of the hunting trip. A Gloucester[Pg 25]
fishing schooner had been purchased by me and was
refitted, covered and strengthened for ice navigation.
To save fuel space and to gain the advantage of a
steamer, I had a Lozier gasoline motor installed. There
had been put on board everything of possible use and
comfort in the boreal wild. As it is always possible
that a summer cruising ship is likely to be lost or delayed
a year, common prudence dictated a preparation
for the worst emergencies.

So far as the needs of my own personal expedition
were concerned, I had with me on the yacht plenty of
hard hickory wood for the making of sledges, instruments,
clothing and other apparatus gathered with
much economy during my former years of exploration,
and about one thousand pounds of pemmican. These
supplies, necessary to offset the danger of shipwreck
and detention by ice, were also all that would be required
for a Polar trip. When, later, I finally decided
on a Polar campaign, extra ship supplies, contributed
from the boat, were stored at Annoatok. There, also,
my supply of pemmican was amplified by the stores of
walrus meat and fat prepared during the long winter
by myself, Rudolph Francke and the Eskimos.

As the yacht slowly soared toward the ocean, and
night descended over the fishing village with its home
lights glimmering cheerfully as the stars one by one
flecked the firmament with dots of fire, I felt that at
last I had embarked upon my destiny. Whether I
should be able to follow my heart’s desire I did not
know; I did not dare hazard a guess. But I was leaving
my country, now on the eve of celebrating its freedom,
behind me; I had elected to live in a world of ice[Pg 26]
and cold, of hunger and death, which lay before me—thousands
of miles to the North.

Day by day passed monotonously; we only occasionally
saw writhing curves of land to the west of us;
about us was the illimitable sea. That I had started on
a journey which might result in my starting for the
Pole, that my final chance had come, vaguely thrilled
me. Yet the full purport of my hope seemed beyond
me. On the journey to Sydney my mind was full. I
thought of the early days of my childhood, of the strange
ambition which grew upon me, of my struggles, and the
chance which favored me in the present expedition.

In the early days of my childhood, of which I now
had only indistinct glimmerings, I remembered a restless
surge in my little bosom, a yearning for something
that was vague and undefined. This was, I suppose,
that nebulous desire which sometimes manifests itself in
early youth and later is asserted in strivings toward
some splendid, sometimes spectacular aim. My boyhood
was not happy. As a tiny child I was discontented,
and from the earliest days of consciousness I
felt the burden of two things which accompanied me
through later life—an innate and abnormal desire for
exploration, then the manifestation of my yearning, and
the constant struggle to make ends meet, that sting of
poverty, which, while it tantalizes one with its horrid
grind, sometimes drives men by reason of the strength
developed in overcoming its concomitant obstacles to
some extraordinary accomplishment.

As a very small boy, I remember being fascinated
by the lure of a forbidden swimming pool. One day,
when but little over five, I, impelled to test the depth,[Pg 27]
plunged to the center, where the water was above my
head, and nearly lost my life. I shall never forget that
struggle, and though I nearly gave out, in that short
time I learned to swim. It seems to me now I have
been swimming and struggling ever since.

Abject poverty and hard work marked my school
days. When quite a boy, after the death of my father,
I came to New York. I sold fruit at one of the markets.
I saved my money. I enjoyed no luxuries.
These days vividly occur in my mind. Later I engaged
in a dairy business in Brooklyn, and on the meager
profits undertook to study medicine.

At that time the ambition which beset me was undirected;
it was only later that I found, almost by accident,
what became its focusing point. I graduated
from the University of New York in 1890. I felt (as
what young man does not?) that I possessed unusual
qualifications and exceptional ability. An office was
fitted up, and my anxiety over the disappearing pennies
was eased by the conviction that I had but to hang
out my shingle and the place would be thronged with
patients. Six months passed. There had been about
three patients.

I recall sitting alone one gloomy winter day.
Opening a paper, I read that Peary was preparing his
1891 expedition to the Arctic. I cannot explain my
sensations. It was as if a door to a prison cell had
opened. I felt the first indomitable, commanding call
of the Northland. To invade the Unknown, to assail
the fastness of the white, frozen North—all that was
latent in me, the impetus of that ambition born in childhood,
perhaps before birth, and which had been stifled
and starved, surged up tumultuously within me.[Pg 28]

I volunteered, and accompanied Peary, on this, the
expedition of 1891-92, as surgeon. Whatever merit
my work possessed has been cited by others.

Unless one has been in the Arctic, I suppose it is
impossible to understand its fascination—a fascination
which makes men risk their lives and endure inconceivable
hardships for, as I view it now, no profitable personal
purpose of any kind. The spell was upon me
then. It was upon me as I recalled those early days on
the Bradley going Northward. With a feeling of sadness
I realize that the glamor is all gone now.

On the Peary and all my subsequent expeditions I
served without pay.

On my return from that trip I managed to make
ends meet by meager earnings from medicine. I was
nearly always desperately hard pressed for money. I
tried to organize several coöperative expeditions to the
Arctic. These failed. I then tried to arouse interest in
Antarctic exploration, but without success. Then came
the opportunity to join the Belgian Antarctic Expedition,
again without pay.

On my return I dreamed of a plan to attain the
South Pole, and for a long time worked on a contrivance
for that end—an automobile arranged to travel
over ice. Financial failure again confronted me. Disappointment
only added to my ambition; it scourged me
to a determination, a conviction that—I want you to
remember this, to bear in mind the mental conviction
which buoyed me—I must and should succeed. It is
always this innate conviction which encourages men to
exceptional feats, to tremendous failures or splendid,
single-handed success.[Pg 29]

A summer in the Arctic followed my Antarctic
trip, and I returned to invade the Alaskan wilds. I succeeded
in scaling Mt. McKinley. After my Alaskan
expeditions, the routine of my Brooklyn office work
seemed like the confinement of prison. I fretted and
chafed at the thought. Let me have a chance, and I
would succeed. This thought always filled my mind.
I convinced myself that in some way the attainment of
one of the Poles—the effort on which I had spent sixteen
years—would become possible.

I had no money. My work in exploration had
netted me nothing, and all my professional income was
soon spent. Unless you have felt the goading, devilish
grind of poverty hindering you, dogging you, you cannot
know the mental fury into which I was lashed.

I waited, and fortune favored me in that I met
Mr. John R. Bradley. We planned the Arctic expedition
on which I was now embarked. Mr. Bradley’s interest
in the trip was that of a great sportsman, eager
to seek big game in the Arctic. My immediate purpose
was to return again to the frozen North. The least
the journey would give me was an opportunity to complete
the study of the Eskimos which I had started
in 1891.

Mr. Bradley and I had talked, of course, of the
Pole; but it was not an important incentive to the
journey. Back in my brain, barely above the subconscious
realm, was the feeling that this, however, might
offer opportunity in the preparation for a final future
determination. I, therefore, without any conscious
purpose, and with my last penny, paid out of my purse[Pg 30]
for extra supplies for a personal expedition should I
leave the ship.[1]

Aboard the Bradley, going northward, my plans
were not at all definite. Even had I known before
leaving New York that I should try for the Pole, I
should not have sought any geographical license from
some vague and unknown authority. Though much has
since been made by critics of our quiet departure, I
always felt the quest of the Pole a personal ambition[2],
a crazy hunger I had to satisfy.

Fair weather followed us to Sydney, Cape Breton.

[Pg 31]

From this point we sailed over the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, then entered the Straits of Belle Isle at a
lively speed. On a cold, cheerless day in the middle of
July we arrived at Battle Harbor, a little town at the
southeastern point of Labrador, where Mr. Bradley
joined us. He had preceded us north, by rail and coasting
vessels, after watching a part of the work of outfitting
the schooner.

On the morning of July 16 we left the rockbound
coast of North America and steered straight for Greenland.
In this region a dense and heavy fog almost
always lies upon the sea. Then nothing is visible but
slow-swaying gray masses, which veil all objects in a
shroud of ghostly dreariness. Through the fog can be
heard the sound of fisher-boat horns, often the very
voices of the fishermen themselves, while their crafts
are absolutely hidden from view. On this trip, however,
from time to time, great fragments of fog slowly
lifted, and we saw, emerging out of the gray mistiness,
islands, bleak and black and weathertorn, and patches
of ocean dotted with scores of Newfoundland boats,
which invade this region to fish for cod. We entered
the Arctic current, and breasting its stream, a fancy
came that perhaps this current, flowing down from out
of the mysterious unknown, came from the very Pole
itself.

Continuing, we entered Davis Straits, where we
encountered headwinds that piled up the water in great
waves. It was a good test of the sailing qualities of the
Bradley, and well did the small craft respond.

Long before the actual coast line of Greenland
could be seen we had a first glimpse of the beauties that[Pg 32]
these northern regions can show. Like great sapphires,
blue ice floated in a golden sea; towering masses of
crystal rose gloriously, dazzling the eye and gladdening
the heart with their superb beauty. The schooner
sailed into this wonderful yellow sea, which soon became
a broad and gleaming surface of molten silver. Although
this striking beauty of the North, which it often
is so chary of displaying, possesses a splendor of color
equal to the gloriousness of tropical seas, it always
impresses one with a steely hardness of quality suggestive
of the steely hardness of the heart of the North.
And it somehow seemed, curiously enough, as if all this
wonderful glitter was a shimmering reflection from the
ice-covered mountains of the Greenland interior, although
the mountains themselves were still invisible.

We swung from side to side, dodging icebergs.
We steered cautiously around low-floating masses,
watching to see that the keel was not caught by some
treacherous jutting spur just beneath the water-line.
Through this fairyland of light and color we sailed
slowly into a region rich in animal life, a curious and
striking sight. Seals floundered in the sunbeams or
slumbered on masses of ice, for even in this Northland
there is a strange commingling and contrast of heat
and cold. Gulls and petrels darted and fluttered about
us in every direction, porpoises were making swift and
curving leaps, even a few whales added to the magic
and apparent unreality of it all.

At length the coast showed dimly upon the horizon,
veiled in a glow of purple and gold. The wind freshened,
the sails filled, and the speed of the schooner increased.
We were gradually nearing Holsteinborg,[Pg 33]
and the course was set a point more in towards shore.
The land was thrown into bold relief by the brilliancy
of lights and shadows, and in the remarkably clear air
it seemed as if it could be reached in an hour. But this
was an atmospheric deception, of the kind familiar to
those who know the pure air of the Rocky Mountains,
for, although the land seemed near, it was at least forty
miles away. The general color of the land was a frosty
blue, and there were deep valleys to be seen, gashes cut
by the slow movement of centuries of glaciers, with
rocky headlands leaping forward, bleak and cold. It
appeared to be a land of sublime desolation.

The course was set still another point nearer the
coast; the wind continued fair and strong; and, with
every possible stitch of canvas spread, the schooner
went rapidly onward.

We saw rocky islands, drenched by clouds of spray
and battered by drifting masses of ice. There the eider
duck builds its nest and spends the brief summer of
the Arctic. We saw dismal cliffs, terra cotta and buff
in color, in the crevasses of which millions of birds made
their homes, and from which they rose, frightened, in
dense clouds, giving vent to a great volume of
clamorous hoarseness.

Through our glasses we could see a surprising
sight in such a land—little patches of vegetation, seal
brown or even emerald green. Yet, so slight were these
patches of green that one could not but wonder what
freak of imagination led the piratical Eric the Red, one
thousand years ago, to give to this coast a name so suggestive
of luxuriant forests and shrubs and general
lushness of growth as “Greenland.” Never, surely, was[Pg 34]
there a greater misnomer, unless one chooses to regard
the old-time Eric as a practical joker.

Between the tall headlands there were fiords cutting
far into the interior; arms of the sea, these, winding
and twisting back for miles. Along these quiet land-locked
waters the Eskimos love to hunt and fish, just as
their forefathers have done for centuries. Shaggy looking
fellows are these Eskimos, clothed in the skins of
animals, relieved by dashes of color of Danish fabric,
most of them still using spears, and thus, to outward
appearance, in the arts of life almost like those that
Eric saw.

Although this rugged coast, with its low-lying
islands, its icebergs and floating icefields, its bleak headlands,
its picturesque scenes of animal life, is a continuous
delight, it presents the worst possible dangers to
navigation, not only from reefs and under-water ice,
but because there are no lighthouses to mark permanent
danger spots and because signs of impending storm are
ever on the horizon. While navigating the coast, our
officers spent sleepless nights of anxiety; but the shortening
of the nights and lengthening of the days, the
daily night brightening resulting from the northerly
movement, combined with an occasional flash of the
aurora, gradually relieved the tension of the situation.

By the time the island of Disco rose splendidly
out of the northern blue, the Arctic Circle had been
crossed, and a sort of celestial light-house brightened
the path of the schooner. Remaining on deck until
after midnight, we were rewarded by a sight of the
sun magnified to many times its normal size, glowing
above the rim of the frosty sea. A light wind blew[Pg 35]
gently from the coast, the sea ran in swells of gold, and
the sky was streaked with topaz and crimson.

Bathed in an indescribable glow, the towering
sides of the greatest icebergs showed a medley of ever-changing,
iridescent colors. The jutting pinnacles of
others seemed like oriental minarets of alabaster fretted
with old gold. Here and there, as though flung by an
invisible hand from the zenith, straggled long cloud ribbons
of flossy crimson and silver. Gradually, imperially,
the sun rose higher and flushed sky and sea
with deeper orange, more burning crimson, and the
bergs into vivid ruby, chalcedony and chrysophase
walls. This suddenly-changing, kaleidoscopic whirl of
color was rendered more effective because, in its midst,
the cliffs of Disco rose frowningly, a great patch of
blackness in artistic contrast. A pearly vapor now
began to creep over the horizon, and gradually spread
over the waters, imparting a gentle and restful tone of
blue. This gradually darkened into irregular shadows;
the brilliant color glories faded away. Finally we retired
to sleep with a feeling that sailing Poleward was
merely a joyous pleasure journey over wonderful
and magic waters. This, the first glorious vision of
the midnight sun, glowed in my dreams—the augury of
success in that for which my heart yearned. The glow
never faded, and the weird lure unconsciously began to
weave its spell.

Next morning, when we went on deck, the schooner
was racing eastward through heavy seas. The terraced
cliffs of Disco, relieved by freshly fallen snow, were but
a few miles off. The cry of gulls and guillemots
echoed from rock to rock. Everything was divested of[Pg 36]
the glory of the day before. The sun was slowly rising
among mouse-colored clouds. The bergs were of an
ugly blue, and the sea ran in gloomy lines of ebony.
Although the sea was high, there was little wind, but we
felt that a storm was gathering and sought to hasten
to shelter in Godhaven—a name which speaks eloquently
of the dangers of this coast and the precious
value of such a harbor.

As we entered the narrow channel, which turns
among low, polished rocks and opens into the harbor,
two Eskimos in kayaks came out to act as pilots. Taking
them aboard, we soon found a snug anchorage,
secure from wind and sea. The launch was lowered,
and in it we left the schooner for a visit to the Governor.

Coming up to a little pier, we were cordially
greeted by Governor Fenker, who escorted us to his
home, where his wife, a cultivated young Danish
woman, offered us sincere hospitality.

The little town itself was keenly alive. All the
inhabitants, and all the dogs as well, were jumping
about on the rocks, eagerly gazing at our schooner.
The houses of the Governor and the Inspector were the
most important of the town. They were built of wood
imported from Denmark, and were covered with tarred
paper. Though quite moderate in size, the houses
seemed too large and out of place in their setting of
ice-polished rocks. Beyond them were twenty Eskimo
huts, nearly square in shape, constructed of wood and
stone, the cracks of which were filled tightly with moss.

We deferred our visit to the native huts, and invited
Governor Fenker and his wife to dine aboard the
schooner. The surprise of the evening for these two[Pg 37]
guests was the playing of our phonograph, the tunes of
which brought tears of homesickness to the eyes of the
Governor’s gentle wife.

Anywhere on the coast of Greenland, the coming
of a ship is always one of the prime events of the season.
So uneventful is life in these out-of-the-way places that
such an arrival is the greatest possible social enlivener.
The instant that the approach of our schooner had been
noted, the Eskimo girls—queer little maids in queer
little trousers—decided upon having a dance, and word
was brought us that everyone was invited to take part.
The sailors eagerly responded, and tumbled ashore as
soon as they were permitted, leaving merely enough for
a watch on board ship. Then, to the sound of savage
music, the dance was continued until long after midnight.
A curious kind of midnight dance it was, with
the sun brightly shining in a night unveiled of glitter
and color glory. The sailors certainly found pleasure
in whirling about, their arms encircling fat and clumsy
waists. They did admit, however, when back on board
the schooner, that the smell of the furs within which the
maidens had spent the past winter was less agreeable
than the savor of fish. The name of this scattered settlement
of huts, Godhaven, comes, clearly enough, from
its offering fortunate refuge from storms; that the
place is also known as Lively is not in the least to be
wondered at, if one has watched a midnight dance of the
little population and their visitors.

Before hauling in anchor in the harbor of Godhaven,
we made some necessary repairs to the yacht and
filled our tanks with water. With a free wind speeding
onward to the west of Disco, we passed the narrow[Pg 38]
strait known as the Vaigat early the following morning.
As I stood on deck and viewed the passing of icebergs,
glittering in the limpid, silvery light of morning like
monstrous diamonds, there began to grow within me a
feeling—that throbbed in pulsation with the onward
movement of the boat—that every minute, every mile,
meant a nearing to that mysterious center, on the attaining
of which I had set my heart, and which, even
now, seemed unlikely, improbable. Yet the thought
gave me a thrill.

Before noon we reached the mouth of Umanak
Fiord, into the delightful waters of which we were
tempted to enter. The lure of the farther North decided
us against this, and soon the striking Svarten
Huk (Black Hook), a great rock cliff, loomed upon
the horizon. Beyond it, gradually appeared a long chain
of those islands among which lies Upernavik, where the
last traces of civilized or semi-civilized life are found.
The wind increased in force but the horizon remained
remarkably clear. Over a bounding sea we sped rapidly
along to the west, into the labyrinth of islands that are
sprinkled along the southern shore of Melville Bay.[3]
Beyond, we were to come into the true boreal wilder[Pg 39]ness
of ice, where there were only a few savage
aborigines, its sole inhabitants.

On the following day, with reduced sail and the
help of the auxiliary engine, we pushed far up into
Melville Bay, where we ran into fields of pack-ice.
Here we decided to hunt for game. With this purpose
it was necessary to keep close to land. Here also
came our first realistic experience with the great forces
of the North. The pack-ice floated close around us,
young ice cemented the broken masses together, and
for several days we were thus closely imprisoned in
frozen seas.

These days of enforced delay were days of great
pleasure, for the bears and seals on the ice afforded
considerable sport. The constant danger of our position,
however, required a close watch for the safety of the
schooner. The Devil’s Thumb, a high rock shaped like
a dark thumb pointing at the sky, loomed darkly
and beckoningly before us. A biting wind descended
from the interior.

The ice groaned; the eiderducks, guillemots and
gulls uttered shrill and disturbing cries, seemingly sensing
the coming of a storm.

For three days we were held in the grip of the relentless
pack; then the glimmer of the land ice changed
[Pg 40]to an ugly gray, the pack around us began to crack
threateningly, and the sky darkened to the southward.

The wind ominously died away. The air thickened
rapidly. A general feeling of anxiety came over us,
although my familiarity with storms in the North made
it possible for me to explain that heavy seas are seldom
felt within the zone of a large ice-pack, for the reason
that the icebergs, the flat ice masses, and even the small
floating fragments, ordinarily hold down the swells.
Even when the pack begins to break, the lanes of water
between the fragments thicken under the lower temperature
like an oiled surface, and offer an easy sea.
Furthermore, a really severe wind would be sure to release
the schooner, and it would then be possible to trust
it to its staunch qualities in free water.

Hardly had we finished dinner when we heard the
sound of a brisk wind rushing through the rigging.
Hurrying to the deck, we saw coils of what looked like
smoky vapor rising in the south as if belched from some
great volcano. The gloom on the horizon was rapidly
growing deeper. The sound of the wind changed to a
threatening, sinister hiss. In the piercing steel-gray
light we saw the ice heave awesomely, like moving hills,
above the blackening water. The bergs swayed and
rocked, and the massed ice gave forth strange, troublous
sounds.

Suddenly a channel began to open through the ice
in front of us. The trisail was quickly set, the other
sails being left tightly furled, and with the engine helping
to push us in the desired direction, we drew deep
breaths of relief as we moved out into the free water
to the westward.[Pg 41]

We felt a sense of safety now, although, clear of the
ice, the sea rose about us with a sickening suddenness.
Black as night, the water seemed far more dangerous
because the waves were everywhere dashing angrily
against walls of ice. Already strong, the wind veered
slightly and increased to a fierce, persistent gale. Like
rubber balls, the bergs bounded and rolled in the sea.
The sound of the storm was now a thunder suggestive
of constantly exploding cannons. But, fortunately, we
were snug aboard, and, keeping the westerly course,
soon escaped the dangers of ensnaring ice.

We were still in a heavy storm, and had we not
had full confidence in the ship, built as she was to withstand
the storms of the Grand Banks, we should still
have felt anxiety, for the schooner rolled and pitched
and the masts dipped from side to side until they almost
touched the water.

Icy water swept the deck. A rain began to fall,
and quickly sheathed the masts and ropes in ice. Snow
followed, giving a surface as of sandpaper to the slippery,
icy decks. The temperature was not low, but the
cutting wind pierced one to the very marrow. Our
men were drenched with spray and heavily coated with
ice. Although suffering severely, the sailors maintained
their courage and appeared even abnormally happy.
Gradually we progressed into the open sea. In the
course of four hours the storm began to abate, and, under
a double-reefed foresail, at last we gleefully rode
out the finish of the storm in safety.

[Pg 42]

THE DRIVING SPUR OF THE POLAR
QUEST

ON THE FRIGID PATHWAY OF THREE CENTURIES OF
HEROIC MARTYRS—MEETING THE STRANGE PEOPLE
OF THE FARTHEST NORTH—THE LIFE OF THE STONE
AGE—ON THE CHASE WITH THE ESKIMOS—MANEE
AND SPARTAN ESKIMO COURAGE

III

Strange Traits of Northernmost Man

I have often wondered of late about the dazzling
white, eerie glamor with which the Northland weaves
its spell about the heart of a man. I know of nothing
on earth so strange, so wonderful, withal so sad. Pursuing
our course through Melville Bay, I felt the fatal
magic of it enthralling my very soul. For hours I
stood on deck alone, the midnight sun, like some
monstrous perpetual light to some implacable frozen-hearted
deity, burning blindingly upon the horizon and
setting the sea aflame. The golden colors suffused my
mind, and I swam in a sea of molten glitter.

I was consumed for hours by but one yearning—a
yearning that filled and intoxicated me—to go on,
and on, and ever onward, where no man had ever been.
Perhaps it is the human desire to excel others, to[Pg 43]
prove, because of the innate egotism of the human unit,
that one possesses qualities of brain and muscle which
no other possesses, that has crazed men to perform this,
the most difficult physical test in the world. The
lure of the thing is unexplainable.

During those dizzy hours on deck I thought of
those who had preceded me; of heroic men who for three
centuries had braved suffering, cold and famine, who
had sacrificed the comforts of civilization, their families
and friends, who had given their own lives in the pursuit
of this mysterious, yea, fruitless quest. I remembered
reading the thrilling tales of those who returned—tales
which had flushed me with excitement
and inspired me with the same mad ambition. I
thought of the noble, indefatigable efforts of these men,
of the heart-sickening failures, in which I too had
shared. And I felt the indomitable, swift surge of
their awful, goading determination within me—to subdue
the forces of nature, to cover as Icarus did the air
those icy spaces, to reach the silver-shining vacantness
which men called the North Pole.

As we cut the shimmering waters, I felt, as it were,
the wierd, unseen presence of those who had died there—died
horribly—men whose bodies had withered, with
slow suffering, in frigid blasts and famine, who possibly
had prolonged their suffering by feeding upon their own
doomed companions—and of others who had perished
swiftly in the sudden yawning of the leprous white
mouth of the hungry frozen sea. It is said by some that
souls live only after death by the energy of great emotions,
great loves, or great ambitions generated throughout
life. It seemed to me, in those hours of intoxica[Pg 44]tion,
that I could feel the implacable, unsatisfied desire
of these disembodied things, who had vibrated with one
aim and still yearned in the spirit for what now they
were physically unable to attain. It seemed that my
brain was fired with the intensity of all these dead men’s
ambition, that my heart in sympathy beat more turbulently
with the throb of their dead hearts; I felt growing
within me, irresistibly, what I did not dare, for fear
it might not be possible, to confide to Bradley—a determination,
even in the face of peril, to essay the Pole!

From this time onward, and until I turned my
back upon the fruitless silver-shining place of desolation
at the apex of the world, I felt the intoxication,
the intangible lure of the thing exhilarating, buoying
me gladsomely, beating in my heart with a singing
rhythm. I recall it now with marveling, and am filled
with the pathos of it. Yet, despite all that I have
suffered since because of it, I regret not those enraptured
hours of perpetual glitter of midnight suns.

One morning we reached the northern shore of
Melville Bay, and the bold cliffs of Cape York were
dimly outlined through a gray mist. Strong southern
winds had carried such great masses of ice against the
coast that it was impossible to make a near approach,
and as a strong wind continued, there was such a heavy
sea along the bobbing line of outer ice as to make it
quite impossible to land and thence proceed toward
the shore.

We were desirous of meeting the natives of Cape
York, but these ice conditions forced us to proceed
without touching here, and so we set our course for the
next of the northernmost villages, at North Star Bay.[Pg 45]
By noon the mist had vanished, and we saw clearly the
steep slopes and warm color of crimson cliffs rising precipitously
out of the water. The coast line is about two
thousand feet high, evidently the remains of an old
tableland which extends a considerable distance northward.
Here and there were short glaciers which had
worn the cliffs away in their ceaseless effort to reach
the sea. The air was full of countless gulls, guillemots,
little auks and eider-ducks.

As the eye followed the long and lofty line of
crimson cliffs, there came into sight a towering, conical
rock, a well-known guidepost for the navigator. Continuing,
we caught sight of the long ice wall of Petowik
Glacier, and behind this, extending far to the eastward,
the scintillating, white expanse of the overland-ice which
blankets the interior of all Greenland.

The small and widely scattered villages of the
Eskimos of this region are hemmed in by the ice walls
of Melville Bay on the southward, the stupendous
cliffs of Humboldt Glacier on the north, an arm of the
sea to the westward, and the hopelessly desolate Greenland
interior toward the east.

There is really no reason why many Eskimos
should not live here, for there is abundant food in both
sea and air, and even considerable game on land. Blue
and white foxes are everywhere to be seen. There is
the seal, the walrus, the narwhal, and the white whale.
There is the white bear, monarch of the Polar wilds,
who roams in every direction over his kingdom. The
principal reason why the population remains so small
lies in the hazardous conditions of life. Children are
highly prized, and a marriageable woman or girl who[Pg 46]
has one or more of them is much more valuable as a
match than one who is childless.

The coast line here is paradoxically curious, for
although the coast exceeds but barely more than two
hundred miles of latitude it presents in reality a sea
line of about four thousand miles when the great indentations
of Wolstenholm Sound, Inglefield Gulf,
and other bays, sounds and fiords are measured.

We sailed cautiously now about Cape Atholl,
which we were to circle; a fog lay upon the waters,
almost entirely hiding the innumerable icebergs, and
making it difficult to pick our course among the dangerous
rocks in this vicinity.

Rounding Cape Atholl, we sailed into Wolstenholm
Sound and turned our prow toward the Eskimo
village on North Star Bay.

North Star Bay is guarded by a promontory expressively
named Table Mountain, “Oomanaq.” As
we neared this headland, many natives came out in
kayaks to meet us. Inasmuch as I knew most of them
personally, I felt a singular thrill of pleasure in seeing
them. Years before, I learned their simple-hearted
faithfulness. Knud Rasmussen, a Danish writer, living
as a native among the Eskimos, apparently for the
sake of getting local color, was in one of the canoes
and came aboard the ship.

As it was necessary to make slight repairs to the
schooner, we here had to follow the primitive method of
docking by preliminary beaching her. This was done at
high tide when the propeller, which had been bent—the
principal damage to the ship—was straightened. At
the same time we gave the yacht a general looking-over,[Pg 47]
and righted a universal joint whose loosening had disabled
the engine.

Meanwhile the launch kept busy scurrying to and
fro, our quest being occasionally rewarded with eider-ducks
or other game. Late at night, a visit was made
to the village of Oomanooi. It could hardly be called
a village, for it consisted merely of seven triangular
sealskin tents, conveniently placed on picturesque rocks.
Gathered about these in large numbers, were men,
women and children, shivering in the midnight chill.

These were odd-looking specimens of humanity.
In height, the men averaged but five feet, two inches,
and the women four feet, ten. All had broad, fat faces,
heavy bodies and well-rounded limbs. Their skin was
slightly bronzed; both men and women had coal-black
hair and brown eyes. Their noses were short, and their
hands and feet short, but thick.

A genial woman was found at every tent opening,
ready to receive visitors in due form. We entered and
had a short chat with each family. Subjects of conversation
were necessarily limited, but after all, they
were about the same as they would have been in a
civilized region. We conversed as to whether or not all
of us had been well, of deaths, marriages and births.
Then we talked of the luck of the chase, which meant
prosperity or need of food. Even had it been a civilized
community, there would have been little questioning regarding
national or international affairs, because, in
such case, everyone reads the papers. Here there
was no comment on such subjects simply because
nobody cares anything about them or has any papers
to read.[Pg 48]

That a prominent Eskimo named My-ah had disposed
of a few surplus wives to gain the means whereby
to acquire a few more dogs, was probably the most
important single item of information conveyed. I was
also informed that at the present time there happened
to be only one other man with two wives.

Marriage, among these folk, is a rather free and
easy institution. It is, indeed, not much more than a
temporary tie of possession. Men exchange partners
with each other much in the manner that men in other
countries swap horses. And yet, the position of women
is not so humble as this custom might seem to indicate,
for they themselves are permitted, not infrequently, to
choose new partners. These exceedingly primitive
ideas work out surprisingly well in practice in these
isolated regions, for such exchanges, when made, are
seemingly to the advantage and satisfaction of all
parties; no regrets are expressed, and the feuds of
divorce courts, of alimony proceedings, of damages for
alienation of affection, which prevail in so-called civilization,
are unknown.

It is certainly a curious thing that these simple
but intelligent people are able to control their own
destinies with a comfortable degree of success, although
they are without laws or literature and without any
fixed custom to regulate the matrimonial bond.

