A lively party visited Chester Valley to-day. They started early with two sledges—Sonntag, with Jensen on one, Knorr and Hans on the other. Sonntag carried out the theodolite and chain to make a survey of the glacier. The others, of course, took their rifles. They saw numerous reindeer, but shot only three. One of these was a trophy of Mr. Knorr's, and had like to have cost him dearly. The poor animal had been badly wounded in the valley, and on three legs tried to climb the steep hill. Knorr, following it, reached at length within twenty yards, and brought it down with a well-directed shot; but the hunter and the victim being, unfortunately for the former, in a line, the hunter was carried off his legs, and the two together went tumbling over the rocks in a manner which, to those below, looked rather alarming. Report does not say how the boy extricated himself. It is lucky, however, that, instead of broken bones, he has only a few bruises to show for his adventure.
SONNTAG CLIMBS THE GLACIER.
Sonntag, too, had his story to tell. Reaching the glacier, he ascended to its surface, after travelling two miles along the gorge made by the glacier on the one side and the sloping mountain on the other. The ascent was made by means of steps cut with a hatchet in the solid ice. The glacier was found to be crossed in places by deep narrow fissures, bridged with a crust of snow, and so completely covered as to defy detection. Into one of these, fortunately a very narrow one, the astronomer was precipitated by the giving way of the bridge, and it is probable that he would have lost his life but for a barometer which he carried in his hand, and which, crossing the crack, broke the fall. The barometer was my best one, and is of course a hopeless wreck.
SEAL-HUNTING.—ESQUIMAU VILLAGE.
Carl and Christian, my two Danish recruits from Upernavik, have been setting nets for seal. These nets are made in the Greenland fashion, of seal-skin thongs, with large meshes. They are kept in a vertical position under the ice by stones attached to their lower margin; and the unsuspecting seal, swimming along in pursuit of a school of shrimps for a meal, or seeking a crack or hole in the ice to catch a breath of air, strikes it and becomes entangled in it, and is soon drowned. Most of the winter seal-fishing of Greenland is done in this manner; and it is in this that the dogs are most serviceable, in carrying the hunter rapidly from place to place in his inspection of the nets, and in taking home the captured animals upon the sledge. This species of hunting is attended with much risk, as the hunter is obliged to run out on the newly-formed ice. Jensen has enlivened many of my evenings with descriptions of his adventures upon the ice-fields while looking after his nets. On one occasion the ice broke up, and he was set adrift, and would have been lost had not his crystal raft caught on a small island, to which he escaped, and where he was forced to remain without shelter until the frost built for him a bridge to the main land. The hardihood and courage of these Greenland hunters is astonishing.
Although the wind has been blowing hard, I have strolled over to the north side of the Fiord on a visit to the Esquimau village of Etah, which is about four miles away in a northeasterly direction. The hut there, as I had already surmised, was uninhabited, but bore evidence of having been abandoned only a short time previous. This is the first time that I have seen the place since the night I passed there in December, 1854,—a night long to be remembered.
Near by the hut I discovered a splendid buck leisurely pawing away the snow and turning up the dried grass and moss, of which he was making a well-earned if not inviting meal. Approaching him on the leeward side, I had no difficulty in coming within easy range; but I felt reluctant to fire upon him. He was so intent upon his work, and seemed so little to suspect that these solitudes, through which he had so long roamed unmolested, contained an enemy, that I almost relented; and I did not pull trigger until I had aimed a third time. But, notwithstanding this irresolution, his splendid haunch now hangs in the rigging, and is set apart for some future feast; and I have no doubt that I shall then eat my share of him without once thinking that I had done a deed of cruelty.
October 20th.
HANS AND PETER.
MY ESQUIMAU PEOPLE.