CHAPTER VI
AN ARCTIC OASIS
In a little arctic oasis lives the meager and scattered handful of the Eskimo population—a little oasis along the frowning western coast of Northern Greenland between Melville Bay and Kane Basin. This region is three thousand miles north of New York City, as a steamer goes; it lies about half way between the Arctic Circle and the Pole, within the confines of the great night. Here, taking the mean latitude, for one hundred and ten days in summer the sun never sets; for one hundred and ten days in winter the sun never rises, and no ray of light save from the icy stars and the dead moon falls on the frozen landscape.
There is a savage grandeur in this coast, carved by eternal conflict with storms and glaciers, bergs and grinding ice-fields; but behind the frowning outer mask nestle in summer many grass-carpeted, flower-sprinkled, sun-kissed nooks. Millions of little auks breed along this shore. Between the towering cliffs are glaciers which launch at intervals their fleets of bergs upon the sea; before these cliffs lies the blue water dotted with masses of glistening ice of all shapes and sizes; behind the cliffs is the great Greenland ice cap, silent, eternal, immeasurable—the abode, say the Eskimos, of evil spirits and the souls of the unhappy dead.
In some places on this coast in summer, the grass is as thick and long as on a New England farm. Here bloom poppies, with dandelions, buttercups, and saxifrage, though to the best of my knowledge the flowers are all devoid of perfume. I have seen bumblebees even north of Whale Sound; there are flies and mosquitoes, and even a few spiders. Among the fauna of this country are the reindeer (the Greenland caribou), the fox—both blue and white—the arctic hare, the Polar bear, and perhaps once in a generation a stray wolf.
But in the long sunless winter this whole region—cliffs, ocean, glaciers—is covered with a pall of snow that shows a ghastly gray in the wan starlight. When the stars are hidden, all is black, void, and soundless. When the wind is blowing, if a man ventures out he seems to be pushed backward by the hands of an invisible enemy, while a vague, unnamable menace lurks before and behind him. It is small wonder the Eskimos believe that evil spirits walk upon the wind.
During the winter these patient and cheerful children of the North live in igloos, or huts, built of stones and earth. It is only when they are traveling, as sometimes during the moonlit period of the month, that they live in the snow igloos, which three good Eskimos can build in an hour or two, and which we built at the end of every day's march on our sledge journey to the Pole. In summer they live in the tupiks, or skin tents. The stone houses are permanent, and a good one will last perhaps a hundred years, with a little repairing of the roof in summer. Igloos are found in groups, or villages, at intervals along the coast from Cape York Bay to Anoratok. As the people are nomadic, these permanent dwellings belong to the tribe, and not to individuals, constituting thus a crude sort of arctic socialism. One year all the houses in a settlement may be occupied; the next year none, or only one or two.