[Contents]CHAPTER XIVCHAPTER XIVAT POND’S INLETOn August twenty-eighth after a long time in very thick fog we at last saw land only a little way off. For a couple of days we had been working down the coast of Devon Island and Bylot Island, wanting to get to Pond’s Inlet where there is a station of the Northwest Mounted Police and also a post of the Hudson Bay Company.Cap’n Bob had not been able to see land or to take any observations but we knew pretty well from dead reckoning that we had reached the south shore of Pond’s Inlet. “Dead reckoning,” you know, means finding out where you are by the record of the number of miles the log shows the ship has[144]travelled. The log itself is a little instrument like a small propeller which is let out on a long rope at the stern; it turns around fast or slow according to the speed at which the boat travels, and the revolutions it makes are recorded showing the number of knots, or sea miles, covered.While we were drifting around in the fog, barely in sight of the high land which now and then showed through the fog, Dad and Dr. Rasmussen paddled about a bit in a small boat shooting murres and dovekies. In quite a short time Dad shot fifty-one, which made several meals for the crowd.Then later we put the dory over with the Johnson engine in it. It made a good little boat to go ahead and see how deep the water was. One of the sailors was in her using the lead and calling back to theMorrisseythe depths of water he found.After a few miles of groping along that way we stopped near shore where a little stream[145]came down right beside a glacier. We only had a few gallons of water left on board in the big tank, and nearly all the casks were empty. While the crew took the casks ashore and filled them, Bob Peary, Ed Manley and I went out rowing in the fog looking for seal. We’d seen quite a few during the day. Of course we didn’t get out of sight of land, but kept going down along the shore, so we could find our way back. You really could see only about a hundred yards.We shot at a couple of seal but missed them. They are pretty hard to hit in the water. They come up just for a minute or even a few seconds and take a look at you if you are close and then dive. We were just going after another which seemed to be keeping pretty well on the surface when we heard the fog horn on theMorrissey. That was a signal that we should come back.A little later we went ashore and on a rocky hillside found a whaler’s grave. He[146]was a harpooner on a famous whaler, theDiana, of Dundee, Scotland, and was buried there in 1903. Some other whalers’ graves not far away were a hundred years old, for there were many of them up here as early as that. During some seasons, I was told, as many as a couple of thousand men would be in these waters and some vessels wintered in little harbors along the coast. Now the whales are about all gone and the whalers are out of business.The fog cleared up later in the day and we made our way to Albert Harbor which was one of the old whaler’s headquarters. There are high cliffs on all sides so it is wonderfully well protected and the water is very deep. In the old days they used to bring the vessels right up to the rock slides at the foot of the cliffs and put ballast on.Then we went on further up the Inlet, which really is a broad sound mostly a dozen miles wide to the place where the Hudson[147]Bay Company’s post is. Right next to the Post is the detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Police have a barracks and a store house, and the H. B. C. about the same, with a store too. Then down along the beach are a dozen little shacks and some sod houses, the homes of the natives who live there. But most of the Eskimos in that part of the country live far away from the post, in villages out where the hunting is better.There were six white men, three of the Police and three H. B. C. Maurice Timbury was the constable in charge for the Police and George Dunn is the factor at the H. B. C. Everyone was most awfully nice to us and they gave us a grand time. We had dinner with the Police and then a dance at the H. B. C. house, which was very lively and lots of fun. The music was a Victrola and the Eskimos came in and danced. Also Nette, the Greenland girl whom we are taking[148]around to Holsteinsborg, was quite the belle of the ball. She dances well and Dr. Rasmussen is a great dancer.The Eskimos here in Baffin Land seem to be much different from those in Greenland. The women tattoo their faces and wear different sorts of clothes. Just there at the Post, where they get lots of white men’s things, the native clothing isn’t seen much and I don’t believe that so much “store” food is so very good for them. Anyway, the crowd I saw seemed sort of puny and soft compared with the fine husky fellows we had been seeing on the other side of Baffin Bay. The kayaks over here seemed bigger and wider than those of the Greenland Eskimos.The meat from the walrus we had killed up on Jones Sound we brought to Pond’s Inlet and gave it to the natives there. They seemed very pleased, for it is fine dog food and they do not get walrus in those waters any more. In return for our gifts some women[149]came on board and finished fleshing off the walrus and seal skins which we had not done yet. Then they were salted some more and put in barrels and headed up to go back to the Museum. It was a terrible job to get the grease off the decks and for a few days after they were as slippery as a skating rink.We went down to some old Eskimo winter houses, or stone igloos a mile or so from the Station. They were very old and were used by a people so many years ago that the present Eskimos don’t know anything about them and