It would seem as if there ought to be a large population,
for there is an average of about three fat, clever
children for each family, the youngest as a rule picturesquely
resting in a pocket on the mother’s back. But
the hardships of life in this region are such that accidents
and deaths keep down the population.[Pg 49]

Each tent has a raised platform, upon which all
sleep. The edge of this makes a seat, and on each
side are placed stone lamps in which blubber is burned,
with moss as a wick. Over this is a drying rack, also a
few sticks, but there is no other furniture. Their dress
of furs gives the Eskimos a look of savage fierceness
which their kindly faces and easy temperament do not
warrant.

On board the yacht were busy days of barter. Furs
and ivory were gathered in heaps in exchange for guns,
knives and needles. Every seaman, from cabin boy to
captain, suddenly got rich in the gamble of trade for
prized blue-fox skins and narwhal tusks.

The Eskimos were equally elated with their part
of the bargain. For a beautiful fox skin, of less use to
a native than a dog pelt, he could secure a pocket knife
that would serve him half a lifetime!

A woman exchanged her fur pants, worth a hundred
dollars, for a red pocket handkerchief with which
she would decorate her head or her igloo for years
to come.

Another gave her bearskin mits for a few needles,
and she conveyed the idea that she had the long end
of the trade! A fat youth with a fatuous smile displayed
with glee two bright tin cups, one for himself
and one for his prospective bride. He was positively
happy in having obtained nine cents’ worth of tin for
only an ivory tusk worth ninety dollars!

With the coming of the midnight tide we lifted
the schooner to an even keel from the makeshift dry-dock
on the beach. She was then towed out into the
bay by the launch and two dories, and anchored.[Pg 50]

Our first walrus adventures began in Wolstenholm
Sound during the beautiful nightless days of mid-August.
The local environment was fascinating. The
schooner was anchored in North Star Bay, a lake of
glitter in which wild men in skin canoes darted after
seals and eider-ducks. On grassy shores were sealskin
tents, about which fur-clad women and children vied
with wolf-dogs for favorite positions to see the queer
doings of white men. A remarkable landmark made the
place conspicuous. A great table-topped rock rose suddenly
out of a low foreland to an altitude of about six
hundred feet. About this giant cliff, gulls, guillemots
and ravens talked and winged uproariously. The rock
bore the native name of Oomanaq. With the unique
Eskimo manner of name-coining, the village was called
Oomanooi.

Wolstenholm Sound is a large land-locked body of
water, with arms reaching to the narrow gorges of the
overland sea of ice, from which icebergs tumble ceaslessly.
The sparkling water reflected the surroundings
in many shades of blue and brown, relieved by strong
contrasts of white and black. On the western sky line
were the chiseled walls of Acponie and other islands,
and beyond a steel-gray mist in which was wrapped the
frozen sea of the Polar gateway. Fleets of icebergs
moved to and fro, dragging tails of drift bejeweled
with blue crystal.

Far out—ten miles from our outlook—there was
a meeting of the currents. Here, small pieces of sea-ice
slowly circled in an eddy, and upon them were herds
of walruses. We did not see them, but their shrill voices
rang through the icy air like a wireless message. This[Pg 51]
was a call to action which Mr. Bradley could not resist,
and preparations were begun for the combat.

The motor boat—the most important factor in the
chase—had been especially built for just such an encounter.
Covered with a folding whale-back top entirely
painted white to resemble ice, we had hoped to
hunt walrus under suitable Arctic cover.

Taking a white dory in tow, two Eskimo harpooners
were invited to follow. The natives in kayaks soon
discovered to their surprise that their best speed was not
equal to ours—for the first time they were beaten in
their own element. For ages the Eskimos had rested
secure in the belief that the kayak was the fastest thing
afloat. They had been beaten by big ships, of course,
but these had spiritual wings and did not count in the
race of man’s craft. This little launch, however, with
its rapid-fire gas explosions, made their eyes bulge to
a wondering, wide-open, seal-like curiosity. They
begged to be taken aboard to watch the loading of the
engines; they thought we fed it with cartridges.

After a delightful run of an hour, a pan of ice
was sighted with black hummocks on it. “Ahwek!
Ahwek!” the Eskimos shouted. A similar sound floated
over the oily waters from many walrus throats. The
walruses were about three miles to the southwest. At a
slower speed we advanced two miles more. In the
meantime Mr. Bradley cleared the deck for action. The
direction of the hunting tactics was now turned over
to My-ah. The mate was at the wheel. I pushed the
levers of the gasoline kicker. Our line of attack was
ordered at right angles to the wind. As we neared the
game, the engines were stopped.[Pg 52]

Looking through glasses, the sight of the gregarious
herd made our hearts quicken. They were all
males of tremendous size, with glistening tusks with
which they horned one another in efforts for favorable
positions. Some were asleep, others basked in the sun
with heads turning lazily from side to side. Now and
then, they uttered sleepy, low grunts. They were
quivering in a gluttonous slumber, while the organs piled
up their bank account of fat to pay the costs of the
gamble of the coming winter night.

With muffled paddles the launch was now silently
propelled forward, while the kayaks stealthily advanced
to deliver the harpoons. The Eskimo reason
for this mode of procedure is based on a careful study
of the walrus’ habits. Its nose in sleep is always
pointed windwards. Its ears are at all times sensitive
to noises from every direction, while the eyes during
wakeful moments sweep the horizon. But its horizon
is very narrow. Only the nose and the ear sense the
distant alarm. We advanced very slowly and cautiously,
and that only when all heads were down. Our boat
slowly got within three hundred yards of the herd. Preparing
their implements to strike, the Eskimos had advanced
to within fifty feet. The moment was tense.
Of a sudden, a tumultuous floundering sound smote the
air. The sleeping creatures awoke, and with a start
leaped into the sea. Turning their kayaks, the Eskimos
paddled a wild retreat and sought the security of the
launch. The sport of that herd was lost to us. Although
they darted about under water in a threatening
manner, they only rose to the surface at a safe distance.

Scanning the surroundings with our glasses, about[Pg 53]
two miles to the south another group was sighted.
This time Bradley, as the chief nimrod, assumed direction.
The kayaks and the Eskimos were placed in the
dory. Tactics were reversed. Instead of creeping up
slowly, a sudden rush was planned. No heed was taken
of noise or wind. The carburetor was opened, the spark
lever of the magneto was advanced to its limit, and we
shot through the waters like a torpedo boat. As we
neared the herd, the dory, with its Eskimos, was freed
from the launch. The Eskimos were given no instructions,
and they wisely chose to keep out of the battle.

As we got to within two hundred yards, the canvas
top of the launch fell and a heavy gun bombardment
began. The walruses had not had time to wake; the suddenness
of the onslaught completely dazed them. One
after another dropped his ponderous head with a
sudden jerk as a prize to the marksmen, while the
launch, at reduced speed, encircled the walrus-encumbered
pan. Few escaped. There were heads and meat
and skins enough to satisfy all wants for a long time
to follow. But the game was too easy—the advantage
of an up-to-date sportsman had been carried to its
highest degree of perfection. It was otherwise, however,
in the walrus battles that followed later—battles
on the success of which depended the possibility of my
being able to assail the northern ice desert, in an effort
to reach the Polar goal.

Oomanooi was but one of six villages among which
the tribe had divided its two hundred and fifty people
for the current season. To study these interesting folk,
to continue the traffic and barter, and to enjoy for a
short time the rare sport of sailing and hunting in this[Pg 54]
wild region, we decided to visit as many of the villages
as possible.

In the morning the anchor was raised and we set
sail in a light wind headed for more northern villages.
It was a gray day, with a quiet sea. The speed of the
yacht was not fast enough to be exciting, so Mr.
Bradley suggested lowering the launch for a crack at
ducks, or a chase at walrus or a drive at anything that
happened to cut the waters. His harpoon gun was
taken, as it was hoped that a whale might come our
way, but the gun proved unsatisfactory and did not
contribute much to our sport. In the fleet launch we
were able to run all around the schooner as she slowly
sailed over Wolstenholm Sound.

Ducks were secured in abundance. Seals were
given chase, but they were able to escape us. Nearing
Saunders Island, a herd of walruses was seen on a pan of
drift ice far ahead. The magneto was pushed, the
carburetor opened, and out we rushed after the shouting
beasts. Two, with splendid tusks, were obtained,
and two tons of meat and blubber were turned over to
our Eskimo allies.

The days of hunting proved quite strenuous, and in
the evening we were glad to seek the comfort of our
cosy cabin, after dining on eider-ducks and other game
delicacies.

A few Eskimos had asked permission to accompany
us to a point farther north. Among them was a
widow, to whom, for herself and her children, we had
offered a large bed, with straw in it, between decks, but
which, savage as she was, she had refused, saying she
preferred the open air on deck. There she arranged a[Pg 55]
den among the anchor chains, under a shelter of seal
skins.

In tears, she told us the story of her life, a story
which offered a peep into the tragedy and at the same
time the essential comedy of Eskimo existence. It
came in response to a question from me as to how the
world had used her, for I had known her years before.
At my simple question, she buried her face in her hands
and for a time could only mutter rapidly and unintelligibly
to her two little boys. Then, between sobs,
she told me her story.

Ma-nee—such was her name—was a descendant of
the Eskimos of the American side. A foreign belle,
and, although thin, fair to look upon, as Eskimo beauty
goes, her hand was sought early by the ardent youths
of the tribe, who, truth to tell, look upon utility as more
desirable than beauty in a wife. The heart of Ma-nee
throbbed to the pleadings of one Ik-wa, a youth lithe
and brave, with brawn and sinews as resilient as rubber
and strong as steel, handsome, dark, with flashing eyes,
yet with a heart as cruel as the relentless wind and cold
sea of the North. Ma-nee married Ik-wa and bore to
him several children. These, which meant wealth of the
most valuable kind (children even exceeding in value
dogs, tusks and skins), meant the attainment of Ik-wa’s
selfish purpose. Ma-nee was fair, but her hands were
not adroit with the needle, nor was she fair in the
plump fashion desirable in wives.

Ik-wa met Ah-tah, a good seamstress, capable of
much toil, not beautiful, but round and plump. Whereupon,
Ik-wa took Ah-tah to wife, and leading Ma-nee to
the door of their igloo, ordered her to leave. Cruel as[Pg 56]
can be these natives, they also possess a persistence and
a tenderness that manifest themselves in strange,
dramatic ways. Ma-nee, disconsolate but brave, departed.
There being at the time a scarcity of marriageable
women in the village, Ma-nee was soon wooed by
another, an aged Eskimo, whose muscles had begun to
wither, whose eyes no longer flashed as did Ik-wa’s,
but whose heart was kind. To him Ma-nee bore two
children, those which she had with her on deck. To
them, unfortunately, descended the heritage of their
father’s frailities; one—now eight—being the only deaf
and dumb Eskimo in all the land; the other, the
younger, aged three, a weakling with a pinched and
pallid face and thin, gaunt arms. Ma-nee’s husband
was not a good hunter, for age and cold had sapped his
vigor. Their home was peaceful if not prosperous; the
two loved one another, and, because of their defects,
Ma-nee grew to love her little ones unwontedly.

Just before the beginning of the long winter night,
the old father, anxious to provide food and deer skins
for the coming months of continuous darkness, ventured
alone in search of game among the mountains
of the interior. Day after day, while the gloom descended,
Ma-nee, dry eyed waited. The aged father
never came back. Returning hunters finally brought
news that he had perished alone, from a gun accident, in
the icy wilderness, and they had found him, his frozen,
mummied face peeping anxiously from the mantle of
snow. Ma-nee wept broken-heartedly.

Ma-nee gazed into the faces of the two children
with a wild, tragic wistfulness. By the stern and inviolable
law of the Eskimos, Ma-nee knew her two be[Pg 57]loved
ones were condemned to die. In this land, where
food is at a premium, and where every helpless and dependent
life means a sensible drain upon the tribe’s
resources, they have evolved that Spartan law which
results in the survival of only the fittest. The one child,
because of its insufficient senses, the other because it
was still on its mother’s back and under three at the
time its father died, and with no father to support
them, were doomed. Kind-hearted as the Eskimos
naturally are, they can at times, in the working out of
that code which means continued existence, be terribly
brutal. Their fierce struggle with the elements for
very existence has developed in them an elemental
fierceness. From probable experience in long-past
losses of life from contagion, they instinctively destroy
every igloo in which a native dies, or, at times, to save
the igloo, they heartlessly seize the dying, and dragging
him through the low door, cast him, ere breath has
ceased, into the life-stilling outer world.

This inviolable custom of ages Ma-nee, with a
Spartan courage, determined to break. During the
long night which had just passed, friends had been kind
to Ma-nee, but now that she was defying Eskimo
usage, she could expect no assistance. Brutal as he
had been to her, hopeless as seemed such prospects,
Ma-nee thought of the cruel Ik-wa and determined to
go to him, with the two defective children of her second
husband, beg him to accept them as his own and to take
her, as a secondary wife, a servant—a position of
humiliation and hard labor. In this determination,
which can be appreciated only by those who know how
implacable and heartless the natives can be, Ma-nee was[Pg 58]
showing one of their marvellous traits, that indomitable
courage, persistence and dogged hopefulness which, in
my two later companions, E-tuk-i-shook and Ah-we-lah,
enabled them, with me, to reach the Pole.

I admired the spirit of Ma-nee, and promised to
help her, although the mission of reuniting the two
seemed dubious.

Ma-nee was not going to Ik-wa entirely empty-handed,
however, for she possessed some positive wealth
in the shape of several dogs, and three bundles of skins
and sticks which comprised her household furniture.

We soon reached the village where Ma-nee was to
be put ashore. Very humbly, the heroic mother and
her two frail children went to Ik-wa’s tent. Ik-wa
was absent hunting, and his wife, who had supplanted
Ma-nee, a fat, unsociable creature, appeared. Weeping,
Ma-nee told of her plight and begged for shelter.
The woman stolidly listened; then, without a word,
turned her back on the forlorn mother and entered her
tent. For the unintentional part we had played she
gave us exceedingly cold, frowning looks which were
quite expressive.

Ma-nee now went to the other villagers. They listened
to her plans, and their primitive faces lighted
with sympathy. I soon saw them serving a pot of steaming
oil meat in her honor—a feast in which we were
urgently invited to partake, but which we, fortunately,
found some good excuse for avoiding. Although she had
violated a custom of the tribe, these people, both stern-hearted
and tender, recognized the greatness of a
mother-love which had braved an unwritten law of ages,
and they took her in. Several months later, on a return[Pg 59]
to the village, I saw Ik-wa himself. Although he did not
thank me for the unwitting part I had played in their
reunion, he had taken Ma-nee back, and near his own
house was a new igloo in which the mother lived with her
children.

Resuming our journey, a snow squall soon frosted
the deck of the yacht, and to escape the icy air we retired
early to our berths. During the night the speed of the
yacht increased, and when we appeared on deck again,
at four o’clock in the morning, the rays of the August
sun seemed actually warm.

We passed the ice-battered and storm-swept cliffs
of Cape Parry and entered Whale Sound. On a sea of
gold, strewn with ice islands of ultramarine and alabaster,
whales spouted and walrus shouted. Large flocks
of little auks rushed rapidly by.

The wind was light, but the engine took us along at
a pace just fast enough to allow us to enjoy the superb
surroundings. In the afternoon we were well into
Inglefield Gulf, and near Itiblu. There was a strong
head wind, and enough ice about to make us cautious in
our prospect.

We aimed here to secure Eskimo guides and with
them seek caribou in Olrik’s Bay. While the schooner
was tacking for a favorable berth in the drift off Kanga,
the launch was lowered, and we sought to interview the
Eskimos of Itiblu. The ride was a wet one, for a short,
choppy sea poured icy spray over us and tumbled us
about.

There were only one woman, a few children, and
about a score of dogs at the place. The woman was a
remarkably fast talker, long out of practice. She told[Pg 60]
us that her husband and the other men were absent on a
caribou hunt, and then, with a remarkably rapid articulation
and without a single question from us, plunged
incessantly on through all the news of the tribe for a
year. After gasping for breath like a smothered seal,
she then began with news of previous years and a history
of forgotten ages. We started back for the launch,
and she invited herself to the pleasure of our company
to the beach.

We had gone only a few steps before it occurred to
her that she was in need of something. Would we not
get her a few boxes of matches in exchange for a narwhal
tusk? We should be delighted, and a handful of sweets
went with the bargain. Her boy brought down two
ivory tusks, each eight feet in length, the two being
worth one hundred and fifty dollars. Had we a knife
to spare? Yes; and a tin spoon was also given, just to
show that we were liberal.

The yacht was headed northward, across Inglefield
Gulf. With a fair wind, we cut tumbling seas of ebony
with a racing dash. Though the wind was strong, the
air was remarkably clear.

The great chiselled cliffs of Cape Auckland rose in
terraced grandeur under the midnight sun. The distance
was twelve miles, and it was twelve miles of submerged
rocks and shallow water.

It was necessary to give Karnah a wide berth.
There were bergs enough about to hold the water down,
though an occasional sea rose with a sickening thump.
At Karnah we went ashore. There was not a man in
town, all being absent on a distant hunting campaign.
But, though there were no men, the place was far from[Pg 61]
being deserted, for five women, fifteen children and
forty-five dogs came out to meet us.

Here we saw five sealskin tents pitched among the
bowlders of a glacial stream. An immense quantity of
narwhal meat was lying on the rocks and stones to dry.
Skins were stretched on the grass, and a general air of
thrift was evidenced about the place. Bundles of seal-skins,
packages of pelts and much ivory were brought
out to trade and establish friendly intercourse. We
gave the natives sugar, tobacco and ammunition in
quantities to suit their own estimate of value.

Would we not place ourselves at ease and stay for
a day or two, as their husbands would soon return? We
were forced to decline their hospitality, for without the
harbor there was too much wind to keep the schooner
waiting. Eskimos have no salutation except a greeting
smile or a parting look of regret. We got both at the
same time as we stepped into the launch and shouted
good-bye.

The captain was told to proceed to Cape Robertson.
The wind eased, and a descending fog soon blotted
out part of the landscape, horizon and sky. It hung
like a gray pall a thousand feet above us, leaving the air
below this bright and startlingly clear.

[Pg 62]

TO THE LIMITS OF NAVIGATION

EXCITING HUNTS FOR GAME WITH THE ESKIMOS—ARRIVAL
AT ETAH—SPEEDY TRIP TO ANNOATOK, THE
WINDY PLACE, WHERE SUPPLIES ARE FOUND IN
ABUNDANCE—EVERYTHING AUSPICIOUS FOR DASH TO
THE POLE—DETERMINATION TO ESSAY THE EFFORT—BRADLEY
INFORMED—DEBARK FOR THE POLE—THE
YACHT RETURNS

IV

Alone with Our Destiny, Seven Hundred Miles
From the Pole

We awoke off Cape Robertson early on August 13,
and went ashore before breakfast. The picturesque
coast here rises suddenly to an altitude of about two
thousand feet, and is crowned with a gleaming, silver
ice cap. Large bays, blue glacial walls and prominent
headlands give a pleasing variety. It is much like the
coast of all Greenland. On its southern exposure the
eroded Huronian rocks provide shelter for millions of
little auks. They dart incessantly from cliff to sea in a
chattering cloud of wings. Rather rich and grassy verdure
offers an oasis for the Arctic hare, while the blue
fox finds life easy here, for he can fill his winter den
with the fat feathered creatures which teem by millions.[Pg 63]

The Eskimos profit by the combination, and pitch
their camp at the foot of the cliffs, for the chase on sea
is nearly as good here as in other places, while land
creatures literally tumble into the larder.

As we approached the shore, ten men, nine women,
thirty-one children and one hundred and six dogs came
out to meet us. I count the children and dogs for they
are equally important in Eskimo economy. The latter
are by far the most important to the average Caucasian
in the Arctic.

Only small game had fallen to the Eskimos’ lot,
and they were eager to venture out with us after big
game. Mr. Bradley gathered a suitable retinue of
native guides, and we were not long in arranging a
compact.

Free passage, the good graces of the cook, and a
knife each were to be their pay. A caribou hunt was
not sufficiently novel to merit a return to Olrik’s Bay,
where intelligent hunting is always rewarded, but it
was hoped we might get a hunt at Kookaan, near the
head of Robertson Bay.[4]

Although hunting in the bay was not successful
from a practical standpoint, it afforded exciting pleas[Pg 64]ure
in perilous waters. Even during these hours of
sport, my mind was busy with tentative plans for a
Polar journey. Whenever I aimed my gun at a snorting
walrus, or at some white-winged Arctic bird, I felt a
thrill in the thought that upon the skill of my arms, of
my aim, and upon that of the natives we were later to
join, would depend the getting of food sufficient to enable
me to embark upon my dream. Everything I did
now began to have some bearing upon this glorious, intoxicating
prospect; it colored my life, day and night. I
realized how easily I might fail even should conditions
be favorable enough to warrant the journey; for this
reason, because of the unwelcome doubt which at times
chilled my enthusiasm, I did not yet confide to Bradley
my growing ambition.

Returning to the settlement, we paid our hunting
guides, made presents to the women and children, and
set sail for Etah. An offshore breeze filled the big wings
of the canvas. As borne on the back of some great
white bird, we soared northward into a limpid molten
sea. From below came the music of our phonograph,
curiously shouting its tunes, classic and popular, in that
grim, golden region of glory and death.

It is curious how ambition sets the brain on fire,
and quickens the heart throbs. As we sped over the
magical waters, the wild golden air electric about me,
I believe I felt an ecstasy of desire such as mystics
achieved from fasting and prayer. It was the surge of
an ambition which began to grow mightily within me,
which I felt no obstacle could withstand, and which,
later, I believe carried me forward with its wings of
faith when my body well nigh refused to move. We[Pg 65]
passed Cape Alexander and entered Smith Sound. We
sped by storm-chiselled cliffs, whereupon the hand of
nature had written a history, unintelligible to humans,
as with a pen of iron. The sun was low. Great bergs
loomed up in the radiant distance, and reflecting silver-shimmering
halos, seemed to me as the silver-winged
ghosts of those who died in this region and who were
borne alone on the wind and air.

Nature seemed to sing with exultation. Approaching
a highland of emerald green and seal brown, I heard
the wild shouting of hawks from the summit, and from
below the shrill chattering of millions of auks with baby
families. And nearer, from the life enraptured waters,
the minor note of softly cooing ducks and mating guillemots.
From the interior land of ice, rising above the
low booming of a sapphire glacier moving majestically
to the sea, rang the bark of foxes, the shrill notes of the
ptarmigan, and from an invisible farther distance the
raucous wolf howl of Eskimo dogs.

Before us, at times, would come a burst of spouting
spray, and a whale would rise to the surface of the sea.
Nearby, on a floating island of ice, mother walrus would
soothingly murmur to her babies. From invisible
places came the paternal voices of the oogzook, and as
we went forward, seals, white whales and unicorns appeared,
speaking perhaps the sign language of the
animal deaf and dumb in the blue submarine.

Occasionally, there was an explosion, when
thunder as from a hundred cannons echoed from cliff to
cliff. A berg was shattered to ruins. Following this
would rise the frightened voices of every animal above
water. Now and then, from ultramarine grottoes issued[Pg 66]
weird, echoing sounds, and almost continually rising to
ringing peals and shuddering into silence, reiterant, incessant,
came nature’s bugle-calls—calls of the wind,
of sundering glaciers, of sudden rushes of ice rivers, of
exploding gases and of disintegrating bergs. With
those sounds pealing in our ears clarion-like, we entered
the “Gates of Hades,” the Polar gateway, bound for
the harbor where the last fringe of the world’s humanity
straggles finally up on the globe.

As we entered Foulke Fiord, half a gale came
from the sea. We steered for the settlement of
Etah. A tiny settlement it was, for it was composed
of precisely four tents, which for this season,
had been pitched beside a small stream, just
inside of the first projecting point on the north shore.
Inside this point there was sheltered water for the
Eskimo’s kayaks, and it also made a good harbor for the
schooner. It is possible in favorable seasons to push
through Smith Sound, over Kane Basin, into Kennedy
Channel, but the experiment is always at the risk of the
vessel.

So, as there was no special reasons for us to hazard
life in making this attempt, we decided to prepare the
schooner here for the return voyage.

These preparations would occupy several days.
We determined to spend as much of this time as possible
in sport, since much game abounded in this region.
Before we landed we watched the Eskimos harpoon a
white whale. There were no unexplored spots in this
immediate vicinity, as both Doctor Kane and Doctor
Hayes, in the middle of the last century, had been
thoroughly over the ground. The little auks kept us[Pg 67]
busy for a day after our arrival, while hares, tumbling
like snowballs over wind-polished, Archæan rocks, gave
another day of gun recreation. Far beyond, along the
inland ice, were caribou, but we preferred to confine our
hunting to the seashore. The bay waters were alive
with eider-ducks and guillemots, while, just outside,
walruses dared us to venture in open contest on the
wind-swept water.

After satisfying our desire for the hunt, we prepared
to start for Annoatok, twenty-five miles to the
northward. This is the northernmost settlement of the
globe, a place beyond which even the hardy Eskimos
attempt nothing but brief hunting excursions, and
where, curiously, money is useless because it has no
value.

We decided to go in the motor boat, so the tanks
were filled with gasoline and suitable food and camp
equipment were loaded. On the morning of August 24,
we started for Annoatok.

It was a beautiful day. The sun glowed in a sky
of Italian blue. A light air crossed the sea, which
glowed dully, like ground glass. Passing inside of
Littleton Island, we searched for relics along Lifeboat
Cove. There the Polaris was stranded in a sinking
condition in 1872, with fourteen men on board. The
desolate cliffs of Cape Hatherton were a midsummer
blaze of color and light that contrasted strongly with
the cold blue of the many towering bergs.

As we went swiftly past the series of wind-swept
headlands, the sea and air became alive with seals, walruses
and birds. We did little shooting as we were
eagerly bent on reaching Annoatok.[Pg 68]

As we passed the sharp rocks of Cairn Point, we
saw a cluster of nine tents on a small bay under Cape
Inglefield.

“Look, look! There is Annoatok!” cried Tung-we,
our native guide. Looking farther, we saw that the
entire channel beyond was blocked with a jam of ice.
Fortunately we were able to take our boat as far as
we desired. A perpendicular cliff served as a pier to
which to fasten it. Here it could rise and fall with the
tide, and in little danger from drifting ice.

Ordinarily, Annoatok is a town of only a single
family or perhaps two, but we found it unusually large
and populous, for the best hunters had gathered here
for the winter bear hunt. Their summer game catch
had been very lucky. Immense quantities of meat were
strewn along the shore, under mounds of stone. More
than a hundred dogs, the standard by which Eskimo
prosperity is measured, yelped a greeting, and twelve
long-haired, wild men came out to meet us as friends.

It came strongly to me that this was the spot to
make the base for a Polar dash. Here were Eskimo
helpers, strong, hefty natives from whom I could select
the best to accompany me; here, by a fortunate chance,
were the best dog teams; here were plenty of furs for
clothing; and here was unlimited food. These supplies,
combined with supplies on the schooner, would give all
that was needed for the campaign. Nothing could have
been more ideal.

For the past several days, having realized the
abundance of game and the auspicious weather, I had
thought more definitely of making a dash for the Pole.
With all conditions in my favor, might I not, by one[Pg 69]
powerful effort, achieve the thing that had haunted me
for years? My former failures dogged me. If I did
not try now, it was a question if an opportunity should
ever again come to me.

Now every condition was auspicious for the effort.
I confess the task seemed audacious almost to the verge
of impossibility. But, with all these advantages so
fortunately placed in my hands, it took on a new and
almost weird fascination. My many years of schooling
in both Polar zones and in mountaineering would
now be put to their highest test.

Yes, I would try, I told myself; I believed I should
succeed. I informed Mr. Bradley of my determination.
He was not over-optimistic about success, but he shook
my hand and wished me luck. From his yacht he
volunteered food, fuel, and other supplies, for local
camp use and trading, for which I have been thankful.

“Annoatok” means “a windy place.” There is really
nothing there to be called a harbor; but we now planned
to bring the schooner to this point and unload her
on the rocky shore, a task not unattended with danger.
However, the base had to be made somewhere hereabout,
as Etah itself is still more windy than Annoatok.
Moreover, at Etah the landing is more difficult, and it
was not nearly so convenient for my purpose as a base.

Besides, there were gathered at Annoatok, as I
have described, with needed food and furs in abundance,
the best Eskimos[5] in all Greenland, from whom, by[Pg 70]
reason of the rewards from civilization which I could
give them, such as knives, guns, ammunition, old iron,
needles and matches, I could select a party more efficient,
because of their persistence, tough fibre, courage
and familiarity with Arctic traveling, than any party
of white men could be.

The possible combination of liberal supplies and
valiant natives left absolutely nothing to be desired to
insure success, so far as preliminaries were concerned.
It was only necessary that good health, endurable
weather and workable ice should follow. The expenditure
of a million dollars could not have placed an expedition
at a better advantage. The opportunity was
too good to be lost. We therefore returned to Etah to
prepare for the quest.

At Etah, practically everything that was to be
landed at Annoatok was placed on deck, so that the
dangerous stop beside the rocks of Annoatok could be
made a brief one. The ship was prepared for the contingency
of a storm.

Late in the evening of August 26, the entire
population of Etah was taken aboard, the anchor was
[Pg 71]tripped, and soon the Bradley’s bow put out on the
waters of Smith Sound for Annoatok. The night was
cold and clear, brightened by the charm of color. The
sun had just begun to dip under the northern horizon,
which marks the end of the summer double days of
splendor and begins the period of storms leading into
the long night. Early in the morning we were off
Annoatok.

The launch and all the dories were lowered and
filled. Eskimo boats were pressed into service and
loaded. The boats were towed ashore. Only a few
reached Annoatok itself, for the wind increased and a
troublesome sea made haste a matter of great importance.
Things were pitched ashore anywhere on
the rocks where a landing could be found for the boats.

The splendid efficiency of the launch proved equal
to the emergency, and in the course of about thirteen
hours all was safely put on shore in spite of dangerous
winds and forbidding seas. That the goods were spread
along the shore for a distance of several miles did not
much matter, for the Eskimos willingly and promptly
carried them to the required points.

Now the time had come for the return of the
schooner to the United States. Unsafe to remain
longer at Annoatok at this advanced stage of the season,
it was also imperative that it go right on with barely a
halt at any other place. The departure meant a complete
severance between the civilized world and myself.
But I do not believe, looking back upon it, that the situation
seemed as awesome as might be supposed. Other
explorers had been left alone in the Northland, and I
had been through the experience before.[Pg 72]

The party, so far as civilized men were concerned,
was to be an unusually small one. That, however, was
not from lack of volunteers, for when I had announced
my determination many of the crew had volunteered to
accompany me. Captain Bartlett himself wished to go
along, but generously said that if it seemed necessary
for him to go back with the schooner, he would need
only a cook and engineer, leaving the other men
with me.

