Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

On the 12th of May the Nulato River broke up and ran out on the top of the Yukon ice for more than a mile upstream; and in a few days the ice of the main river was coming down in a steady flow at a rate of five or six knots, surging into mountains as it met with obstacles, and grinding and crashing and carrying all before it, whole trees and banks being swept away on its victorious march, the water rising fourteen feet above the winter level. On the 26th Whymper and Dall started with two Indians and a steersman in a skin canoe, the river still full of ice, and navigation difficult. They had proceeded but a short distance when they came to bends, round which logs and ice were sweeping at a great rate, so that it was necessary for a man to stand in the bows of the canoe, with a pole shod at one end with iron, to push away the masses of ice and tangle of driftwood. They could often feel the ice and logs rolling and scraping under the canoe; and it was not the thickness of a plank between them and destruction, but that of a piece of sealskin a tenth of an inch thick.

On the 7th of June they were two hundred and forty miles above Nulato, at the junction of the Tanana, the furthest point reached by the Russians, and soon were in a part abounding with moose owing to their seeking refuge in the stream from the millions of mosquitoes. Here the Indian hunters were busy, not wasting powder and shot, but manœuvring round the swimming deer in their birch-bark canoes until they tired the victim out; and then stealthily approaching, securing it with a stab from their knives.

After twenty-six laborious days against the stream they reached Fort Yukon, the then furthest outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company, six hundred miles from Nulato, and, of course, managed and victualled from the east. Here the amount of peltry was astonishing, the fur-room of the fort containing thousands of marten skins, hanging from the beams, and huge piles of common furs lying around, together with a considerable number of foxes, black and silver-grey, and many skins of the wolverine, thought so much more of by the Indians than by any one else that they are used as a medium of exchange. All these furs were brought in from the surrounding districts, far and near, and traded for goods, as widely distributed, among the native tribes whose representatives gathered at the fort in such a miscellaneous crowd that perhaps half a dozen dialects were heard in a morning.

MOOSE-HUNTING ON THE YUKON

In the crowd the busiest and most prominent were the primitive Tananas, gay with feathers and painted faces, looking like survivals among the local Kutchins and the Kutchins of the upper river, the Birch River men, and the Rat River men by whom the skins were brought from the natives of the northern coast, as were the messages from the Franklin search parties. Indians were all of these, distinguishable by their wearing the hyaqua or tooth-shell (Dentalium entalis) through the septum of the nose, while the Mahlemut wears a bone on each side of the mouth, a practice common with all the Innuit, or Eskimo tribes, from the Alaska Peninsula to Point Barrow, unless some other form of labret happens to be the local fashion.

CHAPTER VIII
THE AMERICAN MAINLAND

The Hudson's Bay Company—Samuel Hearne—His journey down the Coppermine River—The North West Fur Company—Sir Alexander Mackenzie—His journey down the Mackenzie—Sir John Franklin's first land journey—Fort Enterprise—Back's journey to Athabasca—The rapids of the Coppermine—Point Turnagain reached—The Wilberforce Falls—The terrible crossing of the Barren Grounds—Franklin's second land journey—Richardson's voyage to the eastward—Discovers Wollaston Land and Dolphin and Union Strait—Franklin's voyage to Return Reef—Back's journey down the Great Fish River—Discovers Montreal Island and King William Land—The Parry Falls—Sir George Simpson—Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson—Exploration of the coast between Return Reef and Point Barrow—Simpson advances beyond Point Turnagain and discovers Victoria Land and Dease Strait—Their second voyage down the Coppermine—Discovery of Simpson Strait—Reach the Great Fish River—Their farthest east—Complete the survey of the northern coast between Boothia and Bering Strait—The first to find the North-West Passage.

For two elks and two black beavers, paid yearly whensoever the King of England entered their estate, the Hudson's Bay Company were, in 1670, presented by Charles II with the northern part of the American mainland, thus ensuring an ample stretch of British territory along the passage to the South Sea. But the company soon ceased to be interested in any such passage, finding quite enough to do in developing the very profitable fur trade of their vast possessions. With the exception of John Knight's disastrous voyage to Marble Island in 1719, whatever attempts at discoveries there may have been were kept quiet for fear of aiding their rivals the French to the south, who were fostering the trade in the region of the great lakes; and not until the French dominion ended in 1763 and the Frenchmen's interests were passing to an opposition British company was any effort made to explore the coast of the Polar Sea.