Thoroughly familiar with the native methods of life and of travel, this officer, Captain G. F. Holm, Royal Danish Navy, adopted the safest, indeed, the only, method of coast transportation—in the umiak.
The umiak (called the woman's boat, as it is always rowed by women) is a flat-bottomed, wooden-framed, skin-covered boat about twenty-five feet long and five feet wide. Only the framework, thwarts, and rowing benches are wooden, the covering being well-dried, blubber-saturated, hair-free skins of the atarsoak (Greenland seal). Resembling in appearance the parchment of a drum-head, the seal-skin becomes quite transparent when wet so that the motion of the water is seen through it. Sometimes a light mast carries a spread seal-skin for sail, but as a rule the boat is propelled by short, bone-tipped paddles which, in the hands of several strong women, carry the umiak thirty miles a day through smooth, ice-free water. When going near the ice a heavy seal-skin is hung before the bow to prevent the delicate boat skin from being cut. When a little hole is worn through, the women deftly thrust a bit of blubber through it until the boat is hauled up on the shore, which must be done daily to dry the sea-saturated covering. These boats can transport from three to four tons of cargo, and are so light that they can be readily carried on the women's backs overland.
Holm knew that his journey must entail at least one winter among such natives as he might meet, so that his equipment was very carefully selected, with a view to the gifts and trading which are so dear to the native heart. The northward journey was full of incident and of interest. Not crowding his women rowers, Holm tarried here and there for the hunt; besides, he wished both to gather information from an occasional encampment and also to cultivate loyalty in his reluctant crew by permitting his women to show their west coast riches to the east-coast heathen.
Here seal were killed and there the polar bear was chased, while the sea-fowl, the narwhal, and the white whale were the objects of pursuit to the eager native hunters, who accompanied the umiaks in their light, swift-flying kayaks.
In voyaging there was the usual danger from sharp ice cutting the umiaks and necessitating repairs, and from lofty bergs and ancient hummocks as they crossed the ocean mouths of the ice-filled fiords, and alas! too often there were tedious, nerve-racking delays when on desolate islands or rocky beaches the umiak fleet was ice-bound for days at a time.
Wintering near Cape Farewell, Holm, with Garde and Knutsen, put to sea May 5, 1884, his umiaks being rowed by nineteen women and five men, while seven hunters followed in kayaks. Garde devoted himself to the precipitous, ice-capped coast, and between 60° and 63° N. found nearly two hundred living glaciers that entered the sea, seventy being a mile or more broad. In Lindenows Fiord, 62° 15′ N., were found almost impenetrable willow groves near old Scandinavian ruins. Fine new ice-fiords were discovered which put forth innumerable numbers of icebergs, the highest rising two hundred feet above the sea.
The western Eskimos were alarmed either at the ice difficulties which lengthened the voyage, or feared the angekoks, or magicians of the east coast, and nineteen of them insisted on turning back. Holm was obliged to send them back under Garde, but with determined courage to fulfil his duty as an officer of the Danish navy, he went on with twelve faithful women and men, although he was not half-way to Cape Dan.
As before told, Graah turned back in sight of Cape Dan, believing that he had reached the limit of human habitations. Great then was Holm's surprise to here find the last of the three missing polar tribes, who to the number of five hundred and forty-eight individuals were occupying the fertile hunting-grounds of the archipelago of Angmagsalik, which consists of about twenty ice-free islands to the west of Cape Dan, about 65° 31′ N., adjacent to the beautiful Sermilik ice-fiord. In this district the tides and currents keep open the inland water-ways, so that seals are plentiful and easily taken, thus making it an Inuit paradise. Holm and Knutsen here wintered, 1884-5, and in their ten months' residence with these people gathered a vast amount of ethnographic and historic material pertaining to the lives of these extraordinary Inuits, who had never before seen a white man.[25]
This missing polar tribe pertains to the stone age of the world, its weapons being almost entirely of bone, while its methods of hunting follow lines long since abandoned by Inuits who have had contact with whites. Their high sense of fidelity was shown by Navfalik, who was placed in charge of stores left for the winter at Kasingortok. That winter his family suffered from lack of food, but all through these days of terrible distress and prolonged hunger the stores of the white man were untouched by this faithful Eskimo.