KALUTUNAH.
The dogs, however, gave them a great deal of trouble; and they were not surprised when, after a halt for coffee, and to make some necessary repairs, they saw the prisoners left in the snow hut coming after them in full pursuit. There was nothing for it but a determined front. Hayes and his companions got their rifles ready, and on the approach of the natives, levelled them, ready to fire. This brought the Esquimaux to their senses, and with many deprecatory gestures they promised to do all that was asked of them. The affair ended, happily, without bloodshed, and the natives accompanied Hayes to the brig, which he reached safely, as before recorded, after many adventures.
Kane makes the following characteristic entry for January 6th, 1855:—“If this journal ever gets to be inspected by other eyes, the colour of its pages will tell of the atmosphere it is written in. We have been emulating the Esquimaux for some time in everything else; and now, last of all, this intolerable temperature and our want of fuel have driven us to rely on our lamps for heat. Counting those which I have [pg 244]added since the wanderers came back, we have twelve constantly going, with the grease and soot everywhere in proportion. I can hardly keep my charts and registers in anything like decent trim. Our beds and bedding are absolutely black, and our faces begrimed with fatty carbon like the Esquimaux of South Greenland.”
Still the scurvy kept a number of the men in an unserviceable condition. Some of Kane’s remarks on the use of raw meats àpropos of their value in a medicinal sense, are interesting:—“I do not know,” says he, “that my journal anywhere mentions our habituation to raw meats, nor does it dwell upon their strange adaptation to scorbutic disease. Our journeys have taught us the wisdom of the Esquimaux appetite, and there are few amongst us who do not relish a slice of raw blubber or a chunk of frozen walrus-beef. The liver of a walrus (awuktanuk) eaten with little slices of his fat, of a verity it is a delicious morsel! Fire would ruin the curt, pithy expression of vitality which belongs to its uncooked pieces. Charles Lamb’s roast pig was nothing to awuktanuk. I wonder that raw beef is not eaten at home. Deprived of extraneous fibre, it is neither indigestible nor difficult to masticate. With acids and condiments it makes a salad which an educated palate cannot help relishing; and as a powerful and condensed heat-making and anti-scorbutic food it has no rival....
“My plans for sledging, simple as I once thought them, and simple certainly as compared with those of the English parties, have completely changed. Give me an eight-pound reindeer-fur bag to sleep in, an Esquimaux lamp with a lump of moss, a sheet-iron snow-melter or a copper soup-pot, with a tin cylinder to slip over it and defend it from the wind, a good pièce de résistance of raw walrus-beef, and I want nothing more for a long journey, if the thermometer will keep itself as high as minus 30°. Give me a bear-[pg 245]skin bag, and coffee to boot, and with the clothes on my back I am ready for minus 60°, but no wind.
ESQUIMAUX SNOW HOUSES.
“The programme runs after this fashion:—Keep the blood in motion, without loitering on the march; and for the halt raise a snow-house; or, if the snow lies scant or impracticable, ensconce yourself in a burrow or under the hospitable lee of an inclined hummock-slab. The outside fat of your walrus sustains your little moss fire; its frozen slices give you bread, its frozen blubber gives you butter, other parts make the soup. The snow supplies you with water; and when you are ambitious of coffee there is a bagful stowed away in your boot. Spread out your bear-bag, your only heavy movable; stuff your reindeer-bag [pg 246]inside, hang your boots up outside, take a blade of bone and scrape off all the ice from your furs. Now crawl in, the whole party of you, feet foremost, draw the top of your dormitory close headlong to leeward. Fancy yourself in Sybaris, and, if you are only tired enough, you may sleep—like St. Lawrence on his gridiron, or even a trifle better.”
On January 17th Kane sadly admits that the “present state of things cannot last.” They required meat above all things, and he determined to make a sledge journey to the Esquimaux huts at Etah in search of it. The preparations made, he started on the 22nd, Hans Christian being the only available man to accompany him, the rest being nearly all prostrated with scurvy, and some in a most dangerous condition. His journal gives a graphic account of the attempt, which was a failure.