EXPERIENCES IN WILD LIFE.
NECESSITIES OF TRAVELLERS IN WILD COUNTRIES.—CONCEALING DOG FOOD.—DEFENCES AGAINST WILD ANIMALS.—HONESTY OF CERTAIN NATIVES.—THE AUTHOR’S EXPERIENCE WITH SIBERIAN KORAKS.—CONCEALING FOOD IN ICEBERGS.—BARON WRANGELL AND DR. KANE.—STORY OF BLANKETS AND BLANKET STRAPS.—A CACHE.—WHAT IT IS.—AUTHOR’S FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH ONE.—A FRAUDULENT GRAVE.—CACHE OF A WHISKEY KEG, AND HOW IT WAS MADE.—“TWO-BOTTLE CAMP.”—CONSOLATION OF A HARD DRINKER.—AN EXTENSIVE CACHE.—HOW THE INDIANS FOUND IT, AND WHAT BECAME OF THEM.—JIM FOSTER AND HIS TENDER HEART.
In all sparsely settled or wild countries, travellers when on journeys are frequently obliged to carry provisions for their entire trip. If they are to go back over the same route they follow in their outward course, they do not carry their provisions the whole distance, but leave them at different points, where they can find them on their return. Especially is this the case where food for the draught or riding animals must be provided. In Northern America and Asia, and in Greenland, Spitzbergen, and other arctic countries, dogs are used for draught purposes; and where a party is travelling it is always necessary to carry a supply of dog food. The favorite article for feeding dogs in winter is dried fish, and great quantities are prepared in the summer months, and stored away where they can be safely kept.
CONCEALING FOOD IN ICE.
An expedition starting in winter for a journey of ten days will carry ten days’ supply of food for dogs and men. If the journey exceeds that time, the allowance must be reduced; and sometimes the party will be on the point of starvation. At the end of each day’s journey, it is customary, if the party is to return by the same route, to conceal a day’s supply of food, and thus lighten the load as much as possible. There are several ways of making these deposits. The first requisite is generally to protect the food against wild animals. Poles eight or ten feet high are set upright, and a rude box is made at the top, where the food can be placed. Wolves and foxes are the principal four-footed thieves; they cannot climb, and therefore anything protected in this way is safe from their depredations. Sometimes a hole is made in the ground, and the deposit is placed within it. This can only be safely done in winter, as the soft earth in summer can be dug up by the enterprising and keen-scented animals with very little trouble. A hole in winter can be made secure by pouring water over the replaced earth, and allowing it to freeze. Wolves and foxes can do many things, but they have not yet invented any way to dig through frozen ground. They are wise enough not to attempt it, as they would need a new set of paws every half hour if they followed digging in frozen earth as a means of livelihood.
Baron Wrangell, Dr. Kane, and other arctic explorers, when travelling on the ice of the Polar Sea, used to make holes in the bergs and hummocks, and sometimes in the level ice, which frequently gets a thickness of eight or ten feet. After they had made the deposit in a hole of this sort, they would fit a block of ice as nearly as possible to the opening. After inserting the block they poured water into the interstices, and allowed it to freeze, so as to make the place as solid and even as ever. This was a sufficient protection against small animals, but not always against polar bears. These huge beasts would scent out the food, and with their powerful claws they managed to dig into the ice, and help themselves. Even if the food had been put into strong boxes before it was deposited, the beasts did not seem to be hindered in getting at it, as they would break the boxes as easily as a rat would open an egg-shell. Dr. Kane once tried the plan of sealing the food in sheet iron cans pointed at the ends. Sometimes the bears tossed these cans a while, and then abandoned them but they generally managed to throw them about with sufficient violence to break the shell and reach the contents. A healthy and full-grown polar bear is a powerful beast, and has no respect for the laws affecting the ownership of property.
HONEST ABORIGINALS.
In the extreme north deposits of food are in much greater danger from four-footed beasts than from men. In the first place, the beasts are much more numerous than men, and consequently want more to eat. Men are not very likely, in those wild countries, to come near the deposits, especially in arctic explorations; and even when they find them they are not generally in the habit of stealing. The Esquimaux of the region where Dr. Kane made his explorations are somewhat thievish when they have the opportunity, but the natives of Northern Asia have a high reputation for honesty. There are some tribes that have never learned to steal; they have had very little intercourse with white men, and are thoroughly uncivilized. As an illustration of this barbarous honesty, I will give my own experience among the Koraks of North-eastern Siberia.
My first acquaintance with them was on the shores of the Okhotsk Sea, where they had assembled with their herds of reindeer. When we went ashore we managed somehow to wet our blankets, and I hung mine up to dry. I expressed my fears that the blankets would be stolen by some of the Koraks, but was told that everything would be safe. When we camped at night, my blankets were dry, and I slept in them. But I forgot the blanket-straps, and there they hung in the open air all night, and all the next day.
Now, it is a moral or an immoral certainty that a pair of leather straps, new, and in good condition, in almost any other country would have been taken in hand by somebody who couldn’t bear to see them unused. But when I finally thought of my straps, I found them hanging where I had left them thirty hours before, in full view of a dozen or more natives, who were dressed in skins, and didn’t know anything more about civilization and the customs of fashionable society than a horse knows about running a sewing-machine.