Schwatka's Search: Sledging in the Arctic in Quest of the Franklin Records

by William H. Gilder

Until the morning that we left, it had been confidently expected that Toolooah and his family, consisting of his wife and two children, would accompany us to the United States. It had been the great ambition of his life to visit the wonderful white men's country, and Lieutenant Schwatka had promised to take him home, provided he could obtain the consent of the captain of the vessel in which we returned. Captain Baker had already given his consent, and there seemed nothing to interfere with their plans. Toolooah and his wife were busy in securing suitable clothing in which to appear abroad when occasion should arise for wearing it, and the faithful services he had rendered on our sledge journey were to be recompensed in the United States, from which he would take home an outfit that should last as long as he lived. But the last day we were on shore some of the old men came to Lieutenant Schwatka, and begged he would not be angry if they said that a long and anxious consultation had resulted in the conclusion that it would be running too great a risk for Toolooah to go to the United States. No man of their tribe had ever been to a civilized country but "Esquimau Joe," who, by the bye, had also made up his mind to remain in the Arctic a year or two longer. He had told them of the great mortality attending those of his people from Cumberland Sound who had gone to England and America, and they were afraid. I think that Toolooah, personally, would have willingly encountered the risk; but with these people, such government as they have is patriarchal, and the young men submit with the best grace to the decision of their elders. It was a matter of regret both to Lieutenant Schwatka and myself that we did not have an opportunity to bestow the attention upon him in our own land that his constant care for our safety and comfort in his country entitled him to at our hands.

The anchor soon swung at the bow of the 'George and Mary', and her yards were squared for Marble Island, where we were to take on board water for the homeward-bound voyage. Our Inuit friends shouted their last farewells, and we were actually "en route" home.

Fortunate was it for us that there was a kind-hearted whaler in Hudson's Bay, or we would have been compelled to spend at least one more winter in the polar regions. But Captain Baker treated us with the greatest consideration not only while we were his guests during the spring at Marble Island, but when we returned to Depot Island he gave us such provisions from his stores as he could spare, and without this assistance we would have suffered considerably, for twice again after our return the natives were entirely without food for several days. But instead of our starving with them, we were enabled to save these poor people much suffering by sharing our slender stock with them. We left the ship in her winter quarters on the 3d of May, and on the 11th pitched our tent on the highest rock on Depot Island. The natives soon came from their igloos on the ice about a mile away, and gathered around us. Whenever they killed a walrus or a seal they brought us some of the meat, for which we paid them, as usual, with powder, caps, or lead. But from the 22d of May, when they killed two walrus, until the 7th of June, when the ship hove in sight from her winter quarters, the weather had been such that they had killed nothing but two small seals. The consequence was that for several days they were without food, and our provisions were gone the day before, so that when the ship was seen we were waiting patiently until the Inuits returned from the pursuit of some walrus that were seen on the ice, in order to break our fast. It was not only a joyful sight to see the ship at this time, but an additional pleasure to note the cloud of thick black smote that hung over her deck, denoting that they had killed a whale and were boiling out the blubber. This was good luck for the officers and crew, and fortunate for us, because the black skin of the whale is exceedingly palatable and wholesome food, and there would in all probability be enough of it on board to keep us and our Inuit allies from hunger for a long time, at least until they could secure food by hunting.

We were pleased to learn that the whalers had killed the only whale they saw, which augured a successful season for them. It eventually proved, however, that the augury was delusive, for from that time forward they did not see another whale, though they cruised the bay until the 9th of August. Subsequently we learned that the whales had all gone out of Hudson's Bay through the strait in the early spring, owing to the entire absence of whale food, which had probably been destroyed by the intense severity of the winter. The natives living near North Bluff and Hudson's Strait had seen plenty of whales passing eastward early in the season, when the ice was still thick, or, as one of them told me, "when the young seal are born," which is in the latter part of March and early in April. They had killed three large whales and struck two others that escaped. We went into North Bay and found these Inuits encamped on the main-land, about fifteen miles from the mouth of the bay, and Captain Baker bought from them a head of whalebone, which they said was at Akkolear, which was still further up the bay, or strait, as it proved to be.

Mr. Williams, first officer of the 'George and Mary', went with two boats and some Inuit guides, sailing directly up the bay toward the north-west until it debouched again upon Hudson's Strait, about fifty miles above where we were anchored, or about sixty-five miles north-west of North Bluff. Here he found the whalebone as described by the natives, and brought it on board after an absence of four days.

