Ford had no tobacco but the soggy black chewing plug dispensed to Eskimos, and we shared with him our remaining plugs and for two hours sat in the cozy Post house kitchen smoking and chatting. Over a year had passed since his last communication with the outside world, for no vessel other than the Pelican when she makes her annual call with supplies ever comes here, and we therefore had some things of interest to tell him.
Our host I soon discovered to be a man of intelligence. He was sixty-six years of age, a native of the east coast of Labrador, with a tinge of Eskimo blood in his veins, and as familiar with the Eskimo language as with English. For twenty years, he informed me, with the exception of one or two brief intervals, he had been buried at George River Post, and was longing for the time when he could leave it and enjoy the comforts of civilization.
After our chat we were shown to our room, where the almost forgotten luxuries of feather beds and pillows, and the great, warm, fluffy woolen blankets of the Hudson’s Bay Company—such blankets as are found nowhere else in the world—awaited us. To undress and crawl between them and lie there, warm and snug and dry, while we listened to the rain, which had begun beating furiously against the window and on the roof, and the wind howling around the house, seemed to me at first the pinnacle of comfort; but this sense of luxury soon passed off and I found myself longing for the tent and spruce-bough couch on the ground, where there was more air to breathe and a greater freedom. I could not sleep. The bed was too warm and the four walls of the room seemed pressing in on me. After four months in the open it takes some time for one to accustom one’s self to a bed again.
The next day at high tide, with the aid of a boat and two Eskimos, we recovered our things from the rocks where we had cached them.
There were no Eskimos at the Post competent or willing to attempt the open-boat journey to Fort Chimo. Those that were here all agreed that the ice would come before we could get through and that it was too dangerous an undertaking. Therefore, galling as the delay was to me, there was nothing for us to do but settle down and wait for the time to come when we could go with dog teams overland.
On Thursday afternoon, three days after our arrival at the Post, we saw the Eskimos running toward the wharf and shouting as though something of unusual importance were taking place and, upon joining the crowd, found them greeting three strange Eskimos who had just arrived in a boat. The real cause of the excitement we soon learned was the arrival of the Pelican. The strange Eskimos were the pilots that brought her from Fort Chimo. All was confusion and rejoicing at once. Ford manned a boat and invited us to join him in a visit to the ship, which lay at anchor four miles below, and we were soon off.
When we boarded the Pelican, which, by the way, is an old British cruiser, we were received by Mr. Peter McKenzie, from Montreal, who has superintendence of eastern posts, and Captain Lovegrow, who commanded the vessel. They told us that they had called at Rigolet on their way north and there heard of the arrival of Richards, Pete and Stanton at Northwest River. This relieved my mind as to their safety.
We spent a very pleasant hour over a cigar, and heard the happenings in the outside world since our departure from it, the most important of which was the close of the Russian-Japanese war. We also learned that the cause of delay in the ship’s coming was an accident on the rocks near Cartwright, making it necessary for them to run to St. Johns for repairs; and also that only the fact of the distressful condition of the Post, unprovisioned as they knew it must be, had induced them to take the hazard of running in and chancing imprison-ment for the winter in the ice.
Mr. McKenzie extended me a most cordial invitation to return with them to Rigolet, but the Eskimo pilots had brought news of large herds of reindeer that the Indians had reported as heading eastward toward the Koksoak, the river on which Fort Chimo is situated, and I determined to make an effort to see these deer. This determination was coupled with a desire to travel across the northern peninsula and around the coast in winter and learn more of the people and their life than could be observed at the Post; and I therefore declined Mr. McKenzie’s invitation.
Captain James Blanford, from St. Johns, was on board, acting as ship’s pilot for the east coast, and he kindly offered to carry out for me such letters and telegrams as I might desire to send and personally attend to their transmission. I gladly availed myself of this offer, as it gave us an opportunity to relieve the anxiety of our friends at home as to our safety. Captain Blanford had been with the auxiliary supply ship of the Peary Arctic expedition during the summer and told us of having left Commander Peary at eighty degrees north latitude in August. The expedition, he told us, would probably winter as high as eighty-three degrees north, and he was highly enthusiastic over the good prospects of Peary’s success in at least reaching “Farthest North.”