ARCTIC SUMMER ABODES.
After toiling round the base of a precipice, we came rather suddenly in view of a small semicircular bay; the cliffs on either side were 800 or 900 feet high, remarkably forbidding and desolate; the mouth of a valley or wide mountain gorge opens out into its head. Here, in the depth of the bay, upon a low flat strip of land, stood seven tents,—the summer village of Kaparōktolik. I never saw a locality more characteristic of the Esquimaux than that which they have here selected for their abode; it is widely picturesque in the true Arctic application of the term.
AN ARCTIC VILLAGE.
Although August had arrived, and the summer had been a warm one, the bay was still frozen over; and if there was an ice-covered sea in front, there was also abundance of ice-covered land in the rear—a glacier occupied the whole valley behind and to within 300 yards of the chosen spot!
The glacier's height appeared to be from 150 to 200 feet; its sea-face extending across the valley,—a probable width of 300 or 400 yards,—was quite perpendicular, and fully 100 feet high. All last winter's snow had thawed away from off it and exposed a surface of mud and stones, fissured by innumerable small rivulets, which threw themselves over the glacier cliffs in pretty cascades, or shot far out in strong jets from their deeply serried channels in its face; whilst other streamlets near the base burst out through sub-glacial tunnels of their own forming.
What a strange people to confine themselves to such a mere strip of beach! Upon each side they have towering rocky hills rising so abruptly from the sea, that to pass along their bases or ascend over their summits, is equally impossible; whilst a threatening glacier immediately behind, bears onward a sufficient amount of rock and earth from the mountains whence it issues, to convince even the unreflecting savage of its progressive motion.
The Village and Glacier of Kaparōktolik, Greenland.
The land is devoid of game, although lemmings and ermines are tolerably numerous; it only supplies the moss which the natives burn with blubber in their lamps, and the dry grass which they put in their boots; even the soft stone, lapis ollaris, out of which their lamps and cooking vessels are made and the iron pyrites with which they strike fire, are obtained by barter from the people inhabiting the land to the west of Navy Board Inlet. But the sea compensates for every deficiency. The assembled population amounted to only 25 souls: 9 men, the rest women and children.
All of them evinced extreme delight at seeing us; as we approached the huts the women and children held up their arms in the air and shouted "Pilletay" (give me), incessantly; the men were more quiet and dignified, yet lost no opportunity, either when we declined to barter, or when they had performed any little service, to repeat "Pilletay" in a beseeching tone of voice.