believe that they were quite a different race. Dr. Rasmussen says that from the things found in this old village, compared with others that have been studied, the people lived there probably about a thousand years ago and in some places even earlier and about the time the Norsemen first came to Greenland in the year one thousand and later.These old Eskimo stone igloos are built in[150]a circle, mostly about fifteen feet or a little more across. There is a small outer room which is the entrance hall, chiefly to keep the inner place warmer. It is so low that they must have had to creep in on their hands and knees. After creeping in there seems to be a kind of step up into the inner room. The main room, I guess, was about five feet high, with a raised platform all around it a couple of feet above the central floor which is just a sort of small square in the middle.Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head.Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head.In one corner of the raised part, usually near the door, the cooking was done. The platform at the back was used for sleeping, and it is all built up very neatly with flat stones, the walls made of stone and turf and whale bone. The roof was flat rock and bone. In some places whale ribs seem to have been used as rafters to support the walls and perhaps the ceiling. They certainly must have been very warm and strong houses. I forgot to say that they really are partly[151]under ground, for the floor level is usually a couple of feet lower than the level of the outer ground.We did some digging around these houses and at some of the old graves. And the next day Dad and I and Dan went with Mr. Gall and his assistant, Abraham Ford of Labrador, in their motor boat twelve miles along the Inlet to some other old houses.We found a few very nice things like spear heads and snow knives made of bone and ivory, harpoon handles and a little cup or dish carved out of bone. Later on Dad got from some of the white men the things they had collected so that altogether we got together quite a fine lot of very interesting things. And many of them really came from the “stone age” of these people, when they made everything they had from stone, like flint arrowheads, or from bone or ivory.Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet.Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet.It is quite wonderful to know that with these very primitive weapons which they[152]made themselves they were able to kill the huge sperm whales. Yet of course they did, for their houses are surrounded with the bones. And in the old times these waters surely were just full of whale, walrus, seal and narwhal.Timbury and the two other constables, Murray and Dunn, went with us in the afternoon hunting for Arctic hare. We saw one but couldn’t get near enough because one of the dogs had followed and would chase it every time we got in sight. Ed shot one duck and I shot two on a little lake about two miles from the settlement. We didn’t know how to get them so Ed took off his clothes and waded out in the icy water up to his armpits and got them.Here at Pond’s Inlet, by the way, is the most northerly radio station in the world. Both the Police and H. B. C. have a short wave receiving set, and the Police also have a low power sending set, which I guess doesn’t[153]work very well. In Mr. Gall’s house we were interested to see our old friends the Eveready Batteries which he uses entirely. Dad arranged with them to have a special program, for a few minutes anyway, on the Eveready hour later in November, if it could be fixed up. That is, he wanted to have part of a program of broadcasting in New York arranged so that it would be directed right at Pond’s Inlet and they up there could hear Dad in New York talking to them.When we left the settlement it was so windy and rough that we stopped at Albert Harbor again. Art and Ed and I went ashore on the steep rocky island to look for hares. We climbed the first hill and saw a lot of sign but no hares.“There’s one!” All of a sudden Art called out. “Over there by the big rock. Dave, you sneak over behind that pile of rocks and Ed and I will stay here and attract his attention.”[154]I crept slowly toward the side of the hill and when I was out of sight of the hare I ran for all I was worth and then slowed down and looked carefully over the top. There he was, about sixty yards away, looking at Art and Ed.I aimed in a hurry and shot and he tumbled right over in his tracks. The twenty-two bullet went right through his shoulders and into his heart and out the other side. We saw that his back was a light greyish color and that he was a lot bigger than the largest American rabbits. In winter, I’m told, they get pure white.We chased another all over the place and almost lost him. Just by luck I had gone around the other way from the others and saw his ears sticking up a long way off. I whistled to make him stand up, but when he did I missed and he started running. I shot at him on the run and with a lot of luck got him right through the hips and backbone. He[155]was larger than the first one, and pure white.We tried some others but with no luck. It was about ten o’clock when we got back to the boat, and almost dark. Beginning here at Pond’s Inlet we have had our first real nights. The sun sets and for some hours it gets dark.Anyway, I asked Dad to send a radio message to Mother telling her that I am fixing up a couple of nice Arctic hare skins for her, to make a collar or something out of. And Fred is showing me how to make powder puffs out of the tails.[156]