The large island, or, in fact, two islands that are thus formed, as there is another passage into the sea about twenty-five miles north of North Bluff, are called by the natives "Kigyuektukjuar," in view of their insular character. Kigyuektuk means island, and especially a large island, King William Land being thus distinguished by them as the island. A "small island" is Kigyuektower, and "long island" Kigyuektukjuar.

The land on the north and east of North Bay is called Queennah, which means "all right," and was given to it in view of the fact that in winter it is filled with reindeer, who can go no farther south in their migration, and spend the winter on the Meta Incognita of Queen Elizabeth, or the Queennah of the Esquimaux. Akkolear means a narrow passage or channel, where the land is visible on both sides as you pass through. The natives we met here are more cleanly in their persons and dress than any others we saw on the Arctic, but there their superiority ends. They are most persistent beggars, and indeed require watching, or they will sometimes steal, a vice to which the Esquimaux as a nation are little given. I saw two of their women, while sitting in our cabin, comb their hair without discovering a single specimen of the genus pediculosum; while, should any one of the other tribes we met have done the same thing, the result would have been most overwhelmingly satisfactory. But though they are dirty they will neither lie nor steal, except in rare instances. The natives of the north shore of Hudson's Strait were spoken of by the early explorers of the present century—Parry, Back, and Lyon—as rude, dirty, and unreliable, and they have not improved much since that day, except in regard to dirt. They are certainly more cleanly—one good trait they have learned from association with white people, to counterbalance many vices thus acquired. But never was I more confounded than when an old woman, who brought a pair of fine fur stockings to Captain Baker, asked for a pack of cards in exchange. The captain had brought her to me to act as interpreter for him, but though the word she used sounded familiar to me I could not for the life of me remember what it meant in English until she made motions of dealing cards and said, "Keeng, kevven, zhak." Then the light burst upon me, but nothing had been further from my mind than playing-cards as an article of trade.

Three of these women wore calico skirts, but they looked as much out of place on them as they would on the men, and I came to the conclusion that it does indeed require some art to look well in a "pinned back." These women, when their skirts were in the way of climbing up the side of the vessel, either gathered them up out of the way or took them off and passed them up separately. Their clothing was complete without this civilized inconvenience, which had no more to do with their costume than the buttons on the back of a man's coat.

The temperature in Hudson's Strait was much lower than in the bay, and we felt the cold intensely. I began to imagine that my acclimatization had not been complete, until I noticed that the Inuits who came on board complained of the cold as much as we did. Indeed, I believe that one feels the cold in an Arctic summer much more disagreeably than in the winter. The low temperature in the strait is in all probability attributable to the ice that is constantly there, either local ice or the pack brought down from Fox Channel by the wind and current. The great Grinnell Glacier, on Meta Incognita, which Captain Hall estimated to be one hundred miles in extent, must also have considerable effect upon the climate. As we passed down toward Resolution Island we could see this great sea of ice from the deck of the vessel in all its solemn grandeur, surrounded by lofty peaks clad in their ever-enduring mantles of snow.

I did not go on shore while our vessel lay at anchor in North Bay, for I had no anxiety to encounter the mosquitoes which abound there, though not to the extent that makes life such a burden as upon the eastern shores of Hudson's Bay. While our water-casks were being filled at Marble Island in the early part of August, Captain Baker and I went in one of the ship's boats to the main-land, about fifteen miles to the south-west, to secure a lot of musk-ox skins and other articles of trade at a Kinnepatooan encampment there, and though we spent but one night on shore, I never before endured such torture from so small a cause as the mosquitoes occasioned us. Indeed, my hands and his for a month afterward, were swollen and sore from the venom of these abominable little pests. They are not like civilized mosquitoes, for no amount of brushing or fanning will keep them away. Their sociability is unbounded, and you have absolutely to push them off, a handful at a time, while their places are at once filled by others, the air teeming with them all the time. The natives keep their tents filled with smoke from a slow, smouldering fire in the doorway, which is the only plan to render them habitable at all; but the remedy is only one degree better than the disease, as Captain Baker remarked to me, with his eyes filled with tears. The only relief from these torments is a strong breeze from the water, which carries them away; but even then it is not safe to seek shelter in the lee of a tent, for there they swarm and are as vigorous in their attacks as during a calm. The men wear mosquito-net hoods over their heads and shoulders while in camp or hunting, and women and children live in the smoke of their smouldering peat fires.