A SURVEYOR'S CHAIN.
McCormick, who is general tinker and the very embodiment of ingenuity, has been making for me a surveyor's chain out of some iron rods; and a party, consisting of Sonntag, McCormick, Dodge, Radcliffe, and Starr, have been surveying the bay and harbor with this chain and the theodolite. They seem to have made quite a frolic of it, which, considering the depressed state of the thermometer, is, I think, a very commendable circumstance. Barnum and McDonald have been given a holiday, and they went out with shot-guns after reindeer. They report having seen forty-six, all of which they succeeded in badly frightening, and they also started many foxes. Charley also had a holiday, but, disdaining the huntsman's weapons, he started on a "voyage of discovery," as he styled it. Strolling down into the bay above Crystal Palace Cliffs,[4] he came upon an old Esquimau settlement, and, finding a grave, robbed it of its bony contents, and brought them to me wrapped up in his coat. It makes a very valuable addition to my ethnological collection, and a glass of grog and the promise of other holidays have secured the coöperation of Charley in this branch of science. Charley, by the way, is one of my most reliable men, and gives promise of great usefulness. Indeed, everybody in the vessel seems desirous of adding to my collections; but this zeal has to-day led me into a rather unpleasant embarrassment. Jensen, whose long residence among the Esquimaux of Southern Greenland has brought him to look upon that people as little better than the dogs which drag their sledges, discovered a couple of graves and brought away the two skin-robed mummies which they enclosed, thinking they would make fine museum specimens; and in this surmise he was quite right; but, unfortunately for the museum, Mrs. Hans was prowling about when Jensen arrived on board, and, recognizing one of them by some article of its fur clothing as a relative, she made a terrible ado, and could not be quieted even by Jensen's assurance that I was a magician, and would restore them to life when in my own country; so, when I learned the circumstances, I thought it right, in respect to humanity if not to science, to restore them to their stony graves, and had it done accordingly.
[4] Discovered and so named by Captain Inglefield, R. N., in August, 1852.
ESQUIMAU GRAVES.
The Esquimau graves appear to be numerous about the harbor, giving evidence of quite an extensive settlement at no very remote period. These graves are merely piles of stones arranged without respect to direction, and in the size of the pile and its location nothing has been consulted but the convenience of the living. The bodies are sometimes barely hidden. Tombs of the dead, they are, too, the mournful evidences of a fast dwindling race.
October 18th.
I have been well repaid for my course in re-interring the mummies; for I have won the gratitude of my Esquimau people, and Hans has brought me in their places two typical skulls which he found tossed among the rocks. The little shrimps are also doing me good service. They have prepared for me several skeletons of all varieties of the animals which we have captured. I first have the bulk of the flesh removed from the bones, then, placing them in a net, they are lowered into the fire-hole, and these lively little scavengers of the sea immediately light within the net, in immense swarms, and in a day or so I have a skeleton more nicely cleaned than could be done by the most skillful of human workmen.
PUTREFACTION AT LOW TEMPERATURES.
A party brought in to-day the carcass of a reindeer which I mortally wounded yesterday, but was too much fatigued to follow. They found its tracks, and, after pursuing them for about a mile, they came upon the animal lying in the snow, dead. It is now discovered that putrefaction has rendered it unfit for use, a circumstance which seems very singular with the temperature at ten degrees below zero. A similar case is mentioned by Dr. Kane as having occurred within his own observation, and Jensen tells me that it is well known that such an event is not uncommon at Upernavik. Indeed, when the Greenlanders capture a deer they immediately eviscerate it. Puzzling as the phenomenon appears at first sight, it seems to me, however, that it admits of ready explanation. The dead animal is immediately frozen on the outside; and there being thus formed a layer of non-conducting ice, as well as the pores being closed, the warmth of the stomach is retained long enough for decomposition to take place, and to generate gas which permeates the tissues, and renders the flesh unfit for food; and this view of the case would seem to be confirmed by the fact that decomposition occurs more readily in the cold weather of midwinter than in the warmer weather of midsummer.
October 19th.