Before resuming our march there was a painful scene at the sledges. Toolooah heard of the death of his mother, in whose charge he had left his little daughter when starting on the expedition, and a group of relatives and friends stooped around the sledge weeping, the women giving vent to their feelings in prolonged wails and moaning. This lasted for about ten minutes, during which I learned from the other natives that they had a very severe winter and much suffering for lack of food. Several deaths had occurred in the tribes since we left. A large portion was now at Wager River, but would be down in the spring or early in the summer. We afterward learned that they, too, had suffered for food. After shaking hands with other old friends at the camp we went into Armow's igloo and ate some frozen walrus meat and blubber that tasted delicious to us, the blubber especially, it having been so long since we had eaten fat food, though so much requiring it. They had but a short supply of meat on hand when we arrived, and the advent of twenty-two hungry travellers and nineteen starving dogs soon reduced their stores, so that, a storm at once setting in from the north-west, making it a useless task to hunt walrus, there was a famine in camp before the end of a week.
They can only hunt walrus successfully at Depot Island with a southerly wind to hold the ice-pack to the floe. Seals are hunted with dogs to find the blow-hole of amog-low, or seal igloo, which, often covered with loose snow, is hidden from the hunter. When found, a wall of snow is built as a protection against the wind, while the hunter waits for hours, and sometimes for days, until the seal comes up to blow, when he is struck through the hole in the ice with a spear and held by a line attached to the boat. It is necessary for this style of hunting that the weather should be such that one can see at a short distance, or on the trackless waste of smooth ice the hunter is apt to get lost. Most of the time we were here it was blowing so that land could not be seen at one hundred yards' distance. It might be well to explain here that, when the wind blows, the dry snow fills the air so that it is thicker than the severest snow-storm in the temperate zone. The Inuits call this condition of affairs "pairk-se-uk-too", and one can witness it almost daily during the winter.
It was the eighth day after our arrival before the storm abated sufficiently to let the hunters out with any prospect of success. The wind was still from the north, and it was very provoking that they could see plenty of walrus and seal on the pack, but far beyond their reach. Affairs were getting desperate now. In the last five days we had but one meal a day, composed at first of about a quarter of a pound of walrus or seal meat, but lately of "kow"—that is, the thick hide of the walrus, with a thin cover of short hair on it, such as is seen on the old fashioned seal-skin trunks. As the hunters got nothing, we were without even our "kow" the next day, with the prospect of remaining without food until Eeglee-leock and Nanook got back from Marble Island, where they went for relief from the natives there three days ago. Lieutenant Schwatka went with them in order to try to get some food for us from the ship. All they had to eat on the way down was walrus blubber, and so great was their anxiety for us that Lieutenant Schwatka and Eeglee-leock left the sled behind at Chesterfield Inlet with Nanook, and walked one day and night without resting, reaching Marble Island at six o'clock in the morning, after a walk of about seventy-five miles.
One of the women in our camp died this day, her death hastened by privation. She was the wife of Te-wort, or "Papa," as he is universally called, not only by the white visitors to Hudson's Bay, but by his own people. The benignant Inuit custom that allows a plurality of wives to those that desire it, leaves him not altogether comfortless in his old age; but "Cockeye" was his first favorite wife, and the mother of the great majority of his children. The funeral ceremonies covered four days, and the morning of the fifth "Papa" visited the grave, and after his return there was nothing to prevent the usual course of events which the burial and mourning customs had interrupted. Even the dogs could be fed if there was anything to give them to eat.
It was a mournful camp after the hunters got in, Friday night, the 12th of the month, empty handed. They all felt the danger that again threatened them, as it had done twice before during the winter, when they had to kill and eat some of their starving dogs. People spoke to each other in whispers, and everything was quiet, save for the never-ceasing and piteous cries of the hungry children, begging for food which their parents could not give them. Most of the time I stayed in bed, trying to keep warm and to avoid exercise that would only make me all the more hungry. It was impossible to keep warm this night, and my aching limbs drove sleep from my eyes.