I wanted only one white companion, however, for
I knew that no group of white men could possibly
match the Eskimos in their own element. I had the
willing help of all the natives, too, at my disposal.
More than that was not required. I made an agreement
with them for their assistance throughout the
winter in getting ready, and then for as many as I
wanted to start with me toward the uttermost North.
For my white companion I selected Rudolph Francke,
now one of the Arctic enthusiasts on the yacht. He
had shipped for the experience of an Arctic trip. He
was a cultivated young German with a good scientific
schooling. He was strong, goodnatured, and his heart
was in the prospective work. These were the qualities
which made him a very useful man as my sole
companion.

Early on the morning of September 3, I bade farewell
to Mr. Bradley, and not long afterward the yacht
moved slowly southward and faded gradually into the
distant southern horizon. I was left alone with my destiny,
seven hundred miles from the Pole.

[Pg 73]

BEGINNING PREPARATIONS FOR THE
POLAR DASH

THE ARCTIC SOLITUDE—RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION—THE
DETERMINATION TO ACHIEVE—PLANNING
OUT THE DETAILS OF THE CAMPAIGN—AN
ENTIRE TRIBE BUSILY AT WORK

V

The Pole, the Route, and the Incentive

When the yacht disappeared I felt a poignant
pang at my heart. After it had faded, I stood gazing
blankly at the sky, and I felt the lure of the old world.
The yacht was going home—to the land of my family
and friends. I was now alone, and, with the exception
of Francke, there was no white man among this tribe
of wild people with whom to converse during the long
Arctic night that was approaching. I knew I should
not be lonely, for there was a tremendous lot of work to
do, although I had unstinted assistance. In every detail,
the entire six months of labor including the catching
of animals, the drying of meat, the making of such
clothes and sledges as would be necessary, and the testing
of them, would have to be managed by myself.
Turning from the rocky highland where I stood, a wild
thrill stirred my heart. The hour of my opportunity[Pg 74]
had come. After years of unavailing hopes and depressing
defeats my final chance was presented! In
the determination to succeed, every drop of blood in my
body, every fibre of me responded.

Why did I desire so ardently to reach the North
Pole? What did I hope to gain? What, if successful,
did I expect to reap as the result of my dreams? These
questions since have been asked by many. I have
searched the chambers of my memory and have tried to
resolve replies to myself. The attaining of the North
Pole meant at the time simply the accomplishing of a
splendid, unprecedented feat—a feat of brain and
muscle in which I should, if successful, signally surpass
other men. In this I was not any more inordinately
vain or seekful of glory than one who seeks pre-eminence
in baseball, running tournaments, or any other
form of athletics or sport.

At the time, any applause which the world might
give, should I succeed, did not concern me; I knew
that this might come, but it did not enter into my
speculations.

For years I had felt the lure of the silver glamor
of the North, and I can explain this no more than the
reason why a poet is driven to express himself in verse,
or why one child preternaturally develops amazing proficiency
in mathematics and another in music. Certain
desires are born or unconsciously developed in us. I,
with others before me, found my life ambition in the
conquest of the Pole. To reach it would mean, I knew,
an exultation which nothing else in life could give.

This imaginary spot held for me the revealing of
no great scientific secrets. I never regarded the feat[Pg 75]
as of any great scientific value. The real victory would
lie, not in reaching the goal itself, but in overcoming
the obstacles which exist in the way of it. In the battle
with these I knew there would be excitement, danger,
necessary expedients to tax the brain and heroic feats
to tax the muscles, the ever constant incentive which
the subduing of one difficulty after another excites.

During the first day at Annoatok, after the yacht
left, I thought of the world toward which it was going,
of the continents to the south of me, of the cities with
their teeming millions, and of the men with their multitudinous,
conflicting ambitions. I could see, in my
mind, the gigantic globe of my world swinging in cloud-swept
emerald spaces, and far in the remote, vast, white
regions in the north of it, far from the haunts of men,
thousands of miles from its populous cities, beyond the
raging of its blue-green seas, myself, alone, a wee, small
atom on its vast surface, striving to reach its hitherto
unattained goal. I felt, as I thought of my anticipation
and lonely quest, a sense of the terrible overwhelming
hugeness of the earth, and the poignant
loneliness any soul must feel when it embarks upon
some splendid solitary destiny.

Beyond and above me I visioned the unimaginable,
blinding white regions of ice and cold, about which, like
a golden-crowned sentinel, with face of flame, the
circling midnight sun kept guard. Upon this desolate,
awe-inspiring stage—unchanged since the days of its
designing—I saw myself attempting to win in the most
spectacular and difficult marathon for the testing of
human strength, courage and perseverance, of body
and brain, which God has offered to man. I could see[Pg 76]
myself, in my fancy pictures, invading those roaring
regions, struggling over icy lands in the dismal twilight
of the Arctic morning, and venturing, with a few companions,
upon the lifeless, wind-swept Polar sea. A
black mite, I saw myself slowly piercing those white
and terrible spaces, braving terrific storms, assailing
green, adamantine barriers of ice, crossing the swift-flowing,
black rivers of those ice fields, and stoutly persisting
until, successful, I stood alone, a victor, upon the
world’s pinnacle!

This thought gave me wild joy. That I, one white
man, might alone succeed in this quest gave me an impetus
which only single-handed effort and the prospect
of single-handed success can give. There was pleasure
in the thought that, in this effort, I was indebted to no
one; no one had expended money for me or my trip; no
white men were to risk their lives with me. Whether
it resulted in success or defeat, I alone should exult or
I alone should suffer. I was the mascot of no clique of
friends, nor the pawn of scientists who might find a
suppositious and mythical glory in the reflected light of
another’s achievement. The quest was personal; the
pleasure of success must be personal.

Yet, I want you to understand this thing was no
casual jaunt with me. All my life hinged about it, my
hopes were bent upon it; the doing of it was part of
me. My plans of action were not haphazard and hair-brained.
Logically and clearly, I mapped out a campaign.
It was based upon experience in known conditions,
experience gathered after years of discouragement
and failure.

ON THE CHASE FOR BEAR
THE BOX-HOUSE AT ANNOATOK AND ITS WINTER ENVIRONMENT

At Annoatok we erected a house of packing
[Pg 77]
boxes.[6]
The building of the house, which was to be both
storehouse and workshop, was a simple matter. The
walls were made of the packing boxes, especially
selected of uniform size for this purpose.

MAN’S PREY OF THE ARCTIC SEA—WALRUS ASLEEP

Enclosing a space thirteen by sixteen feet, the
cases were quickly piled up. The walls were held
together by strips of wood, the joints sealed with
pasted paper, with the addition of a few long boards. A
really good roof was made by using the covers of the
boxes as shingles. A blanket of turf over this confined
the heat and permitted, at the same time, healthful
circulation of air.

We slept under our own roof at the end of the
first day. Our new house had the great advantage
of containing within it all our possessions within easy[Pg 78]
reach at all times. When anything was needed in the
way of supplies, all we had to do was to open a box
in the wall.

The house completed, we immediately began the
work of building sledges, and the equally important
work, at which a large proportion of the Eskimos were
at once set, of making up furs into clothing. According
to my plans, each one of us embarking in the Polar
journey would have to carry two suits of fur clothing.
In the Arctic regions, especially when men are marching
to the limit of their strength every day, the bodily
heat puts the clothing into such condition that the only
safe way, if health is to be preserved, is to change suits
frequently, while the perspiration-soaked furs are laid
out to dry.

The Eskimos had also to prepare for winter.[Pg 79]
Tents of sealskin are inhabitable only in the summer
time. For the coming period of darkness and bitter
cold, they made igloos of stone and snow.

Meanwhile, they were not in the least averse to
agreeable relaxation. I had with me a good supply of
tea, and was in the habit of drinking a cup of it with
Francke about four o’clock every afternoon. Observing
this, the Eskimos at once began to present themselves
at the tea hour. Fortunately, tea was one of the
supplies of which I had brought a good deal for the
sake of pleasing the natives, and it was not long before
I had a very large and gossipy afternoon tea party
every day, in this northernmost human settlement of
the globe.

I planned to superintend every detail of progress,
as far as it concerned our journey. I could watch the
men, too, and see which ones promised to be the best
to accompany me. And, what was a most important
point, I could also perfect my final plans for the advance
right at my final base.

I aimed to reach the top of the globe in the angle
between Alaska and Greenland, a promising route
through a new and lonesome region which had not been
tried, abandoning what has come to be called the
“American Route.” I should strike westward and then
northward, working new trails. With Annoatok as a
base of operations, I planned to carry sufficient supplies
over Schley Land and along the west coast of the game
lands, trusting that the game along this region would
furnish sufficient supplies en route to the shores of the
Polar sea. This journey to land’s end would also afford
a test of every article of equipment needed in the field
work, and would enable us to choose finally from a[Pg 80]
selected number of Eskimos those most able to endure
the rigors of the unlimited journey which lay before us.

I sent out a few hunters along the intended line
to seek for haunts of game, but I was not surprised that
their searching in the dark was practically unsuccessful,
and it merely meant that I must depend upon my previous
knowledge of conditions. I knew from the general
reports of the natives, and from the explorations of
Sverdrup, that the beginning of the intended route
offered abundant game, and the indications were that
further food would likewise be found as we advanced.
The readiness with which the Eskimos declared themselves
ready to trust to the food supply of the unknown
region was highly encouraging.

To start from my base with men and dogs in superb
condition, with their bodies nourished with wholesome
fresh meat instead of the nauseating laboratory stuff
too often given to men in the North, was of vital importance;
and if the men and dogs could afterwards
be supported in great measure by the game of the
region through which we were to pass, it would be of
an importance more vital still. If my information was
well founded and my general conjectures correct, I
should have advantages which had not been possessed
by any other leader of a Polar expedition. The new
route seemed to promise, also, immunity from the
highly disturbing effects of certain North Greenland
currents. In all, the chances seemed not unfavorable.

With busy people hard at work about me, I knew
that the months of the long night would pass rapidly
by. There was much to do, and with the earliest dawn
of the morning of the next year we must be ready to
start for the Pole.

[Pg 81]

THE CURTAIN OF NIGHT DROPS

TRIBE OF TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY NATIVES BUSILY
BEGIN PREPARATIONS FOR THE POLAR DASH—EXCITING
HUNTS FOR THE UNICORN AND OTHER GAME
FROM ANNOATOK TO CAPE YORK—EVERY ANIMAL
CAUGHT BEARING UPON THE SUCCESS OF THE
VENTURE—THE GREY-GREEN GLOOM OF TWILIGHT
IN WHICH THE ESKIMO WOMEN COMMUNICATE
WITH THE SOULS OF THE DEAD

VI

The Sunset of 1907

Winter, long-lasting, dark and dismal, approached.
To me it was to be a season of feverish labor in which
every hand at work and every hour employed counted
in the problem of success. While the hands of the entire
tribe would be busy, and while I should direct and help
in the making of sleds, catching of game, preparing of
meat, I knew that my mind would find continual excitement
in dreams of my quest, in anticipating and solving
its difficulties, in feeling the bounding pulse of the dash
over the ice of the Polar sea, with dogs joyously barking,
whips cracking the air, and the reappearing sun
paving our pathway with liquid gold. In the labor of
the long winter which I began to map out I knew I
should find ceaseless zest, for the pursuit of every
narwhal, every walrus, every fox I should regard with[Pg 82]
abated suspense, each one bearing upon my chances; in
the employment of every pair of hands I should hang
with an eager interest, the expediency and excellence of
the work making for success or failure. From this time
onward everything of my life, every native, every occurrence
began to have some bearing upon the dominating
task to which I had set myself.

With the advance of winter, storms of frightful
ferocity began to arise. Inasmuch as we had stored
meat and blubber in large quantities about our camp, it
was not necessary at these times to venture out to dig
up supplies from great depths of snow drift. During
these periods hands were employed busily inside the
igloos. Although a large quantity of animals and furs
had been gathered by the hunters before our arrival, we
now unexpectedly discovered that the supply was inadequate.
According to my plans, a large party of
picked natives would accompany me to land’s end and
somewhat beyond on the Polar sea when I started for
my dash in the coming spring. As spring is the best
hunting season, it was therefore imperative to secure
sufficient advance provisions for the families of these
men in addition to preparing requisites for my expedition.
So the early days of the winter would have to be
busily occupied by the men in a ceaseless hunt for game,
and later, even when the darkness had fully fallen, the
moonlight days and nights would thus have to be
utilized also.

In the Polar cycle of the seasons there are peculiar
conditions which apply to circumstances and movements.
As the word, seasons, is ordinarily understood, there are
but two, a winter season and a summer season—a winter
season of nine months and a summer of three months.[Pg 83]

But, for more convenient division of the yearly
periods, it is best to retain the usual cycle of four seasons.
Eskimos call the winter “ookiah,” which also
means year, and the summer “onsah.” Days are “sleeps.”
The months are moons, and the periods are named in accord
with the movements of various creatures of the
chase.

In early September at Annoatok the sun dips considerably
under the northern horizon. There is no
night. At sunset and at sunrise storm clouds hide the
bursts of color which are the glory of twilight, and the
electric afterglow is generally lost in a dull gray.

The gloom of the coming winter night now thickens.
The splendor of the summer day has gone. A day
of six months and a night of six months is often ascribed
to the Polar regions as a whole, but this is only true of a
very small area about the Pole.

As we come south, the sun slips under the horizon
for an ever-increasing part of each twenty-four hours.
Preceding and following the night, as we come from the
Pole, there is a period of day and night which lengthens
with the descent of latitude.

It is this period which enables us to retain the names
of the usual seasons—summer for the double days, fall
for the period of the setting sun. This season begins
when the sun first dips under the ice at midnight for a
few moments. These moments increase rapidly, yet
one hardly appreciates that the sun is departing until
day and night are of equal length, for the night remains
light, though not cheerful. Then the day rapidly shortens
and darkens, and the sun sinks until at last there is
but a mere glimmer of the glory of day. Winter is lim[Pg 84]ited
to the long night, and spring applies to the days of
the rising sun, a period corresponding to the autumn
days of the setting sun.

At Annoatok the midnight sun is first seen on
April 23. It dips in the sea on August 19. It thus encircles
the horizon, giving summer and continuous day
for one hundred and eighteen days. It sets at midday
on October 24, and is absent a period of prolonged
night corresponding to the day, and it
rises on February 19. The Arctic air, with its low
temperature and its charge of frosted humidity, so
distorts the sun’s rays that when low it is frequently
lifted one or two diameters; therefore, the exact day or
hour for sunrise or sunset does not correspond to mathematical
calculations. Then follow days of spring.

In the fall, when the harmonizing influence of the
sun is withdrawn, there begins a battle of the elements
which continues until stilled by the hopeless frost of
early night.

At this time, although field work was painful, the
needs of our venture forced us to persistent action in
the chase of walrus, seal, narwhal and white whale. We
thus harvested food and fuel.

Before winter ice spread over the sea, ptarmigan,
hare and reindeer were sought on land to supply the
table during the long night with delicacies, while bear
and fox pleased the palates of the Eskimos, and their
pelts clothed all.

Many long journeys were undertaken to secure
an important supply of grass to pad boots and
mittens and also to secure moss, which serves as wick for
the Eskimo lamp. During the months of September[Pg 85]
and October, along the entire Greenland coast, the Eskimos
were engaged in a feverish quest for reserve supplies.
Shortly after my arrival, word had been carried
from village to village that I was at Annoatok, and, intending
to make a dash for the “Big Nail,” desired the
help of the entire tribe. Intense and spontaneous
activity followed. Knowing the demands of the North,
and of such work as I planned, the natives, without specific
instructions from me and with only a brief outline
of the planned Polar campaign which was sent from
village to village, immediately got busy gathering the
needed things. They knew better than I where to go
for certain game, and where certain desirable things were
obtainable. This relieved me of a great responsibility.
Each local group of natives was to perform some important
duty, suited to its available resources, in gathering
the tremendous amount of material required for our
trip. Each village had its peculiar game advantages.

In some places foxes and hares, the skins of which
were necessary for coats and stockings, were abundant,
and the Eskimos must not only gather the greatest
number possible, but prepare the skins and make them
into properly fitting garments. In other places reindeer
were plentiful. The skin of these was needed for sleeping
bags, while the sinew was required for thread. In
still other places seal was the luck of the chase; its skin
was one of our most important needs. Of it boots were
made, and an immense amount of line and lashings
prepared.

Thus, in one way or another, every man and woman
and most of the children of this tribe of two hundred and
fifty people were kept busy in the service of the expe[Pg 86]dition.
The work was well done, and with much better
knowledge of the fitness of things than could have been
possessed by any possible gathering of alien white men.

The quest of the walrus and the narwhal came in
our own immediate plan of adventure, although the narwhal,
called by whale fishers the unicorn, does not often
come under the eye of the white man. It afforded for
a brief spell good results in sport and useful material.
Its blubber is the pride of every housekeeper, for it gives
a long, hot flame to the lamp, with no smoke to spot the
igloo finery. The skin is regarded as quite a delicacy.
Cut into squares, it looks and tastes like scallops, with
only a slight aroma of train oil. The meat dries easily,
and is thus prized as an appetizer or as a lunch to be
eaten en route in sled or kayak. In this shape it was an
extremely useful thing for us, for it took the place of
pemmican on our less urgent journeys.

Narwhals played in schools, far off shore, and
usually along the edges of some large ice field, their long
ivory tusks rising under spouts of breath and spray.
Whenever this glad sight was noted, every kayak about
camp was manned, and the skin canoes went flittering
like birds over the water. Some of the Eskimos climbed
to the ice fields and delivered their harpoons from a
secure footing. Others hid behind floating fragments
of heavy ice and made a sudden rush as the animals
passed. Still others came up in the rear, for the narwhal
cannot easily see backward, and does not often turn
to watch its enemies, its speed being so fast that it can
easily keep ahead of them.

In these exciting hunts I participated with eager
delight, and by proxy mentally engaged in every en[Pg 87]counter.
For, in this sea game, existed food supplies
which, instead of entirely confining myself to pemmican,
I planned also to use on my Polar journey. As the skin
boats, like bugs, sped over the water, I felt the movement
of them surge in my brain; with the upraising of
each swift-darting native’s arm I felt, as it were, my
heart stop with bated suspense. With every failure I
experienced a throb of dismay. With the hauling in of
each slimy beast I felt, as it were, nearer my goal.

Narwhal hunting, in itself, and without the added
spur of personal interest, which I had, is brimful of
thrilling sport. The harpoon is always delivered at
close range. Whenever the dragging float marks the
end of the line in tow of the frightened creature, the line
of skin canoes follows. Timid by nature and fearing to
rise for breath, the narwhal plunges along until nearly
strangled. When he does come up, there are likely to
be several Eskimos near with drawn lances, which inflict
deep gashes.

Again the narwhal plunges deep down, with but
one breath, and hurries along as best it can. But its
speed slackens and a line of crimson marks its hidden
path. Loss of blood and want of air do not give it a
chance to fight. Again it comes up with a spout.
Again the lances are hurled.

The battle continues for several hours, with many
exciting adventures, but in the end the narwhal always
succumbs, offering a prize of several thousands of
pounds of meat and blubber. Victory as a rule is not
gained until the hunters are far from home, and also far
from the shore line. But the Eskimo is a courageous
hunter and an intelligent seaman.[Pg 88]

To the huge carcass frail kayaks are hitched in a
long line. Towing is slow, wind and sea combining to
make the task difficult and dangerous. One sees nothing
of the narwhal and very little of the kayak, for dashing
seas wash over the little craft, but the double-bladed
paddles see-saw with the regularity of a pendulum.
Homecoming takes many hours and demands a prodigious
amount of hard work, but there is energy to
spare, for a wealth of meat and fat is the culmination of
all Eskimo ambition.

Seven of these ponderous animals were brought in
during five days, making a heap of more than forty
thousand pounds of food and fuel. The sight of this
tremulous, blubbering mass filled my heart with joy.
Our success was not too soon, for now the narwhals suddenly
disappeared, and we saw no more of them. About
this time three white whales were also obtained at Etah
by a similar method of hunting.

With the advent of actual winter, storms swept
over the land and sea with such fury that it was no longer
safe to venture out on the water in kayaks. After the
catching of several walruses from boats, sea hunting
now was confined to the quest of seal through young ice.
As such hunting would soon be limited to only a few
open spaces near prominent headlands, an industrious
pursuit was feverishly engaged in at every village from
Annoatok to Cape York, and hour by hour, day by day,
until the hunt of necessity changed from sea to land, the
husky natives engaged in seal catching. As yet we had
no caribou meat, and the little auks, which had been
gathered in nets during the summer, with the eider-duck
bagged later, soon disappeared as a steady diet. We[Pg 89]
must now procure such available land game as hare,
ptarmigan and reindeer, for we had not yet learned to
eat with a relish the fishy, liver-like substance which is
characteristic of all marine mammals.

Guns and ammunition were now distributed, and
when the winds were easy enough to allow one to venture
out, every Eskimo sought the neighboring hills.
Francke also took his exercise with a gun on his shoulder.

The combined efforts resulted in a long line of
ptarmigan, two reindeer and sixteen hares. As snow
covered the upper slopes, the game was forced down
near the sea, where we could still hope to hunt in the
feeble light of the early part of the night.

With a larder fairly stocked and good prospects
for other tasty meats, we were spared the anxiety of a
winter without supplies. Francke was an ideal chef in
the preparation of this game to good effect, for he had a
delightful way of making our primitive provisions quite
appetizing.

In the middle of October fox skins were prime, and
then new steel traps were distributed and set near the
many caches. By this time all the Eskimos had abandoned
their sealskin tents and were snugly settled in
their winter igloos. The ground was covered with
snow, and the sea was almost entirely frozen.

Everybody was busy preparing for the coming cold
and night. The temperature was about 20° below zero.
Severe storms were becoming less frequent, and the air,
though colder, was less humid and less disagreeable. An
ice-foot was formed by the tides along shore, and over
this the winter sledging was begun by short excursions
to bait the fox traps and gather the foxes.[Pg 90]

Our life now resolved itself into a systematic
routine of work, which was practically followed throughout
the succeeding long winter night. About the box-house
in which Francke and I lived were igloos housing
eight to twelve families. The tribe of two hundred and
fifty was distributed in a range of villages along the
coast, an average of four families constituting a community.
Early each morning Koo-loo-ting-wah would
bang at my door, enter, and I would drowsily awaken
while he freshened the fire. Rising, we would prepare
hot coffee and partake of breakfast with biscuits. By
seven o’clock—according to our standard of time—five
or six of the natives would arrive, and, after a liberal
libation of coffee, begin work. I taught them to help
me in the making of my hickory sleds. Some I taught
to use modern carpentering instruments, which I had
with me. Another group was schooled in bending the
resilient but tough hickory. This was done by wrapping
old cloths about the wood and steeping it in hot water.
Others engaged, as the days went by, in making dog
harness, articles of winter clothing, and drying meat.
Not an hour was lost during the day. At noon we
paused for a bite of frozen meat and hot tea. Then we
fell to work again without respite until five or six o’clock.

Meanwhile, beginning in the early morning of our
steadily darkening days, other male members of the tribe
pursued game. Others again followed a routine of
scouring of the villages and collecting all the furs and
game which had been caught. The women of the tribe,
in almost every dimly lighted igloo, were no less industrious.
To them fell the task of assisting in drying the
fur skins, preparing dried meat and making our cloth[Pg 91]ing.
Throughout the entire days they sat in their snow
and stone houses, masses of ill-smelling furs before them,
cutting the skins and sewing them into serviceable garments.
This work I often watched, passing from igloo
to igloo, with an interest that verged on anxiety; for
upon the strength, thickness and durability of these depended
my life, and that of the companions I should
choose, on the frigid days which would inevitably come
on my journey Poleward. But these broad-faced,
patient women did their work well. Their skill is quite
remarkable. They took my measurements, for instance,
by roughly sizing up my old garments and by measuring
me by sight. Garments were made to fit snugly after
the preliminary making by cutting out or inserting
patches of fur. Needles among the natives are indeed
precious. So valuable are they that if a point or eye is
broken, with infinite skill and patience the broken end
is heated and flattened, and by means of a bow drill a
new eye is bored. A new point is with equal skill shaped
on local stones. With marvelous patience they make
their own thread by drying and stripping caribou or
narwhale sinews.

Were it not for their extraordinary eyesight, such
work, under such conditions, would be impossible. But
in the dark the natives can espy things invisible to white
men. This owl-sight enables them to hunt, if necessary,
in almost pitch darkness, and to perform tedious feats
of hand skill which, in such dim light, an alien would
bungle. I noticed, with much curiosity, that when the
natives inspected any photograph or object which I gave
them they always held it upside down. All objects, as
is well known, are reflected in the retina thus, and it is[Pg 92]
our familiarity with the size and comparative relations
of things which enables the brain to visualize an object
or scene at its proper angle. This strange, instinctive
act of the natives might form an interesting chapter in
optics.

Meanwhile, busy and interested in the beginning of
our various pursuits, the great crust which was to hold
down the sea for so many months, closed and thickened.

During the last days of brief sunshine the weather
cleared, and at noon on October 24 everybody sought
the open for a last glimpse of the dying day. There
was a charm of color and glitter, but no one seemed quite
happy as the sun sank under the southern ice, for it was
not to rise again for one hundred and eighteen days.

Just prior to the falling of darkness, with that instinctive
and forced hilarity with which aboriginal beings
seek to ward off an impending calamity, the Eskimos
engaged in their annual sporting event. It is a curious
sight, indeed, to behold a number of excited, laughing
Eskimos gathering about two champion dogs which are
to fight. Although the zest of betting is unknown, the
natives regard dog fights with much the same eager excitement
as a certain type of sporting man does a cock
encounter. Sometimes the dogs do not fight fairly, a
number of the animals bunching together and attacking
a single dog. Dogs selected for the fight are, of course,
the best of the teams. A dog which maintains his fighting
supremacy becomes a king dog, and when beaten
becomes a first lieutenant to the king.

After the forced enthusiasm of this brief period of
excitement, the Eskimos begin to succumb to the inevitable
melancholia of nature, when the sun, the source of[Pg 93]
natural life, disappears and darkness descends. A
gloom descends heavily upon their spirits. A subtle
sadness tinctures their life, and they are possessed by an
impulse to weep. At this season, hour by hour, the
darkness thickens; the cold increases and chills their
igloos; the wind, exultant while the sun shines, now
whines and sobs dolorously—there is something gruesome,
uncanny, supernatural, in its siren sorrow. Outside,
the snow falls, the sea closes. Its clamant beat of
waves is silenced. Sea animals mostly disappear; land
animals are rare. Their source of physical supply vanished,
the Eskimos unconsciously feel the grim hand of
want, of starvation, which means death, upon them. The
psychology of this period of depression partly lies, undoubtedly,
in this instinctive dread of death from lack of
food and the natural depression of unrelieved gloom.
Moreover, there is a grief, born of the native superstition
that, when the sea freezes, the souls of all who have
perished in the waters are imprisoned during the long
night. Too fierce is the struggle of these people with
the elemental forces to permit them, like many other
aboriginal peoples to be obsessed greatly with superstitions.
Although their religion is a very primitive and
native one, it is usually only at the inception of night
that they feel the appalling nearness of a world
that is supernatural. As the last rim of the sun
sank over the southern ice, the natives entered upon a
formal period of melancholy, during which the bereavements
of each family, and the discomforts and disasters
of the year, were memoralized.

I shall never forget that long, sad evening, which
lasted many normal days. The sun had descended. A[Pg 94]
sepulchral, gray-green curtain of gloom hung over the
chilled earth. In the dim semi-darkness could be
vaguely seen the outlines of the igloos, of the heaving
curvatures of snow-covered land, and the blacker, snake-like
twistings of open lanes of water, where the sea had
not yet frozen. Sitting in my box-house, I was startled
suddenly by a sound that made my flesh for the instant
creep. I walked to the door and threw it open. Over
the bluish, snow-covered land, formed by the indentures
and hollows, stretched dark-purplish shapes—Titan
shadows, sepulchral and ominous, some with shrouded
heads, others with spectral arms threateningly upraised.
Nebulous and gruesome shreds of blue-fog like wraiths
shifted over the sea. Out of the sombre, heavy air began
to issue a sound as of many women sobbing. From
the indistinct distance came moaning, crooning voices.
Sometimes hysterical wails of anguish rent the air, and
now and then frantic choruses shrieked some heart-aching
despair. My impression was that I was in a
land of the sorrowful dead, some mid-strata of the spirit
world, where, in this gray-green twilight, formless
things in the distance moved to and fro.

There is, I believe, in the heart of every man, an
instinctive respect for sorrow. With muffled steps, I
left the igloo and paced the dreariness of ice, treading
slowly, lest, in the darkness, I slip into some unseen
crevasse of the open sea. A strange and eerie sight confronted
me. Along the seashore, bending over the lapping
black water, or standing here and there by inky,
open leads in the severed ice, many Eskimo women were
gathered. Some stood in groups of two or three.
Bowed and disconsolate, her arms about them, with[Pg 95]
almost every hundred steps, I saw a weeping mother and
her children. Standing rigid and stark, motionless
graven images of despair, or frantically writhing to and
fro, others stood far apart in desolate places, alone.

The dull, opaque air was tinged with a strange phosphorescent
green, suggestive of a place of dead things;
and now, like the flutterings of huge death-lamps, along
the horizon, where the sun had sunk, gashes of crimson
here and there fitfully glowed blood-red in the pall-like
sky.

To the left, as I walked along, I recognized Tung-wingwah,
with a child on her back and a bag of moss in
her hand. She stood behind a cheerless rock, with her
face toward the faint red flushes of the sun. She stood
motionless. Big tears rolled from her eyes, but not a
sound was uttered. To my low queries she made no
response. I invited her to the camp to have a cup of
tea, thinking to change her sad thoughts and loosen her
tongue. But still her eyes did not leave that last distant
line of open water. From another, I later learned that
in the previous April her daughter of five, while playing
on the ice-foot, slipped and was lost in the sea. The
mother now mourned because the ice would bury her
little one’s soul.

A little farther along was Al-leek-ah, a woman of
middle age, with two young children by her side. She
was hysterical in her grief, now laughing with a weird
giggle, now crying and groaning as if in great pain, and
again dancing with emotions of madness. I learned her
story from a chatter that ran through all her anguish.
Towanah, her first husband, had been drawn under the
ice, by the harpoon line, twenty years ago. And though[Pg 96]
she had been married three times since, she was trying
to keep alive the memory of her first love. I went on,
marveling at a primitive fidelity so long enduring.

Still farther along towards the steep slopes of the
main coast, I saw Ahwynet, all alone in the gloomy
shadow of great cliffs. Her story was told in chants
and moans. Her husband and all her children had been
swept by an avalanche into the stormy seas. There was
a kind of wild poetry in the song of her bereavement.
Tears came to my eyes. The rush of the avalanche, the
hiss of the wind, the pounding of the seas, were all indicated.
And then, in heart-breaking tones, came “blood
of her blood, flesh of her flesh, under the frozen waters,”
and other sentiments which I could not catch in the
undertone of sobs.

