One or two other events have served to liven us up. Last night one of the natives at the Indian village died. It was what we expected, for he has been very sick for a week with pneumonia. This morning at daylight we noticed a smoke across the river and I walked over to investigate the cause. I regretted finding the obsequities closed and the four natives who had officiated just leaving. They had taken the dead man and all his personal belongings over to the bank of the river opposite the village, to a little knoll, where they built a platform on some poles leaned against each other for support. The body was wrapped in tent cloth and laid on this platform, which was about five feet above the ground—as high as the men could conveniently reach. After this the whole was firmly lashed together with walrus thong, so the winds and the dogs cannot tear it down. By the side of the scaffold the dead man's sled was laid upside down, and hung on the willows around were all the personal belongings of the deceased. He was "well-to-do," and these amounted to considerable as the Eskimos valued them. There were two nice reindeer skins, his clothes, mittens, muckluks, handkerchief, tin cup, etc. It seemed too bad to see those two deerskins left to decay in the weather, when the dead man's relatives are in sore need, but this is the invariable custom of these people. No worse than what occurs among Christians, when all available and unavailable funds are used to defray the expenses of an ostentatious funeral, leaving the family in destitution.
Joe Jury and Jack Messing, two of the Hanson Camp boys, spent the day with us and we had a big dinner. This "having company" disturbs the monotony of so much "prospecting," as we are doing these days.
Nov. 20, Sunday, 6 p. m.—To-day has been a very enjoyable one at this camp on the Kowak. In fact every day is. The Hanson boys were all up for Sunday services. There were also two men from the Jesse Lou Camp, fifteen miles below us, who are visiting the Hanson Camp. The latter have invited our whole crowd down for Thanksgiving dinner next Thursday. We look forward to a "big spread." for this camp is abundantly supplied with luxuries in the food line, as I can testify, having taken dinner with them twice already. They are well-to-do, educated men, full of spontaneous hilarity, and a great boon to the Penelope Camp. Solsbury is a correspondent of the San Jose "Mercury." He is a lawyer and of course a good talker. He tells stories by the hour.
This afternoon he got started from some cause—a predetermined one. I presume—and talked for two hours. He resembles the newspaper cuts of Mark Twain. It is very entertaining when he tells of his experience in lumbering in the Sierras. His own boys say that he talks so incessantly that they beg him to quit before they get tired of his wit or confiscate it entirely. Everyone grows tiresome to his fellows on a trip like this; it could not be otherwise. Constant association for months brings out a man's faults and traits of character so plainly that those which are of little note glare like tiger's eyes in the dark, and his company becomes disagreeable, living as we do in a little cabin, and looking in each other's faces if we take a stroll, to keep watch for frost bites. It is better to be in a large company than in a small crowd, so one can vary his personal reflections.
Jack Messing is a man one likes to meet. He is a German by birth and the most generous of men by nature. His great fault is generosity, a vice seldom met with in my remembrance, and the boys make him the butt of dozens of jokes. He would give away the last stitch of clothing he owns should a man ask him. He gives the Eskimos all sorts of things and feeds them whenever he can, which is all the time, for these natives know a friend and are faithful to him. He has previously worn a full beard, but to-day he stalked into church with his face shaven clean excepting a long fringe of whiskers left in a circle from ear to ear around under his chin. He wore a belt and pistol, and had a big tin star on his left coat lapel and carried a "she-la-ly." He looked exactly like an Irish policeman, only with the usual recognized attributes of the latter highly accentuated. He stated in Irish dialect that he was after the thief who had stolen a pail of water from a certain camp down the river. As this allusion was in reference to a well-known occurrence of a week ago, it was very disastrous to the serious feeling which should prevail at a religious meeting, and it was some time before the congregation could settle down to the business in hand.
This afternoon we had a regular concert. The violin, autoharp and banjo make fine harmony in this noiseless atmosphere, and we were soon expressing our feelings in jumping and dancing. Two pairs of bones rattled to such of the music as was appropriate, and it was no dull time in the Penelope Camp. Clyde took the pictures of the crowd. I say this afternoon, but I mean to-day: it is light for only about six hours, and at high noon the sun scarcely peeps above the hills to the southward. It appears to be sundown at noon, and the colors of sky and landscape are beautiful.
We have had our first snow, only an inch, but enough to whiten the landscape until the next wind, that is booked for a circus, whisks it all into the hollows and then covers it up with sand, giving it a sharp rap and bidding it "stay there."
This morning we saw a very beautiful mirage. The mountains and trees down the river from us were reflected in the sky above, upside down. Then for another fine display we have the aurora. Last night it appeared in the form of a great bow reaching nearly to the zenith. It consisted of many colored scintillating rays, which brightened and then almost disappeared, only to reappear in different form as if they had left the stage to change their costume. The aurora appears in different form each night. And there is the beautiful moonlight. The moon is above the horizon always now. It reverses the order of the sun and shines all day in winter, scarcely appearing in summer.
How the time flies, to me at least! Before we know it. Spring will tap at the door. The unbearable monotony of an Arctic winter, which some travelers dwell upon so desolately, is unknown to us so far, and I for one will never know it. During the past few weeks I have read. So far have devoured "Last Days of Pompeii." "In His Steps," "Opening of a Chestnut Burr," "The Honorable Peter Sterling," and "Etidorpha." I spent two weeks upon the latter and think it is a wonderful book, coming upon my thoughts here in the Arctics like a great semi-scientific visitor. There are more books in the neighborhood than I could read in two winters.
I have been given a new name—"Chickadee Joe." At the Hanson Camp they call me "Little Joe," to distinguish me from "Big Joe." We are very familiar with one another and change very suddenly from a highly intellectual crowd to one of stirring juvenility. We had such an unexpected romp the other day. There was about an inch of snow out on the smooth ice, and it was snowing great flakes still. Three of our boys were playing snowball with several of the Eskimo children, and washing each other's faces and slipping down all over the ice. Two Eskimo "belles" joined us, Kalhak and Aggi-chuck, and they did not hesitate to give us a return snowball or a face full of the same. They were strong, too, and several times I found myself sprawling on the ice and covered with snow, to the great amusement of everyone. After all that may be said of this strange people, they derive a sort of very human satisfaction from their cold and narrow life, and I shall always think of them as finding some happiness in the long winter along with the aurora and the moonlight.