CHAPTER II.BEYOND CIVILIZATION.

Upernavik Districtextends from about latitude 70° to latitude 74°, and enjoys the pre-eminent distinction of being the most northern spot of all the earth where civilized industry is carried on. The settlements comprised within this most northern of the Greenland Districts are, Upernavik (which is the capital), Proven, South Proven, Karsuk (the home of Esac), Aukpadlartok, Kresarsoak, Kryatok, and Tessuisak. Of these, the latter is the most northern, and is, moreover, the most northern spot of earth where any Christian people dwell. It lies some fifty miles to the northward of Upernavik, in latitude 73° 35´. There, after leaving Upernavik, and twisting for many hours about among a perfect maze of islands, we made our next halt. The place differs in its general features from Karsuk, already described, only in having for its trader, governor, or bestyrere, whichever you like to call him, a man of more intelligence than Esac, and altogether of very different character. This governor’s wife is Danish, and he brought her with him from Copenhagen to this last boundary of the Christian world, and he lives in a comfortable little house of civilized construction. His wife, when she first came here, was a fresh young bride; and here four children have been born to them. One of these sleeps in its cold grave among the stones.

VIEW OF UPERNAVIK AND KRESARSOAK.

The town itself is otherwise not unlike Karsuk, and has about the same number of native inhabitants, an equal number of yelping dogs (I should say about a hundred), and the average proportion of the filth and stench inseparable from a town of such description. Among it all the trader’s little whitewashed house loomed up cheerily, and, like a light-house in a dirty fog, it was a pleasant thing to look upon. It was late at night when we dropped our anchor, but the photographers had time to get out their camera and bath; and as the clock struck twelve they made a picture of it—the most northern house upon the globe,photographed by the light of the midnight sun! a feat well suited to the place and the romantic circumstances of our situation. We carried the picture off as a pleasant souvenir.

But, unhappily, the proprietor of this house was not there, nor his family. They had all gone off reindeer-shooting—the entire family camping out in the open air—a circumstance which I regretted the more that the man had served me before as interpreter and dog-manager in 1860-’61, and I was naturally desirous to see him. We sent off a native courier, but the courier missed him, and after remaining twelve hours, and the case appearing hopeless, thePantherwas headed once more northward, and over the classic ground of the whalers we were soon passing Wedge Island and Cone Island, and Horse’s Head, and Cape Shackleton; and finally we fetched up at the Duck Islands, sixty miles beyond Tessuisak.

The Duck Islands were in former years a sort of whalemen’s rendezvous. To this point they fought their way among the great ice-fields along the Greenland coast; and here they are beyond the Danish colonies, and beyond the reach of human succor if misfortune happens them. Ahead of them lies Melville Bay, and the “middle ice” or “pack,” which they are bold to enter, and if lucky enough, in the end, to pass, they are pretty sure to find an ample reward in the cargo of whale blubber and whalebone which theywill gather in the northern and western waters of Baffin’s Bay. In former times this fleet numbered something like a hundred sail; but now about a dozen steamers do the work of the noble old sailing ships, of which the recently destroyedTrue Lovewas the last. As the fleet “take the ice” here early in June or late in May, we were of course too late for them.

When a little more than half-way between the first and second of the Duck Islands we ran, at nearly full speed, upon a sunken rock not laid down on the charts—perhaps for the reason that nobody ever hit it before, but more probably, as it seemed, because of the disposition of our mate to allow no opportunity to be lost for sounding Baffin’s Bay with the keel of thePanther. We struck it first with the stem, and fortunately glanced off to port, thus easing the shock, and, by somewhat deadening the headway of the steamer, the better enabled us to take the rock again and get fast aground.