Cold shivers began to run up my spine, and I
turned to retreat to camp. Here was a scene that perhaps
a Dante might adequately write about. I cannot.
I felt that I, an alien, was intruding into the realm of
some strange and mystic sorrow. I felt the sombre thrill
of a borderland world not human. These women were
communicating with the souls of their dead. To those
who had perished in the sea they were telling, ere the
gates of ice closed above them, all the news of the past
year—things of interest and personal, and even of years
before, as far back as they could remember. Almost
every family each year loses someone in the sea;
almost every family was represented by these weeping
women, overburdened with their own naive sorrow, and
who yet strangely sought to cheer the souls of the disconsolate
and desolate dead.

Meanwhile, while the women were weeping and giv[Pg 97]ing
their parting messages to the dead, the male members
of the tribe, in chants and dramatic dances, were
celebrating, in the igloos, the important events of the
past year.

Inside, the igloos were dimly lighted with stone
blubber lamps. These, during the entire winter, furnish
light and heat. The lamp consists of a crescent-shaped
stone with a concavity, in which there is animal oil and a
line of crushed moss as a wick. Lighted early in the season,
for an entire winter, these lamps cast a faint, perpetual,
flickering light. Shadows dance grotesquely
about on the rounded walls. An oily stench pervades the
unventilated enclosure. In this weird, yellow-blackish
radiance the men engage in their fantastic dances. Moving
the central parts of their bodies to and fro, they utter
weird sing-song chants. They recite, in jerky, curious
singing, the history of the big events of the year; of successful
chases; of notable storms; of everything that
means much in their simple lives. As they dance, their
voices rise to a high pitch of excitement. Their eyes
flash like smoldering coals. Their arms move frantically.
Some begin to sob uncontrollably. A hysteria of
laughter seizes others. Finally the dance ends; exhausted,
they pass into a brief lethargy, from which they
revive, their melancholia departed. The women return
from the shores of the sea; they wipe their tears, and,
with native spontaneity, forget their depression and
smile again.

While I was interested in the curious spectacles presented,
the sunset of 1907 to me was inspiration for the
final work in directing the completion of the outfit with
which to begin the conquest of the Pole at sunrise of[Pg 98]
1908. Fortunately, I was not handicapped by the company
of the usual novices taken on Polar expeditions.
There were only two of us white men, and white men, at
the best, must be regarded as amateurs compared with
the expert efficiency of Eskimos in their own environment.
Our food supply contained only the prime factors
of primitive nourishment. Special foods and laboratory
concoctions and canned delicacies did not fill an
important space in our larder. Nor had we balloons,
automobiles, motor sleds or other freak devices. We
did, however, I have said, have what was of utmost importance,
an abundance of the best hickory and metal
for the making of the sleds upon which our destinies
were vitally to depend.

[Pg 99]

FIRST WEEK OF THE LONG NIGHT

HUNTING IN THE ARCTIC TWILIGHT—PURSUING BEAR,
CARIBOU AND SMALLER GAME IN SEMI-GLOOM

VII

The Glory of the Aurora

The sun had dropped below the horizon. The
gloom continued steadily to thicken. Each twenty-four
hours, at the approximate approach of what was
the noon hour when the sun had been above the horizon,
the sky to the south of us glowed with marvelous, subdued
sunset hues. By this time our work had gone
ahead by progressive stages. Furs, to protect us from
the cold of the uttermost North on my prospective trip,
had been prepared and were being made into clothing;
meat and fat, for food and fuel, were being dried and
stored in numerous caches about Annoatok; several of
the sledges and part of the equipment were ready.

We still had need of large quantities of supplies,
and, while some of the natives were busy with their
routine work, we planned that as many others as possible
should use the twilight days pursuing bear, caribou,
fox, hare and other game far beyond the usual
Eskimo haunts. Before the dawn of the sun’s afterglow,
on the morning of October 26, seven sledges with[Pg 100]
sixty dogs were on the ice-foot near our camp, ready to
start for hunting grounds near Humboldt Glacier, a
distance of one hundred miles northward.[7]

While the teamsters waited for the final password
the dogs chafed fiercely. I could barely see the outlines
of my companions in the gloom, and it was difficult, in
the irregular snow and tide-lifted ice descending to sea
level, to find footing.

The word to start was given. My companions took
up the cry.

“Huk! Huk! Huk!” (Go! Go!) they shouted.

The dogs responded in leaps and howls.

“Howah! Howah!” (Right! Right!) “Egh!
Egh!” (Stop! Stop!) “Aureti!” (Behave!) came echoingly
along the line of teams. Finally the wild dash
slackened, the dogs regulated their paces to an easy trot,
and we swept steadily along the frozen highway of the
tide-made shelf of the ice-foot. The sledges dodged
stones and ice-blocks, edged along dangerous precipices,
in the depths of which I heard the swish of water, and
glided miraculously over crevices and along deep gorges.
Jumping about the sledges, guiding, pushing, or retarding
their speed, cracking their whips in the air, the
natives, with that art which only aborigines seem to
have, picked the way and controlled the dogs, but a few
generations removed from their wolf progenitors, with
amazing dexterity.

A low wind blew down the slopes and froze our[Pg 101]
breath in lines of frost about our heads. The temperature
was 35° below zero. To the left of us was Kane
Basin, recalling its history of human strife northward.
It was filled with serried ranges of crushed ice, a berg
here and there, all in the light of the kindling sky, aglow
with purple and blue. To the far west I saw the
dim outline of Ellesmere, my promised land, over which
I hoped to force a new route to the Pole; upon its snowy
highlands was poured a soft creamy light from encouraging
skies. To the right was the rugged coast of Greenland,
its huge, ice-chiselled cliffs leaping portentously
forward in the gloom. Thrilling with the race, we made
a run of twenty miles and reached Rensselaer Harbor,
where Dr. Kane had spent his long nights of misfortune.

We pitched camp at the ice-foot at the head of the
bay. Although we found traces of hare and fox, it was
too dark to venture on the chase. The temperature had
fallen to −40°, the wind pierced with a sharp sting. For
my shelter I erected a new tent which I had invented,
and the efficiency of which I desired to test. Taking the
sledge frame work as a platform, a folding top of strong
canvas was fastened, and spread between two bars of
hickory from each end. The entrance was in front.
Inside was a space eight feet long and three and one-half
feet wide, with a round whaleback top. Inside this
a supplementary wall was constructed of light blankets,
offering an air space of an inch between the outer wall
as a non-conductor to confine the little heat generated
within. As there was ample room for only two persons,
Koo-loo-ting-wah, my leading man, was invited to share
the tent. The natives had not provided themselves with
shelter of any kind. They had counted on either build[Pg 102]ing
an igloo or seeking the shelter of the snows, as do the
creatures of the wilds.

Inside my tent I prepared a meal on the little
German stove, burning the vapor of alcohol. The meal
consisted of a pail of hot corn meal, fried bacon and a
liberal all-round supply of steaming tea. To accomplish
this, which included melting the snow, heating the water,
and cooking everything separately, required about two
hours. As I considered eating outside with any degree
of comfort impossible, my companions were invited to
crowd inside the tent. The vapor of their breath and
that of the cooking soon condensed into snow, and a
miniature snowstorm covered everything within. After
this was swept out, the Eskimos were invited to enter
again. All partook of the meal ravenously, and then
emerged to reconnoiter the surroundings. Tracks of
ptarmigan, hare and foxes were found, and as we moved
about with seeking, owl eyes, ravens shouted notes of
welcome.

We then retired to rest. As there was no snow
about that was sufficiently hard to cut blocks with which
to erect snow houses, the natives placed themselves in
semi-reclining positions on their sledges and slept in their
traveling clothes. After a few hours they awoke and
partook of chopped frozen meat and blubber; two hours
later, they made a fire in a tin can, with moss and blubber
as fuel, and over this prepared a pot of parboiled meat.
A crescent-shaped wall of snow was built to break the
wind; in the shelter of this they sat, grinning delightedly,
and eating savagely, with much smacking of the lips, the
steaming broth and walrus meat. All this I studied with
intense interest. I desired on this trip not only to test[Pg 103]
my tent, but to learn more of the native arts of the
Eskimo, knowing that I, on my Polar trip, must, if I
would be successful, adapt myself to just such methods
of living.

This was my first winter experience of camping out
in the night season for this year, and, with only a diet of
meal and bacon, I was miserably cold. I was now testing
also for the first time the new winter clothing with
which I and all my companions were dressed. Our
shirts were made of bird skins. Over these were coats
of blue fox or caribou skins; our trousers were of bear,
our boots of seal, and our stockings of hare skins. This
was the usual native winter costume, but under it I had
added a suit of underwear.

Retiring again for rest, I left instructions to be
called for an early start. It seemed that I had hardly
settled comfortably in my sleeping bag when the call for
action came.

We hastily partook of tea and biscuits, harnessed
our teams and started through the dark. The Eskimos,
having eaten their fill of fat and frozen meat, to which I
must yet accustom myself, were thoroughly comfortable.
I was miserably cold.

By running behind my sledge I produced sufficient
bodily heat after awhile to feel comfortable. My face
suffered severely from the cutting slant of the winds.
We passed the perpendicular walls of Cape Seiper at
dawn. We ran along the long, straight coast into Bancroft
Bay during the six hours of twilight. The journey
was continued to Dallas Bay by a forced march of fifty
miles before we halted.

The scene displayed the rare glory of twilight[Pg 104]
charms as it had the day before, but the snow was
deeper, the temperature lower. The wind steadily increased
and veered northward. We made several efforts
to cross the bay ice, but cracked ice, huge uplifted blocks
and deep snows compelled a retreat to the ice-foot.

The ice-foot along Smith Sound is a superb highway,
where otherwise sledge travel would be quite impossible
along the coast.

Along Dallas Bay we found a great deal of grass-covered
land in undulating valleys and on low hills,
which offered grazing for caribou and hare. The preceding
glimmer of the new moon, which was to rise a
few days hence, offered sufficient light to search for
game.

We now fed our dogs for the first time since leaving
Annoatok. After a liberal drink of snow water, we
started to seek our luck in the chase. In the course of
an hour my companions returned with four hares which,
when dressed, weighed about forty-eight pounds. Two
of these were cached. The others were eaten later.

Before dawn of the day-long twilight the wind
increased to a full gale. The sky to the north, smoky
all night, now blackened as with soot. The wind came
with a howl that brought to mind the despairing cries of
the dying explorers whose bleached bones were strewn
along the shore. The gloomy outline of the coast remained
visible for awhile; but soon the air thickened
and came weighted with snow that piled up in huge
drifts.

The Eskimos took a few of their favorite dogs and
sought shelter to the lee of the tent, where drift covered
their blankets with snow. Breathing holes were kept[Pg 105]
open over their faces. Buried in snow drifts, they were
imprisoned for twenty-eight hours. But this tent sled
sheltered Koo-loo-ting-wah and myself. When the rush
of the storm had abated we began digging our way out.
In this effort we dug up men and dogs like potatoes
from a patch. The northern sky had paled, the south
was brightening. The pack was lined with long lines
beyond each hummock; the snow was covered with a
strong crust. But the ice-foot was a hopeless line of
drifts which made travel over it quite impossible.

The work of pounding snow from the dogs and
freeing the sledges brought to our faces beads of perspiration
which rolled off and froze in lines of ice on our
furs. We were none the worse as a result of the storm,
and although hungry as wolves, time was too precious to
stop for a full meal.

We now pushed out of the bay, on to the sea ice.
At this point the dogs scented a bear and soon crossed
its track. Rested and hungry, they were in condition
for a desperate chase. Their sharp noses pointed keenly
into the huge bear foot-prints, their little ears quivered,
while, with howls, they started onward in a mad rush.

Neither our voices nor the whips made an impression
on their wild speed. We crossed banks and ridges
of snow and swirled about slopes of ice, gripping
sledges violently. Now we were thrown to one side,
again to the other, dragging resistlessly beside the sleds.
Rising, we gripped the rear upstanders with fierce
determination.

Just how we escaped broken limbs, and our sledges
utter destruction, is a mystery to me. After a run of an
hour we sighted the bear. The animal had evidently[Pg 106]
sighted us, for he was galloping for the open water
toward the northwest. We cut the fleetest dogs loose
from each team. Freed, they rushed over the snow like
race-horses. But the bear had an advantage. As
the first dog nipped his haunches he plunged into the
black waters. We advanced and waited for him to rise.
But this bruin had sense enough to emerge on the opposite
shore, where he shook off the freezing waters
vigorously, and then sat down as if to have a
laugh at us.

I knew that to plunge into the waters would have
been fatal to dog or man and equally fatal to a boat, as
ice, in the intense cold, would form about it so rapidly
that it could not be propelled.

The dogs sat down and howled a chorus of sad disappointment.
For miles about, the men sought fruitlessly
for a way to cross. Outwitted, we returned to
continue our journey Northward.

Advance Bay and its islands were in sight. Among
these, we aimed to place our central camp. The light
was fading fast, and a cold wind came from Humboldt
Glacier, which at this time was located by a slight darkening
of the sky. Many grounded icebergs were about,
and the sea ice was much crossed. The hummocks and
the snow were not as troublesome as farther south.

Two ravens followed us, their shrill cries echoing
from berg to berg. The Eskimos inferred from their
presence that bears were near, but we saw no tracks.

The cries of the ravens were nearly as provoking
to the dogs as the bear tracks, and we moved along
rapidly to Brook’s Island. This was rather high, with a
plateau and sharp cliffs. Bonsall Island near by was[Pg 107]
rounded by glacial action. Between them we found a
place to camp somewhat sheltered from the wind.

While eating our ration of corn meal and bacon,
howls of the dogs rose to a fierce crescendo. I supposed
they were saluting the coming of the moon, as is their
custom, but the howls changed to tones of increasing
excitement. We went out to inquire, but saw nothing.
It was so dark that I could not see the dogs twenty feet
away, and the cold wind made breathing difficult.

“Nan nook” (Bear), the Eskimos said in an undertone.
I looked around for some position of defense.
But the dense night-blackness rendered this hopeless, so
we took our position behind the tent, rifles in hand. The
bear, of an inquisitive turn of mind, deliberately advanced
upon us. “Taokoo! taokoo! igloo dia oo-ah-tonie!”
(Look! look! beyond the iceberg!) said the
Eskimos. Neither the iceberg nor the bear was visible.
After a cold and exciting wait, the bear turned and hid
behind another iceberg. We separated a few of the
best bear dogs from each other. Bounding off, they
disappeared quietly in the darkness. The other dogs
were fastened to the sledges, and away we started.

I sat on To-ti-o’s sledge, as he had the largest team.
We jumped crevasses, and occasionally dipped in open
water.

The track of the bear wound about huge bergs
which looked in the darkness like nebulous shadows.
The dogs, of themselves, followed the invisible line of
tracks.

Soon the wolfish dogs ahead began to shout the
chorus of their battle. We left the track in an air-line
course for the dark mystery out of which the noise came.[Pg 108]
To-ti-o took the lead. As we neared the noise, all but
two dogs of his sledge were cut loose. The sledge overturned,
I under it. As Koo-loo-ting-wah came along,
he freed all his dogs. I passed him my new take-down
Winchester.

Hurrying after To-ti-o, he had advanced only a few
steps when To-ti-o fired. Koo-loo-ting-wah, noting an
effort of the bear to rise, fired the new rifle.

A flash of fire lit the darkness. Koo-loo-ting-wah
rushed to me, asking for the folding lantern. The
smokeless powder had broken the new gun. To-ti-o had
no more cartridges. The bear, however, was quiet. We
advanced, lances in hand.

The dogs danced wildly about the bear, but he
managed to throw out his feet with sufficient force to
keep the canine fangs disengaged. The other Eskimos
now came, with rushing dogs in advance. To-ti-o dashed
forward and delivered the lance under the bear’s
shoulder. The bear was his. He thereby not only
gained the prize for the expedition, but, by the addition
of the bear to his game list, completed his retinue of accomplishments
whereby he could claim the full privileges
of manhood.

THE HELPERS—NORTHERNMOST MAN AND HIS WIFE

Among other things, it gave him the right to marry.
He had already secured a bride of twelve, but, without
this bear conquest, the match would not have been permanent.
He danced with the romantic joy of a young
lover. We drove the dogs off from the victim with
lashes, and fell to and skinned and dressed the carcass.
A taste was given to each dog. The balance was placed
on the sledges. Soon we were to camp, waiting for the
sled loads of bear meat.

[Pg 109]

A MECCA OF MUSK OX ALONG EUREKA SOUND
A NATIVE HELPER
AH-WE-LAH’S PROSPECTIVE WIFE

On the day following we started to hunt caribou.
The sky was beautifully clear; the glacial wind was lost
as we left the ice. The party scattered among numerous
old bergs of the glacier. Koo-loo-ting-wah accompanied
me. We aimed to rise to a small tableland from
which I might make a study of the surroundings.

We had not gone inland more than a mile when we
saw numerous fresh caribou tracks. Following these,
we moved along a steep slope to the tableland above at
an altitude of about one thousand feet. We peeped
over the crest. Below us were two reindeer digging
under the snow for food. The light was good, and they
were in gun range. An Eskimo, however, gets very near
his game before he chances a shot, so, winding about
under the crest of a cliff or a snow-covered shelf of rocks,
we got to their range and fired.

The creatures fell. They were nearly white, young,
and possessed long fur and thick skins, which we needed
badly for sleeping bags. With pocket knives, the
natives skinned the animals and divided the meat in three
packs while I examined the surroundings.

Part of the face of Humboldt Glacier, which extends
sixty miles north, was clearly visible in cliffs
of a dark blue color. The interior ice ran in waves like
the surface of stormy seas, perfectly free of snow, with
many crevasses. An odd purplish-blue light upon it was
reflected to the skies, resembling to some extent a water
sky. The snow of the sea ice below was of a delicate
lilac. Otherwise, sky and land were flooded with the
usual dominant purple of the Arctic twilight.

This glacier, the largest in Arctic America, had at
one time extended very much farther south. All the[Pg 110]
islands, including Brook’s, had at one time been under
its grinding influence. As a picture it was a charming
study in purple and blue, but the temperature was too
low and the light too nearly spent to venture a further
investigation.

The Eskimos fixed for me an extremely light pack.
This was comfortably placed on my back, with a bundle
of thongs over the forehead. The natives took their
huge bundles, and, together, we started for camp. At
every rest we cut off slices of caribou tallow. I was surprised
to find that I had acquired a taste for a new
delicacy. At camp we found the natives, all in good
humor, awaiting us beside heaps of meat and skins. All
had been successful in securing from one to two animals
each in regions nearer by. In a further search they
had failed to find promising tracks, so we proposed to
return on the morrow, hoping to meet bears en route.

With the stupor of the gluttony of reindeer meat
and the fatigue of the long chase, we slept late. Awaking,
we partook each of a cup of tea, and packed and
loaded the meat. Drawing heavy loads, the dogs gladly
leaped forward. The twilight flush already suffused
the sky with incandescence. Against the southeastern
sky, glowing with rose, the great glaciers of Humboldt
loomed in walls of violet, while the sea displayed many
shades of rose and lilac, according to the direction of the
light on the slope of the drifts.

Knowing that their noses pointed to a land of walrus,
the dogs kept up a lively pace. Not a breath of
air was stirring. The temperature was -42°. Aiming
to make Annoatok in two marches, we ran behind the
sledges to save dog energy as much as possible. The[Pg 111]
cold enforced vigorous exercise. But, weighted down
by furs, the comfort of the sledges was often sought
to escape the tortures of perspiration. The source of
light slowly shifted along shadowed mountains under
the frozen sea. Our path glowed with electric, multi-colored
splendor.

By degrees, the rose-colored sky assumed the hue of
old gold, the violet embroideries of clouds changed to
purple. The gold, in running bands, darkened; the
purple thickened. Soon new celestial torches lighted
the changing sheen of the snows. Into the dome of
heaven swam stars of burning intensity, each of which
rivalled the sun in a miniature way. In this new illumination
the twilight fires lost flame and color. Cold
white incandescence electrically suffused the frigid sky.

I strode onward, in that white, blazing air, the joy
and beauty of it enthralling my soul. I felt as though
I were walking in a world of heatless fire, a half supernatural
realm such as that wherein reigned the gods of
ancient peoples. I felt as an old Norseman must have
felt when the glory of Valhalla burst upon him. For a
long time I was unconscious of the fatigue which was
growing upon me. Finally, overcome by the long
forced march, I sank on my sled. The Eskimos, chanting
songs, loomed ahead, their forms magnified in the
unearthly light. Slowly a subtle change appeared along
the horizon. Silent and impressed, I watched the changing
scenes and evolving lights as if all were some divine
and awe-inspiring stage arranged by God for some
heroic drama of man.

New and warm with shimmering veils of color, attended
by four radiant satellites, the golden face of the[Pg 112]
moon rose majestically over the sparkling pinnacles of
the Greenland glaciers. Below, the lovely planet-deflected
images formed rainbow curves like rubied necklaces
about her invisible neck. As the moon ascended
in a spiral course the rose hues paled, the white light
from the stars softened to a rich, creamy glow.

We continued our course, the Eskimos singing, the
dogs occasionally barking. Hours passed. Then we
all suddenly became silent. The last, the supreme,
glory of the North flamed over earth and frozen sea.
The divine fingers of the aurora,[8] that unseen and intangible
thing of flame, who comes from her mysterious
throne to smile upon a benighted world, began to
touch the sky with glittering, quivering lines of glowing
silver. With skeins of running, liquid fire she wove
over the sky a shimmering panorama of blazing beauty.
Forms of fire, indistinct and unhuman, took shape and
vanished. From horizon to zenith, cascades of milk-colored
fire ascended and fell, as must the magical fountains
of heaven.

In the glory of this other-world light I felt the in[Pg 113]significance
of self, a human unit; and, withal I became
more intensely conscious than ever of the transfiguring
influence of the sublime ideal to which I had set
myself. I exulted in the thrill of an indomitable determination,
that determination of human beings to essay
great things—that human purpose which, throughout
history, has resulted in the great deeds, the great art, of
the world, and which lifts men above themselves. Spiritually
intoxicated, I rode onward. The aurora faded.
But its glow remained in my soul.

We arrived at camp late on November 1.

[Pg 114]

THE MOONLIGHT QUEST OF THE
WALRUS

DESPERATE AND DANGEROUS HUNTING, IN ORDER TO
SECURE ADEQUATE SUPPLIES FOR THE POLAR DASH—A
THRILLING AND ADVENTUROUS RACE IS MADE OVER
FROZEN SEAS AND ICY MOUNTAINS TO THE WALRUS
GROUNDS—TERRIFIC EXPLOSION OF THE ICE ON
WHICH THE PARTY HUNTS—SUCCESS IN SECURING
OVER SEVEN SLED-LOADS OF BLUBBER MAKES THE
POLE SEEM NEARER—AN ARCTIC TRAGEDY

VIII

Five Hundred Miles Through Night and Storm

The early days of November were devoted to routine
work about Annoatok. Meat was gathered and
dried in strips by Francke; a full force of men were put
to the work of devising equipment; the women were
making clothing and dressing skins; and then a traveling
party was organized to go south to gather an additional
harvest of meat and skins and furs. For this purpose
we planned to take advantage of the November moon.
Thus, in the first week of the month, we were ready for
a five-hundred-mile run to the southern villages and to
the night-hunting grounds for walrus.

A crack of whips explosively cut the taut, cold air.
The raucous, weird and hungry howl of the wolf-dogs[Pg 115]
replied: “Ah-u-oo, Ah-u-oo, Ah-u-oo!” rolled over
the ice; “Huk-huk!” the Eskimos shouted. There was a
sudden tightening of the traces of our seven sledges;
fifty lithe, strong bodies leaped forward; and, holding
the upstanders, the rear upright framework of the native
sledges, I and my six companions were off. In a few
moments the igloos of the village, with lights shining
through windows where animal membranes served as
glass, had sped by us. The cheering of the natives behind
was soon lost in the grind of our sledges on the irregular
ice and the joyous, unrestrained barking of the
leaping, tearing, restless dog-teams.

To the south of us, a misty orange flush suffused
the dun-colored sky. The sun, which we had not seen
for an entire month, now late in November far below
the horizon, sent to us the dim radiance of a far-away
smile. After its setting it had, about noon time of each
day, set the sky faintly aglow, this radiance decreasing
until it was lost in the brightness of the midday moon.
Rising above the horizon, a suspended lamp of frosty,
pearl-colored glass, the moon for ten days of twenty-four
hours, each month, encircled about us, now lost
behind ice-sheeted mountains, again subdued under
colored films of frost clouds, but always relieving the
night of its gloom, and permitting, when the wind was
not too turbulent, outside activity.

A wonderful animal is the sea-horse, or whale-horse,
as the Icelanders and Dutch (from whom we have
borrowed “walrus”) call it. In the summer its life is
easy and its time is spent in almost perpetual sunny
dreams, but in winter it would be difficult to conceive
of a harder existence than its own. Finding food in[Pg 116]
shallow Polar seas, it comes to permanent open water,
or to the crevasses of an active pack for breath. With
but a few minutes’ rest on a storm-swept surface, it explores,
without other relief for weeks, the double-night
darkness of unknown depths under the frozen sea. At
last, when no longer able to move its huge web feet, it
rises on the ice or seeks ice-locked waters for a needed
rest. In winter, the thump of its ponderous head keeps
the young ice from closing its breathing place. If on ice,
its thick skin, its blanket of blubber, and an automatic
shiver, keep its blood from hardening. This is man’s
opportunity to secure meat and fuel, but the quest involves
a task to which no unaided paleface is equal. The
night hunt of the walrus is Eskimo sport, but it is nevertheless
sport of a most engaging and exciting order.

So that I might not be compelled to start on my
dash stintedly equipped, we now prepared for such an
adventure by moonlight. Before this time there had
not been sufficient atmospheric stability and ice continuity
to promise comparative safety. My heart exulted
as I heard the crack of the whips in the electric
air and felt the earth rush giddily under my feet as I
leaped behind the speeding teams. The fever of the
quest was in my veins; its very danger lent an indescribable
thrill, for success now meant more to me than
perhaps hunting had ever meant to any man.

Not long after we started, darkness descended. The
moon slowly passed behind an impenetrable curtain of
inky clouds; the orange glow of the sun faded; and we
were surrounded on every side by a blackness so thick
that it was almost palpable.

As I now recall that mad race I marvel how we[Pg 117]
escaped smashing sledges, breaking our limbs, crushing
our heads. We tumbled and jumped in a frantic
race over the broken, irregular pack-ice from Annoatok
to Cape Alexander, a distance of thirty miles as the
raven moves, but more than forty miles as we follow the
sledge trail. Here the ice became thin; we felt cold mist
rising from open water; and now and then, in an occasional
breaking of the darkness, we could discern
vast sheets or snaky leads of open sea ahead of us.

To reach the southern waters where the walrus were
to be found, we now had to seek an overland route,
which would take us over the frozen Greenland mountains
and lead us through the murky clouds, a route of
twisting detours, gashed glaciers, upturned barriers of
rock and ice, swept by blinding winds, unmarked by any
trail, and which writhed painfully beyond us for forty-seven
miles.

Arriving at the limit of traversable sea-ice, we
now paused before sloping cliffs of glacial land-ice
which we had to climb. Picture to yourself a vast glacier
rising precipitously, like a gigantic wall, thousands
of feet above you, and creeping tortuously up its glassy,
purple face, if such that surface could be called, formed
by the piling of one glacial formation upon the other
in the descent through the valleys, a twisting, retreating
road of jagged ice strata, of earth and stone,
blocked here and there by apparently impassable impediments,
pausing at almost unscalable, frozen cliffs,
and at times no wider than a few yards. Imagine yourself
pausing, as we suddenly did, and viewing the perilous
ascent, the only way open to us, revealed in the
passing glimmer of the pale, circling moon, despair,[Pg 118]
fear and hope tugging at your heart. Whipped across
the sky by the lashing winds, the torn clouds, passing
the face of the moon, cast magnified and grotesquely
gesticulating shadows on the glistening face of the icy
Gibraltar before us. Some of these misty shapes
seemed to threaten, others shook their rag-like arms,
beckoning forward. Upon the face of the towering,
perpendicular ice-wall, great hummocks like the
gnarled black limbs of a huge tree twisted upwards.

I realized that the frightful ascent must be made.
The goal of my single aim suddenly robbed the climb
of its terrors. I dropped my whip. Six other whips
cracked through the air. Koo-loo-ting-wah said, “Kah-Kah!”
(Come, come!) But Sotia said, “Iodaria-Iodaria!”
(Impossible, impossible!) The dogs emitted
shrill howls. Holding the rear upstanders of the
sledges, we helped to push them forward.

Before us, the fifty dogs climbed like cats through
narrow apertures of the ice, or took long leaps over the
serried battlements that barred our way. We stumbled
after, sometimes we fell. Again we had to lift the
sledges after the dogs.

From the top of the glacier a furious wind brushed
us backwards. We felt the steaming breath of the
laboring dogs in our faces. My heart thumped painfully.
Now and then the moon disappeared; we followed
the unfailing instinct of the animals. I realized
that a misstep might plunge me to a horrible death in
the ice abysm below. With a howl of joy from drivers,
the dogs finally leaped to the naked surface of the
wind-swept glacier. Panting in indescribable relief,
we followed. But the worst part of the journey lay[Pg 119]
before us. The sable clouds, like the curtain of some
cyclopean stage, seemed suddenly drawn aside as if
by an invisible hand.

Upon the illimitable stretch of ice rising before
us like the slopes of a glass mountain, the
full rays of the moon poured liquid silver. Only in
dreams had such a scene as this been revealed to me—in
dreams of the enchanted North—which did not now
equal reality. The spectacle filled me with both awed
delight and a sense of terror.

Beyond the fan-shaped teams of dogs the eyes ran
over fields of night-blackened blue, gashed and broken
by bottomless canyons which twisted like purple serpents
in every direction. Vast expanses of smooth
surface, polished by the constant winds, reflected the
glow of the moon and gleamed like isles of silver in
a motionless, deep, sapphire sea; but all was covered
with the air of night. In the moonlight, the jagged irregular
contours of the broken ice became touched with
a burning gilt. A constant effect like running quicksilver
played about us as the moon sailed around the
heavens.

Above us the ice pinnacles were lost in the clouds,
huge billowy masses that were blown in the wind
troublously, like the heavy black tresses of some Titan
woman. I thrilled with the beauty of the magical spectacle,
yet, when I viewed the perilous pathway, I felt
the grip of terror again at my heart.

