That night, after the igloo was closed and we were eating our evening meal, we heard a sled drive up to the door and supposed our fish had arrived; but what was our joy when we recognized Koumania's voice driving the dogs, and then heard Henry at the door of our igloo. We then learned that they had reached the Dangerous Rapids only that afternoon, and while building the igloos the three young men we had seen in the morning returned and reported having seen us up the river. As soon as Henry heard this he had the load dumped from one of the sleds, and took Koumania to drive and an Ooqueesiksillik native as guide, and came at once to report. He said it had been very difficult to get his party of natives away from the camps that they met daily, and that they had moved by portages, which doubled the distance. He had bought dog food of the natives all along the route, and his dogs were, consequently, in good order. They would remain in camp where they were a day or two to feed up the dogs and get what fish they wanted for his two sleds, and then join us on the 10th.
About five miles inland from Starvation Cove the natives had found during the summer the skeleton of a white man which no one had ever seen before. On the way down, Henry visited the place and erected a monument over the remains. The pieces of clothing found indicated that deceased was a sailor, not an officer. The finding of this grave is worthy of notice, as showing that the natives were thoroughly aroused by our visit and its object. We had promised them liberal rewards for everything of importance found, and for valuable information—that is, anything new—and were always particular to keep our promises. The consequence was that they had greatly aided us by searching everywhere within reach of their camps or hunting grounds. In approaching the Dangerous Rapids from Cockburn Bay, Henry had found an island where on the Admiralty chart is marked a point of the mainland. In fact, there is a delta at the mouth of the river. Narleyow led them to a place in the branch of the river flowing to the westward of this island, where he said a rocky ridge froze to the bottom, making a pocket which held fish. They dug four holes within an area of ten feet, and in one day caught fifty-seven of the immense salmon for which this river is famous. He cooked one for us, which was the largest I ever saw. Joe measured the cross-section of one he saw in the native igloos below our camp that measured over one foot. I asked him how much over, but he couldn't tell, he said, as his pocket measure was "only a foot long".
[Illustration: VIEW ON BACK'S RIVER.]
The largest number of fish caught here are what the natives call "cow-e-sil-lik," and are peculiar to these waters. They are something like very large herring, and the flesh much coarser than salmon or trout. All the fish here are quite fat, the salmon especially. We bought several bags of salmon oil from the natives, which we used, so long as it lasted, as a substitute for reindeer tallow, which is all gone now. The weather is intensely cold -62 degrees Fahrenheit on the 10th, the day the remainder of our party rejoined us at this camp. There was scarcely any wind, and it did not seem so cold as at -10 degrees or -20 degrees, with the wind blowing in one's face, as it was the last few days of our travelling, with the thermometer at -46 degrees and -48 degrees. Yet we were so well fortified against the cold by the quantities of fat we had eaten that we did not mind it. The prospect was that now we were out of fat we would suffer a great deal with the intense cold that we might expect in going across land from Back's River to Hudson's Bay.
The rapids on Back's River are all marked by open water, and are recognizable at a long distance by the column of black smoke arising from them like steam from a boiling caldron. The ice in the vicinity is dangerous to travel upon, there often being thin places, where the moving water has nearly, but not quite, cut through, and not distinguishable from the surrounding ice, which may be four or five feet thick. The natives test it, before going upon it, with a knife or stick, and know from the sound whether or not it is safe to travel upon. In some of the many open water places that we found in our journey up the river we could walk boldly up to the very edge and lie down and quench our thirst from the rushing torrent, while in other places it was not safe to go within several hundred yards of the open water. On the 20th we passed open rapids about half a mile long, where we had to take the land. From the top of the hill it was a grand spectacle to look down upon the seething torrent and see the great cakes of ice broken off above and crushed to atoms as they passed through and under the ice below.
[Illustration: THE DANGEROUS RAPIDS, BACK'S RIVER.]
We had hoped to have Narleyow go with us to Depot Island, as he had previously been up Back's River and knew a route overland by which in three days we could reach a river where some Kinnepatoos were encamped all the year round. Here we could refit with meat and clothing and follow the river, which flows into Chesterfield Inlet, and then keep upon the salt-water ice to Depot Island. But with true Inuit perverseness he decided at the last minute not to go. He, however, gave Toolooah minute directions for finding the place where to leave Back's River, which is nearly as far west as Lake McDougal, and the route overland, where we would find sledge tracks and footprints to guide us to the camp.
We found the travelling on Back's River much more tedious than we had anticipated, owing to the bare ice in the vicinity of the open-water rapids and the intense cold which kept the air filled with minute particles of ice from the freezing of the steam of the open water. These little particles of ice would fall upon the hard snow, which otherwise would have been good sledging, and remain separated from each other so that you could brush them up like sand, and were, in fact, nearly as hard as sand, so that it was almost impossible to drag the sledges along. The thermometer would frequently register -50 degrees and -60 degrees when we were moving with a strong wind blowing directly in our faces. Such travelling as this is simply terrible, and it is astonishing that we were able to do it without encountering any severe frost-bites. Indeed, we travelled one day with the thermometer -69 degrees, and, a gale blowing at this time, both white men and Inuits were more or less frost-bitten, but merely the little nippings of nose, cheeks, and wrists that one soon gets accustomed to in this country. As Lieutenant Schwatka says, it is like almost all other dangers that you hear and read about, they seem to dwindle when you meet them boldly face to face. A battle always seems more terrible to those in the rear than to those in the front lines.
It was a noticeable fact that our course up the river was considerably east of south, instead of west, as mapped upon the Admiralty chart. There could be no mistake in regard to this when we could daily see the sun rise and set on the right of our general line of travel. It was near the end of December before we reached the vicinity of Mount Meadowbank, though we had hoped to be far beyond it by that time. Storms had kept us in camp several days during the journey up the river, and our provisions were nearly all exhausted, so that we had to lie over to hunt for game. The hunters could find nothing near the river, and were obliged to go with a sled one day's march to the east, build an igloo, and hunt from there. It was terribly cold for them, sleeping in an igloo, without fire or blankets, merely a shelter from the wind, and forced, as they were, to sleep in their clothes. I have had such experience and know what it is. In such cases one suffers more from cold feet than anything else. They would be intensely cold with dry stockings, but one's stockings are always wet from perspiration after walking, and when compelled to wear them at night cause great suffering.
Equeesik killed four reindeer, and we had to wait for them to be brought in. At this time this was all the food we had, and before more was obtained we were upon short rations. The dogs were beginning to feel the effect of hard work, cold weather, and low diet, and already we had lost two fine young dogs that died in consequence of privation. Before we had reached Depot Island we lost twenty-seven dogs, all but four of which died from the hardships incident to the journey. All hands were in harness whenever we marched, and the work was too hard to admit of feeling the cold as the greatest discomfort we had to encounter.