Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, Volume 2

by Sir William Edward Parry

On the 17th the wind freshened almost to a gale from the northwest, with thicker and more constant snow than before. The thermometer fell to 16-1/2° at six A.M., rose no higher than 20° in the course of the day, and got down to 12° at night, so that the young ice began now to form about us in great quantities.

Appearances had now become so much against our making any farther progress this season, as to render it a matter of very serious consideration whether we ought to risk being shut up during the winter in the middle of the strait, where, from whatever cause it might proceed, the last year's ice was not yet wholly detached from the shores, and where a fresh formation had already commenced, which there was too much reason to believe would prove a permanent one. Our wintering in the strait involved the certainty of being frozen up for eleven months; a sickening prospect under any circumstances, but in the present instance, probably, fatal to our best hopes and expectations.

The young ice had now formed so thick about the Fury, that it became rather doubtful whether we should get her out without an increase of wind to assist in extricating her, or a decrease of cold. At ten A.M., however, we began to attempt it, but by noon had not moved the ship more than half her own length. As soon as we had reached the outer point of the floe, in a bay of which we had been lying, we had no longer the means of applying a force from without, and, if alone, should therefore have been helpless, at least for a time. The Hecla, however, being fortunately unencumbered, in consequence of having lain in a less sheltered place, sent her boats with a hawser to the margin of the young ice; and ours being carried to meet it, by men walking upon planks, at considerable risk of going through, she at length succeeded in pulling us out; and, getting into clear water, or, rather, into less tough ice, at three P.M. we shaped a course to the eastward.

In our return to Igloolik we encountered a severe gale, but we luckily discovered it at half past ten A.M., though such was the difficulty of distinguishing this from Neerlo-nakto, or either from the mainland, on account of the snow that covered them, that, had it not been for the Esquimaux huts, we should not easily have recognised the place. At noon on the 24th we arrived off the point where the tents had first been pitched, and were immediately greeted by a number of Esquimaux, who came running down to the beach, shouting and jumping with all their might.

As soon as we had anchored I went on shore, accompanied by several of the officers, to pay the Esquimaux a visit, a crowd of them meeting us, as usual, on the beach, and greeting us with every demonstration of joy. They seemed disappointed that we had not reached Akkolee, for they always receive with eagerness any intelligence of their distant country people. Many of them, and Toolemak among the number, frequently repeated the expressions "Owyak Na-o!" (no summer), "Took-too Na-o!" (no reindeer), which we considered at the time as some confirmation of our own surmises respecting the badness of the past summer. When we told them we were come to winter among them, they expressed very great, and, doubtless, very sincere delight, and even a few koyennas (thanks) escaped them on the first communication of this piece of intelligence.

We found these people already established in their winter residences, which consisted principally of the huts before described, but modified in various ways both as to form and materials. The roofs, which were wholly wanting in the summer, were now formed by skins stretched tight across from side to side. This, however, as we soon afterward found, was only a preparation for the final winter covering of snow; and, indeed, many of the huts were subsequently lined in the same way within, the skins being attached to the sides and roof by slender threads of whalebone, disposed in large and regular stitches. Before the passages already described, others were now added, from ten to fifteen feet in length, and from four to five feet high, neatly constructed of large flat slabs of ice, cemented together by snow and water. Some huts also were entirely built of this material, of a rude circular or octangular form, and roofed with skins like the others. The light and transparent effect within these singular habitations gave one the idea of being in a house of ground glass, and their newness made them look clean, comfortable, and wholesome. Not so the more substantial bone huts, which, from their extreme closeness and accumulated filth, emitted an almost insupportable stench, to which an abundant supply of raw and half-putrid walrus' flesh in no small degree contributed. The passages to these are so low as to make it necessary to crawl on the hands and knees to enter them; and the floors of the apartments were in some places so slippery, that we could with difficulty pass and repass, without the risk of continually falling among the filth with which they were covered. These were the dirtiest, because the most durable, of any Esquimaux habitations we had yet seen; and it may be supposed they did not much improve during the winter. Some bitches with young were very carefully and conveniently lodged in small square kennels, made of four upright slabs of ice covered with a fifth, and having a small hole as a door in one of the sides. The canoes were also laid upon two slabs of this kind, like tall tombstones standing erect; and a quantity of spare slabs lying in different places, gave the ground an appearance somewhat resembling that of a statuary's yard. Large stores of walrus' and seals' flesh, principally the former, were deposited under heaps of stones all about the beach, and, as we afterward found, in various other parts of the island, which showed that they had made some provision for the winter, though, with their enormous consumption of food, it proved a very inadequate one.

Leaving the Fury at seven A.M. on the 26th, and being favoured by a fresh easterly breeze, we soon cleared the southwest point of Igloolik; and, having passed the little island of Oogli=aghioo, immediately perceived to the W.N.W. of us a group of islands, so exactly answering the description of Coxe's Group, both in character and situation, as to leave no doubt of our being exactly in Captain Lyon's former track. Being still favoured by the wind and by the total absence of fixed ice, we reached the islands at eleven A.M., and, after sailing a mile or two among them, came at once in sight of two bluffs, forming the passage pointed out by Toolemak, and then supposed to be called Khemig. The land to the north, called by the Esquimaux Khiadlaghioo, was now found to be, as we had before conjectured, the southern shore of Richards's Bay. The land on our left or to the southward proved an island, five miles and a quarter in length, of the same bold and rugged character as the rest of this numerous group, and by far the largest of them all. To prevent the necessity of reverting to this subject, I may at once add, that two or three months after this, on laying before Ewerat our own chart of the whole coast, in order to obtain the Esquimaux names, we discovered that the island just mentioned was called Khemig, by which name Ormond Island was also distinguished; the word expressing, in the Esquimaux language, anything stopping up the mouth of a place or narrowing its entrance, and applied also more familiarly to the cork of a bottle, or a plug of any kind. And thus were reconciled all the apparent inconsistencies respecting this hitherto mysterious and incomprehensible word, which had occasioned us so much perplexity.

At daylight on the 27th we crossed to a small island at the margin of the ice; and leaving the boat there in charge of the coxswain and two of the crew, Mr. Ross and myself, accompanied by the other two, set out across the ice at seven A.M. to gain the main land, with the intention of determining the extent of the inlet by walking up its southern bank. After an hour's good travelling, we landed at eight A.M., and had scarcely done so when we found ourselves at the very entrance, being exactly opposite the place from which Mr. Richards and myself had obtained the first view of the inlet. The patch of ice on which we had been walking, and which was about three miles long, proved the only remains of last year's formation; so forcibly had nature struggled to get rid of this before the commencement of a fresh winter.

Walking quickly to the westward along this shore, which afforded excellent travelling, we soon perceived that our business was at an end, the inlet terminating a very short distance beyond where I had first traced it, the apparent turn to the northward being only that of a shallow bay.

Having thus completed our object, we set out on our return, and reached the boat at three P.M., after a walk of twenty miles. The weather fortunately remaining extremely mild, no young ice was formed to obstruct our way, and we arrived on board at noon the following day, after an examination peculiarly satisfactory, inasmuch as it proved the non-existence of any water communication with the Polar Sea, however small and unfit for the navigation of ships, to the southward of the Strait of the Fury and Hecla.