I was aroused from my brief reverie by the familiar
“Huk-huk! Ah-gah! Ah-gah!” of the Eskimos, and
placing our hands upon the sledges, we leaped forward
into the purple-gashed sea, with its blinding sheets of[Pg 120]
silver. I seemed carried through a world such as the
old Norsemen sang of in the sagas.

Of a sudden, as though extinguished, the moonlight
faded, huge shadows leaped onto the ice before us,
frenziedly waved their arms and melted into the pitch-black
darkness which descended. I had read imaginative
tales of wanderings in the nether region of the
dead, but only now did I have a faint glimmering of
the terror (with its certain, exultant intoxication)
which lost souls must feel when they wander in a darkness
beset with invisible horrors.

Over the ice, cut with innumerable chasms and
neck-breaking irregularities, we rushed in the dark.
The wind moaned down from the despairing cloud-enfolded
heights above; it tore through the bottomless
gullies on every side with a hungry roar. Beads of
perspiration rolled down my face and froze into icicles
on my chin and furs. The temperature was 48° below
zero.

Occasionally we stopped a moment to gasp for
breath. I could hear the panting of my companions,
the labor of the dogs. A few seconds’ inaction was
followed by convulsive shivering; the pain of stopping
was more excruciating than that of climbing. In the
darkness, the calls of the invisible Eskimos to the dogs
seemed like the weird appeals of disembodied things. I
felt each moment the imminent danger of a frightful
death; yet the dogs with their marvelous intuition,
twisting this way and that, and sometimes retreating,
sensed the open leads ahead and rushed forward safely.

At times I felt the yawning depth of ice canyons
immediately by my side—that a step might plunge me[Pg 121]
into the depths. Desperately I held on to the sledges,
and was dragged along. Such an experience might
well turn the hair of the most expert Alpinist white in
one night; yet I did not have time to dwell fully upon
the dangers, and I was carried over a trip more perilous
than, later, proved the actual journey on sea-ice to the
Pole.

Occasionally the moon peered forth from its clouds
and brightened the gloom. In its light the ice fields
swam dizzily by us, as a landscape seen from the window
of a train; the open gashed gullies writhed like
snakes, pinnacles dancing like silver spears. By alternate
running and riding we managed to keep from
freezing and sweating. We finally reached an altitude
of inland ice exceeding two thousand feet. Silver fog
crept under our feet. We were traveling now in a
world of clouds.

We paced twelve miles at a rapid speed. In the
light of the moon-burned clouds which rolled about our
heads, I could see the forms of my companions only
indistinctly. The dogs ahead were veiled in the argent,
tremulous mists; the ice sped under me; I was no longer
conscious of an earthly footing; I might have been
soaring in space.

We began to descend. Suddenly the dogs started
in leaps to fly through the air. Our sleds were jerked
into clouds of cutting snow. We jabbed our feet into
the drift to check the mad speed. On each side we saw
a huge mountain, seemingly thousands of feet above us,
but ahead was nothing but the void of empty space.
Soon the sledges shot beyond the dogs. We threw ourselves
off to check the momentum. With dog intelli[Pg 122]gence
and savage strength judiciously expended, we
reached the sea level by flying flights over dangerous
slopes, and, like cats, we landed on nimble feet in
Sontag Bay.

A bivouac was arranged under a dome of snow-blocks,
and exhausted by the mad journey, a sleep of
twenty-four hours was indulged in.

Now, for a time, our task was easier. A course
was set along the land, southward. Each of the native
settlements was visited. The season’s gossip was exchanged.
Presents went into each household, and a
return of furs and useful products filled our sledges.
Thus the time was occupied in profitable visits during
the feeble light of the November moon. With the
December moon we returned northward to Ser-wah-ding-wah.

Then our struggle began anew for the walrus
grounds. The Polar drift, forcing through Smith
Sound, left an open space of water about ten miles
south of Cape Alexander. This disturbed area was our
destination. It was marked by a dark cloud, a “water-sky”—against
the pearly glow of the southern heavens.
The ice surface was smooth. We did not encounter
the crushed heaps of ice of the northern route, but
there were frequent crevasses which, though cemented
with new ice, gave us considerable anxiety, for I realized
that if a northwesterly storm should suddenly strike
the pack we might be carried helplessly adrift.

The urgency of our mission to secure dog food,
however, left no alternative. It was better to brave
death now, I thought, than to perish from scant supplies
on the Polar trip. We had not gone far before the[Pg 123]
ever-keen canine noses detected bear tracks on the ice.
These we shot over the pack surface in true battle spirit.
As the bears were evidently bound for the same hunting
grounds, this course was accepted as good enough
for us. Although the trail was laid in a circuitous
route, it avoided the most difficult pressure angles. We
traveled until late in the day. The moon was low,
and the dark purple hue of the night blackened the
snows.

Of a sudden we paused. From a distance came
a low call of walrus bulls. The bass, nasal bellow was
muffled by the low temperature, and did not thump the
ear drums with the force of the cry in sunny summer.
My six companions shouted with glee, and became
almost hysterical with excitement. The dogs, hearing
the call, howled and jumped to jerk the sledges. We
dropped our whips, and they responded with all their
brute force in one bound. It was difficult to hold to
the sledges as we shot over the blackening snows.

The ice-fields became smaller as we advanced;
dangerous thin ice intervened; but the owl-eyes of the
Eskimos knew just where to find safe ice. The sounds
increased as we approached. We descended from the
snow-covered ice to thin, black ice and for a time I
felt as if we were flying over the open surface of the
deep. With a low call, the dogs were stopped. They
were detached from the sledges and tied to holes drilled
with a knife in ice boulders.

Pushing the sledges upon which rested the harpoon,
the lance, the gun and knives, each one of us
advanced at some distance from his neighbor. Soon,
lines of mist told of dangerous breaks, and the ice was[Pg 124]
carefully tested with the spiked shaft before venturing
farther. I was behind Koo-loo-ting-wah’s sledge.
While he was creeping up to the water’s edge, there
came the rush of a spouting breath so near that we
seemed to feel the crystal spray. I took his place and
pushed the sledge along.

Taking the harpoon, with stealthy strides Koo-loo-ting-wah
moved to the water’s edge and waited for the
next spout. We heard other spouts in various directions,
and in the dark water, slightly lighted by the
declining moon, we saw other dark spots of spray.
Suddenly a burst of steam startled me. It was near
the ice where Koo-loo-ting-wah lay. I was about to
shout, but the Eskimo turned, held up his hand and
whispered “Ouit-ou.” (Wait.)

Then, very slowly, he lowered his body, spread out
his form on the ice, and startlingly imitated the walrus
call. His voice preternaturally bellowed through
the night. Out of the inky water, a walrus lifted its
head. I saw its long, white, spiral, ivory tusk and two
phosphorescent eyes. Koo-loo-ting-wah did not stir.
I shivered with cold and impatience. Why did he not
strike? Our prey seemed within our hands. I uttered
an exclamation of vexed disappointment when, with a
splash, the head disappeared, leaving on the water a
line of algae fire.

For several minutes I stood gazing seaward. Far
away on the black ocean, to my amazement, I saw
lights appearing like distant lighthouse signals, or the
mast lanterns on passing ships. They flashed and
suddenly faded, these strange will-o’-the wisps of the
Arctic sea. In a moment I realized that the lights were[Pg 125]
caused by distant icebergs crashing against one another.
On the bergs as on the surface of the sea, as it happened
now, were coatings of a teeming germ life, the same
which causes phosphorescence in the trail of an ocean
ship. The effect was indescribably weird.

Suddenly I jumped backward, appalled by a noise
that reverberated shudderingly under the ice on which
I stood. The ice shook as if with an earthquake. I
hastily retreated, but Koo-loo-ting-wah, lying by the
water’s edge, never stirred. A dead man could not have
been less responsive. While I was wondering as to the
cause of the upheaval, the ice, within a few feet of Koo-loo-ting-wah,
was suddenly torn asunder as if by a submarine
explosion. Koo-loo-ting-wah leaped into the
air and descended apparently toward the distending
space of turbulent open water. I saw him raise his arm
and deliver a harpoon with amazing dexterity; at the
same instant I had seen also the white tusk and phosphorescent
eyes of a walrus appear for a moment in the
black water and then sink.

The harpoon had gone home; the line was run out;
a spiked lance shaft was driven into the ice through
a loop in the end of the line, and the line was thus
fastened. We knew the wounded beast would have to
rise for air. With rifle and lance ready, we waited,
intending, each time a spout of water arose, to drive
holes into the tough armor of skin until the beast’s
vitals were tapped. By feeling the line, I could sense
the struggles of the wild creature below in the depths
of the sea. Then the line would slacken, a spout of
steam would rise from the water, Koo-loo-ting-wah
would drive a spear, I a shot from my gun. The air[Pg 126]
would become oppressive with the creature’s frightful
bellowing. Then would come an interval of silence.

For about two hours we kept up the battle. Then
the line slackened, Koo-loo-ting-wah called the others,
and together we drew the huge carcass, steaming with
blood, to the surface of the ice. Smelling the odorous
wet blood, the dogs exultantly howled.

Falling upon the animal, the natives, trained in
the art, with sharp knives had soon dressed the thick
meat and blubber from the bones and lashed the weltering
mass on a sledge. This done, with quick despatch,
they separated, dashed along the edge of the ice, casting
harpoons whenever the small geysers appeared on the
water. We were in excellent luck. One walrus after
another was dragged lumberingly on the ice, and in the
course of several hours the seven sledges were heavily
loaded with the precious supplies which would now
enable me, liberally equipped, to start Poleward. We
gave our dogs a light meal, and started landward, leaving
great piles of walrus meat behind us on the ice.

Although we were tired on reaching land, we began
to build several snow-houses in which to sleep. Not far
away was an Eskimo village. Summoning the natives
to help us bring in the spoils of the hunt which had been
left on the ice, we first indulged in a gluttonous feast
of uncooked meat, in which the dogs ravenously joined.
The meat tasted like train-oil. The work of bringing
in the meat and blubber and caching it for subsequent
gathering was hardly finished when, from the ominous,
glacial-covered highlands, a winter blast suddenly began
to come with terrific and increasing fury.

Blinding gusts of snow whipped the frozen earth.[Pg 127]
The wind shrieked fiendishly. Above its roar, not three
hours after our last trip on the ice, a resounding, crashing
noise rose above the storm. Braving the blasts, I
went outside the igloo. Through the darkness I could
see white curvatures of piling sea-ice. I could hear the
rush and crashing of huge floes and glaciers being carried
seaward. Had we waited another day, had we been
out on the ice seeking walrus just twenty-four hours
after our successful hunt, we should have been carried
away in the sudden roaring gale, and hopelessly perished
in the wind-swept deep.

During the night, or hours usually allotted to rest,
the noise continued unabated. I failed to sleep. Now
and then, a crashing noise shivered through the storm.
An igloo from the nearby settlement was swept into
the sea. During the gale many of the natives who had
retired with their clothes hung out to dry, awoke to
find that the wind had robbed them of their valuable
winter furs.

Some time along in the course of the night, I
heard outside excited Eskimos shouting. There was
terror in the voices. Arising and dressing hastily, I
rushed into the teeth of the storm. Not far away were
a number of natives rushing along the land some
twenty feet beneath which the sea lapped the land-ice
with furious tongues. They had cast lines into the sea
and were shouting, it seemed, to someone who was
struggling in the hopeless, frigid tumult of water.

I soon learned of the dreadful catastrophe. Ky-un-a,
an old and cautious native, awakened by the storm
a brief while before, after dressing himself, ventured
outside his stone house to secure articles which he had[Pg 128]
left there. As was learned later, he had just tied his
sledge to a rock when a gust of wind resistlessly rushed
seaward, lifted the aged man from his feet, and dropped
him into the sea. Through the storm, his dreadful
cries attracted his companions. Some who were now
tugging at the lines, were barely covered with fur rugs
which they had thrown about them, and their limbs
were partly bare. Now and then, a blinding gust of
wind, filled with freezing snow crystals, almost lifted
us from our feet. The sea lapped its tongues sickeningly
below us.

Finally a limp body, ice-sheeted, dripping with
water, yet clinging with its mummied frozen hands to
the line, was hauled up on the ice. Ky-un-a, unconscious,
was carried to his house about five hundred feet
away. There, after wrapping him in furs, in a brave
effort to save his life, the natives cut open his fur garments.
The fur, frozen solid by the frigid blasts in the
brief period which had elapsed since his being lifted from
the water, took with it, in parting from his body, long
patches of skin, leaving the quivering raw flesh exposed
as though by a burn. For three days the aged man lay
dying, suffering excruciating tortures, the victim of
merely a common accident, which at any time may happen
to anyone of these Spartan people. I shall never
forget the harrowing moans of the suffering man piercing
the storm. Perhaps it had been merciful to let him
perish in the sea.

Ky-un-a’s old home was some forty miles distant.
To it, that he might die there, he desired to go. On the
fourth day after the accident, he was placed in a litter,
covered with warm furs, and borne over the smooth ice[Pg 129]fields.
I shall never forget that dismal and solemn
procession. A benign calm prevailed over land and sea.
The orange glow of a luxurious moon set the ice coldly
aflame. Long shadows, like spectral mourners, robed
in purple, loomed before the tiny procession. Now and
then, as they dwindled in the distance, I saw them, like
black dots, crossing areas of polished ice which glowed
like mirror lakes of silver. From the distance, softly
shuddered the decreasing moans of the dying man; then
there was silence. I marvelled again upon the lure of
this eerily, weirdly beautiful land, where, always imminent,
death can be so terrible.

[Pg 130]

MIDNIGHT AND MID-WINTER

THE EQUIPMENT AND ITS PROBLEMS—NEW ART IN THE
MAKING OF SLEDGES COMBINING LIGHTNESS—PROGRESS
OF THE PREPARATIONS—CHRISTMAS, WITH ITS
GLAD TIDINGS AND AUGURIES FOR SUCCESS IN QUEST
OF THE POLE

IX

The Coming of the Eskimo Stork

In planning for the Polar dash I appreciated fully
the vital importance of sledges. These, I realized,
must possess, to an ultimate degree, the combined
strength of steel with the lightness and elasticity of
the strongest wood. The sledge must neither be flimsy
nor bulky; nor should it be heavy or rigid. After a
careful study of the art of sledge-traveling from the
earliest time to the present day, after years of sledging
and sledge observation in Greenland, the Antarctic and
Alaska, I came to the conclusion that success was dependent,
not upon any one type of sledge, but upon
local fitness.

All natives of the frigid wilds have devised sledges,
traveling and camp equipment to fit their local needs.
The collective lessons of ages are to be read in this development
of primitive sledge traveling. If these wild
people had been provided with the best material from[Pg 131]
which to work out their hard problems of life, then it is
probable that their methods could not be improved.
But neither the Indian nor the Eskimo was ever in
possession of either the tools or the raw material to fit
their inventive genius for making the best equipment.
Therefore, I had studied first the accumulated results
of the sledge of primitive man and from this tried to
construct a sledge with its accessories in which were included
the advantages of up-to-date mechanics with the
use of the most durable material which a search of the
entire globe had afforded me.[9]

The McClintock sledges, made of bent wood with
wide runners, had been adopted by nearly all explorers,
under different names and with considerable modifications,
for fifty years. This sledge is still the best type
for deep soft snow conditions, for which it was originally
intended. But such snow is not often found on
the ice of the Polar sea. The native sledge which Peary
copied, although well adapted to local use along the ice-foot
and the land-adhering pack, is not the best sledge
for a trans-boreal run. This is because it is too heavy
and too easily broken, and breakable in such a way that
it cannot be quickly repaired.[Pg 132]

For the Arctic pack, a sledge must be of a moderate
length, with considerable width. Narrow runners offer
less friction and generally give sufficient bearing surface.
The other qualities vital to quick movement and
durability are lightness, elasticity and interchangeability
of parts. All of these conditions I planned to meet in
a new pattern of sledge which should combine the durability
of the Eskimo sledges and the lightness of the
Yukon sledge of Alaska.

The making of a suitable sledge caused me a good
deal of concern. Before leaving New York I had
taken the precaution of selecting an abundance of the
best hickory wood in approximately correct sizes for
sledge construction. Suitable tools had also been provided.
Now, as the long winter with its months of
darkness curtailed the time of outside movement, the
box-house was refitted as a workshop. From eight to
ten men were at the benches, eight hours each day,
shaping and bending runners, fitting and lashing interchangeable
cross bars and posts, and riveting the iron
shoes. Thus the sledge parts were manufactured to
possess the same facilities to fit not only all other
sledges, but also other parts of the same sledge. If,
therefore, part of a sledge should be broken, other parts
of a discarded sledge could offer repair sections easily.

The general construction of this new sledge is
easily understood from the various photographs presented.
All joints were made elastic by seal-thong
lashings. The sledges were twelve feet long and thirty
inches wide; the runners had a width of an inch and an
eighth. Each part and each completed sledge was
thoroughly tested before it was finally loaded for the[Pg 133]
long run. For dog harness, the Greenland Eskimo
pattern was adopted. But canine habits are such
that when rations are reduced to minimum limits
the leather strips disappear as food. To obviate this
disaster, the shoulder straps were made of folds of
strong canvas, while the traces were cut from cotton
log line.

A boat is an important adjunct to every sledge
expedition which hopes to venture far from its base
of operations. It is a matter of necessity, even when
following a coast line, as was shown by the mishap of
Mylius Erickson, for if he had had a boat he would
himself have returned to tell the story of the Danish
Expedition to East Greenland.

Need for a boat comes with the changing conditions
of the advancing season. Things must be carried
for several months for a chance use in the last stages
of the return. But since food supplies are necessarily
limited, delay is fatal, and therefore, when open water
prevents advance, a boat is so vitally necessary as to
become a life preserver. Foolish indeed is the explorer
who pays slight attention to this important problem.

The transportation of a boat, however, offers many
serious difficulties. Nansen introduced the kayak, and
most explorers since have followed his example. The
Eskimo canoe serves the purpose very well, but to carry
it for three months without hopeless destruction requires
so tremendous an amount of energy as to make
the task practically impossible.

Sectional boats, aluminum boats, skin floats and
other devices had been tried, but to all there is the same
fatal objection on a Polar trip, of impossible trans[Pg 134]portation.
But it seems odd that the ordinary folding
canvas boat has not been pressed into this service.

We found such a canoe boat to fit the situation
exactly, and selected a twelve-foot Eureka-shaped boat
with wooden frame. The slats, spreaders and floor-pieces
were utilized as parts of sledges. The canvas
cover served as a floor cloth for our sleeping bags. Thus
the boat did useful service for a hundred days and never
seemed needlessly cumbersome. When the craft was
finally spread for use as a boat, in it we carried the
sledge, in it we sought game for food, and in it or under
it we camped. Without it we could never have returned.

Even more vital than the choice of sledges, more
vital than anything else, I knew, in such a trip as I
proposed, is the care of the stomach. From the published
accounts of Arctic traveling it is impossible to
learn a fitting ration, and I hasten to add that I well
realized that our own experience may not solve the
problem for future expeditions. The gastronomic
need differs with every man. It differs with every expedition,
and it is radically different with every nation.
Thus, when De Gerlache, with good intentions, forced
Norwegian food into French stomachs, he learned that
there is a nationality in gastronomics. Nor is it safe
to listen to scientific advice, for the stomach is arbitrary,
and stands as autocrat over every human sense and
passion and will not easily yield to dictates.

In this respect, as in others, I was helped very
much by the natives. The Eskimo is ever hungry, but
his taste is normal. Things of doubtful value in nutrition
form no part in his dietary. Animal food, con[Pg 135]sisting
of meat and fat, is entirely satisfactory as a
steady diet without other adjuncts. His food requires
neither salt nor sugar, nor is cooking a matter of necessity.

Quantity is important, but quality applies only
to the relative proportion of fat. With this key to
gastronomics, pemmican was selected as the staple food,
and it would also serve equally well for the dogs.

We had an ample supply of pemmican, which was
made of pounded dried beef, sprinkled with a few
raisins and some currants, and slightly sweetened with
sugar. This mixture was cemented together with
heated beef tallow and run into tin cans containing six
pounds each.

This combination was invented by the American
Indian, and the supply for this expedition was made by
Armour of Chicago after a formula furnished by Captain
Evelyn B. Baldwin. Pemmican had been used before
as part of the long list of foodstuffs for Arctic expeditions,
but with us there was the important difference
that it was to be almost entirely the whole bill of fare
when away from game haunts. The palate surprises
in our store were few.

By the time Christmas approached I had reason
indeed for rejoicing. Although this happy season
meant little to me as a holiday of gift-giving and feasting,
it came with auguries for success in the thing my
heart most dearly desired, and compared to which earth
had nothing more alluring to give.

Our equipment was now about complete. In the
box house were tiers of new sledges, rows of boxes and
piles of bags filled with clothing, canned supplies,[Pg 136]
dried meat, and sets of strong dog harness. The
food, fuel and camp equipment for the Polar dash were
ready. Everything had been thoroughly tested and put
aside for a final examination. Elated by our success,
and filled with gratitude to the faithful natives, I declared
a week of holidays, with rejoicing and feasting.
Feasting was at this time especially desirable, for we
had now to fatten up for the anticipated race.

Christmas day in the Arctic does not dawn with the
glow which children in waking early to seek their bedecked
tree, view outside their windows in more southern
lands. Both Christmas day and Christmas night
are black. Only the stars keep their endless watch in
the cold skies.

Standing outside my igloo on the happy night, I
gazed at the Pole Star, the guardian of the goal I
sought, and I remembered with a thrill the story of that
mysterious star the Wise Men had followed, of the
wonders to which it led them, and I felt an awed reverence
for the Power that set these unfaltering beacons
above the earth and had written in their golden traces,
with a burning pen, veiled and unrevealed destinies
which men for ages have tried to learn.

I retired to sleep with thoughts of home. I thought
of my children, and the bated expectancy with which
they were now going to bed, of their hopefulness of the
morrow, and the unbounded joy they would have in gifts
to which I could not contribute. I think tears that
night wet my pillow of furs. But I would give them,
if I did not fail, the gift of a father’s achievement, of
which, with a glow, I felt they should be proud.

The next morning the natives arrived at the box[Pg 137]
house early. It had been cleared of seamstresses and
workmen the day before, and put in comparatively
spick and span order. I had told the natives they were
to feed to repletion during the week of holiday, an injunction
to the keeping of which they did not need
much urging.

Early Christmas morning, men and women began
working overtime on the two festive meals which were
to begin that day and continue daily.

About this time, the most important duty of our
working force had been to uncover caches and dig up
piles of frozen meat and blubber. Of this, which possesses
the flavor and odor of Limburger cheese, and also
the advantage, if such it be, of intoxicating them, the
natives are particularly fond. While a woman held a
native torch of moss dipped in oils and pierced with a
stick, the men, by means of iron bars and picks, dug up
boulders of meat just as coal is forced from mines.

A weird spectacle was this, the soft light of the
blubber lamp dancing on the spotless snows, the soot-covered
faces of the natives grinning while they worked.
The blubber was taken close to their igloos and placed
on raised platforms of snow, so as to be out of reach
of the dogs. Of this meat and blubber, which was
served raw, partially thawed, cooked and also frozen,
the natives partook during most of their waking hours.
They enjoyed it, indeed, as much as turkey was being
relished in my far-away home.

Moreover they had, what was an important delicacy,
native ice cream. This would not, of course,
please the palate of those accustomed to the American
delicacy, but to the Eskimo maiden it possesses all the[Pg 138]
lure of creams, sherberts or ice cream sodas. With us,
sugar in the process of digestion turns into fat, and fat
into body fuel. The Eskimo, having no sugar, yearns
for fat, and it comes with the taste of sweets.

The making of native ice cream is quite a task. I
watched the process of making it Christmas day with
amused interest. The native women must have a mixture
of oils from the seal, walrus and narwhal. Walrus
and seal blubber is frozen, cut into strips, and
pounded with great force so as to break the fat cells.
This mass is now placed in a stone pot and heated to
the temperature of the igloo, when the oil slowly separates
from the fibrous pork-like mass. Now, tallow from
the suet of the reindeer or musk ox is secured, cut into
blocks and given by the good housewife to her daughters,
who sit in the igloo industriously chewing it until
the fat cells are crushed. This masticated mass is placed
in a long stone pot over the oil flame, and the tallow
reduced from it is run into the fishy oil of the walrus
or seal previously prepared.

This forms the body of native ice cream. For
flavoring, the housewife has now a variety from which
to select. This usually consists of bits of cooked meat,
moss flowers and grass. Anticipating the absence of
moss and grass in the winter, the natives, during the
hunting season, take from the stomachs of reindeer and
musk oxen which are shot, masses of partly digested
grass which is preserved for winter use. This, which
has been frozen, is now chipped in fragments, thawed,
and, with bits of cooked meats, is added to the mixed
fats. It all forms a paste the color of pistache, with occasional
spots like crushed fruit.[Pg 139]

The mixture is lowered to the floor of the igloo,
which, in winter, is always below the freezing point, and
into it is stirred snow water. The churned composite
gradually brightens and freezes as it is beaten. When
completed, it looks very much like ice cream, but it has
the flavor of cod liver oil, with a similar odor. Nevertheless,
it has nutritive qualities vastly superior to our
ice cream, and stomach pains rarely follow an engorgement.

With much glee, the natives finished their Christmas
repast with this so-called delicacy. For myself a
tremendous feast was prepared, consisting of food left
by the yacht and the choicest meat from the caches. My
menu consisted of green turtle soup, dried vegetables,
caviar on toast, olives, Alaskan salmon, crystallized potatoes,
reindeer steak, buttered rice, French peas, apricots,
raisins, corn bread, Huntley and Palmer biscuits,
cheese and coffee.

As I sat eating, I thought with much humor of
the curious combinations of caviar and reindeer steak,
of the absurd contradiction in eating green turtle soup
beyond the Arctic circle. I ate heartily, with more
gusto than I ever partook of delicious food in the Waldorf
Astoria in my far-away home city. After dinner
I took a long stroll on snow shoes. As I looked at the
star-lamps swung in heaven, I thought of Broadway,
with its purple-pale strings of lights, and its laughing
merry-makers on this festive evening.

I did not, I confess, feel lonely. I seemed to be
getting something so much more wholesome, so much
more genuine from the vast expanse of snow and the
unhidden heavens which, in New York, are seldom seen.[Pg 140]
Returning to the box-house, I ended Christmas evening
with Edgar Allen Poe and Shakespeare as companions.

The box-house in which I lived was amply comfortable.
It did not possess the luxury of a civilized
house, but in the Arctic it was palatial. The interior
fittings had changed somewhat from time to time, but
now things were arranged in a permanent setting. The
little stove was close to the door. The floor measured
sixteen feet in length and twelve feet in width. On one
side the empty boxes of the wall made a pantry, on the
other side were cabinets of tools, and unfinished sledge
and camp material.

With a step we rose to the next floor. On each
side was a bunk resting on a bench. The bench was
used as a bed, a work bench and seat. The long rear
bench was utilized as a sewing table for the seamstresses
and also for additional seating capacity. In the center
was a table arranged around a post which supported
the roof. Sliding shelves from the bunks formed table
seats. A yacht lamp fixed to the post furnished ample
light. There was no other furniture. All of our needs
were conveniently placed in the open boxes of the wall.

THE CAPTURE OF A BEAR
ROUNDING UP A HERD OF MUSK OXEN

The closet room therefore was unlimited. In the
boxes near the floor, in which things froze hard, the
perishable supplies were kept. In the next tier there
was alternate freezing and thawing. Here we stored
lashings and skins that had to be kept moist. The tiers
above, usually warm and dry under the roof, were used
for various purposes. There, fresh meat in strips, dried
crisp in three days. Taking advantage of this, we had
made twelve hundred pounds of dog pemmican from
[Pg 141]
walrus meat. In the gable we placed furs and instruments.

SVARTEVOEG—CAMPING FIVE HUNDRED MILES FROM THE POLE

The temperature changed remarkably as the thermometer
was lifted. On the floor in the lower boxes,
it fell as low as -20°. Under the bunks on the floor, it
was usually -10°. The middle floor space was above
the freezing point. At the level of the bunk the temperature
was +48°. At the head, standing, +70°, and
under the roof, -105°.

We contrived to keep perfectly comfortable. Our
feet and legs were always dressed for low temperature,
while the other portions of our body were lightly clad.
There was not the usual accumulation of moisture except
in the lower boxes, where it reinforced the foundation
of the structure and did no harm. From the hygienic
standpoint, with the material at hand, we could
not have improved the arrangement. The ventilation
was by small openings, mostly along the corners, which
thus drew heat to remote angles. The value of the long
stove pipe was made evident by the interior accumulation
of ice. If we did not remove the ice every three or four
days the draft was closed by atmospheric humidity condensed
from the draft drawn through the fire. From
within, the pipe was also a splendid supplementary
heater, as it led by a circuitous route about the vestibule
before the open air was reached, thus keeping the workshop
somewhat warm. Two Eskimo lamps gave the
added heat and light for the sledge builders.

From Christmas Day until New Year’s there were
daily feasts for the natives. I luxuriated in a long rest,
spending my time taking walks and reading. I got a
sort of pleasure by proxy in watching the delight of these[Pg 142]
primal people in real food, food which, although to us
horribly unpalatable, never gives indigestion. This
period was one of real Christmas rejoicing in many snow
homes, and the spirit, although these people had never
heard of the Christ child, was more truly in keeping with
this holiday than it often is in lands where, in ostentatious
celebration, the real meaning is lost.

Wandering from igloo to igloo, to extend greetings
and thanks for their faithful work, I was often touched
by the sounds of thin, plaintive voices in the darkness.
Each time a pang touched my heart, and I remembered
the time when I first heard my own baby girl’s wee
voice. The little ones had begun to arrive. The Eskimo
stork, at igloo after igloo, was leaving its Christmas
gift.

For some time before Christmas, Cla-you, easily
our best seamstress, had not come for her assignment
of sewing. To her had been given the delicate
task of making hare skin stockings; but she had lost
interest in needle-work and complained of not feeling
well. E-ve-lue (Mrs. Sinue) was completing her task.
Ac-po-di-soa (the big bird), Cla-you’s husband, whom
we called Bismark, had also deserted the bench where
he had been making sledges. For his absence there was
no explanation, for neither he nor his wife had ever
shirked duties before. To solve the mystery I went to
his igloo during Christmas week. There I first got
news from the stork world. The boreal stork comes at
a special season of the year, usually a few weeks after
midnight when there is little else to interest the people.
This season comes nine months after the days of
budding passions in April, the first Arctic month of[Pg 143]
the year when all the world is happy. In the little
underground home, the anticipated days of the stork
visit were made interesting by a long line of preparations.

A prospective mother is busy as a bee in a
charming effort to make everything new for the
coming little one. All things about must be absolutely
new if possible. Even a new house must be built. This
places the work of preparation quite as much on the
father as on the mother. There is in all this a splendid
lesson in primitive hygiene.

