We now commenced a second drift with the pack, which took us down to latitude 64° north, and longitude 57° west, on the 25th April, when, towards midnight, a swell entered into the pack, and gradually increased, until the ice commenced churning up around the vessel, and dashing against her sides. These violent shocks continued throughout the morning, and really seemed as if they would soon destroy the ship. However, by the power of steam, we got the vessel’s head towards the swell, and with a strong fair wind, we commenced pushing out. After many narrow escapes from contact with the icebergs, we were by night in comparatively open water. We were free! and steered a course for the settlement of Holsteinborg, in Greenland, to recruit, and to prepare for another attempt. What a change on the following morning! Not a piece of ice could be seen, save a few distant bergs. We once more had our little vessel dancing under us upon the waters, innumerable sea-birds flew around us, and the very sea, in contrast to its late frozen surface, appeared alive with seals and whales. All nature seemed alive, and we felt as if we had risen from the dead! In the evening, the snow-covered peaks of Sukkertoppen were seen, and on the 28th of April, we moored in Holsteinborg harbour. Our anchors had not been down, nor had our feet touched the land since the 3rd of August. Ice-bound and imprisoned, we had drifted upwards of 1,200 miles. Need it be added how thankful we were to that kind Providence who had watched over us, and under Him to our gallant Captain, to whose unremitting attentions to our comforts and safety we owed our health and deliverance!
The winter in Greenland had been very severe, and the country was still snow-covered, and without an indication of spring. The natives were scarcely aroused from their winter’s sleep, and all our expectations of venison and ptarmigan feasts soon vanished. Very few reindeer had yet been taken, the season not commencing before July, when the hunters go up the fiords and kill them by thousands for the sake of their skins alone, leaving their carcasses to be devoured by the wolves.
Our men, however, were bent upon enjoying themselves, and as Jack’s wants are few, with the aid of a couple of fiddlers and some bottles of grog, they kept up one continuous ball—patronized by all the fair Esquimaux damsels—in the dance-house on shore. The whole population had turned out to meet us. We were entertained by the kind-hearted dames upon stockfish and seal-beef, and such luxuries as they could afford, with a hearty welcome to their neat and cleanly houses; and we in our turn endeavoured to do the hospitalities on board the Fox with pickled pork and preserved cabbage. It was new life to us, who had been confined so long in our little den, thus to mingle with these friendly people. Never was sympathy more needed. We arrived hungry and unshaven, our faces begrimed with oil-smoke, our clothes in tatters; the good women of Holsteinborg worked and washed for us, repaired our sadly disreputable wardrobes, danced for us, sang to us, and parted from us with tears and a few little presents by way of souvenirs, as if we could ever forget them. We wrote a few hasty letters, hoping that they would reach home in the autumn, and sailed once more upon our voyage.
We wished to call at Godhavn for another Esquimaux and some more dogs, besides a few stores, of which we stood in need; so, sailing up the coast, we arrived off the harbour on the night of May 10, but an impenetrable stream of loose ice blockaded the entrance. It was a wild night, and snowing heavily; sea, air, ice islands and icebergs seemed all mingled in one common haze. We endeavoured to haul off the land, and near midnight we narrowly escaped destruction upon an island, which, seen suddenly on the lee-beam, was at first taken for a berg. We all thought our ship must be dashed upon the rocks, and we were only saved by the presence of mind and seamanship of our Captain, who never left the deck, and wore the ship within a few yards of the shore. We anchored next day at the Whale-fish Islands, and fell in there with the Jane and Heroine whalers, whose captains gave us a true Scotch welcome, and ransacked their ships to find some little comforts for us. We again tasted the roast beef of old England. From the islands, we crossed to Godhavn, where finding the harbour still full of ice, we hauled into a rocky creek outside, a perfect little dock just capable of holding the ship, but exposed to southerly winds.