The closing ceremony was a most touching one. After "Papa" had returned from the grave, Armow went out of doors and brought in a piece of frozen something that it is not polite to specify further than that the dogs had entirely done with it, and with it he touched every block of snow in a level with the beds of the igloo. The article was then taken out of doors and tossed up in the air to fall at his feet, and by the manner in which it fell he could joyfully announce that there was no liability of further deaths in camp for some time to come.
The wind was from the east Saturday, and a little better for hunting, so the men were off bright and early. About noon there was a joyful sound in camp. The women and children ran into our igloo shouting "Iviek seleko" (walrus killed), and fairly jumped up and down in their joy. I think the veriest stoic would have at least smiled. I know I laughed and said "good," though I tried to look dignified and unconcerned. Thank God, the danger was over, for the present at least, and I should be able to start for Marble Island in a day or two. It was not until the 17th, however, that I got away at last, as no sledges could move or the dogs be fed during the four days succeeding the death of "Papa's" wife. According to the Inuit belief, an infringement of this custom would cause a fearful mortality that I did not care to become responsible for, and had to wait patiently until the gods of the walrus and seal were satisfied that due respect had been paid to the memory of the departed.
The first day of my march to Marble Island I met Ikomar coming with relief for our camp, and took from his sled one of two boxes containing hard bread and some pork, molasses, and tobacco, sending another box and the remainder of the food to Henry and Frank, who would come down to Marble Island when Ikomar returned. I found a note from Lieutenant Schwatka, in which I read that a bottle of whiskey was among the stores sent; but in the excitement of the occasion and my interest in some papers of 1879, I forgot to look for it. My surprise and disappointment can therefore be imagined that night, when Toolooah dragged the bottle forth from the bottom of the bread box, and asked what it was. We each drank some of the contents, and I noticed, on pouring it into a tin cup, that it was of the consistency of thick syrup, and the cup absolutely froze to my lips, at the same time burning them as if with a red-hot knitting-needle. I had often before heard of a bottle of whiskey freezing to a person's lips, but until that moment I had regarded the assertion as a base effort to deceive and to divert the mind from the actual cause of a too prolonged hold of the bottle. I found the whiskey a great comfort on the trip to Marble Island, and could not help feeling that our long winter journey would have been made much more comfortable by some form of ardent spirits, probably diluted alcohol, to be partaken of in small quantities each night on arriving in camp, or after unusually fatiguing work and exposure.
I reached the ship 'George and Mary' at midnight of Saturday the 21st, and found every one in bed, except Captain Baker, who received me very kindly, and at once impressed me as a straightforward, generous-spirited man. The cabin of his vessel is exceedingly small and inconvenient, but the officers submitted to much discomfort in our behalf. I found that the crew had been entirely free from scurvy, which had so seriously afflicted the crews of the fleet at Marble Island the previous winter. The entire freedom from this disease seems to be attributable to Captain Baker's excellent management, and the constant feeding of fresh reindeer, walrus, or seal meat to the crew, as well as to those in the cabin.
He had, however, lost one man, George Vernoi, a Canadian, who died of consumption, with which he was suffering when he shipped at New Bedford, and one officer, Mr. Charles A. Lathe, of Swansea, Mass., first mate, who froze to death while on a hunting expedition to the main-land during the previous fall. He, together with Mr. Gilbert, the third officer of the vessel, and some Kinnepatoo Inuits, went ashore on the 1st of October to secure fresh meat for the crew. In five days they had killed seven reindeer, and started to return to the ship; but a gale prevented their working to windward, and, their sail torn from the mast, they drifted during the night to a small barren island, where in the morning their boat was broken and their provisions washed away. They were suffering extremely from thirst, having neglected to bring water with them from the shore, and found none on the island. A day was spent in endeavoring to repair the boat, and after another bitter night on the island, without water, they got away at nearly nightfall of the day following and reached another island where they found water and spent the night.