To examine, first, the general home environment;
there is a little girl four years old still taking nature’s
substitute for the bottle. She looks about for a meaning
of all the changes about the home, but does not
understand. You enter the new house on hands and
knees through an entrance twelve or fifteen feet long,
crowding upwards into an ever-open door just large
enough to pass the shoulders. You rise into a dungeon
oblong in shape. The rear two-thirds of this is raised
about fifteen inches and paved with flat-rock. Upon
this the furs are spread for a bed. The forward edge
forms a seat. The space ahead of this is large enough
for three people to stand at once. On each side there
is a semi-circular bulge. In these are placed the crescent-shaped
stone dishes, in which moss serves as a wick
to burn blubber. Over this blubber flame, there is a
long stone pot in which snow is melted for water and
meats are occasionally cooked. Over this there is a
drying rack for boots and furs. There is no other
furniture. This house represents the home of the Eskimo
family at its best. Do what she will, the best house[Pg 144]wife
cannot free it of oil and soot. It is not, indeed, a
fit place for the immaculate stork to come.

For months, the finest furs have been gathered to
prepare a new suit for the mother. Slowly one article
of apparel after another has been completed and put
aside. The boots, called kamik, are of sealskin, bleached
to a spotless cream color. They reach halfway up
the thigh. The inner boot, called atesha, of soft caribou
fur, is of the same length; along its upper edge there is
a decorative run of white bear fur. The silky fur pads
protect the tender skin of limb and foot, for no stockings
are used. Above these, there are dainty little pants
of white and blue fox, to protect the body to a point
under the hips, and for protection above that there is a
shirt of birdskins or aht-tee. This is the most delicate of
all garments. Hundreds of little auk skins are gathered,
chewed and prepared, and as the night comes the garment
is built blouse-shaped, with hood attached. It fits
loosely. There are no buttons or openings. For the
little one, the hood is enlarged and extended down the
back, as the pocket for its future abode. The coat of
fine blue fox skins, or amoyt, is of the same shape, but
fits loosely over all.

The word amoyt, or amoyt docsoa, in its application,
also covers the entire range of the art and function
of pregnancy. This is regarded as an institution
of the first order, second only to the art of the chase.
All being ready for the mother, for the baby only a
hood is provided, while bird-skins and grass are provided
to take the place of absorbent cotton. For the first year,
the child has absolutely no other wrap or cover but its
little hood.[Pg 145]

The Eskimo loves children. If the stork does not
come in due time, he is likely to change his life partner.
For this reason he looks forward to the Christmas season
with eager anticipation. Seeking the wilds far and
near for needed furs, in bitter winds and driving snows,
he endures all kinds of hardships during the night of
months for the sake of the expected child. Brave, good
little man of iron, he fears nothing.

From a near-by bank of hard snow he cuts blocks
for a new igloo. In darkness and wind he transports
them to a point near the house. When enough have
been gathered, he walls a dome like a bee-hive. The interior
arrangement is like the winter underground home.
The light is put into it. By this he can see the open
cracks between snow blocks. These are filled in to keep
wind and snow out. When all is completed, he cuts a
door and enters. The bed of snow is flattened.

Then he seeks for miles about for suitable grass
to cover the cheerless ice floor. To get this grass, he
must dig under fields of hardened snow. Even then he
is not always rewarded with success. The sledge, loaded
with frozen grass, is brought to the little snow dome.
The grass is carefully laid on the bed of leveled snow.
Over it new reindeer skins are spread. Now the new
house of snow blocks in which the stork is to come is
ready.

As the stork’s coming is announced the mother’s
tears give the signal. She goes to the new snowhouse
alone. The father is frightened and looks serious. But
she must tear herself away. With her new garments,
she enters the dark chamber of the snowhouse, strikes
a fire, lights the lamp. The spotless walls of snow are[Pg 146]
cheerful. The new things about give womanly pride.
But life is hard for her. A soul-stirring battle follows
in that den of ice.

There is a little cry. But there is no doctor, no
nurse, no one, not a kindly hand to help. A piece of
glass is used as a surgical knife. Then all is over. There
is no soap, no water. The methods of a mother cat are
this mother’s. Then, in the cold, cheerless chamber of
ice, she fondly examines the little one. Its eyes are blue,
but they turn brown at once when opened. Its hair
is coal black, its skin is golden. It is turned over and
over in the search for marks or blemishes. The
mother’s eyes run down along the tiny spine. At its
end there is a blue shield-shaped blot like a tattoo mark.
This is the Eskimo guarantee of a well-bred child. If
it is there, the mother is happy, if not, there are doubts
of the child’s future, and of the purity of the parents.
Now the father and the grandmother come. All rejoice.

If misfortune at the time of birth befalls a mother,
as is not infrequent, the snow mound becomes her grave;
it is not opened for a long time.

After a long sleep, into which the mother falls after
her first joy, she awakes, turns over, drinks some ice-water,
eats a little half-cooked meat, and then, shaking
the frozen breath from the covers, she wraps herself
and her babe snugly in furs. Again she sleeps, perhaps
twenty-four hours, seemingly in perfect comfort, while
the life-stilling winter winds drive over the feeble wall
of snow which shelters her from the chilly death outside.

One day during Christmas week there was a knock
at our door. The proud Ac-po-di-soa walked in, fol[Pg 147]lowed
by his smiling wife, with the sleeping stork gift
on her back. The child had been born less than five
days before. We walked over and admired the little
one. It suddenly opened its brown eyes, screwed up
its little blubber nose, and wrinkled its chin for a cry.
The mother grabbed her, plunged out of the door,
pulled the undressed infant out, and in the wind and
cold served the little one’s want.

New Year’s Day came starlit and cold. The year
had dawned in which I was to essay the task to which
I had set myself, the year which would mean success or
failure to me. The past year had been gracious and
bountiful, so, in celebration, Francke prepared a feast
of which we both ate to gluttonous repletion. This
consisted of ox-tail soup, creamed boneless cod, pickles,
scrambled duck eggs with chipped smoked beef, roast
eider-duck, fresh biscuits, crystallized potatoes, creamed
onions, Bayo beans and bacon, Malaga grapes,
(canned), peach-pie, blanc-mange, raisin cake, Nabisco
biscuits and steaming chocolate.

The day was spent in making calls among the
Eskimos. In the evening several families were given
a feast which was followed by songs and dances. This
hilarity was protracted to the early hours of morning
and ended in an epidemic of night hysteria. When thus
afflicted the victims dance and sing and fall into a trance,
the combination of symptoms resembling insanity.

In taking account of our stock we found that our
baking powder was about exhausted. This was sad
news, for a breakfast of fresh biscuits, butter and coffee
was one of the few delights that remained for me in
life. We had bicarbonate of soda, but no cream of[Pg 148]
tartar. I wondered whether we could not substitute for
cream of tartar some other substance.

Curious experiments followed. The juice of sauerkraut
was tried with good results. But the flavor, as a
steady breakfast food, was not desirable. Francke had
fermented raisins with which to make wine. As a wine
it was a failure, but as a fruit acid it enabled us to make
soda biscuits with a new and delicate flavor. Milk, we
found, would also ferment. From the unsweetened
condensed milk, biscuits were made that would please
the palate of any epicure. My breakfast pleasure therefore
was still assured for many days to come.

[Pg 149]

EN ROUTE FOR THE POLE

THE CAMPAIGN OPENS—LAST WEEKS OF THE POLAR
NIGHT—ADVANCE PARTIES SENT OUT—AWAITING
THE DAWN

X

The Start with Sunrise of 1908

Two weeks of final tests and re-examination of
clothing, sledges and general equipment followed the
New Year’s festivities. On January 14 there was
almost an hour of feeble twilight at midday. The moon
offered light enough to travel. Now we were finally
ready to fire the first guns of the Polar battle. Scouts
were outside, waiting for the signal to proceed. They
were going, not only to examine the ice field for the
main advance, but to offer succor to a shipwrecked crew,
which the natives believed was at Cape Sabine.

The smoke of a ship had been seen late in the fall,
and much wood from a wrecked ship had been found.
The pack was, therefore, loaded with expedition supplies,
with instructions to offer help to anyone in want
that might be found.

I had just finished a note to be left at Cape
Sabine, telling of our headquarters, our caches and
our willingness to give assistance. This was handed to
Koo-loo-ting-wah, standing before his restless dogs,[Pg 150]
whip in hand, as were his three companions, who volunteered
as scouts. They jumped on the sledges, and soon
the dogs were rushing toward the Polar pack of Smith
Sound.

It was a beautiful day. A fold of the curtain of
night had been lifted for a brief spell. A strong mixed
light, without shadows, rested on the snow. It changed
in quality and color with the changing mystery of the
aurora. One might call it blue, or purple, or violet, or
no color at all, according to the color perception of the
observer.

In the south the heavens glowed with the heralds
of the advancing sun. The light was exaggerated by
the blink of the ice over which the light was sent, for the
brightness of the heavens was out of proportion to its
illuminating effect upon the surface snows. In the
north, the half-spent moon dispelled the usual blackness
Poleward, while the zenith was lighted with stars of the
first and second magnitude.

The temperature was -41° F. The weather was
perfectly calm—all that could be expected for the important
event of opening the campaign.

In the course of a few hours the cheerful light
faded, the snows darkened to earthy fields, and out of
the north came a smoky tempest. The snow soon piled
up in tremendous drifts, making it difficult to leave the
house without climbing new hills. The dogs tied about
were buried in snow. Only the light passing through
the membrane of intestines, which was spread over the
ports to make windows for the native houses, relieved
the fierce blackness.

The run to Cape Sabine, under fine conditions, was[Pg 151]
about forty miles, and could be made in one day, but
Smith Sound seldom offers a fair chance. Insufficient
light, impossible winds or ice make the crossing hazardous
at best. The Eskimos cross every year, but
they are out so much after bears that they have a good
knowledge of the ice before they start to reach the other
shores.

Coming from the north, with a low temperature
and blowing snow, the wind would not only stop our
scouts, but force the ice south, leaving open spaces of
water. A resulting disruption of the pack might greatly
delay our start with heavy sledges. Furthermore,
there was real danger at hand for the advance. If the
party had been composed of white men there surely
would have been a calamity. But the Eskimo
approaches the ventures of the wild with splendid endurance.
Moreover, he has a weather intelligence which
seldom finds him unprepared.

At midnight of the second night the party returned.
They were none the worse for the storm. The main
intent of their mission had failed. The storm had forced
them into snow embankments, and before it was quite
spent a bear began to nose about their shelter places.
The dogs were so buried with drift that they were not on
watch until the bear had destroyed much of their food.
Then their mad voices aroused the Eskimos.

As they dug out of their shelter, the bear took a big
walrus leg and walked off, man-like, holding the meat in
his forepaws. In their haste to free the dogs, they cut
their harness to pieces, for snow and ice cemented the
creatures. Oo-tah ran out in the excitement to head
off the bear—not to make an attack, but simply to stop[Pg 152]
his progress. The bear dropped the meat and grabbed
Oo-tah by the seat of his trousers. The dogs, fortunately,
came along in time to save Oo-tah’s life, but he
had received a severe leg wound, which required immediate
surgical attention.

The bear was captured, and with loads of bear meat
and the wounded scout the party returned as quickly as
possible. In the retreat it was noticed that the ice was
very much broken.

In the wreck of an Arctic storm there is always a
subsequent profit for someone. The snow becomes
crusted and hardened, making sledge travel easy. The
breaking of the ice, which was a great hindrance to our
advance, offered open water for walrus and bear hunting.
At this time we went to Serwahdingwah for the
last chase. Some of the Eskimos took their families,
so Annoatok became depopulated for a while. But on
our return, visitors came in numbers too numerous for
our comfort.

Dogs and skins, bargained for earlier in the season,
were now delivered. Each corps of excursionists required
some attention, for they had done noble work for
the expedition. We gave them dinners and allowed
them to sit about our stove with picture-books in hand.

Another storm came, with still more violent force,
a week later. This caused us much anxiety, for we
counted on our people being scattered on the ice along
the shores of Cape Alexander. In a storm this would
probably be swept from the land and carried seaward.
There was nothing that could be done except wait for
news. Messengers of trouble were not long in reaching
headquarters after the storm. None of the men were[Pg 153]
on the ice, but a hurricane from the land had wrecked
the camps.

Our men suffered little, but many of the natives in
neighboring villages were left without clothing or sleeping
furs. In the rush of the storm the ice left the land,
and the snowhouses were swept into the sea. Men and
women, without clothing, barely escaped with their lives.
Two of our new sledges, some dogs, and three suits of
winter furs were lost. A rescue party with furs had to
be sent to the destitute people. Fortunately, our people
were well supplied with bed-furs, out of which new
suits were made.

Sledge loads of our furs were also coming north,
and instructions were sent to use these for the urgent
needs of the sufferers. Other things were sent from
Annoatok, with returning excursionists, and in the
course of a week the damage was replaced. But the
loss was all on the expedition, and deprived many of the
men in their northern journey of suitable sleeping-furs.
Walruses were obtained after the storm, and the natives
now had no fear of a famine of meat or fat.

By the end of January most of the natives had returned,
and new preparations were made for a second
effort to cross the Sound. Francke asked to join the
party, and prepared for his first camp outing. Four
sledges were loaded with two hundred pounds each of
expedition advance supplies. Four good drivers volunteered
to move the sledges to the American side.

The light had gradually brightened, and the storms
passed off and left a keen, cold air, which was as clear as
crystal. But at best the light was still feeble, and could
be used for only about four hours of each twenty-four.[Pg 154]
If, however, the sky remained clear, the moon and stars
would furnish enough illumination for a full day’s travel.
There was a little flush of color in the southern skies,
and the snows were a pale purple as the sledges groaned
in their rush over the frosty surface.

The second party started off as auspiciously as the
first, and news of its luck was eagerly awaited.

They reached Cape Sabine after a long run of
twenty hours, making a considerable detour to the north.
The ice offered good traveling, but the cold was bitter,
the temperature being -52° F., with light, extremely
humid and piercing winds.

Along the land and within the bays the snow was
found to be deep, and a bitter wind came from the west.
Two of the party could not be persuaded to go farther,
but Francke, with two companions, pushed on for another
day along the shore to Cape Veile. Beyond, the
snow was too deep to proceed. The supplies were cached
in a snowhouse, while those at Cape Sabine were left in
the old camp. The party returned at the end of four
days with their object accomplished. Nothing was seen
of the rumored shipwrecked crew.

The next party, of eight sledges, led by Es-se-you,
Kud-la, and Me-tek, started on February 5. The
object was to carry advance supplies to the head of
Flagler Bay, and hunt musk ox to feed the sledge teams
as they moved overland. We were to meet this party at
an appointed place in the bay.

The light was still too uncertain to risk the fortunes
of the entire force. With a hundred dogs, a delay of a
day would be an expensive loss, for if fed upon the carefully
guarded food of the advance stores, a rapid reduc[Pg 155]tion
in supplies would follow, which could not be replaced,
even if abundant game were secured later. It
was, therefore, desirable to await the rising sun.

We made our last arrangements, fastened our last
packs, and waited impatiently for the sunrise, here at
this northernmost outpost of human life, just seven hundred
miles from the Pole. And this was the problem
that now insistently and definitely confronted us after
the months of planning and preparation: Seven hundred
miles of advance, almost a thousand miles as our
route was planned; one thousand miles of return; two
thousand miles in all; allowing for detours (for the line
to be followed could not be precisely straight), more
than two thousand miles of struggling travel across icy
and unknown and uninhabitable wastes of moving ice.

On the morning of February 19, 1908, I started on
my trip to the North Pole.

Early, as the first real day of the year dawned,
eleven sledges were brought to the door of our box-house
and lashed with supplies for the boreal dash.
There were four thousand pounds of supplies for use on
the Polar sea, and two thousands pounds of walrus skin
and fat for use before securing the fresh game we anticipated.
The eleven sledges were to be driven by
Francke, nine Eskimos, and myself. They were drawn
by one hundred and three dogs, each in prime condition.
The dogs had been abundantly fed with walrus
skin and meat for several weeks, and would now be fed
only every second day on fresh supplies.

My heart was high. I was about to start on the
quest which had inspired me for many years! The
natives were naturally excited. The dogs caught the[Pg 156]
contagious enthusiasm, and barked joyously. At eight
o’clock in the morning our whips snapped, the spans of
dog teams leaped forward, and we were off.

My Polar quest had begun!

Most of the tribe had seemed willing to go with
me, and to take all their dogs, but the men and the dogs
finally selected were the pick of the lot. All were in
superb physical condition, this matter of condition
being something that I had carefully looked out for during
the winter months. I regard this as having been
highly advantageous to me, that I have always been able
to win the friendship and confidence of the Eskimos; for
thus I found them extremely ready to follow my advice
and instructions, and to do in general anything I desired.
That I could speak Eskimo fairly well—well enough to
hold ordinary conversations—was also a strong asset in
my favor.

When we started, a few stars were seen between
thin clouds, but the light was good. A soft wind came
from the south; the temperature was -36° F. The
Greenland ice-cap was outlined; a belt of orange in the
south heralded the rising sun. The snow still retained
the purple of twilight. The ice was covered with about
three inches of soft snow over a hard crust, which made
speed difficult. Before noon the sky was gray, but the
light remained good enough for traveling until 4 P. M.
A course was made about northwest, because a more
direct line was still impractical.

A water sky to the west and south denoted open
water. At 3 P. M. we ran into bear tracks, and the
sledges bounced along as if empty. The tracks were
making a good course for us, so the dogs were[Pg 157]
encouraged. By four o’clock the feeble light made it
dangerous to proceed. Two hunters still followed the
bear tracks, while the others built three snowhouses for
camp. Nothing was seen of the bears.

The dogs were tied to holes cut in the ice, and we
crept into our snow-mounds, tired, hungry and sleepy.
The night was extremely uncomfortable—the first
nights from camp always are.

The next day brought a still air with a temperature
of -42° F., and brilliant light at eight o’clock. We had
made twenty miles through the air-line distance from
Annoatok, and Cape Sabine was but thirty miles away.
We had been forced so far north that we still had thirty
miles before us to the Cape. The dogs, however, were in
better trim, and we had no doubt about reaching the
off-shores for the next camp. We followed the edge of
ice which had been made in a wide open space in December.
Here the traveling was fairly level, but above was
a hopeless jungle of mountains and ridges of ice. We
made about three miles an hour, and were able to ride
occasionally.

At noon of February 20th we stopped, and coffee
was served from our ever-hot coffee box. A can had
been placed in a box, and so protected by reindeer skins
that the heat was retained for twelve hours during the
worst weather. This proved a great luxury.

While we sat regaling ourselves, a great ball of fire
rose along the icy horizon. Our hearts were glad. The
weather was bitterly cold; the temperature was 51° F.:
but the sun had risen; the long night was at end. There
was little else to mark the glory of sunrise. The light
was no brighter than it had been for two hours. The[Pg 158]
sky remained a purple blue, with a slight grayness in the
south, darkening toward the horizon. The snows were
purple, with just a few dashes of red in the road before
us. This unpretentious burst of the sun opened our
spirits to new delights. Even the dogs sat in graceful
rows and sounded a chorus of welcome to the coming of
the day.

Although Cape Sabine, on February 20, was in
sight, we still headed for Bache Peninsula. Impossible
ice and open water pushed us farther and farther
north. It was three o’clock before the Cape was
seen over the dogs’ tails. Soon after four the light
failed, the land colored to purple and gold toward the
rim of the horizon, and we were left to guess the direction
of our course. But Eskimos are somewhat better
than Yankees at guessing, for we got into no troubles
until 9 P. M., when we tried to scale the rafted ice
against Cape Sabine. With only the camp equipment
and dog food, the dogs crept up and down in the black
hills of ice, while we followed like mountain-sheep.

Here had been the camp of the ill-fated Greely
expedition. It recurred to me that it was a curious whim
of fate that this ill-starred camp of famine and death, in
earlier days, should have marked the very outset of our
modern effort to reach the Pole. But later we were to
learn that under similar conditions a modern expedition
can meet the same fate as that of the Lady Franklin
Bay Expedition.

We turned about, took the advance supplies, and
picked a course through Rice Strait, to avoid the rough
ice northward. Here the surface was good, but a light
wind, with a temperature of -52° F., came with great[Pg 159]
bitterness. The dogs refused to face the wind, and required
someone to lead the way. The men buried their
faces in the fur mittens, leaned on the upstanders, and
ran along.

Passing Cape Rutherford on February 22, we followed
the coast. Here the wind came from the right,
caught the tip of the nose, burning with a bleaching
effect, which, in camp later, turned black. At Cape
Veile the cache igloo was sighted, and there camp was
pitched.

In the morning the minimum thermometer registered
-58° F. We were evidently passing from the
storms and open water of Smith Sound, from warm,
moist air to a still, dry climate, with very low temperature.
The day opened beautifully with a glow of rose
to the south, which colored the snows in warm tones.
At noon the sun showed half of its face over the cliffs
as we crossed the bay and sought better ice along
Bache Peninsula. That night we camped near the
Weyprecht Islands. The day, although bright, proved
severe, for most of the natives had frostbites about the
face. Along Bache Peninsula we saw hares staring at
us. Four were secured for our evening meal. In the
very low temperature of -64° F. the hunters suffered
from injuries like burns, due to the blistering cold metal
of their guns.

Dog food had also to be prepared. In efforts to
divide the walrus skin, two hatchets were broken. The
Eskimo dog is a tough creature, but he cannot be expected
to eat food which breaks an axe. Petroleum and
alcohol were used liberally, and during the night the
skin was sufficiently softened by the heat to be cut with[Pg 160]
the hatchets. This skin seems to be good food for the
dogs. It is about one inch thick, and contains little
water, the skin fibre being a kind of condensed nutriment,
small quantities of which satisfy the dogs. It
digests slowly, and therefore has lasting qualities.

The lamps, burning at full force, made the igloos
comfortable. The temperature fell to -68° F. It was
the first satisfying sleep of the journey for me. The
economy of the blue fire stoves is beyond conception.
Burning but three pounds of oil all night, the almost
liquid air was reduced to a normal temperature of freezing
point.

Francke used alcohol stoves, with a double consumption
of fuel. The natives, in their three igloos,
used the copper lamp, shaped after the stone devices,
but they did no cooking.

In the morning of the 23d we heard sounds to the
south, which at first we thought to be walrus. But after
a time the noise was interpreted as that of the dogs of
the advance party. They were camped a few miles
beyond, and came to our igloos at breakfast. One musk
ox and eleven hares had been secured. The valley had
been thoroughly hunted, but no other game was sighted.

The ground was nearly bare, and made sledge
travel impossible. They were bound for Annoatok at
once. This was sad news for us. We had counted on
game with which to feed the dog train en route to the
Polar sea. If animals were not secured, our project
would fail at the very start, and this route would be impossible.
To push overland rapidly to the west coast
was our only chance, but the report of insufficient snow
seemed to forbid this. Something, however, must be[Pg 161]
tried. We could not give up without a stronger fight.
The strong probability of our failing to find musk ox,
and extending the expedition for another year, over
another route, made it necessary to send Francke back
to headquarters to guard our supplies. There was no
objection to the return of most of the other party, but
we took their best dogs and sledges, with some exchange
of drivers.

With this change in the arrangements, and the advance
supplies from Cape Sabine and Cape Viele, each
sledge now carried eight hundred pounds. Beyond, in
Flagler Bay, the ice luckily became smooth and almost
free of snow. An increased number of dogs, with good
traveling, enabled us to make satisfactory progress,
despite the steadily falling temperature.

The head of Flagler Bay was reached late at night,
after an exhausting march of twenty-five miles. A hard
wind, with a temperature of -60° F., had almost paralyzed
the dogs, and the men were kept alive only by
running with the dogs. Comfortable houses were built
and preparations made for a day of rest. On the morrow
we aimed to explore the land for an auspicious route.
Many new frostbites were again noted in camp. One of
the dogs died of the cold.

The party was by no means discouraged, however.
We were as enthusiastic as soldiers on the eve of a
longed-for battle. The reduced numbers of the return
party gave us extra rations to use in times of need, and
the land did not seem as hopeless as pictured by the
returning natives. A cache was made here of needful
things for use on the return. Other things, which we
had found useless, were also left here.

[Pg 162]

EXPLORING A NEW PASS OVER ACPOHON

FROM THE ATLANTIC WATERS AT FLAGLER BAY TO THE
PACIFIC WATERS AT BAY FIORD—THE MECCA OF THE
MUSK OX—BATTLES WITH THE BOVINE MONSTERS OF
THE ARCTIC—SUNRISE AND THE GLORY OF SUNSET

XI

Breaking a Trail Beyond the Haunts of Man

Early in the morning of February 25 the dogs were
spanned to sledges with heavy loads, and we pushed into
the valley of mystery ahead. Our purpose was to cross
the inland ice and descend into Cannon Bay. The
spread of the rush of glacial waters in summer had dug
out a wide central plain, now imperfectly covered with
ice and snow. Over this we lined a trail.

On each side of us were gradual slopes rising to
cliffs, above which I noted the blue wall of the overland
sea of ice, at an altitude of about two thousand feet.
Nowhere did this offer a safe slope for an ascent. We
now explored the picturesque valley, for I knew that
our only hope was to push overland to Bay Fiord. The
easy slopes were enlivened with darting, downy hares.
Some sat motionless, with their long ears erect, while
they drank the first golden air of sunrise and watched
the coming of new life. Others danced about in frisky
play.[Pg 163]

As we pushed along, the ascent of the slope was
gradual. The necessity for crossing from side to side
to find ice or snow lengthened our journey. Only the
partially bare earth gave us trouble. The temperature
was -62° F., but there was no wind. The upper slopes
glittered with bright sunshine. Winding with a stream,
we advanced twenty miles. Beyond there was the
same general topography. The valley looked like a
pass. Clouds of a different kind were seen through the
gorges. At various places we noted old musk ox paths.
I knew that where game trails are well marked on mountains
one is certain to find a good crossing. This rule is
equally good in the Arctic as elsewhere. At any rate,
there was no alternative. The tortures of the top had to
be risked. Pushing onward, we found no fresh signs of
musk ox. A few bear tracks were seen, and a white fox
followed us to camp. We shot sixteen hares, and for the
evening meal unlimited quantities of savory hare meat
made an appetizing broth.

On the day following, everything was advanced to
this point. A prolonged search for musk ox was made,
with negative results.

On the morning of the 27th, full loads were taken
on our sledges. With slow progress we advanced on the
rising bed of the stream, the valley moved, and the river
ice was found in one channel, making better travel.
Hare and fox tracks increased in number. The side
slopes were grassy, and mostly swept bare of snow by
strong winter winds. Sand dunes and gravel lines were
also piled up, while huge drifts of pressed snow indicated
a dangerous atmospheric agitation. Here, I
knew, were excellent feeding grounds for musk ox and[Pg 164]
caribou. But a careful scrutiny gave no results for a
long time.

To us the musk ox was now of vital importance.
The shorter way, over Schley Land and northward
through Nansen Sound, was possible only if game in
abundance was secured en route. If the product of
the chase gave us no reward, then our Polar venture was
doomed at the outset.

One day, with a temperature of -100° below the
freezing point, and with a light but sharp Arctic wind
driving needles of frost to the very bone, we searched
the rising slopes of ice-capped lands in the hope of
spotting life.

For three days the dogs had not been fed. They
sniffed the air, searched the horizon, and ranged the
wilds with all the eagerness of their wolf progenitors.
The hare and the fox were aroused from their winter’s
sleep, but such game was not what we now desired.
Only meat and fat in heaps could satisfy the wants of
over a hundred empty stomachs.

After a hard pull, ascending miniature, ice-covered
hills, winding about big, polished boulders, we
entered a wider section of the narrow gorge-like valley.
Here the silurian rocks had broken down, and by the
influence of glacier streams and glaciers, now receding,
a good deal of rolling, grass-covered land spread from
cliff to cliff. Strong winter gales had bared the ground.
We sat down to rest. The dogs did likewise.

All searched the new lands with eager eyes. The
dog noses pointed to a series of steep slopes to the
north. They were scenting something, but were too
tired to display the usual animation of the chase. Soon[Pg 165]
we detected three dark, moving objects on a snowy sun-flushed
hill, under a huge cliff, about a thousand feet
above us. “Ah-ming-mah!” shouted E-tuk-i-shook.
The dogs jumped; the men grasped glasses; in a second
the sledge train was in disorder.

Fifty dogs were hitched to three sledges. Rushing
up three different gulches, the sledges, with tumbling
human forms as freight, advanced to battle. The musk
oxen, with heads pointed to the attacking forces, quietly
awaited the onrush.

Within an hour three huge, fat carcasses were down
in the river bed. A temporary camp was made, and
before the meat froze most of it had passed palates
tantalized by many days of gastronomic want.

Continuing our course, we crossed the divide in a
storm. Beyond, in a canyon, the wind was more uncomfortable
than in the open. Something must be done.
We could not long breathe that maddening air, weighted
by frost and thickened by snows. The snow-bank gave
no shelter whatever, and a rush of snow came over,
which quickly buried the investigators. But it was our
only hope.

“Dig a hole,” said Koo-loo-ting-wah.

Now, to try to dig a hole without a shovel, and with
snow coming more rapidly than any power of man
could remove, seemed a waste of needed vital force.
But I had faith in the intelligence of my savage companions,
and ordered all hands to work. They gathered
at one corner of the bank, and began to talk and shout,
while I allowed myself to be buried in a pocket of the
cliffs to keep my tender skin from turning to ice. Every
few minutes someone came along to see if I was safe.[Pg 166]

The igloo was progressing. Two men were now
inside. In the course of another hour they reported
four men inside; in another hour seven men were inside,
and the others were piling up the blocks, cut with knives
from the interior. A kind of vestibule was made to
allow the wind to shoot over the entrance. Inside, the
men were sweating.

Soon afterward I was told that the igloo was completed.
I lost no time in seeking its shelter. A square
hole had been cut, large enough for the entire party if
packed like sardines. Our fur clothing was removed,
and beaten with sticks and stones.

The lamps sang cheerily of steaming musk ox
steaks. The dogs were brought into the canyon. A
more comfortable night was impossible. We were fifty
feet under the snow. The noise of the driving storm
was lost. The blinding drift about the entrance was
effectually shut out by a block of snow as a door. Two
holes afforded ventilation, and the tremendous difference
between the exterior and the interior air assured
a circulation.

When we emerged in the morning the sky was
clear. A light wind came from the west, with a temperature
of -78° F. Two dogs had frozen during the
storm. All were buried in the edge of a drift that was
piled fifteen feet. An exploration of the canyon showed
other falls and boulders impossible for sledge travel.