[Contents]CHAPTER XIVCHAPTER XIVAT POND’S INLETOn August twenty-eighth after a long time in very thick fog we at last saw land only a little way off. For a couple of days we had been working down the coast of Devon Island and Bylot Island, wanting to get to Pond’s Inlet where there is a station of the Northwest Mounted Police and also a post of the Hudson Bay Company.Cap’n Bob had not been able to see land or to take any observations but we knew pretty well from dead reckoning that we had reached the south shore of Pond’s Inlet. “Dead reckoning,” you know, means finding out where you are by the record of the number of miles the log shows the ship has[144]travelled. The log itself is a little instrument like a small propeller which is let out on a long rope at the stern; it turns around fast or slow according to the speed at which the boat travels, and the revolutions it makes are recorded showing the number of knots, or sea miles, covered.While we were drifting around in the fog, barely in sight of the high land which now and then showed through the fog, Dad and Dr. Rasmussen paddled about a bit in a small boat shooting murres and dovekies. In quite a short time Dad shot fifty-one, which made several meals for the crowd.Then later we put the dory over with the Johnson engine in it. It made a good little boat to go ahead and see how deep the water was. One of the sailors was in her using the lead and calling back to theMorrisseythe depths of water he found.After a few miles of groping along that way we stopped near shore where a little stream[145]came down right beside a glacier. We only had a few gallons of water left on board in the big tank, and nearly all the casks were empty. While the crew took the casks ashore and filled them, Bob Peary, Ed Manley and I went out rowing in the fog looking for seal. We’d seen quite a few during the day. Of course we didn’t get out of sight of land, but kept going down along the shore, so we could find our way back. You really could see only about a hundred yards.We shot at a couple of seal but missed them. They are pretty hard to hit in the water. They come up just for a minute or even a few seconds and take a look at you if you are close and then dive. We were just going after another which seemed to be keeping pretty well on the surface when we heard the fog horn on theMorrissey. That was a signal that we should come back.A little later we went ashore and on a rocky hillside found a whaler’s grave. He[146]was a harpooner on a famous whaler, theDiana, of Dundee, Scotland, and was buried there in 1903. Some other whalers’ graves not far away were a hundred years old, for there were many of them up here as early as that. During some seasons, I was told, as many as a couple of thousand men would be in these waters and some vessels wintered in little harbors along the coast. Now the whales are about all gone and the whalers are out of business.The fog cleared up later in the day and we made our way to Albert Harbor which was one of the old whaler’s headquarters. There are high cliffs on all sides so it is wonderfully well protected and the water is very deep. In the old days they used to bring the vessels right up to the rock slides at the foot of the cliffs and put ballast on.Then we went on further up the Inlet, which really is a broad sound mostly a dozen miles wide to the place where the Hudson[147]Bay Company’s post is. Right next to the Post is the detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Police have a barracks and a store house, and the H. B. C. about the same, with a store too. Then down along the beach are a dozen little shacks and some sod houses, the homes of the natives who live there. But most of the Eskimos in that part of the country live far away from the post, in villages out where the hunting is better.There were six white men, three of the Police and three H. B. C. Maurice Timbury was the constable in charge for the Police and George Dunn is the factor at the H. B. C. Everyone was most awfully nice to us and they gave us a grand time. We had dinner with the Police and then a dance at the H. B. C. house, which was very lively and lots of fun. The music was a Victrola and the Eskimos came in and danced. Also Nette, the Greenland girl whom we are taking[148]around to Holsteinsborg, was quite the belle of the ball. She dances well and Dr. Rasmussen is a great dancer.The Eskimos here in Baffin Land seem to be much different from those in Greenland. The women tattoo their faces and wear different sorts of clothes. Just there at the Post, where they get lots of white men’s things, the native clothing isn’t seen much and I don’t believe that so much “store” food is so very good for them. Anyway, the crowd I saw seemed sort of puny and soft compared with the fine husky fellows we had been seeing on the other side of Baffin Bay. The kayaks over here seemed bigger and wider than those of the Greenland Eskimos.The meat from the walrus we had killed up on Jones Sound we brought to Pond’s Inlet and gave it to the natives there. They seemed very pleased, for it is fine dog food and they do not get walrus in those waters any more. In return for our gifts some women[149]came on board and finished fleshing off the walrus and seal skins which we had not done yet. Then they were salted some more and put in barrels and headed up to go back to the Museum. It was a terrible job to get the grease off the decks and for a few days after they were as slippery as a skating rink.We went down to some old Eskimo winter houses, or stone igloos a mile or so from the Station. They were very old and were used by a people so many years ago that the present Eskimos don’t know anything about them and believe that they were quite a different race. Dr. Rasmussen says that from the things found in this old village, compared with others that have been studied, the people lived there probably about a thousand years ago and in some places even earlier and about the time the Norsemen first came to Greenland in the year one thousand and later.These old Eskimo stone igloos are built in[150]a circle, mostly about fifteen feet or a little more across. There is a small outer room which is the entrance hall, chiefly to keep the inner place warmer. It is so low that they must have had to creep in on their hands and knees. After creeping in there seems to be a kind of step up into the inner room. The main room, I guess, was about five feet high, with a raised platform all around it a couple of feet above the central floor which is just a sort of small square in the middle.Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head.Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head.In one corner of the raised part, usually near the door, the cooking was done. The platform at the back was used for sleeping, and it is all built up very neatly with flat stones, the walls made of stone and turf and whale bone. The roof was flat rock and bone. In some places whale ribs seem to have been used as rafters to support the walls and perhaps the ceiling. They certainly must have been very warm and strong houses. I forgot to say that they really are partly[151]under ground, for the floor level is usually a couple of feet lower than the level of the outer ground.We did some digging around these houses and at some of the old graves. And the next day Dad and I and Dan went with Mr. Gall and his assistant, Abraham Ford of Labrador, in their motor boat twelve miles along the Inlet to some other old houses.We found a few very nice things like spear heads and snow knives made of bone and ivory, harpoon handles and a little cup or dish carved out of bone. Later on Dad got from some of the white men the things they had collected so that altogether we got together quite a fine lot of very interesting things. And many of them really came from the “stone age” of these people, when they made everything they had from stone, like flint arrowheads, or from bone or ivory.Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet.Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet.It is quite wonderful to know that with these very primitive weapons which they[152]made themselves they were able to kill the huge sperm whales. Yet of course they did, for their houses are surrounded with the bones. And in the old times these waters surely were just full of whale, walrus, seal and narwhal.Timbury and the two other constables, Murray and Dunn, went with us in the afternoon hunting for Arctic hare. We saw one but couldn’t get near enough because one of the dogs had followed and would chase it every time we got in sight. Ed shot one duck and I shot two on a little lake about two miles from the settlement. We didn’t know how to get them so Ed took off his clothes and waded out in the icy water up to his armpits and got them.Here at Pond’s Inlet, by the way, is the most northerly radio station in the world. Both the Police and H. B. C. have a short wave receiving set, and the Police also have a low power sending set, which I guess doesn’t[153]work very well. In Mr. Gall’s house we were interested to see our old friends the Eveready Batteries which he uses entirely. Dad arranged with them to have a special program, for a few minutes anyway, on the Eveready hour later in November, if it could be fixed up. That is, he wanted to have part of a program of broadcasting in New York arranged so that it would be directed right at Pond’s Inlet and they up there could hear Dad in New York talking to them.When we left the settlement it was so windy and rough that we stopped at Albert Harbor again. Art and Ed and I went ashore on the steep rocky island to look for hares. We climbed the first hill and saw a lot of sign but no hares.“There’s one!” All of a sudden Art called out. “Over there by the big rock. Dave, you sneak over behind that pile of rocks and Ed and I will stay here and attract his attention.”[154]I crept slowly toward the side of the hill and when I was out of sight of the hare I ran for all I was worth and then slowed down and looked carefully over the top. There he was, about sixty yards away, looking at Art and Ed.I aimed in a hurry and shot and he tumbled right over in his tracks. The twenty-two bullet went right through his shoulders and into his heart and out the other side. We saw that his back was a light greyish color and that he was a lot bigger than the largest American rabbits. In winter, I’m told, they get pure white.We chased another all over the place and almost lost him. Just by luck I had gone around the other way from the others and saw his ears sticking up a long way off. I whistled to make him stand up, but when he did I missed and he started running. I shot at him on the run and with a lot of luck got him right through the hips and backbone. He[155]was larger than the first one, and pure white.We tried some others but with no luck. It was about ten o’clock when we got back to the boat, and almost dark. Beginning here at Pond’s Inlet we have had our first real nights. The sun sets and for some hours it gets dark.Anyway, I asked Dad to send a radio message to Mother telling her that I am fixing up a couple of nice Arctic hare skins for her, to make a collar or something out of. And Fred is showing me how to make powder puffs out of the tails.[156]
CHAPTER XIVCHAPTER XIVAT POND’S INLET
CHAPTER XIV
