After we left Duck Island I put in quite some time getting our things ready for trading and for presents. Of course we weren’t going to do any real trading, except for little personal things some of us wanted. Most of the stuff was to give natives who helped us in the hunting and collecting of specimens. One of my nice jobs was filling a lot of tin cans with screw tops with candy and sugar. And we also sorted out some gay sweaters and jerseys which Mr. Alex Taylor, who lives at Rye, had given the expedition. (All our crew, by the way, now have Alex Taylor sweaters and they certainly came in handy.)
We arrived at Cape York on the night of July 20th. Cape York is a big cape which marks the northern end of Melville Bay and really is the beginning of far North Greenland. The people living there and in the few settlements further north are the Smith Sound tribe of Eskimos, who live nearer the North Pole than any other people. About at this [[64]]latitude is further north than the most northerly points of the mainland of any of the continents, North America, Europe, or Asia. So we felt we really were beginning to get pretty far north.
In a Fjord Back of Upernivik.
The Cape itself is a high mountain which sort of spills right down into the sea. The slopes, some of them, are quite red, and the snow is all colored crimson too, from a sort of dust which seems to cover it. This part is called the Crimson Cliffs, and they have been seen and described by about every Arctic expedition. In behind the cape is a great glacier which breaks off right into the water very conveniently. Cap’n Bob put the Morrissey right up alongside the ice wall and men jumped down on the glacier from the bowsprit and carried lines and fastened the ship so she lay right alongside, as if the ice were a wharf. Of course there was no wind and the water was quiet.
Then they took a hose and ran it up a way [[65]]and put one end in one of the many streams which were running down the top of the glacier, melted snow water. There was enough slope to carry the water into our big tank on deck. Also the sailors filled the barrels, using buckets. It was a great way to get a full load of real ice water.
While we were working in the Eskimos came off in their kayaks. We bought a fine kayak for a rifle and some ammunition. The very next day, when we were ashore, we found that the owner of the traded kayak already had a new one well started. I suppose in a few days more he was all fixed up with a boat again. And with his really fine rifle he ought to do most awfully well hunting. I certainly hope so. A kayak to an Eskimo is about the most important thing in life. I imagine a rifle would come next. Compared to an automobile with us, our auto is only a luxury which we really could get along without.
Tupiks, the Eskimo Summer Houses Made of Skins, at Karnah.
About a mile from the little settlement of [[66]]Cape York there is a “bird mountain.” That’s what they call the places where they find the dovkies, or little auks. These are small birds which live on mountain sides where there are talus slopes—that is, big slides of loose rocks all piled up. They make their nests down in the holes and cracks and they are very hard to find.