In this fearful crisis, amid arctic cold and in polar darkness, savage humanity rose to heroic heights. Selfishness and covetousness stood abashed among these children of the stone age, and in their stead were awakened holy feelings of human pity and a spirit of self-denying charity.
Their deeds show that in the white north as in the sunny south there abide the true spirit of brotherly love and a recognized sense of human interdependence. After the Etah manner, there recurred the episode of the Samaritan charity of ancient Judea. Yet the action of the Inuit even surpassed the deed of the good man of Palestine, for Etah aid was not the outcome of a rich man's loving generosity to a penniless sufferer, but it also paralleled the widow's mite, for Kalutunah, the savage sorcerer, and his tribesmen gave the sole food of to-morrow for their wives and children to save from death the rich and alien white men of the unknown south. Does heroism rise to nobler deeds in the midst of our superior civilization and higher development?
DR. RAE AND THE FRANKLIN MYSTERY
"An age which passes over in silence the merits of the heroic deserves as a punishment that it should not bring forth such an one in its midst."—Forster.
In 1845 Captain John Franklin, royal navy, in command of the ships Erebus and Terror, sailed with one hundred and twenty-nine souls to make the northwest passage. His orders carried him via Lancaster Sound and Cape Walker, and he was provisioned for three years. The ships were last seen by civilized men in Baffin Bay, whence they passed from the knowledge of the world. In 1847 great anxiety prevailed as to the fate of the expedition, and fears of its loss grew stronger from year to year. More than a score of ships, with crews of nearly two thousand men, at an expense of millions of dollars vainly sought, between 1847 and 1853, news of the missing squadron, and the British Parliament offered a reward of ten thousand pounds sterling for the first accredited information regarding the lost explorers.
The Franklin mystery was solved through the labors of Dr. John Rae, a Scotch surgeon in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, whose marvellous endurance and restless energy are evident from the statement that in his various journeys of exploration he walked more than twenty thousand miles. The conditions under which Rae gained information as to the fate of Franklin are herein set forth.
Twice before had Rae been engaged in the Franklin search, in 1848-50 with Sir John Richardson, and later under the auspices of the Hudson Bay Company. In these combined journeys of five thousand three hundred and eighty miles he had explored much of Wollaston and Victoria Lands, from Fort Confidence as a base. The doctor then found at Parker Bay the butt of a flag-staff, which from its tack and line, bearing the special mark of the royal navy, had evidently belonged to one of Franklin's ships. Now, in 1853, he was in command of a Hudson Bay Company's party to complete the exploration of Boothia Peninsula.
Leaving Chesterfield Inlet by boat, Rae was en route to Repulse Bay, his intended head-quarters, when he fell in with a herd of walruses, from which, in spite of his terrified crew, who feared these sea-monsters, he obtained an enormous animal that furnished enough blubber for his cooking-lamps throughout the winter. That Rae's walrus hunt was not without danger was evident from the experiences of four Eskimos off this very coast on Rae's previous visit. The natives lashed together their four kayaks, and while in pursuit of walruses were attacked by a ferocious male. Striking down the first kayak with his enormous tusks, the infuriated animal ploughed through the miniature fleet, capsizing and breaking up the four tiny crafts and drowning the unfortunate hunters.