The journey to the top of the glacier was much more difficult than in the previous autumn, the snow having in a great measure melted away, exposing the rocks, and embarrassing us in the ascent of the glacier's side, as well as of the gorge. Every thing was wet and mucky, overhead as well as under foot. The glacier-surface was shedding water from every side, like the roof of a house in a February thaw; and the little streams which flowed down its side, joining the waters of the melting snow, trickled underneath the glacier and reappeared in rushing torrents in the valley below from the glacier front; and thence poured into the lake, and from the lake to the sea.
I was fortunate in finding my stakes all standing; and, having brought up the theodolite, I repeated the angles which, with Sonntag, I had taken the previous October. These angles, when afterwards reduced, exhibited a descent of the centre of the glacier, down the valley, of ninety-six feet.
THE MUSK-OX.
Chester Valley has in former times been quite a resort of the Esquimaux. We found there several old ruins of huts, some of them with bones strewn about them, which showed that they were not of very ancient date. Among these bones, which were mostly of the walrus, seal, and bears, I found a part of the head of a musk-ox, and in such a position as appeared to render it probable that the animal of which it had formed a part had been the food of the former inhabitants of the ruin. Upon referring the matter to Kalutunah, he told me that the musk-ox was supposed to have been once numerous along the entire coast, and that they are still occasionally seen. No longer ago than the previous winter, a hunter of Wolstenholme Sound, near a place called Oomeak, had come upon two animals and killed one of them. It would seem from this circumstance that the musk-ox is not yet extinct in Greenland, as naturalists have supposed.
One day of my stay in the valley was occupied with running a set of levels down from the foot of the glacier to the sea, by which I found the former to be ninety-two feet above the latter; and another day was passed in hunting.
It would be impossible to convey an adequate idea of the immense numbers of the little auks which swarmed around us. The slope on both sides of the valley rises at an angle of about forty-five degrees to a distance of from three hundred to five hundred feet, where it meets the cliffs, which stand about seven hundred feet higher. These hill-sides are composed of the loose rocks which have been split off from the cliffs by the frost. The birds crawl among these rocks, winding far in through narrow places, and there deposit each a single egg and hatch their young, secure from their enemy, the foxes, which prowl round in great numbers, ever watching for a meal.
AUK-CATCHING.
Having told Kalutunah that I wanted to accompany him and help him at auk-catching, that worthy individual came to my tent early one morning, much rejoiced that the Nalegaksoak had so favored him, and, bright and early, hurried me to the hill-side. The birds were more noisy than usual, for they had just returned in immense swarms from the sea, where they had been getting their breakfast.[14] Kalutunah carried a small net, made of light strings of seal-skin knitted together very ingeniously. The staff by which it was held was about ten feet long. After clambering over the rough, sharp stones, we arrived at length about half-way up to the base of the cliffs, where Kalutunah crouched behind a rock and invited me to follow his example. I observed that the birds were nearly all in flight, and were, with rare exceptions, the males. The length of the slope on which they were congregated was about a mile, and a constant stream of birds was rushing over it, but a few feet above the stones; and, after making in their rapid flight the whole length of the hill, they returned higher in the air, performing over and over again the complete circuit. Occasionally a few hundreds or thousands of them would drop down, as if following some leader; and in an instant the rocks, for a space of several rods, would swarm all over with them,—their black backs and pure white breasts speckling the hill very prettily.
[14] The food of the little auk, as indeed the food of all of the Arctic water-fowl, consists of different varieties of marine invertebrata, chiefly crustacea, with which the Arctic waters abound. It is owing to the riches of the North water in these low forms of marine life that the birds flock there in such great number during the breeding season, which begins in June and ends in August.
While I was watching these movements with much interest, my companion was intent only upon business, and warned me to lie lower, as the birds saw me and were flying too high overhead. Having at length got myself stowed away to the satisfaction of my savage companion, the sport began. The birds were beginning again to whirl their flight closer to our heads,—so close, indeed, did they come that it seemed almost as if I could catch them with my cap. Presently, I observed my companion preparing himself as a flock of unusual thickness was approaching; and, in a moment, up went the net; a half dozen birds flew bang into it, and, stunned with the blow, they could not flutter out before Kalutunah had slipped the staff quickly through his hands and seized the net; with his left hand he now pressed down the birds, while with the right he drew them out, one by one; and, for want of a third hand, he used his teeth to crush their heads. The wing's were then locked across each other, to keep them from fluttering away; and, with an air of triumph, the old fellow looked around at me, spat the blood and feathers from his mouth, and went on with the sport, tossing up his net and hauling it in with much rapidity, until he had caught about a hundred birds; when, my curiosity being amply satisfied, we returned to camp and made a hearty meal out of the game which we had bagged in this novel and unsportsman-like manner. While an immense stew was preparing, Kalutunah amused himself with tearing off the birds' skins, and consuming the raw flesh while it was yet warm.