On August twenty-eighth after a long time in very thick fog we at last saw land only a little way off. For a couple of days we had been working down the coast of Devon Island and Bylot Island, wanting to get to Pond’s Inlet where there is a station of the Northwest Mounted Police and also a post of the Hudson Bay Company.Cap’n Bob had not been able to see land or to take any observations but we knew pretty well from dead reckoning that we had reached the south shore of Pond’s Inlet. “Dead reckoning,” you know, means finding out where you are by the record of the number of miles the log shows the ship has[144]travelled. The log itself is a little instrument like a small propeller which is let out on a long rope at the stern; it turns around fast or slow according to the speed at which the boat travels, and the revolutions it makes are recorded showing the number of knots, or sea miles, covered.While we were drifting around in the fog, barely in sight of the high land which now and then showed through the fog, Dad and Dr. Rasmussen paddled about a bit in a small boat shooting murres and dovekies. In quite a short time Dad shot fifty-one, which made several meals for the crowd.Then later we put the dory over with the Johnson engine in it. It made a good little boat to go ahead and see how deep the water was. One of the sailors was in her using the lead and calling back to theMorrisseythe depths of water he found.After a few miles of groping along that way we stopped near shore where a little stream[145]came down right beside a glacier. We only had a few gallons of water left on board in the big tank, and nearly all the casks were empty. While the crew took the casks ashore and filled them, Bob Peary, Ed Manley and I went out rowing in the fog looking for seal. We’d seen quite a few during the day. Of course we didn’t get out of sight of land, but kept going down along the shore, so we could find our way back. You really could see only about a hundred yards.We shot at a couple of seal but missed them. They are pretty hard to hit in the water. They come up just for a minute or even a few seconds and take a look at you if you are close and then dive. We were just going after another which seemed to be keeping pretty well on the surface when we heard the fog horn on theMorrissey. That was a signal that we should come back.A little later we went ashore and on a rocky hillside found a whaler’s grave. He[146]was a harpooner on a famous whaler, theDiana, of Dundee, Scotland, and was buried there in 1903. Some other whalers’ graves not far away were a hundred years old, for there were many of them up here as early as that. During some seasons, I was told, as many as a couple of thousand men would be in these waters and some vessels wintered in little harbors along the coast. Now the whales are about all gone and the whalers are out of business.The fog cleared up later in the day and we made our way to Albert Harbor which was one of the old whaler’s headquarters. There are high cliffs on all sides so it is wonderfully well protected and the water is very deep. In the old days they used to bring the vessels right up to the rock slides at the foot of the cliffs and put ballast on.Then we went on further up the Inlet, which really is a broad sound mostly a dozen miles wide to the place where the Hudson[147]Bay Company’s post is. Right next to the Post is the detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Police have a barracks and a store house, and the H. B. C. about the same, with a store too. Then down along the beach are a dozen little shacks and some sod houses, the homes of the natives who live there. But most of the Eskimos in that part of the country live far away from the post, in villages out where the hunting is better.There were six white men, three of the Police and three H. B. C. Maurice Timbury was the constable in charge for the Police and George Dunn is the factor at the H. B. C. Everyone was most awfully nice to us and they gave us a grand time. We had dinner with the Police and then a dance at the H. B. C. house, which was very lively and lots of fun. The music was a Victrola and the Eskimos came in and danced. Also Nette, the Greenland girl whom we are taking[148]around to Holsteinsborg, was quite the belle of the ball. She dances well and Dr. Rasmussen is a great dancer.The Eskimos here in Baffin Land seem to be much different from those in Greenland. The women tattoo their faces and wear different sorts of clothes. Just there at the Post, where they get lots of white men’s things, the native clothing isn’t seen much and I don’t believe that so much “store” food is so very good for them. Anyway, the crowd I saw seemed sort of puny and soft compared with the fine husky fellows we had been seeing on the other side of Baffin Bay. The kayaks over here seemed bigger and wider than those of the Greenland Eskimos.The meat from the walrus we had killed up on Jones Sound we brought to Pond’s Inlet and gave it to the natives there. They seemed very pleased, for it is fine dog food and they do not get walrus in those waters any more. In return for our gifts some women[149]came on board and finished fleshing off the walrus and seal skins which we had not done yet. Then they were salted some more and put in barrels and headed up to go back to the Museum. It was a terrible job to get the grease off the decks and for a few days after they were as slippery as a skating rink.We went down to some old Eskimo winter houses, or stone igloos a mile or so from the Station. They were very old and were used by a people so many years ago that the present Eskimos don’t know anything about them and believe that they were quite a different race. Dr. Rasmussen says that from the things found in this old village, compared with others that have been studied, the people lived there probably about a thousand years ago and in some places even earlier and about the time the Norsemen first came to Greenland in the year one thousand and later.These old Eskimo stone igloos are built in[150]a circle, mostly about fifteen feet or a little more across. There is a small outer room which is the entrance hall, chiefly to keep the inner place warmer. It is so low that they must have had to creep in on their hands and knees. After creeping in there seems to be a kind of step up into the inner room. The main room, I guess, was about five feet high, with a raised platform all around it a couple of feet above the central floor which is just a sort of small square in the middle.Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head.Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head.In one corner of the raised part, usually near the door, the cooking was done. The platform at the back was used for sleeping, and it is all built up very neatly with flat stones, the walls made of stone and turf and whale bone. The roof was flat rock and bone. In some places whale ribs seem to have been used as rafters to support the walls and perhaps the ceiling. They certainly must have been very warm and strong houses. I forgot to say that they really are partly[151]under ground, for the floor level is usually a couple of feet lower than the level of the outer ground.We did some digging around these houses and at some of the old graves. And the next day Dad and I and Dan went with Mr. Gall and his assistant, Abraham Ford of Labrador, in their motor boat twelve miles along the Inlet to some other old houses.We found a few very nice things like spear heads and snow knives made of bone and ivory, harpoon handles and a little cup or dish carved out of bone. Later on Dad got from some of the white men the things they had collected so that altogether we got together quite a fine lot of very interesting things. And many of them really came from the “stone age” of these people, when they made everything they had from stone, like flint arrowheads, or from bone or ivory.Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet.Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet.It is quite wonderful to know that with these very primitive weapons which they[152]made themselves they were able to kill the huge sperm whales. Yet of course they did, for their houses are surrounded with the bones. And in the old times these waters surely were just full of whale, walrus, seal and narwhal.Timbury and the two other constables, Murray and Dunn, went with us in the afternoon hunting for Arctic hare. We saw one but couldn’t get near enough because one of the dogs had followed and would chase it every time we got in sight. Ed shot one duck and I shot two on a little lake about two miles from the settlement. We didn’t know how to get them so Ed took off his clothes and waded out in the icy water up to his armpits and got them.Here at Pond’s Inlet, by the way, is the most northerly radio station in the world. Both the Police and H. B. C. have a short wave receiving set, and the Police also have a low power sending set, which I guess doesn’t[153]work very well. In Mr. Gall’s house we were interested to see our old friends the Eveready Batteries which he uses entirely. Dad arranged with them to have a special program, for a few minutes anyway, on the Eveready hour later in November, if it could be fixed up. That is, he wanted to have part of a program of broadcasting in New York arranged so that it would be directed right at Pond’s Inlet and they up there could hear Dad in New York talking to them.When we left the settlement it was so windy and rough that we stopped at Albert Harbor again. Art and Ed and I went ashore on the steep rocky island to look for hares. We climbed the first hill and saw a lot of sign but no hares.“There’s one!” All of a sudden Art called out. “Over there by the big rock. Dave, you sneak over behind that pile of rocks and Ed and I will stay here and attract his attention.”[154]I crept slowly toward the side of the hill and when I was out of sight of the hare I ran for all I was worth and then slowed down and looked carefully over the top. There he was, about sixty yards away, looking at Art and Ed.I aimed in a hurry and shot and he tumbled right over in his tracks. The twenty-two bullet went right through his shoulders and into his heart and out the other side. We saw that his back was a light greyish color and that he was a lot bigger than the largest American rabbits. In winter, I’m told, they get pure white.We chased another all over the place and almost lost him. Just by luck I had gone around the other way from the others and saw his ears sticking up a long way off. I whistled to make him stand up, but when he did I missed and he started running. I shot at him on the run and with a lot of luck got him right through the hips and backbone. He[155]was larger than the first one, and pure white.We tried some others but with no luck. It was about ten o’clock when we got back to the boat, and almost dark. Beginning here at Pond’s Inlet we have had our first real nights. The sun sets and for some hours it gets dark.Anyway, I asked Dad to send a radio message to Mother telling her that I am fixing up a couple of nice Arctic hare skins for her, to make a collar or something out of. And Fred is showing me how to make powder puffs out of the tails.[156]
On August twenty-eighth after a long time in very thick fog we at last saw land only a little way off. For a couple of days we had been working down the coast of Devon Island and Bylot Island, wanting to get to Pond’s Inlet where there is a station of the Northwest Mounted Police and also a post of the Hudson Bay Company.
