The total omission of similar tales of admirable and humane conduct from the legends and the folksongs of the Inuits of the stone age doubtless depends in part on the savage superstitions, wherein magical powers and forces of evil are greatly exalted, and in part on the disposition to dwell on the unusual and the terrifying.
So there are reasons to believe that the survivors of the stone age in East Greenland exhibit in their daily life human qualities of goodness and of justice that were characteristic of their rude and virile ancestors.
Such, though inadequately described, are the newly found Inuits of the Angmagsalik district of East Greenland, the sole surviving remnant of the untutored aborigines of the north polar lands. Their human evolution is of intense interest, as it has been worked out under adverse conditions of appalling desolation as regards their food and their travel, their dress and their shelter, their child-rearing and their social relations.
That the world knows the last of the missing polar tribes, and that this remote, primitive people is now being uplifted in the scale of humanity, must be credited to the resolute courage, the professional zeal, and, above all, to the sympathetic human qualities of Captain Holm and his faithful officers and assistants.
THE FIDELITY OF ESKIMO BRÖNLUND
"And truly he who here
Hath run his bright career,
And served men nobly, and acceptance found,
And borne to light and right his witness high,
What better could he wish than then to die?"
—Arnold.
The Mylius-Erichsen arctic expedition of 1905 sailed for the east coast of Greenland in the ship Danmark, commanded by Captain Trolle, Danish Royal Navy. Its purpose was to continue the remarkable surveys of the Danish government by completing the coast-line of northeast Greenland. From its winter quarters at Cape Bismarck, 76° 14′ N., autumnal sledge parties established advance depots of supplies in order to facilitate the travel of its surveying party the following spring.
The field work was under charge of Mylius-Erichsen personally, a Danish explorer of ability and experience, already distinguished for successful work in northwestern Greenland. It was planned that near the eighty-second parallel of north latitude the main party should be divided, so as to complete the work that season. Lieutenant Koch was to outline the southeastern shore-lines of the land to the north of Greenland, while Mylius-Erichsen was to carry his surveys inland until they joined those of Peary, thus filling in the totally unknown regions of extreme northeastern Greenland.
This plan was carried out in the spring of 1906, the two parties separating at Northeast Cape, whence Koch struck courageously north on May 1, with food for fourteen days only. Game fortunately came to him and he was enabled to advance his country's colors to an unprecedentedly northern latitude for Denmark, 83.5° N., and by his explorations to complete the survey of the most northerly land of the globe—originally named Hazen Land, which is now known as Peary Land. The brilliant discoveries, tragic experiences, and heroic struggles of Mylius-Erichsen and his topographer Hagen, and the fidelity unto death of his Eskimo dog driver, Jörgen Brönlund, are briefly outlined in this narrative.