Secrets of Polar Travel

by Robert E. Peary

The inert collapse of half a ton or more of flesh and bone under the impact of a bullet in the brain is sufficient to tilt a small ice-pan and slide the dead walrus into the water. The slightest touch of the ship as she forges alongside the cake to hoist the animal on board will have the same result, and on two or three occasions when I have lowered a boat to put a man on the ice and make a line fast to the animal, the man’s weight has been enough to disturb the balance and throw the precious meat into the water.

Now that the United States has given up all her rights in Greenland to Denmark, it is quite likely that an embargo on walrus hunting in the Whale Sound region will be attempted as has been the case for years in southern Greenland.

In such event polar expeditions by the Smith Sound route may find it desirable to obtain dog food in bulk for winter use at headquarters from the whale factories of the Labrador coast. It will not be as satisfactory as the walrus meat, but it may serve the purpose.

Seen a few feet under one’s boat in the pale-green, icy water of Whale Sound, a herd of rushing walrus, as swift and sinuous as seals, the great uncouth, gray shapes rolling from side to side to leer upward with little, bloodshot eyes and show a flash of white tusks, is like a nightmare dream of the inferno.

Stuffed and baked, the heart of the walrus is as great a delicacy as a beef heart. Dr. Senn, a Chicago traveler and writer, a summer visitor on one of my auxiliary ships, was greatly captivated by it, and Percy, my Newfoundland steward of numerous expeditions, incited by the praise of his discovery, became a blue-ribbon chef in cooking it. Some explorers have highly praised the walrus liver and urged its value as a preventive and cure for scurvy. Never having been obliged to use it for that purpose, and spoiled perhaps by the more delicate seal, reindeer, musk-ox, and hare livers, the members of my expeditions never seemed to care for it.

The thick, tough hide of the walrus furnishes a dog food of wonderful staying qualities. A small piece of it when frozen will keep the strongest-jawed Eskimo dog occupied and interested for hours in his efforts to soften it to the point where he can swallow it whole.

I have always taken on just as much walrus meat and blubber as the ship, already filled almost to her capacity with coal, etc., would allow—some fifty walrus, perhaps. This, together with seventy or more tons of whale meat bought at Labrador, has carried the dogs through the winter, and has also helped feed the Eskimos, who virtually live on narwhal, seal, and walrus. The narwhal and seal also make valuable dog food, the former being found in the Whale Sound region; but on my last expedition north there was virtually no narwhal hunting.

Seals are obtained in abundance at Cape Chalon, the spring hunting-ground of the Eskimos, and at the end of some seasons large piles of this meat are stacked along the ice-foot at the village. Equipped with a seal spear, and dressed in the warmest of furs, with feet padded with bearskin to muffle their tread, and with small three-legged stools, men, boys, and even women may be seen sitting for hours beside a hole in the ice waiting for a seal to appear for a breath of air. Occasional seals were always captured on our way to and from winter quarters, and they frequently appeared near the ship during the winter.

For the fresh-meat supply of my men I have always depended on the musk-ox, and on all my expeditions have been able to find numbers of these animals within a radius of a hundred miles of the ship or other winter quarters. They can be found at any time of the year, even during the long polar night, by those who know how. The grass and creeping-willows furnish subsistence for them the year round, the strong winds peculiar to those regions sweeping large tracts of land bare of snow in winter, thus enabling them to eke out an existence.

I killed my first musk-ox in 1892 on the northeast coast of Greenland near Independence Bay, and three years later discovered tracks of fifteen or twenty in the same region, and secured six of them. During my expedition of 1898–1902 numerous musk-oxen were killed about Fort Conger, seventy-odd in its immediate neighborhood; forty in the region from Discovery Harbor westward by way of Black Rock Vale, and the southern side of Lake Hazen, seventeen about St. Patrick’s Bay, three beyond Black Cape, near the winter quarters of the Alert; sixteen in Musk Ox Valley; twelve at the Bellows and Black Rock Vale; seventeen on Bache Peninsula; twenty at the northern arm of Buchanan Bay, and one at its southern arm; seven on the ice-cap of Ellesmere Land; and in the autumn of 1900 one hundred and one were killed in various localities from Discovery Harbor to Very River, ninety-two of them being secured in less than three weeks. In the region about Cape Morris K. Jesup two herds numbering fifteen and eighteen animals were discovered, and two or three stray ones, but only four of these were needed for my party.