Cap’n Bob had not been able to see land or to take any observations but we knew pretty well from dead reckoning that we had reached the south shore of Pond’s Inlet. “Dead reckoning,” you know, means finding out where you are by the record of the number of miles the log shows the ship has[144]travelled. The log itself is a little instrument like a small propeller which is let out on a long rope at the stern; it turns around fast or slow according to the speed at which the boat travels, and the revolutions it makes are recorded showing the number of knots, or sea miles, covered.
While we were drifting around in the fog, barely in sight of the high land which now and then showed through the fog, Dad and Dr. Rasmussen paddled about a bit in a small boat shooting murres and dovekies. In quite a short time Dad shot fifty-one, which made several meals for the crowd.
Then later we put the dory over with the Johnson engine in it. It made a good little boat to go ahead and see how deep the water was. One of the sailors was in her using the lead and calling back to theMorrisseythe depths of water he found.
After a few miles of groping along that way we stopped near shore where a little stream[145]came down right beside a glacier. We only had a few gallons of water left on board in the big tank, and nearly all the casks were empty. While the crew took the casks ashore and filled them, Bob Peary, Ed Manley and I went out rowing in the fog looking for seal. We’d seen quite a few during the day. Of course we didn’t get out of sight of land, but kept going down along the shore, so we could find our way back. You really could see only about a hundred yards.
We shot at a couple of seal but missed them. They are pretty hard to hit in the water. They come up just for a minute or even a few seconds and take a look at you if you are close and then dive. We were just going after another which seemed to be keeping pretty well on the surface when we heard the fog horn on theMorrissey. That was a signal that we should come back.
A little later we went ashore and on a rocky hillside found a whaler’s grave. He[146]was a harpooner on a famous whaler, theDiana, of Dundee, Scotland, and was buried there in 1903. Some other whalers’ graves not far away were a hundred years old, for there were many of them up here as early as that. During some seasons, I was told, as many as a couple of thousand men would be in these waters and some vessels wintered in little harbors along the coast. Now the whales are about all gone and the whalers are out of business.
The fog cleared up later in the day and we made our way to Albert Harbor which was one of the old whaler’s headquarters. There are high cliffs on all sides so it is wonderfully well protected and the water is very deep. In the old days they used to bring the vessels right up to the rock slides at the foot of the cliffs and put ballast on.
Then we went on further up the Inlet, which really is a broad sound mostly a dozen miles wide to the place where the Hudson[147]Bay Company’s post is. Right next to the Post is the detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Police have a barracks and a store house, and the H. B. C. about the same, with a store too. Then down along the beach are a dozen little shacks and some sod houses, the homes of the natives who live there. But most of the Eskimos in that part of the country live far away from the post, in villages out where the hunting is better.
There were six white men, three of the Police and three H. B. C. Maurice Timbury was the constable in charge for the Police and George Dunn is the factor at the H. B. C. Everyone was most awfully nice to us and they gave us a grand time. We had dinner with the Police and then a dance at the H. B. C. house, which was very lively and lots of fun. The music was a Victrola and the Eskimos came in and danced. Also Nette, the Greenland girl whom we are taking[148]around to Holsteinsborg, was quite the belle of the ball. She dances well and Dr. Rasmussen is a great dancer.
The Eskimos here in Baffin Land seem to be much different from those in Greenland. The women tattoo their faces and wear different sorts of clothes. Just there at the Post, where they get lots of white men’s things, the native clothing isn’t seen much and I don’t believe that so much “store” food is so very good for them. Anyway, the crowd I saw seemed sort of puny and soft compared with the fine husky fellows we had been seeing on the other side of Baffin Bay. The kayaks over here seemed bigger and wider than those of the Greenland Eskimos.
The meat from the walrus we had killed up on Jones Sound we brought to Pond’s Inlet and gave it to the natives there. They seemed very pleased, for it is fine dog food and they do not get walrus in those waters any more. In return for our gifts some women[149]came on board and finished fleshing off the walrus and seal skins which we had not done yet. Then they were salted some more and put in barrels and headed up to go back to the Museum. It was a terrible job to get the grease off the decks and for a few days after they were as slippery as a skating rink.