A trail was picked over the hills to the side. The
day was severe. How we escaped broken legs and
smashed sleds was miraculous. But somehow, in our
plunges down the avalanches, we always landed in a
soft bed of snow. We advanced about ten miles, and[Pg 167]
made a descent of five hundred feet, first camping upon
a glacial lake.

The temperature now was -79° F., and although
there were about nine hours of good light, including twilight,
we had continued our efforts too long, and were
forced to build igloos by moonlight. Glad were we,
indeed, when the candle was placed in the dome of snow,
to show the last cracks to be stuffed.

In the searchlight of the frigid dawn I noticed that
our advance was blocked by a large glacier, which tumbled
barriers of ice boulders into the only available line
for a path. A way would have to be cut into this barrier
of icebergs for about a mile. This required the full
energy of all the men for the day. I took advantage of
the halt to explore the country through which we were
forcing a pass. The valley was cut by ancient glaciers
and more modern creeks along the meeting line of two
distinct geological formations. To the north were
silurian and cambro-silurian rocks; to the south were
great archæan cliffs.

With the camera, the field-glass, and other instruments
in the sack, I climbed into a gorge and rose to the
level of the mountains of the northern slopes. The
ground was here absolutely destitute of vegetation, and
only old musk ox trails indicated living creatures. The
snow had all been swept into the ditches of the lowlands.
Climbing over frost-sharpened stones, I found
footing difficult.

The average height of the mountains proved to be
nineteen hundred feet. To the northeast there was land
extending a few miles further, with a gradual rising
slope. Beyond was the blue edge of the inland ice. To[Pg 168]
the northwest, the land continued in rolling hills, beyond
which no land-ice was seen. The cliffs to the south were
of about the same height, but they were fitted to the
crest with an ice-cap. The overflow of perpetual snows
descended into the gorges, making five overhanging
glaciers.

The first was at the divide, furnishing in summer
the waters which started the vigorous stream to the
Atlantic slopes. It was a huge stream of ice, about a
mile wide, and it is marked by giant cliffs, separated by
wide gaps, indicating the roughness of the surface over
which it pushes its frozen height. To the stream to
which it gives birth, flowing eastward from the divide,
I will give the name of Schley River, in honor of Rear-Admiral
Schley.

The stream starting westward from the divide,
through picturesque rocks, tumbles in icy falls into a
huge canyon, down to the Pacific waters at Bay Fiord.
To this I will give, in honor of General A. W. Greely,
the name Greely River.

The second and third glaciers were overhanging
masses about a half-mile wide, which gave volume in
summer time to Greely River.

The fourth was a powerful glacier, with a discharging
face of blue three miles long, closing up a valley
and damming up a lake about four miles long and one
mile wide. The lake was beyond the most precipitous
of the descending slopes. The upper cliffs of the walled
valley to Flagler Bay were still visible, while to the west
was seen a line of mountains and cliffs which marked the
head of Bay Fiord, under which was seen the ice covering
the first water of the Pacific upon which our future[Pg 169]
fortunes would be told. To this sea level there was an
easy descent of four hundred feet on the river ice and
snowdrifts, making, with good luck, a day’s run of
twenty miles.

Returning, at camp I was informed that not only
had a trail been cut, but many of the sledges had been
advanced to the good ice beyond. Two of the sledges,
however, had been badly broken, and must be mended
at dawn before starting.

The day was beautiful. For the first time I felt
the heat of the sun. It came through the thick fur of
my shoulders with the tenderness of a warm human
hand. The mere thought of the genial sunbeams
brought a glow of healthful warmth, but at the same
time the thermometer was very low, -78½° F. One’s
sense of cold, under normal conditions, is a correct instrument
in its bearing upon animal functions, but as an
instrument of physics it makes an unreliable thermometer.
If I had been asked to guess the temperature of
the day I should have placed it at -25° F.

The night air had just a smart of bitterness. The
igloo failed to become warm, so we fed our internal fires
liberally with warming courses, coming in easy stages.
We partook of superheated coffee, thickened with sugar,
and biscuits, and later took butter chopped in squares,
which was eaten as cheese with musk ox meat chopped
by our axes into splinters. Delicious hare loins and
hams, cooked in pea soup, served as dessert.

The amount of sugar and fat which we now consumed
was quite remarkable. Fortunately, during the
journey to the edge of the Polar sea, there was no
urgent limit to transportation, and we were well sup[Pg 170]plied
with the luxury of sugar and civilized foods, most
of which later were to be abandoned.

In this very low temperature I found considerable
difficulty in jotting down the brief notes of our day’s
doings. The paper was so cold that the pencil barely
left a mark. A few moments had to be spent warming
each page and pencil before beginning to write. With
the same operation, the fingers were also sufficiently
warmed to hold the pencil. All had to be done by the
light and heat of a candle.

To economize fuel, the fires later were extinguished
before retiring to sleep. In the morning we were buried
in the frost falling from our own breath.

It was difficult to work at dawn with fur-covered
hands; but the Eskimo can do much with his glove-fitting
mitten. The broken sledges were soon repaired.
After tumbling over irregular ice along the face of the
glacier, the river offered a splendid highway over which
the dogs galloped with remarkable speed. We rode
until cold compelled exercise. The stream descended
among picturesque hills, but the most careful scrutiny
found no sign of life except the ever-present musk ox
trails of seasons gone by.

As we neared the sea line, near the mouth of the
river, we began to see a few fresh tracks of hare and
musk ox. Passing out on the south of Bay Fiord, we
noted bear and wolf tracks. Then the eyes of the hunter
and the dog rolled with eager anticipation.

The sun flushed the skies in flaming colors as it was
about to sink behind a run of high peaks. The western
sky burned with gold, the ice flashed with crimson inlets,
but the heat was very feeble. The temperature was[Pg 171]
-72° F. We had already gone twenty-five miles, and
were looking forward to a point about ten miles beyond
as the next camping place, when all my companions,
seemingly at once, espied a herd of musk ox on the sky
line of a whale-backed mountain to the north.

The distance was about three miles, but the eagle
eyes of the natives detected the black spots.

We searched the gorge with our glasses. Suddenly
one of the Eskimos cried out in a joyous tone: “Ah-ming-ma!
Ah-ming-ma!“

I could detect only some dark specks on the snow,
which looked like a hundred others that I knew to be
rocks. I levelled my glasses on the whale-backed mountain
at which the Eskimo was staring, and, sure enough,
there were three musk oxen on a steep snow slope.
They seemed to be digging up the winter snow fields
to get “scrub” willows. They were not only three miles
away, but at an altitude of perhaps a thousand feet
above us.

The cumbersome loads were quickly pitched from
three sledges. Rifles and knives were securely fastened.
In a few moments the long lashes snapped, and away
we rushed, with two men on each of the sledges and
with double teams of twenty dogs.

The dogs galloped at a pace which made the sledges
bound like rubber balls over irregularities of rocks, slippery
ice, and hard-crusted snow, and our hold tightened
on the hickory in the effort to keep our places. It disturbed
the dogs not at all whether they were on rock or
snow, or whether the sledge rested on runners or turned
spirally; but it made considerable difference to us, and
we lost much energy in the constant efforts to avoid[Pg 172]
somersaults. We did not dare release our grip for a
moment, for to do so would have meant painful bumping
and torn clothes, as well as being left behind in the
chase.

It took but a brief time to cover the three miles.
We made our final advance by three separate ravines,
and for a time the musk oxen were out of sight. When
we again saw them they had not taken the alarm, nor
did they until we were ready to attack them from three
separate points.

All but five dogs from each sledge were now freed
from harness. They darted toward the oxen with fierce
speed.

The oxen tried to escape through a ravine, but it
was too late. The dogs were on every side of them, and
all the oxen could do was to grunt fiercely and jump
into a bunch, with tails together and heads directed at
the enemy. There were seven musk oxen in all, and they
tried to keep the dogs scattered at a safe distance.

The dogs would rush up to within a few feet, showing
their teeth and uttering wolfish sounds, and every
now and then an ox would rush out from its circle, with
head down, in an effort to strike the dogs; but the dogs
were always too quick to be caught by the savage thrust,
and each time the ox, in its retreat, would feel canine
fangs closing on its haunches.

After a few such efforts, the bulls, with lowered
horns, merely held to the position, while the dogs, not
daring actually to attack under such circumstances, sat
in a circle and sent up blood-chilling howls. Meanwhile,
the Eskimos and myself were hurrying up.

“THE IGLOO BUILT, WE PREPARE FOR OUR DAILY CAMP”

The strife was soon over. I snapped my camera at
[Pg 173]
an old bull which at that moment broke through the
dogs and, followed by a group of them, was driven
madly over a cliff in a plunge of five thousand feet. The
other oxen were soon killed by the hunters.

CAMPING TO EAT AND TAKE OBSERVATIONS
ON AGAIN!

The sun settled under mountains of ice, and the
purple twilight rapidly thickened. It was very cold.
The breath of each man came like jets of steam from a
kettle. The temperature was now -81° F. No time
could be lost in dressing the game. But the Eskimos
were equal to the task, and showed such skill as only
Indians possess.

While this was being done by my companions, I
strolled about to note the ear-marks of the home of the
musk ox. The mountain was in line of the sweep of the
winds, and was bared of snows. Here were grass,
mosses, and creeping willows in abundance, descending
into the gullies. I found fossil-stumps of large trees
and bits of lignite coal. The land in pre-glacial times
had evidently supported a vigorous vegetation; but now
the general aspect offered a scene of frosty hopelessness.
Still, in this desolation of snowy wastes, nature had supplied
creatures with food in their hard pressure of life.

Fox and wolf tracks were everywhere, while on
every little eminence sat an Arctic hare, evincing ear-upraised
surprise at our appearance. With the glasses
I noted on neighboring hills three other herds of musk
ox. This I did not tell the hunters, for they would not
have rested until all were secured. Living in a land of
cold and hunger, the Eskimo is insatiable for game. We
had as much meat as we could possibly use for the next
few days, and it was much easier to fill up, and secure
more when we needed it, than now to carry almost im[Pg 174]possible
loads. In a remarkably short time the skins
were removed and the meat was boned and cut in small
strips in such a way that the axe would break it when
frozen. Neatly wrapped in skins, the loads did not
seem large.

Selecting a few choice bits for later use, the balance
was separated and allowed to cool. I looked at the
enormous quantity of meat, and wondered how it could
be transported to camp, but no such thought troubled
the Eskimos. Piece after piece went down the canine
throats with a gulp. No energy was wasted in mastication.
With a drop of the jaws and a twist of the neck,
the task of eating was finished and the stomach began to
spread. The dogs had not yet reached their limit when
the snow was cleared of its weight of dressed meat and
a canine wrangle began for the possession of the cleaned
bones.

With but little meat on the sledges, we began the
descent, but the spirit of the upward rush was lost.
The dogs, too full to run, simply rolled down the slopes,
and we pushed the sledges ourselves. The ox that had
made the death plunge was picked up and taken as
reserve meat. It was midnight before camp was
pitched. The moon burned with a cheerful glow. The
air was filled with liquid frost, but there was no wind
and consequently no suffering from cold.

Two comfortable snowhouses were built, and in
them our feasts rivalled the canine indulgence. Thus
was experienced the greatest joy of savage life in boreal
wilds—the hunt of the musk ox, with the advantage of
the complex cunning gathered by forgotten ages. The
balance of the meat left after our feast was buried, with[Pg 175]
the protecting skins, in the snow. On opening the meat
on the following morning, it was still warm, although
the minimum thermometer registered -80° F. for the
night.

A few minutes before midday, on our next march,
the sledge train halted. We sat on the packs, and,
with eyes turned southward, waited. Even an Eskimo
has an eye for color and a soul for beauty. To us there
appeared a play of suppressed light and bleached color
tints, as though in harmony with bars of music, which
inspired my companions to shouts of joy.

Slowly and majestically the golden orb lifted. The
dogs responded in low, far-reaching calls. The Eskimos
greeted the day god with savage chants. The sun, a
flushed crimson ball, edged along the wintry outline of
the mountains’ purplish snowy glitter. The pack was
suddenly screened by a moving sheet of ever-changing
color, wherein every possible continuation of purple and
gold merged with rainbow hues.

Soon the dyes changed to blue, and eventually the
sky was fired by flames of red. Then, slowly, the great
blazing globe sank into seas of fire-flushed ice. The
snowy mountains about glowed with warm cheer. The
ice cooled again to purple, and again to blue, and then
a winter blackness closed the eye to color and the soul
to joy.

[Pg 176]

IN GAME TRAILS TO LAND’S END

SVERDRUP’S NEW WONDERLAND—FEASTING ON GAME EN
ROUTE TO SVARTEVOEG—FIRST SHADOW OBSERVATIONS—FIGHTS
WITH WOLVES AND BEARS—THE JOYS
OF ZERO’S LOWEST—THRESHOLD OF THE UNKNOWN

XII

Shores of the Circumpolar Sea

March 2 was bright and clear and still. The ice
was smooth, with just snow enough to prevent the dogs
cutting their feet. The heavy sledges bounded along
easily, but the dogs were too full of meat to step a lively
pace. The temperature was -79° F. We found it
comfortable to walk along behind the upstanders of the
sledges. Some fresh bear tracks were crossed. These
denoted that bears had advanced along the coast on an
exploring tour, much as we aimed to do. Scenting
these tracks, the dogs forgot their distended stomachs,
and braced into the harness with full pulling force. We
were still able to keep pace by running. Hard exercise
brought no perspiration.

After passing the last land point, we noted four
herds of musk oxen. The natives were eager to embark
for the chase. I tried to dissuade them, but, had we not
crossed the bear trail, no word of mine would have kept
them from another chase of the musk ox.[Pg 177]

Long after sunset, as we were about to camp, a bear
was sighted advancing on us behind a line of hummocks.
The light was already feeble. It was the work of but a
minute to throw our things on the ice and start the teams
on the scent of the bear. But this bear was thin and
hungry. He gave us a lively chase. His advance was
checked, however, as our rush began, and he spread his
huge paws into a step which outdistanced our dogs.
The chase was continued on the ice for about three miles.
Then bruin, with sublime intelligence, took to the land
and the steep slopes, leading us over hilly, bare ground,
rocks, and soft snows. He gained the top of the tall
cliffs while we were still groping in the darkness among
the rocks at the base, a thousand feet below.

The sledges were now left, and the dogs freed.
They flew up a gully in which the bear tracks guided an
easy path. In a short time their satisfying howls told
of the bear’s captivity. He had taken a position on
a table-rock, which was difficult for the dogs to climb.
At an easy distance from this rock were steep slopes of
snow. One after another, the dogs came tumbling
down these slopes. With but a slight cuff of his paw,
the bear could toss the attacking dogs over dizzy heights.
His position was impregnable to the dogs, but, thus
perched, he was a splendid mark for E-tuk-i-shook. That
doughty huntsman raised his gun, and, following a shot,
the bear rolled down the same slopes on which he had
hurled the dogs. To his carcass a span of strong dogs
were soon hitched, and it was hauled down to the sea
level. Quickly dressed and distributed, the bear was
only a teasing mouthful to the ever-hungry dogs.

It was nearly midnight before we returned to our[Pg 178]
sledge packs. The work of building the houses was
rendered difficult by the failing moon and the very low
temperature. The lowest temperature of the season,
-83°, was reached this night.

The sun rose in the morning of March 3 with warm
colors, painting the crystal world surrounding us with
gorgeous tints of rose and old gold. It was odd that
in the glare of this enrapturing glory we should note the
coldest day of the year.

With the returning sun in the Arctic comes the
most frigid season. The light is strongly purple, and
one is tempted to ascribe to the genial rays a heating
influence which is as yet absent, owing to their slant.
The night-darkened surfaces prevent the new sunbeams
from disseminating any considerable heat, and the
steadily falling temperature indicates that the crust of
the earth, as a result of its long desertion by the sun in
winter, is still unchecked in its cooling. Because of the
persistence of terrestrial radiation, we have the coldest
weather of the year with the ascending sun.

It is a fortunate provision of nature that these icy
days of the ascending sun are usually accompanied by a
breathless stillness. When wind and storms come, the
temperature quickly rises. It is doubtful if any form
of life could withstand a storm at -80° F. A quiet
charm comes with this eye-opening period. The spirits
rise with indescribable gladness, and, although the mercury
is frozen, the body, when properly dressed, is perfectly
comfortable. The soft light of purple and gold,
or of lilac and rose, on the snowy slopes, dispels the
chronic gloom of the long night, while the tonic of a
brightening air of frost returns the flush to the pale[Pg 179]
cheeks. The stillness adds a charm, with which the
imagination plays. It is not the music of silence, nor
the gold solitude of summer, nor the deathlike stillness
of the winter blackness. It is the stillness of zero’s
lowest, which has a beauty of its own.

The ice pinnacles are lined with hoar frost, on
which there is a play of rainbow colors. The tread of
one’s feet is muffled by feathery beds of snow. The
mountains, raised by the new glow of light or outlined
by colored shadows, stand against the brightened
heavens in sculptured magnificence.

The bear admires his shadow, the fox peeps from
behind his bushy tail, devising a new cult, for his art of
night will soon be a thing of the past. The hare sits,
with forelegs bent reverently, as if offering prayers of
gratitude. The musk ox stands in the brightest sun, with
his beautiful coat of black and blue, and absorbs the first
heaven-given sun bath, and man soars high in dreams of
happiness.

Shadows always attract the eye of primitive people
and children. In a world such as the one we were invading,
with little to rest the eye from perpetual glitter, they
were to become doubly interesting. When we first
began observing our shadows, on March 3, I did not
dream that a thing so simple could rise to the dignity
of a proof of the Polar conquest. But, since then, I have
come to the conclusion that, if a proof of this much-discussed
problem is at all possible, it is in the corroborative
evidence of just such little things as shadows.

Accordingly, I have examined every note and impression
bearing on natural phenomena en route.

To us, in our daily marches from Bay Fiord, the[Pg 180]
shadow became a thing of considerable interest and importance.
The Eskimo soul is something apart from
the body. The native believes it follows in the shadow.
For this reason, stormy, sunless days are gloomy times
to the natives, for the presence of the soul is then not in
evidence. The night has the same effect, although the
moon often throws a clear-cut shadow. The native believes
the soul at times wanders from the body. When
it does this, the many rival spirits, which in their system
of beliefs tenant the body, get into all sorts of trouble.

Every person, and every animal, has not only a soul
which guards its destiny, but every part of the body has
an individual spirit—the arm, the leg, the nose, the eye,
the ear, and every other conceivable part of the anatomy,
with a peculiar individuality, throbs with a separate life.
The separate, wandering soul in the shadow is the guiding
influence.

Furthermore, there is no such conception as an
absolutely inanimate thing. The land, the sea, the air,
ice, and snow, have great individual spirits that ever
engage in battle with each other. Even mountains, valleys,
rocks, icebergs, wood, iron, fire—all have spirits.
All of this gives them a keen interest in shadows in an
otherwise desert of gloom and death.

Their entire religious creed would require a long
time to work out. Even that part of it which is represented
by the shadow is quite beyond me. As I observed
in our following marches toward Svartevoeg,
their keen eyes detect in shadows incidents and messages
of life, histories that would fill volumes. The shadow is
long or short, clear-cut or vague, dark or light, blue or
purple, violet or black. Each phase of it has a special[Pg 181]
significance. It presages luck or ill-luck on the chase,
sickness and death in the future, the presence or unrest
of the souls of parted friends. Even the souls of the
living sometimes get mixed. Then there is love or intrigue.
All the passions of wild life can be read from
the shadows. The most pathetic shadows had been the
vague, ghastly streaks of black that followed the body
about a week before sunset in October. At that time
all the Arctic world is sad, and tears come easily.

The shadow does not quickly come back with the
returning sun. Continuous storms so screen the sunbeams
that only a vague, diffused light reaches the long
night-blackened snows. When the joy of seeing the
first shadows exploded among my companions I did not
know just what intoxication infected the camp. With
full stomachs of newly acquired musk ox loins, we had
slept. Suddenly the sun burst through a maze of burning
clouds and made our snow palace glow with electric
darts. The temperature was very low. Only half-dressed,
the men rushed out, dancing with joy.

Their shadows were long, sharp-cut, and of a deep,
purple blue. They danced with them. This brought
them back to the normal life of Eskimo hilarity. Then
followed the pleasures of the thrill of the sunny days of
crystal air and blinding sparkle during never-to-be
forgotten days of the enervating chill of zero’s lowest at
-83° F.

In the northward progress, for a long time the
shadows did not perceptibly shorten or brighten to my
eyes. The natives, however, on our subsequent marches,
got from these shadows a never-ending variety of topics
to talk about. They foretold storms, located game, and[Pg 182]
read the story of respective home entanglements of the
Adamless Eden which we had left far away on the
Greenland shore.

Our bear adventures took us on an advance trail
over which progress was easy. Beyond, the snow increased
rapidly in depth with every mile. Snowshoes
were lashed to our feet for the first mile. We halted in
our march at noon, attacked suddenly by five wolves.
The rifles were prepared for defense. No shots were to
be fired, however, unless active battle was commenced.
The creatures at close range were slightly cream-colored,
with a little gray along their backs, but at a greater distance
they seemed white. They came from the mountains,
with a chilling, hungry howl that brought shivers.
The dogs were interested, but made no offer to give
chase.

The wolves passed the advancing sledges at a distance,
and gathered about the rear sledge, which was
separated from the train. The driver turned his team
to help in the fight. As the sledges neared, the teams
were stopped, the wolves sat down and delivered a maddening
chorus of chagrin. The dogs were restless, but
only wiggled their tails. The men stood still, with
rifles pointed. The chorus ended. The battle was declared
off. Seeing that they were outnumbered, the
howling creatures turned and dashed up the snowy
slopes, from which they had come, with a storming rush.
The train was lined up, and through the deep snow we
plowed westward.

In two difficult marches we reached Eureka
Sound.

Wolves continued on our trail nearly every day[Pg 183]
along the west coast of Acpohon, and also along North
Devon.

In the extreme North, the wolf, like the fox, is pure
white, with black points to the ears, and spots over the
eyes. In the regions farther south his fur is slightly
gray. In size, he is slightly larger than the Eskimo
dog, his body longer and thinner, and he travels with his
tail down. Like the bear, he is a ceaseless wanderer
during all seasons of the year.

In winter, wolves gather in groups of six or eight,
and attack musk ox, or anything in their line of march.
But in summer they travel in pairs, and become scavengers.
The wolf is alert in estimating the number of his
combatants and their fighting qualities. Men and dogs
in numbers he never approaches within gunshot, contenting
himself by howling piercingly from mountains
at a long distance. When a single sledge was separated
from the others, he would approach to an uncomfortable
range.

Bear tracks were also numerous. We were, however,
too tired to give chase. Close to a cape where we
paused, on Eureka Sound, to cut snow-blocks for igloos
attached to the sledges, E-tuk-i-shook noted two bears
wandering over the lands not far away. Watching for
a few moments with the glasses, we noted that they were
stalking a sleeping musk ox. Now we did not care particularly
for the bears, but the musk ox was regarded as
our own game, and we were not willing to divide it
knowingly. The packs were pitched into the snow, and
the dogs rushed through deep snow, over hummocks
and rocks, to the creeping bears.

As the bears turned, the rear attack seemed to offer[Pg 184]
sport, and they rose to meet us. But as one team after
the other bounced over the nearest hills, their heads
turned and they rushed up the steep slopes. We now
saw twenty musk oxen asleep in scattered groups.
These interested us more than the bears. The dogs
were seemingly of the same mind, for they required no
urging to change the noses from the bears to the
musk oxen.

As we wound around the hill upon which they
rested, all at once arose, shook off the snow, rubbed their
horns on their knees, and then formed a huge star. In
a short time the entire herd was ours. The meat was
dressed, wrapped in skins, the dogs lightly fed, and the
carcasses hauled to camp. Then we completed our
igloos. Bears and wolves wandered about camp all
night, but with one hundred dogs, whose eyes were on
the swelled larder, there was no danger from wild
brutes.

Early in the morning of March 4 we were awakened
by a furious noise from the dogs. Koo-loo-ting-wah
peeked out and saw a bear in the act of taking a choice
strip of tenderloin from the meat. With a deft cut of the
knife, a falling block of snow made a window, and
through it the rifle was leveled at the animal. He was
big, fat, and gave us just the blubber required for our
lamps.

A holiday was declared. It would take time to
stuff the dogs with twenty musk oxen and a bear. Furthermore,
our clothing needed attention. Boots, mittens,
and stockings had to be dried and mended. Some
of our garments were torn in places, permitting winds
to enter. Much of the dog harness required fixing.[Pg 185]
The Eskimos’ sledges had been slightly broken. Later,
the same day, another herd of twenty musk oxen
were seen. Now even the Eskimo’s savage thirst
for blood was satisfied. The pot was kept boiling, and
the igloos rang with chants of primitive joys.

On March 7 we began a straight run to the Polar
sea, a distance of one hundred and seventy miles. The
weather was superb and the ice again free of heavy
snow.

In six marches we reached Schei Island, which we
found to be a peninsula. We halted here and a
feast day was declared. Twenty-seven musk oxen and
twenty-four hares were secured in one after-dinner hunt.
This meat guaranteed a food supply to the shores of the
Polar sea. A weight was lifted from my load of cares,
for I had doubted the existence of game far enough
north to count on fresh meat to the sea. The temperature
was still low (-50° F.), but the nights were brightening,
and the days offered twelve hours of good light.
Our outlook was hopeful indeed.

In the Polar campaign, the bear was unconsciously
our best friend, and also consciously our worst enemy.
There were times when we admired him, although he was
never exactly friendly to us. There were other times
when we regarded him with a savage wrath. Only beyond
the range of life in the utmost North were we free
from his attacks. In other places he nosed our trail
with curious persistence. He had attacked the first
party that was sent out to explore a route, under cover
of night and storms. One man was wounded, another
lost the tail of his coat and a part of his anatomy.

In our march of glory through the musk ox land,[Pg 186]
the bear came as a rival, and disputed not only our right
to the chase, but also our right to the product from our
own catch. But we had guns and dogs, and the bears
fell easily. We were jealous of the quest of the musk
ox. It seemed properly to belong to the domain of
man’s game. We were equal at the time to the task,
and did not require the bear’s help.

The bears were good at figures, and quickly realized
ours was a superior fighting force. So they joined
the ranks in order that they might share in the division
of the spoils. The bear’s goodly mission was always
regarded with suspicion. We could easily spare the
bones of our game, which he delighted to pick. We were
perfectly able to protect our booty with one hundred
dogs, whose dinners depended on open eyes. But the
bear did not always understand our tactics. We afterwards
learned that we did not always understand his,
for he drove many prizes into our arms. But man is a
short-sighted critic—he sees only his side of the game.

In the northern march a much more friendly spirit
was developed. We differed on many points of ethics
with bruin, and our fights, successful or otherwise, were
too numerous and disagreeable to relate fully. Only
one of these battles will be recorded here, to save the
reputation of man as a superior fighting animal.

We had made a long march of about forty miles.
Already the dull purple of twilight was resting heavily
on darkening snows. The temperature was -81°.
There was no wind. The air was semi-liquid with suspended
crystals. When standing still we were perfectly
comfortable, although jets of steam from our nostrils
arranged frost crescents about our faces.[Pg 187]

We had been advancing towards a group of musk
oxen for more than an hour. We were now in the habit
of living from catch to catch, filling up on meat at the
end of each successful hunt, and waiting for pot-luck for
the next meal. The sledges were too heavily loaded to
carry additional weight. Furthermore, the temperature
was too low to split up frozen meat. Indeed, most
of our axes had been broken in trying to divide meat as
dog food. It was plainly an economy of axes and fuel
to fill up on warm meat as the skin was removed, and
wait for the next plunder.

We had been two days without setting eyes on an
appetizing meal of steaming meat. Not a living speck
had crossed our horizon; and, therefore, when we noted
the little cloud of steam rise from a side hill, and
guessed that under it were herds of musk ox, our
palates moistened with anticipatory joys. A camping
place was sought. Two domes of snow were erected as
a shelter.

Through the glasses we counted twenty-one musk
oxen. Some were digging up snow to find willows;
others were sleeping. All were unsuspecting. After
the experience we had in this kind of hunting, we confidently
counted the game as ours. A holiday was declared
for the morrow, to dispose of the surplus. Nourishment
in prospect, one hundred dogs started with a
jump, under the lashes of ten Eskimos. Our sledges
began shooting the boreal shoots. After rushing over
minor hills, the dog noses sank into bear tracks. A little
farther along, we realized we had rivals. Two bears
were far ahead, approaching the musk oxen.

The dogs scented their rivals. The increased[Pg 188]
bounding of the sledges made looping-the-loop seem
tame. But we were too late; the bears ran into the
bunch of animals, and spoiled our game with no advantage
to themselves. Giving a half-hearted chase, they
rose to a bank of snow, deliberately sat down, and turned
to a position to give us the laugh.

The absence of musk ox did not slacken the pace
of the dogs. The bears were quick to see the force of
our intent. They scattered and climbed. A bear is an
expert Alpinist; he requires no ice axe and no lantern.
The moon came out, and the snow slopes began to glare
with an electric incandescence.

In this pearly light, the white bear seemed black,
and was easily located. One bear slipped into a ravine
and was lost. All attention was now given to the other,
which was ascending an icy ridge to a commanding
precipice. We cut the dogs from the sledges. They
soared up the white slope as if they had wings. The
bear gained the crest in time to cuff away each rising
antagonist. The dogs tumbled over each other, down
several hundred feet into a soft snow-padded gully.
Other dogs continued to rise on the ridge to keep the
bear guessing. The dogs in the pit discovered a new
route, and made a combined rear attack. Bruin was
surprised, and turned to face his enemies. Backing from
a sudden assault, he stepped over a precipice, and tumbled
in a heap into the dog-strewn pit. The battle was
now on in full force. Finding four feet more useful
than one mouth, the bear turned on his back and sent his
paws out with telling effect. The dogs, although not
giving up the battle, scattered, for the swing of the
creature’s feet did not suit their battle methods. Sit[Pg 189]ting
on curled tails, they filled the air with murderous
howls and raised clouds of frozen breath in the flying
snow.

We were on the scene at a safe distance, each with
a tight grip on his gun, expecting the bear to make a
sudden plunge. But he was not given a choice of movement,
and we could not shoot into the darting pit of
dogs without injuring them. At this moment Ah-we-lah,
youngest of the party, advanced. Leaving his gun,
he descended through the dog ranks into the pit, with
the spiked harpoon shaft. The bear threw back its
head to meet him. A score of dogs grabbed the bear’s
feet. Ah-we-lah raised his arm. A sudden savage
thrust sank the blunt steel into the bear’s chest. Cracking
whips, we scattered the guarding dogs. The prize
was quickly divided.

