Among other things, it gave him the right to marry. He had already secured a bride of twelve, but, without this bear conquest, the match would not have been permanent. He danced with the romantic joy of a young lover. We drove the dogs off from the victim with lashes, and fell to and skinned and dressed the carcass. A taste was given to each dog. The balance was placed on the sledges. Soon we were to camp, waiting for the sled loads of bear meat.
A MECCA OF MUSK OX ALONG EUREKA SOUND
A NATIVE HELPER
AH-WE-LAH’S PROSPECTIVE WIFE
On the day following we started to hunt caribou. The sky was beautifully clear; the glacial wind was lost as we left the ice. The party scattered among numerous old bergs of the glacier. Koo-loo-ting-wah accompanied me. We aimed to rise to a small tableland from which I might make a study of the surroundings.
We had not gone inland more than a mile when we saw numerous fresh caribou tracks. Following these, we moved along a steep slope to the tableland above at an altitude of about one thousand feet. We peeped over the crest. Below us were two reindeer digging under the snow for food. The light was good, and they were in gun range. An Eskimo, however, gets very near his game before he chances a shot, so, winding about under the crest of a cliff or a snow-covered shelf of rocks, we got to their range and fired.
The creatures fell. They were nearly white, young, and possessed long fur and thick skins, which we needed badly for sleeping bags. With pocket knives, the natives skinned the animals and divided the meat in three packs while I examined the surroundings.
Part of the face of Humboldt Glacier, which extends sixty miles north, was clearly visible in cliffs of a dark blue color. The interior ice ran in waves like the surface of stormy seas, perfectly free of snow, with many crevasses. An odd purplish-blue light upon it was reflected to the skies, resembling to some extent a water sky. The snow of the sea ice below was of a delicate lilac. Otherwise, sky and land were flooded with the usual dominant purple of the Arctic twilight.
This glacier, the largest in Arctic America, had at one time extended very much farther south. All the islands, including Brook's, had at one time been under its grinding influence. As a picture it was a charming study in purple and blue, but the temperature was too low and the light too nearly spent to venture a further investigation.
The Eskimos fixed for me an extremely light pack. This was comfortably placed on my back, with a bundle of thongs over the forehead. The natives took their huge bundles, and, together, we started for camp. At every rest we cut off slices of caribou tallow. I was surprised to find that I had acquired a taste for a new delicacy. At camp we found the natives, all in good humor, awaiting us beside heaps of meat and skins. All had been successful in securing from one to two animals each in regions nearer by. In a further search they had failed to find promising tracks, so we proposed to return on the morrow, hoping to meet bears en route.