We went down to some old Eskimo winter houses, or stone igloos a mile or so from the Station. They were very old and were used by a people so many years ago that the present Eskimos don’t know anything about them and believe that they were quite a different race. Dr. Rasmussen says that from the things found in this old village, compared with others that have been studied, the people lived there probably about a thousand years ago and in some places even earlier and about the time the Norsemen first came to Greenland in the year one thousand and later.
These old Eskimo stone igloos are built in[150]a circle, mostly about fifteen feet or a little more across. There is a small outer room which is the entrance hall, chiefly to keep the inner place warmer. It is so low that they must have had to creep in on their hands and knees. After creeping in there seems to be a kind of step up into the inner room. The main room, I guess, was about five feet high, with a raised platform all around it a couple of feet above the central floor which is just a sort of small square in the middle.
Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head.Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head.
Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head.
In one corner of the raised part, usually near the door, the cooking was done. The platform at the back was used for sleeping, and it is all built up very neatly with flat stones, the walls made of stone and turf and whale bone. The roof was flat rock and bone. In some places whale ribs seem to have been used as rafters to support the walls and perhaps the ceiling. They certainly must have been very warm and strong houses. I forgot to say that they really are partly[151]under ground, for the floor level is usually a couple of feet lower than the level of the outer ground.
We did some digging around these houses and at some of the old graves. And the next day Dad and I and Dan went with Mr. Gall and his assistant, Abraham Ford of Labrador, in their motor boat twelve miles along the Inlet to some other old houses.
We found a few very nice things like spear heads and snow knives made of bone and ivory, harpoon handles and a little cup or dish carved out of bone. Later on Dad got from some of the white men the things they had collected so that altogether we got together quite a fine lot of very interesting things. And many of them really came from the “stone age” of these people, when they made everything they had from stone, like flint arrowheads, or from bone or ivory.
Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet.Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet.
Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet.
It is quite wonderful to know that with these very primitive weapons which they[152]made themselves they were able to kill the huge sperm whales. Yet of course they did, for their houses are surrounded with the bones. And in the old times these waters surely were just full of whale, walrus, seal and narwhal.
Timbury and the two other constables, Murray and Dunn, went with us in the afternoon hunting for Arctic hare. We saw one but couldn’t get near enough because one of the dogs had followed and would chase it every time we got in sight. Ed shot one duck and I shot two on a little lake about two miles from the settlement. We didn’t know how to get them so Ed took off his clothes and waded out in the icy water up to his armpits and got them.
Here at Pond’s Inlet, by the way, is the most northerly radio station in the world. Both the Police and H. B. C. have a short wave receiving set, and the Police also have a low power sending set, which I guess doesn’t[153]work very well. In Mr. Gall’s house we were interested to see our old friends the Eveready Batteries which he uses entirely. Dad arranged with them to have a special program, for a few minutes anyway, on the Eveready hour later in November, if it could be fixed up. That is, he wanted to have part of a program of broadcasting in New York arranged so that it would be directed right at Pond’s Inlet and they up there could hear Dad in New York talking to them.
When we left the settlement it was so windy and rough that we stopped at Albert Harbor again. Art and Ed and I went ashore on the steep rocky island to look for hares. We climbed the first hill and saw a lot of sign but no hares.
“There’s one!” All of a sudden Art called out. “Over there by the big rock. Dave, you sneak over behind that pile of rocks and Ed and I will stay here and attract his attention.”[154]
I crept slowly toward the side of the hill and when I was out of sight of the hare I ran for all I was worth and then slowed down and looked carefully over the top. There he was, about sixty yards away, looking at Art and Ed.
I aimed in a hurry and shot and he tumbled right over in his tracks. The twenty-two bullet went right through his shoulders and into his heart and out the other side. We saw that his back was a light greyish color and that he was a lot bigger than the largest American rabbits. In winter, I’m told, they get pure white.
We chased another all over the place and almost lost him. Just by luck I had gone around the other way from the others and saw his ears sticking up a long way off. I whistled to make him stand up, but when he did I missed and he started running. I shot at him on the run and with a lot of luck got him right through the hips and backbone. He[155]was larger than the first one, and pure white.
We tried some others but with no luck. It was about ten o’clock when we got back to the boat, and almost dark. Beginning here at Pond’s Inlet we have had our first real nights. The sun sets and for some hours it gets dark.
Anyway, I asked Dad to send a radio message to Mother telling her that I am fixing up a couple of nice Arctic hare skins for her, to make a collar or something out of. And Fred is showing me how to make powder puffs out of the tails.
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