On our advance to the Polar sea, I found that there
is considerable art in building snowhouses. The casual
observer is likely to conclude that it is an easy problem
to pile up snow-blocks, dome-shaped, but to do this
properly, so that the igloo will withstand wind, requires
adept work. From the lessons of my companions in
this art I now became more alert to learn, knowing the
necessity of protection on our Polar dash.

The first problem is to find proper snow. One has
often to seek for banks where the snow is just hard
enough. If it is too hard, it cannot be easily cut with
knives. If it is too soft, the blocks will crush, and cause
the house to cave in. Long knives are the best instruments—one
of fifteen inches and another about ten.
From sixty to seventy-five blocks, fifteen by twenty-four
inches, are required to make a house ten feet by ten.[Pg 190]
The blocks are cut according to the snow, but fifteen by
twenty-four by eight inches is the best size.

The lower tiers of blocks are set in slight notches in
the snow, to prevent the blocks from slipping out. A
slight tilt begins from the first tiers; the next tier tilts
still more, and so the next. The blocks are set so that
the upper blocks cover the breaks in the lower tier. The
fitting is done mostly with the blocks in position, the
knife being passed between the blocks to and fro, with
a pressure on the blocks with the other hand. The
hardest task is to make the blocks stick without holding
in the upper tiers. This is done by deft cuts with the
knife and a slight thump of the blocks.

The dome is the most difficult part to build. In
doing this all blocks are leveled and carefully set to arch
the roof.

When the structure is completed, a candle is lit and
the cracks are stuffed by cutting the edges off the nearest
blocks, and pressing the broken snow into the cracks
with the mittens. After this process, the interior arrangement
is worked out. The foot space is first cut
out in blocks. If the snow is on a slope, as it often happens,
these blocks are raised and the upper slopes are
cut down to a level plane.

The foot space is a very important matter, first for
the comfort of sitting, and also to let off the carbonic
acid gas, which quickly settles in these temperatures and
extinguishes the fires. It, of course, has also an important
bearing on human breathing.

Inhalation of very cold air at this time forced an
unconscious expenditure of very much energy. The
extent of this tax can be gauged only by the enormous[Pg 191]
difference between the temperature of the body and that
of the air. One day it was -72° F. The difference
was, therefore, 170°. It is hard to conceive of normal
breathing under such difficulties; but when properly
clothed and fed, no great discomfort or ill-effects are
noted. The membranes of the air passages are, however,
overflushed with blood. The chest circulation is
forced to its limits, and the heart beats are increased and
strengthened. The organs of circulation and respiration,
which do ninety per cent. of the work of the body,
are taxed with a new burden that must be counted in
estimating one’s day’s task. This loss of power in
breathing extreme frost is certain to reduce working
time and bodily force.

The land whose coast we were following to the
shores of the Polar sea is part of the American hemisphere,
and one of the largest islands of the world,
spreading 30° longitude and rising 7° of latitude. What
is its name? The question must remained unanswered,
for it not only has no general name, but numerous sections
are written with names and outlines that differ to a
large extent with the caprice of the explorers who have
been there.

The south is called Lincoln Land; above it,
Ellesmere Land. Then comes Schley Land, Grinnell
Land, Arthur Land, and Grant Land, with other lands
of later christening by Sverdrup and others.

No human beings inhabit the island. No nation
assumes the responsibility of claiming or protecting it.
The Eskimo calls the entire country Acpohon, or “the
Land of Guillemots,” which are found in great abundance
along the southeast point. I have, therefore, to[Pg 192]
avoid conflictions, affixed the name of Acpohon as the
general designation.

We had now advanced beyond the range of all
primitive life. No human voice broke the frigid silence.
The Eskimos had wandered into the opening of the
musk ox pass. Sverdrup had mapped the channels of
the west coast. But here was no trace of modern or aboriginal
residence. There is no good reason why men
should not have followed the musk oxen here, but the
nearest Eskimos on the American side are those on Lancaster
Sound.

I found an inspiration in being thus alone at the
world’s end. The barren rocks, the wastes of snow-fields,
the mountains stripped of earlier ice-sheets, and
every phase of the landscape, assured a new interest.
There was a note of absolute abandon on the part of
nature. If our own resources failed, or if a calamity
overtook us, there would be no trace to mark icy graves
forever hidden from surviving loved ones.

My Eskimo comrades were enthusiastic explorers.
The game trails gave a touch of animation to their steps,
which meant much to the progress of the expedition.
We not only saw musk oxen in large herds, but tracks
of bears and wolves were everywhere in line with our
course. On the sea-ice we noted many seal blow-holes.
Already the natives talked of coming here on the following
year to cast their lot in the new wilds.

The picturesque headland of Schie we found to be
a huge triassic rock of the same general formation as
that indicated along Eureka Sound. Its west offered a
series of grassy slopes bared by persistent winds, upon
which animal life found easy access to the winter-cured[Pg 193]
grass. A narrow neck of land connected what seemed
like an island with the main land. Here caches of fur
and fuel were left for the return. In passing Snag’s
Fiord the formation changed. Here, for several
marches, game was scarce. The temperature rose as we
neared the Polar sea. The snow became much deeper
but it was hardened by stronger winds and increased
humidity. High glacier-abandoned valleys with gradual
slopes to the water’s edge, gave the Heiberg shores
on Nansen Sound a different type of landscape from
that of the opposite shores. Here and there we found
pieces of lignite coal, and as we neared Svartevoeg the
carboniferous formation became more evident.

Camping in the lowlands just south of Svartevoeg
Cliffs we secured seven musk oxen and eighty-five hares.
Here were immense fields of grass and moss bared by
persistent winter gales. By a huge indentation here,
through which we saw the sea-level ice of the west, the
shores seemed to indicate that the point of Heiberg is an
island, but of this we were not absolutely sure. To us
it was a great surprise that here, on the shores of the
Polar sea, we found a garden spot of plant luxuriance
and animal delight. For this assured, in addition to the
caches left en route, a sure food supply for the return
from our mission to the North.

[Pg 194]

THE TRANS-BOREAL DASH BEGINS

BY FORCED EFFORTS AND THE USE OF AXES SPEED IS MADE
OVER THE LAND—ADHERING PACK ICE OF POLAR SEA—THE
MOST DIFFICULT TRAVEL OF THE PROPOSED
JOURNEY SUCCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED—REGRETFUL
PARTING WITH THE ESKIMOS

XIII

Five Hundred Miles From the Pole

Svartevoeg is a great cliff, the northernmost point
of Heiberg Land, which leaps precipitously into the
Polar sea. Its negroid face of black scarred rocks
frowns like the carven stone countenance of some hideously
mutilated and enraged Titan savage. It expresses,
more than a human face could, the unendurable
sufferings of this region of frigid horrors. It is five
hundred and twenty miles from the North Pole.

From this point I planned to make my dash in as
straight a route as might be possible. Starting from
our camp at Annoatok late in February, when the curtain
of night was just beginning to lift, when the chill
of the long winter was felt at its worst, we had forced
progress through deep snows, over land and frozen seas,
braving the most furious storms of the season and traveling
despite baffling darkness, and had covered in less
than a month about four hundred miles—nearly half[Pg 195]
the distance between our winter camp and the Pole.

Arriving at land’s end my heart had cause for
gratification. We had weathered the worst storms of
the year. The long bitter night had now been lost. The
days lengthened and invaded with glitter the decreasing
nights. The sun glowed more radiantly daily, rose
higher and higher to a continued afterglow in cheery
blues, and sank for periods briefer and briefer in seas of
running color. Our hopes, like those of all mankind, had
risen with the soul-lifting sun. We had made our progress
mainly at the expense of the land which we explored,
for the game en route had furnished food and clothing.

The supplies we had brought with us from Annoatok
were practically untouched. We had stepped in
overfed skins, were fired by a resolution which was recharged
by a strength bred of feeding upon abundant
raw and wholesome meat. Eating to repletion on unlimited
game, our bodies were kept in excellent trim by
the exigencies of constant and difficult traveling.

As a man’s mental force is the result of yesteryears’
upbuilding, so his strength of to-day is the result of last
week’s eating. With the surge of ambition which had
been formulating for twenty years, and my body in best
physical shape for the supreme test, the Pole now
seemed almost near.

As the great cliffs of Svartevoeg rose before us my
heart leaped. I felt that the first rung in the ladder of
success had been climbed, and as I stood under the black
cliffs of this earth’s northernmost land I felt that I
looked through the eyes of long experience. Having
reached the end of Nansen Sound, with Svartevoeg on
my left, and the tall, scowling cliffs of Lands-Lokk on[Pg 196]
my right, I viewed for the first time the rough and heavy
ice of the untracked Polar sea, over which, knowing the
conditions of the sea ice, I anticipated the most difficult
part of our journey lay. Imagine before you fields of
crushed ice, glimmering in the rising sunlight with shooting
fires of sapphire and green; fields which have been
slowly forced downward by strong currents from the
north, and pounded and piled in jagged mountainous
heaps for miles about the land. Beyond this difficult ice,
as I knew, lay more even fields, over which traveling,
saving the delays of storms and open leads, would be
comparatively easy. To encompass this rough prospect
was the next step in reaching my goal. I felt that no
time must be lost. At this point I was now to embark
upon the Polar sea; the race for my life’s ambition was
to begin here; but first I had finally to resolve on the
details of my campaign.

I decided to reduce my party to the smallest possible
number consistent with the execution of the problem
in hand. In addition, for greater certainty of
action over the unknown regions beyond, I now definitely
resolved to simplify the entire equipment. An
extra sled was left at the cache at this point to insure
a good vehicle for our return in case the two sleds which
we were to take should be badly broken en route. I
decided to take only two men on the last dash. I had
carefully watched and studied every one of my party,
and had already selected E-tuk-i-shook and Ah-we-lah,
two young Eskimos, each about twenty years old, as best
fitted to be my sole companions in the long run of
destiny.

Twenty-six of the best dogs were picked, and upon[Pg 197]
two sleds were to be loaded all our needs for a trip estimated
to last eighty days.

To have increased this party would not have enabled
us to carry supplies for a greater number of days.

The sleds might have been loaded more heavily, but
I knew this would reduce the important progress of the
first days.

With the character of ice which we had before us,
advance stations were impossible. A large expedition
and a heavy equipment would have been imprudent.
We must win or lose in a prolonged effort at high pressure.
Therefore, absolute control and ease of adaptability
to a changing environment was imperative.

From past experience I knew it was impossible to
control adequately the complex human temperament of
white men in the Polar wilderness. But I felt certain
the two Eskimo boys could be trusted to follow to the
limit of my own endurance. So our sleds were burdened
only with absolute necessaries.

Because of the importance of a light and efficient
equipment, much care had to be taken to reduce every
ounce of weight. The sleds were made of hickory, the
lightest wood consistent with great endurance, and
every needless fibre was gouged out. The iron shoes
were ground thin, and up to the present had stood the
test of half the Polar battle.

Eliminating everything not actually needed, but
selecting adequate food, I made the final preparations.

The camp equipment selected included the following
articles: One blow fire lamp (jeuel), three aluminum
pails, three aluminum cups, three aluminum teaspoons,
one tablespoon, three tin plates, six pocket[Pg 198]
knives, two butcher knives (ten inches), one saw knife
(thirteen inches), one long knife (fifteen inches), one
rifle (Sharp’s), one rifle (Winchester .22), one hundred
and ten cartridges, one hatchet, one Alpine axe, extra
line and lashings, and three personal bags.

The sled equipment consisted of two sleds weighing
fifty-two pounds each; one twelve-foot folding canvas
boat, the wood of which formed part of a sled; one
silk tent, two canvas sled covers, two reindeer skin sleeping
bags, floor furs, extra wood for sled repairs, screws,
nails and rivets.

My instruments were as follows: One field glass;
one pocket compass; one liquid compass; one aluminum
surveying compass, with azimuth attachment; one
French surveyor’s sextant, with radius 7½, divided on
silver to 10ʹ, reading by Vernier to 10″ (among the extra
attachments were a terrestrial and an astronomical telescope,
and an extra night telescope mounted in aluminum,
and also double refracting prisms, thermometers,
etc.—the instrument was made by Hurleman of France
and bought of Keuffel & Esser); one glass artificial
horizon; three Howard pocket chronometers; one Tiffany
watch; one pedometer; map-making material and
instruments; three thermometers; one aneroid barometer;
one camera and films; notebook and pencils.

The personal bags contained four extra pairs of
kamiks, with fur stockings, a woolen shirt, three pairs of
sealskin mittens, two pairs of fur mittens, a piece of
blanket, a sealskin coat (netsha), extra fox tails and dog
harness, a repair kit for mending clothing, and much
other necessary material.

On the march we wore snow goggles, blue fox coats[Pg 199]
(kapitahs) and birdskin shirts (Ah-tea), bearskin pants
(Nan-nooka), sealskin boots (Kam-ik), hare-skin stockings
(Ah-tee-shah), and a band of fox tails under the
knee and about the waist.

The food supply, as will be seen by the following
list, was mostly pemmican:

Eight hundred and five pounds of beef pemmican,
one hundred and thirty pounds of walrus pemmican,
fifty pounds of musk ox tenderloin, twenty-five pounds
of musk ox tallow, two pounds of tea, one pound of
coffee, twenty-five pounds of sugar, forty pounds of
condensed milk, sixty pounds of milk biscuit, ten pounds
of pea soup powdered and compressed, fifty pounds of
surprises, forty pounds petroleum, two pounds of wood
alcohol, three pounds of candles and one pound of
matches.

We planned our future food supply with pemmican
as practically the sole food; the other things were to be
mere palate satisfiers. For the eighty days the supply
was to be distributed as follows:

For three men: Pemmican, one pound per day for
eighty days, two hundred and forty pounds. For six
dogs: Pemmican, one pound per day for eighty days,
four hundred and eighty pounds. This necessitated a
total of seven hundred and twenty pounds of pemmican.

Of the twenty-six dogs, we had at first figured on
taking sixteen over the entire trip to the Pole and back
to our caches on land, but in this last calculation only six
were to be taken. Twenty, the least useful, were to
be used one after the other, as food on the march, as
soon as reduced loads and better ice permitted. This,
we counted, would give one thousand pounds of fresh[Pg 200]
meat over and above our pemmican supply. We
carried about two hundred pounds of pemmican
above the expected consumption, and in the final working
out the dogs were used for traction purposes longer
than we anticipated. But, with a cautious saving, the
problem was solved somewhat more economically than
any figuring before the start indicated.

Every possible article of equipment was made to do
double service; not an ounce of dead weight was carried
which could be dispensed with.

After making several trips about Svartevoeg, arranging
caches for the return, studying the ice and land,
I decided to make the final start on the Polar sea on
March 18, 1908.

The time had come to part with most of our faithful
Eskimo companions. Taking their hands in my manner
of parting, I thanked them as well as I could for their
faithful service to me. “Tigishi ah yaung-uluk!” (The
big nail!), they replied, wishing me luck.

Then, in a half gale blowing from the northwest and
charged with snow, they turned their backs upon me and
started upon the return track. They carried little but
ammunition, because we had learned that plenty of game
was to be provided along the return courses.

Even after they were out of sight in the drifting
snowstorm their voices came cheerily back to me. The
faithful savages had followed me until told that I could
use them no longer; and it was not only for their simple
pay of knives and guns, but because of a real desire to
be helpful. Their parting enforced a pang of loneliness.[10]

[Pg 201]With a snow-charged blast in our faces it was impossible
for us to start immediately after the Eskimos
returned. Withdrawing to the snow igloo, we entered
our bags and slept a few hours longer. At noon the
horizon cleared. The wind veered to the southwest and
came with an endurable force. Doubly rationed the
night before, the dogs were not to be fed again for two
days. The time had come to start. We quickly loaded
our sleds. Hitching the dogs, we let the whips fall, and
with bounds they leaped around deep ice grooves in the
great paleocrystic floes.

Our journey was begun. Swept of snow by the
force of the preceding storm, the rough ice crisply
cracked under the swift speed of our sleds. Even on
this uneven surface the dogs made such speed that I kept
ahead of them only with difficulty. Their barking pealed
about us and re-echoed from the black cliffs behind.
Dashing about transparent ultramarine gorges, and
about the base of miniature mountains of ice, we soon
came into a region of undulating icy hills. The hard
irregularity of the ice at times endangered our sleds.
We climbed over ridges like walls. We jumped dangerous
crevasses, keeping slightly west by north; the
land soon sank in the rear of us. Drifting clouds and
wind-driven snows soon screened the tops of black mountains.
Looking behind, I saw only a swirling, moving
scene of dull white and nebulous gray. On every side
ice hummocks heaved their backs and writhed by. Be[Pg 202]hind
me followed four snugly loaded sleds, drawn by
forty-four selected dogs, under the lash of four expert
Eskimo drivers. The dogs pranced; the joyous cries of
the natives rose and fell. My heart leaped; my soul
sang. I felt my blood throb with each gallop of the leaping
dog teams. The sound of their feet pattering on the
snow, the sight of their shaggy bodies tossing forward,
gave me joy. For every foot of ice covered, every minute
of constant action, drew me nearer, ever nearer, to
my goal.

Our first run was auspicious; it seemed to augur
success. By the time we paused to rest we had covered
twenty-six miles.

We pitched camp on a floeberg of unusual height;
about us were many big hummocks, and to the lee of
these banks of hardened snow. Away from land it is
always more difficult to find snow suitable for cutting
building blocks. There, however, was an abundance.
We busily built, in the course of an hour, a comfortable
snow igloo. Into it we crept, grateful for shelter from
the piercing wind.

The dogs curled up and went to sleep without a call,
as if they knew that there would be no food until to-morrow.
My wild companions covered their faces with their
long hair and sank quietly into slumber. For me sleep
was impossible. The whole problem of our campaign
had again to be carefully studied, and final plans made,
not only to reach our ultimate destination, but for the
two returning Eskimos and for the security of the things
left at Annoatok, and also to re-examine the caches left
en route for our return. These must be protected as
well as possible against the bears and wolves.[Pg 203]

Already I had begun to think of our return to land.
It was difficult at this time even to approximate any
probable course. Much would depend upon conditions
to be encountered in the northward route. Although we
had left caches of supplies with the object of returning
along Nansen Sound, into Cannon Fiord and over
Arthur Land, I entertained grave doubts of our ability
to return this way. I knew that if the ice should drift
strongly to the east we might not be given the choice of
working out our own return. For, in such an event, we
should perhaps be carried helplessly to Greenland, and
should have to seek a return either along the east or
the west coast.

This drift, in my opinion, would not necessarily
mean dangerous hardships, for the musk oxen would
keep us alive to the west, and to the east it seemed possible
to reach Shannon Island, where the Baldwin-Zeigler
expeditions had abandoned a large cache of supplies.
It appeared not improbable, also, that a large
land extension might offer a safe return much further
west. I fell asleep while pondering over these things. By
morning the air was clear of frost crystals. It was intensely
cold, not only because of a temperature of 56°
below zero, Fahrenheit, but a humid chill which pierced
to the very bones. A light breeze came from the west.
The sun glowed in a freezing field of blue.

Hitching our dogs, we started. For several hours
we seemed to soar over the white spaces. Then the ice
changed in character, the expansive, thick fields of
glacier-like ice giving way to floes of moderate size and
thickness. These were separated by zones of troublesome
crushed ice thrown into high-pressure lines, which[Pg 204]
offered serious barriers. Chopping the pathway with
an ice axe, we managed to make fair progress. We
covered twenty-one miles of our second run on the Polar
sea. I expected, at the beginning of this final effort,
to send back by this time the two extra men, Koo-loo-ting-wah
and In-u-gi-to, who had remained to help us
over the rough pack-ice. But progress had not been as
good as I had expected; so, although we could hardly
spare any food to feed their dogs, the two volunteered
to push along for another day without dog food.

Taking advantage of big, strong teams and the fire
of early enthusiasm, we aimed to force long distances
through the extremely difficult ice jammed here against
the distant land. The great weight of the supplies intended
for the final two sleds were now distributed over
four sleds. With axe and compass in hand, I led the
way. With prodigious effort I chopped openings
through barriers after barriers of ice. Sled after sled
was passed over the tumbling series of obstacles by my
companions while I advanced to open a way through the
next. With increasing difficulties in some troublesome
ice, we camped after making only sixteen miles. Although
weary, we built a small snowhouse. I prepared
over my stove a pot of steaming musk ox loins and broth
and a double brew of tea. After partaking of this our
two helpers prepared to return. To have taken them
farther would have necessitated a serious drain on our
supplies and an increased danger for their lives in a
longer return to land.

DASHING FORWARD EN ROUTE TO THE POLE

By these men I sent back instructions to Rudolph
Francke to remain in charge of my supplies at Annoatok
until June 5th, 1908, and then, if we should not have
[Pg 205]
returned by that date, to place Koo-loo-ting-wah in charge
and go home either by a whaler or some Danish ship. I
knew that, should we get in trouble, he could offer no
relief to help us, and that his waiting an indefinite time
alone would be a needless hardship.

DEPARTURE OF SUPPORTING PARTY
A BREATHING SPELL
POLEWARD!

The way before Koo-loo-ting-wah and In-u-gi-to,
who had so cheerfully remained to the last possible moment
that they could be of help, was not an entirely
pleasant one. Their friends were by now well on their
journey toward Annoatok, and they had to start after
them with sleds empty of provisions and dogs hungry for
food.

They hoped to get back to land and off the ice of
the Polar sea in one long day’s travel of twenty-four
hours. Even this would leave their fourth day without
food for their dogs. In case of storms or moving of
the ice, other days of famine might easily fall to their lot.
However, they faced possible dangers cheerfully rather
than ask me to give them anything from the stores that
were to support their two companions, myself and our
dogs on our way onward to the Pole and back. I was
deeply touched by this superlative devotion. They assured
me too (in which they were right) that they had
an abundance of possible food in the eighteen dogs they
took with them. If necessary, they could sacrifice a few
at any time for the benefit of the others, as must often
be done in the Northland.

There were no formalities in our parting on the
desolate ice. Yet, as the three of us who were left
alone gazed after our departing companions, we felt a
poignant pang in our hearts. About us was a cheerless
waste of crushed wind-and-water-driven ice. A sharp[Pg 206]
wind stung our faces. The sun was obscured by clouds
which piled heavily and darkly about the horizon. The
cold and brilliant jeweled effects of the frozen sea were
lost in a dismal hue of dull white and sombre gray. On
the horizon, Svartevoeg, toward which the returning
Eskimos were bound, was but a black speck. To the
north, where our goal lay, our way was untrodden, unknown.
The thought came to me that perhaps we
should never see our departing friends. With it came
a pang of tenderness for the loved ones I had left behind
me. Although our progress so far had been successful,
and half the distance was made, dangers unknown
and undreamed of existed in the way before us.
My Eskimos already showed anxiety—an anxiety which
every aboriginal involuntarily feels when land disappears
on the horizon. Never venturing themselves far
onto the Polar sea, when they lose sight of land a panic
overcomes them. Before leaving us one of the departing
Eskimos had pointed out a low-lying cloud to the
north of us. “Noona” (land), he said, nodding to the
others. The thought occurred to me that, on our trip,
I could take advantage of the mirages and low clouds
on the horizon and encourage a belief in a constant nearness
to land, thus maintaining their courage and cheer.[11]

Regrets and fears were not long-lasting, however,[Pg 207]
for the exigencies of our problem were sufficiently imperative
and absorbing. To the overcoming of these we
had now to devote our entire attention and strain every
fibre.

We had now advanced, by persistent high-pressure
efforts, over the worst possible ice conditions, somewhat
more than sixty miles. Of the 9° between land’s end
and the Pole, we had covered one; and we had done this
without using the pound of food per day allotted each of
us out of the eighty days’ supply transported.

POLAR BEAR

[Pg 208]

OVER THE POLAR SEA TO THE BIG LEAD

WITH TWO ESKIMO COMPANIONS, THE RACE POLEWARD
CONTINUES OVER ROUGH AND DIFFICULT ICE—THE
LAST LAND FADES BEHIND—MIRAGES LEAP INTO
BEING AND WEAVE A MYSTIC SPELL—A SWIRLING
SCENE OF MOVING ICE AND FANTASTIC EFFECTS—STANDING
ON A HILL OF ICE, A BLACK, WRITHING,
SNAKY CUT APPEARS IN THE ICE BEYOND—THE BIG
LEAD—A NIGHT OF ANXIETY—FIVE HUNDRED MILES
ALREADY COVERED—FOUR HUNDRED TO THE POLE

XIV

To Eighty-Third Parallel

Our party, thus reduced to three, went onward.
Although the isolation was more oppressive, there were
the advantages of the greater comfort, safety, speed and
convenience that came from having only a small band.
The large number of men in a big expedition always
increases responsibilities and difficulties. In the early
part of a Polar venture this disadvantage is eliminated
by the facilities to augment supplies by the game en
route and by ultimate advantages of the law of the survival
of the fittest. But after the last supporting sleds
return, the men are bound to each other for protection
and can no longer separate. A disabled or unfitted[Pg 209]
dog can be fed to his companions, but an injured or
weak man cannot be eaten nor left alone to die. An
exploring venture is only as strong as its weakest member,
and increased numbers, like increased links in a
chain, reduce efficiency.

Moreover, personal idiosyncrasies and inconveniences
always shorten a day’s march. And, above all, a
numerous party quickly divides into cliques, which are
always opposed to each other, to the leader, and invariably
to the best interests of the problem in hand.
With but two savage companions, to whom this arduous
task was but a part of an accustomed life of frost, I did
not face many of the natural personal barriers which contributed
to the failure of former Arctic expeditions.

In my judgment, when you double a Polar party
its chances for success are reduced one-half; when you
divide it, strength and security are multiplied.

We had been traveling about two and one-half miles
per hour. By making due allowances for detours and
halts at pressure lines, the number of hours traveled
gave us a fair estimate of the day’s distance. Against
this the pedometer offered a check, and the compass
gave the course. Thus, over blank charts, our course
was marked.

By this kind of dead reckoning our position on
March 20 was: Latitude, 82° 23ʹ; Longitude, 95° 14ʹ.
A study of our location seemed to indicate that we had
passed beyond the zone of ice crushed by the influence
of land pressure. Behind were great hummocks and
small ice; ahead was a cheerful expanse of larger, clearer
fields, offering a promising highway.

Our destination was now about four hundred and[Pg 210]
sixty miles beyond. Our life, with its pack environment,
assumed another aspect. Previously we permitted
ourselves some luxuries. A pound of coal oil
and a good deal of musk ox tallow were burned each day
to heat the igloo and to cook abundant food. Extra
meals were served when occasion called for them, and
for each man there had been all the food and drink he
desired. If the stockings or the mittens were wet there
was fire enough to dry them out. All of this had now
to be changed.

Hereafter there was to be a short daily allowance
of food and fuel—one pound of pemmican a day for the
dogs, about the same for the men, with just a taste of
other things. Fortunately, we were well provided with
fresh meat for the early part of the race by the lucky run
through game lands. Because of the need of fuel
economy we now cut our pemmican with an axe. Later
it split the axe.

At first no great hardship followed our changed
routine. We filled up sufficiently on two cold meals
daily and also depended on superfluous bodily tissue.
It was no longer possible to jump on the sled for an
occasional breathing spell, as we had done along the
land.

Such a journey as now confronted us is a long-continued,
hard, difficult, sordid, body-exhausting thing.
Each day some problem presents some peculiar condition
of the ice or state of the weather. The effort, for
instance, to form some shield from intense cold gives
added interest to the game. That one thing after another
is being met, with always the anticipation of next
day’s struggle, adds a thrill to the conquest, spurs one[Pg 211]
to greater and ever greater feats, and really constitutes
the actual victory of such a quest. With overloaded
sleds the drivers must now push and pull at them to aid
the dogs. My task was to search the troubled ice for
easy routes, cutting away here and there with the ice-axe
to permit the passing of the sleds.

Finally stripping for the race, man and dog must
walk along together through storms and frost for the
elusive goal. Success or failure must depend mostly
upon our ability to transport nourishment and to keep
up the muscular strength for a prolonged period.

As we awoke on the morning of March 21 and
peered out of the eye-port of the igloo, the sun edged
along the northeast. A warm orange glow suffused the
ice and gladdened our hearts. The temperature was
63° below zero, Fahrenheit; the barometer was steady
and high. There was almost no wind. Not a cloud
lined the dome of pale purple blue, but a smoky streak
along the west shortened our horizon in that direction
and marked a lead of open water.

Our breakfast consisted of two cups of tea, a watch-sized
biscuit, a chip of frozen meat and a boulder of
pemmican. Creeping out of our bags, our shivering
legs were pushed through bearskin cylinders which
served as trousers. We worked our feet into frozen
boots and then climbed into fur coats. Next we kicked
the front out of the snowhouse and danced about to
stimulate heart action.

Quickly the camp furnishings were tossed on the
sleds and securely lashed. We gathered the dog traces
into the drag lines, vigorously snapped the long whips,
and the willing creatures bent to the shoulder straps.[Pg 212]
The sleds groaned. The unyielding snows gave a
metallic ring. The train moved with a cheerful pace.

“Am-my noona terronga dosangwah” (Perhaps
land will be out of sight today), we said to one another.[12]
But the words did not come with serious intent. In
truth, each in his own way felt keenly that we were leaving
a world of life and possible comfort for one of torment
and suffering. Axel Heiberg Land, to the south,
was already only a dull blue haze, while Grant Land, on
the eastward, was making fantastic figures of its peaks
and ice walls. The ice ran in waves of undulating blue,
shimmering with streams of gold, before us. Behind,
the last vestiges of jagged land rose and fell like marionettes
dancing a wild farewell. Our heart-pulls were
backward, our mental kicks were forward.

Until now this strange white world had been one
of grim reality. As though some unseen magician had
waved his wand, it was suddenly transformed into a
land of magic. Leaping into existence, as though from
realms beyond the horizon, huge mirages wove a web of
marvelous delusional pictures about the horizon. Peaks
of snow were transformed into volcanoes, belching
smoke; out of the pearly mist rose marvelous cities with[Pg 213]
fairy-like castles; in the color-shot clouds waved golden
and rose and crimson pennants from pinnacles and
domes of mosaic-colored splendor. Huge creatures,
misshapen and grotesque, writhed along the horizon and
performed amusing antics.

Beginning now, and rarely absent, these spectral
denizens of the North accompanied us during the entire
journey; and later, when, fagged of brain and sapped
of bodily strength, I felt my mind swimming in a sea
of half-consciousness, they filled me almost with horror,
impressing me as the monsters one sees in a nightmare.

At every breathing spell in the mad pace our heads
now turned to land. Every look was rewarded by a
new prospect. From belching volcanoes to smoking
cities of modern bustle, the mirages gave a succession of
striking scenes which filled me with awed and marveling
delight. A more desolate line of coast could not be
imagined. Along its edge ran low wind-swept and
wind-polished mountains. These were separated by
valleys filled with great depths of snow and glacial ice.