True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World

by A. W. Greely

Mylius-Erichsen hoped that the outlying valleys of his newly discovered Denmark Fiord would afford enough game to enable them to live, at least long enough to permit them to reach some one of their depots where they could deposit the records of their surveys. They reached the fiord about the end of July, but alas! the big game of the past spring was gone! Now and then they killed a stray musk-ox and, like famishing creatures, men and dogs ate for once their fill. Again and again food failed utterly, but when death came too near they killed, with sad hearts, one of their faithful dogs, until nine of them had been eaten.

In the recovered field-journal of Brönlund, under date of August 7, we read: "No more food! It is impossible to travel and we are more than nine hundred kilometres [five hundred and sixty miles] from the ship." On the 8th Erichsen started for the southern end of the fiord, thinking that in its ice-free valleys the chances of game would be increased. As it was necessary to travel on the ice-floes they started across the ice, changing from one floe to another when forced to do so. Unfortunately they were driven offshore and found themselves adrift. Day after day, kept seaward by wind and tide, they strove in vain to reach shore, but it was sixteen days before this was accomplished. When they landed on August 24, Brönlund writes: "We still have fourteen dogs, but no food. We have killed one of these animals and eaten half of him; the other half will serve as our food to-morrow. The half of a dog for three men and thirteen dogs is not too much to digest, and after eating it we are as hungry as before."

When land was reached Erichsen and Hagen applied themselves to hunting. Hare after hare and ptarmigan after ptarmigan were pursued and killed. But alas! the valleys were searched in vain for musk-oxen or reindeer, and it was feared that the big game of the region was exterminated.

Throughout these awful days of suspense and of hunger neither Mylius-Erichsen nor Hagen failed to maintain their courage and cheerfulness. In the intervals of needed rest between the long, exhausting hunting tramps, they kept on the even tenor of their way. Erichsen wrote a little poem to distract the attention of his companions from their present surroundings. Faithful to the last to his favorite vocation, Hagen made with care and pride beautiful sketches of the country traversed and of the lands newly discovered. Thus passed away the brief polar summer, but further details are lacking since Brönlund's journal has no entries from August 31 to October 19.

Meanwhile, Koch had made safely his homeward journey, and, although the anxiety of the officers at the ship was somewhat lessened by the news that game had been found in the far north, yet they were nevertheless uneasy as to the dangers of Erichsen's home travel. Koch, it seems, had found an open and impassable sea at Mount Mallemuk, so that he was driven to the inland ice. He there found himself obliged to cross a very narrow glacier, where its seaward slant was so nearly perpendicular that a single slip would have precipitated men and dogs into the open sea, hundreds of feet below.

Later it was decided to send a search party north, under mate Thostrup. Nor was this autumnal march without danger, even apart from the perils of travel along the coast, where the men nearly perished by breaking through the new ice. At Jokel Bay Thostrup was driven to the inland ice, the only possible route. At all times difficult, this travel was now made especially dangerous by the fact that the old glacial surface was not yet covered by the hard-packed winter drifts. Thostrup's whole sledge party on several occasions barely escaped falling into the fearful crevasses, seen with difficulty in the semi-darkness of the sunless days. As it was, several of the dogs were lost when, a snow bridge crumbling, the animals fell into a crevasse. Their seal-skin traces breaking, the dogs dropped to the bottom of the ice-chasms, which were sometimes two hundred feet or more deep. With kindly hearts the Eskimo drivers tried to shoot the poor animals, and put them out of their misery, but did not always succeed. As Erichsen had not reached the coast the journey was without result. Thostrup found untouched the caches of Lambert Land and Mount Mallemuk, and turned southward on October 18, unconscious that a hundred miles to the westward his missing shipmates, facing frost and famine, were valiantly struggling against fate and death.

The condition of the arctic Crusoes of Denmark Fiord, though there were doubtless days of cheer and hope, grew gradually worse, and by the middle of October had become terrible, if not hopeless. Although the autumnal ice was now forming, Mylius-Erichsen knew that in their state of physical weakness the long journey of five hundred miles to the ship, around Cape Northeast, could never be made. Hagen agreed with him that the single chance of life, feeble though it was, lay in crossing the ice-capped mountain range, direct to the depot on Lambert Land. Of course, the height of the ice-cap, the character of its surface, and the irregularities of the road were all unknown quantities.

The state of their field outfit for the crossing of the inland ice betrayed their desperate condition. In general, their equipment had practically disappeared under stress of travel and of hunting. To the very last they had carried their scientific outfit and instruments. It was a sad day when they recognized that the only way of repairing the great rents in their skin boots was through the use of the sole-leather case of the theodolite. Even that had quite gone, and without needle, thread, or leather, they could only fold wraps around their boots, now in shreds, and tie them on with such seal-skin thongs as had not been eaten. The tent was badly torn, and, with the sleeping-gear—on which had been made sad inroads for dog-food and patches for clothing—afforded wretched shelter against storm and cold. For transportation there were four gaunt dogs—the last that ravenous hunger had spared—to haul the remnants of a disabled sledge. The winter cold had set in, with almost unendurable bitterness to the enfeebled, shivering men. The weak arctic sun, now skirting the southern sky at mid-day, was leaving them for the winter, so that the dangers of crevasses and the difficulties of glacier-travel must be met either in total darkness, or, at the best, in feeble, uncertain twilight.

Discarding everything that could be spared, they reached the inland ice on October 19, the day the sun went for the winter, and barefooted they travelled across this glacial ice-cap one hundred and sixty miles in twenty-six days. Their shipmate, Lieutenant A. Trolle says: "When I think of the northerly wind and the darkness, when I consider that every morning they must have crawled out of their dilapidated sleeping-bags, though they could have had one desire, one craving—that of sleeping the eternal sleep—then my mind is full of sorrow that I shall never be able to tell them how much I admire them. They would go on, they would reach a place where their comrades could find them and the results of their work. Then at last came the end, the death of Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen a few miles from the depot, and the last walk of Brönlund, crawling along on frozen feet in the moonshine. With the sure instinct of the child of nature, he found the depot, ate some of the food, wrapped himself up in his fur, and died."