By the 25th of May we were prepared for another and final attempt to accomplish our mission, and to try our fortunes in the ice. We were certainly sobered down considerably by our late severe lesson; but although less confident in our own powers, a steady determination to do our best prevailed throughout the ship. Passing again through the Waigat, we stopped at the coal-deposits to fill up with fuel, and we shot a few ptarmigan while thus detained. We next stopped at Saunderson’s Hope, “the Cape where the fowls do breed,” but it was yet too early for eggs, and as the looms had no young to protect, they flew away in thousands at every discharge of a gun; we got but few of these, in our opinion, delicious birds. On the 31st, we made fast to an iceberg off Upernavik, to await the breaking up of the ice in Melville Bay. When we were in these latitudes the previous year, all things living were migrating southward, but now constant flights of sea-birds streamed northward, night and day, towards their breeding-places and feeding-grounds, and by sitting on the rocky points, and shooting them as they passed, we could generally make a fair bag. We were now almost subsisting on eider ducks and looms.
On June the 6th, we commenced our ice-struggles in Melville Bay, endeavouring, according to the usual mode of navigation, to push up, between the main pack and the ice still attached to the land, on all occasions when the winds moved the pack out, and left a space or lane of water. While thus following up the coast, on the 7th, we ran upon a reef of sunken and unknown rocks, and, on the tide falling, we lay over in such a manner as to threaten to fill upon the water again rising. We succeeded, however, in heaving off without damage.
After many escapes from being squeezed by the ice closing upon the land, and after three weeks of intense labour, we reached Cape York on June 26th. We there communicated with the natives who had so much assisted Dr. Kane, when he wintered in Smith Sound. These poor creatures live upon the flesh of the bear, seal, and walrus, which they kill upon the ice with bone spears. They are, perhaps, the only people in the world living upon a sea-coast without boats of any kind, and are so completely isolated, that, previous to their being first visited in 1818, they considered themselves to be the only people in the world. Dr. Kane left among them a Greenland Esquimaux, “Hans,” with his canoe. They told us that Hans was married, and was well, but that they had eaten the boat, besides many of their dogs, when hungry, during the last winter. We invited them on board, and they saw all our treasures of wood and iron; but they appeared to covet more than all, our dogs, and a few light pieces of wood, fit for spear-handles. We sent them away rejoicing over a few presents of long knives and needles, and they continued to dance and brandish the knives over their heads until we were out of sight.
Passing Cape Dudley Diggs, we landed at a breeding-place of rotges (little auks); the birds were sitting in myriads upon the ledges of the cliffs, and we shot a great many; but our time was too precious to wait long, even for fresh food, and so we bore away. We were considerably baffled with ice-floes in crossing over towards Lancaster Sound, and we did not reach that side until July 12.
Near Cape Horsburgh we found a small and enterprising family of natives, who had crossed over to this barren land from Pond’s Bay, two years previously, in search of better hunting ground. These poor people could give us no information of the missing ships; so we merely stopped to give them a few presents; we then steered for Pond’s Bay, from whence we had heard rumours of wrecks and wreck-wood being in the possession of the natives. In crossing Lancaster Sound, we were completely beset in the pack, and were even threatened with another drift out to sea like that of last year; we fortunately escaped, however, from the grip of the ice, after being carried for seven days in a helpless state, and as far as Cape Bathurst, before we could regain command over our ship.
At the entrance to Pond’s Bay, we found an old woman and a boy living in a skin tent, their tribe being some twenty-five miles up the inlet, at a village on the north side. This village, called Kapawroktolik, could not be reached by land, on account of the precipitous cliffs facing the sea. The inlet was, however, yet full of ice, and Captain M‘Clintock endeavoured to reach the natives by sledge. In the meantime, we on board were employed in collecting sea-birds from the neighbouring breeding cliffs of Cape Grahame Moore. We also frequently visited the land to collect cochlearia, or scurvy-grass, which grew luxuriantly about the old Esquimaux encampments. A trade was commenced with the old lady on shore; for we found that, concealed among the stones, she had a number of narwhales’ horns, teeth, and blades of whalebone, of which she would only produce one at a time, by way of enhancing the value by its apparent scarcity. Around her tent were snares set in all directions for catching birds, and she had a large quantity of putrid blubber lying en cache, which was her principal food and fuel. The boy brought us a hare, which he had shot with his bow and arrow. Captain M‘Clintock having failed to reach the village, owing to the ice being all adrift in the inlet, he determined to take the ship there if possible, and to take the old woman as pilot.