Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

KALUTUNAH

What with sickness, accident, and other disaster, it became evident that the Advance would never leave her wintering place, and in July Kane set off on a wild endeavour to reach Beechey Island and obtain relief from the Franklin search vessels, but he had to return. Next month Hayes was sent to Upernivik, but he also came back. Finally in May, 1855, the brig was abandoned and the survivors began their journey to the south. Fortunately on the outward voyage Kane, at Fiskernaes, had engaged Hans Hendrik the Greenlander, then a boy of nineteen, who became quite a prominent figure in this and subsequent voyages, and without him and Kalutunah, chief of the Etah Eskimos, the whole party would have perished miserably.

Hans first appears when spearing a bird on the wing; Kalutunah's first appearance was equally encouraging. "The leader of the party," says Kane, "was a noble savage, greatly superior in everything to the others of his race. He greeted me with respectful courtesy, yet as one who might rightfully expect an equal measure of it in return, and, after a short interchange of salutations, seated himself in the post of honour at my side. I waited, of course, till the company had fed and slept, for among savages especially haste is indecorous, and then, after distributing a few presents, opened to them my project of a northern exploration. Kalutunah received his knife and needles with a 'Kuyanaka,' 'I thank you'; the first thanks I have heard from a native of this upper region. He called me his friend—'Asakaoteet,' 'I love you well'—and would be happy, he said, to join the nalegak-soak in a hunt."

And the journey ended in a hunt, for the dogs caught sight of a large male bear in the act of devouring a seal. The impulse was irresistible; Kane lost all control over both dogs and drivers, who seemed dead to everything but the passion of pursuit. Off they sped with incredible speed; the Eskimos clinging to their sledges and cheering their dogs with loud cries. A mad, wild chase, wilder than German legend—"the dogs, wolves; the drivers, devils." After a furious run, the animal was brought to bay, and the lance and rifle did their work. There were more bears and more hunts, and when Kane objected that this could hardly be called northern exploration, he was told by Kalutunah, significantly, that the bear-meat was absolutely necessary for the support of their families, and that the nalegak-soak had no right to prevent him from providing for his household. "It was a strong argument," says Kane, "and withal the argument of the strong."

THE EAST COAST OF SMITH SOUND

Bear-hunting hereabouts has its dangers, for the Eskimos of the north are not armed with bows and arrows as are those of the mainland. When the bear is found the dogs are set upon the trail, and the hunter runs by their side in silence. As he turns the angle ahead his game is in view before him, stalking probably along with quiet march, sometimes sniffing the air suspiciously, but making, nevertheless, for a clump of hummocks. The dogs spring forward, opening in a wild wolfish yell, the driver shrieking "Nannook! nannook!" and all straining every nerve in pursuit. The bear rises on his haunches, views his pursuers, and starts off at full speed. The hunter, as he runs, leaning over his sledge, seizes the traces of a couple of his dogs and liberates them from their burden. It is the work of a minute; for the speed is not checked and the remaining dogs rush on with apparent ease. Pressed more severely, the bear stands at bay while his two foremost pursuers halt at a short distance and quietly await the arrival of the hunter. At this moment the whole pack are liberated; the hunter grasps his lance, and, stumbling through the snow and ice, prepares for the encounter. Grasping the lance firmly in his hands he provokes the animal to pursue him by moving rapidly across its path, and then running as if to escape. But hardly is its long body extended for the tempting chase, before, with a quick jump, the hunter doubles on his track, and, as the bear turns after him again, the lance is plunged into the left side below the shoulder; and that so dexterously, that, if it be an inch or so wide of the proper spot, the spear has to be left in the bear and the man has to run for his life.

At this hazardous work Kalutunah was an adept, and he was equally skilful at a much less dangerous game, as Dr. Hayes was to discover when wintering in the schooner United States in Foulke Harbour, further south, in 1860-61. Hayes wished to learn how to catch auks, and the Eskimo gave him a lesson. Kalutunah carried a small net, made of light strings of sealskin knitted together, the staff by which it was held being about ten feet in length. Arriving about half-way up the cliffs he crouched behind a rock and invited the doctor to follow his example. The slope on which the birds were congregated was about a mile long, and in vast flocks they were sweeping over it a few feet above the stones down the whole length of the hill, returning higher in the air, and so round and round in a complete circuit. Occasionally a few hundreds or thousands would drop down as if following some leader, and in an instant the rocks, for some distance, would swarm with them as they speckled the hill with their black backs and white breasts. The doctor was told to lie lower, as the birds noticed him and were flying too far overhead. Having placed himself as Kalutunah approved, the birds began to sweep lower and lower in their flight until their track came well within reach. Then, as a dense portion of the crowd approached, up went the net, and half a dozen birds flew into it, and, stunned by the blow, could not recover before the Eskimo had slipped the staff through his hands and seized the net. With his left hand he pressed down the birds, while with the right he drew them out one by one, and, for want of a third hand, used his teeth to crush their heads. The wings were then locked across each other; and with an air of triumph the old chief looked around, spat the blood and feathers from his mouth, and went on with the sport, tossing up his net and hauling it in with much rapidity until he had caught about a hundred, and wanted no more.

Hayes did his best to disparage both Kalutunah and Hans, to whom he was not quite so much indebted as Kane, owing to his having given himself a better chance of retreat by not taking the schooner out of Smith Sound, his quarters in Hartstene Bay being only some twelve miles north of Cape Alexander. He had come to verify the existence of the open sea and sail to the Pole across it if he could; and he verified it to his own satisfaction. But he did not get so far north as Morton, although he claimed to have done so, for he climbed a cliff eight hundred feet high and looked out over the open water—in Kennedy Channel—and did not see the Greenland cliffs trending away northwards within thirty miles of him, and visible all the way up for two degrees north of Cape Constitution. Thus he left the map as Kane left it, with Greenland cut off short south of the eighty-first parallel, and his farthest seems to have been the south point of Rawlings Bay, where the Alert was forced on shore in August, 1876, in 80° 15´.