The shock was, I need hardly say, rather startling. The worst results were, not without reason, anticipated. The timber-heads were of course, as everybody supposed, started and glaring wide open; of course the ship had sprung a leak; of course we would have to take to our boats, and make our way as best we could to Tessuisak and Upernavik, and there meet the Danish ship, and reach home by way of Copenhagen, leaving thePantherto go to pieces on the rocks. It was not a pleasant prospect, but there was no help for it. The artists were in a great stew about the “negatives.” Our special artist (the very lively young gentleman, much given to caricature, already mentioned, who, for short, bore the cheering name of “Blob”) was much alarmed for the safety of his numerous sketches. “The Professor” bemoaned the fate of his collection of specimens. But to every body’s great surprise,and to the utter destruction of every body’s well-laid plans of misfortune, a careful examination proved that no harm had been done whatever, except to the cabin furniture. The shock set our cups and plates shying about the deck in a very fragmentary state, and sent our cabin-boy, who was, as usual, asleep in the pantry, head foremost through the door, where he tripped up the steward, who was bringing in a pot of boiled mush, all of which the unhappy boy received on the abdominal region, and for the first, last, and only time during the cruise got thoroughly waked up.

It was none of our (that is to say, the passengers’) business whether thePanthergot off the rocks or not. That was the captain’s affair; and therefore, when we learned that no hole had been made in her bottom, we were eager to get ashore, and after the birds. “The Professor” was easy in his mind about the specimens; “Blob” was relieved about his caricatures, and the “negatives” were safe. What was to prevent us? Nothing but the settlement of the question of responsibility as to whose fault it was that we hit the rock. The mate said it wasn’t his. Oh no! who ever was at fault when any mischief was done? But the captain declared it was; and the mate, with equal zeal, repeated that it was not. But the second mate was against him, and every body else appeared to be; so he protested very loudly that it was no part of his duty to keep the run of all the rocks in Baffin’s Bay; which was rather hard upon the captain, who kept the charts, and, if there were any rocks lying around loose, should know about it.

This home-thrust incensed the captain greatly; and, without making any secret of it, he advised the mate to go home to his mother (which he would, no doubt, have been glad enough to do), and, with a consistency peculiarto maritime people, told him, with the same breath, that he had better go and scrape the rust off the anchor, as that was all he was fit for. This settled the matter; and the matter being settled, a calm followed on the heels of the storm; and, upon the first lull, we got a boat off the davits, and got ourselves and our guns and heavy shot, for the promiscuous slaughter of ducks, landed on the beach. Then we all filed off to left and right, and marched inland, the ducks very obligingly getting up before us as we went along, and hurrying away with a terrible flapping of wings and quacking with fright—at least, such aswe did not bring down—and, since they rose superbly, any body with half a hand could have knocked over his bird. The sport was good, and by all odds the best we had yet enjoyed.

EIDER-DUCKS.

The islands proved, indeed, to have been well named. The birds were the famous eider-duck, close kindred of our much prized canvas-back, though much larger, and, feeding on shrimps, their flesh is not so well flavored.

The whole aspect of the place was forbidding in the extreme—too bleak and desolate to make one think of looking there for game did he not know better beforehand. But there were, towards the centre of the island, some small pools or lakes of snow-water, which furnished moisture for the growth of great quantities of moss; and in this moss, after the waters had subsided and left it dry, the birds had built their nests, lining them with the delicate down which grows upon the breast. This the bird plucks off with her bill to the extent of a good handful, leaving the feathers intact; and when she quits her nest to feed, she covers her eggs with this warm material to keep them warm. In regions farther south the Greenlanders make descents upon the islands, and carry off this fine lining of the nests, which, when cleaned, becomes the well-known and very valuable “eider-down” of commerce. “Live down” is the commercial name for it; and it is a singular fact that the same material plucked from the bird even an instant after death is worthless. The wonderful elasticity which gives such great value to the “live down” is wholly wanting in the dead.

During the early part of the season the ducks go in pairs, and the contrast between the two is very great—the female bird being brown and homely, while the male is black, with cream-colored breast and neck, and has the most beautiful tints of green upon his head. If the nestis robbed of down, and the female’s own supply is exhausted, the male will sometimes obligingly pluck himself to accommodate her; but after she begins to “sit” he is seldom seen about her nest or in her company, and, indeed, is not allowed there except when she has been robbed, and wants his help to refresh the family nest. The males then flock together—like hen-pecked husbands at the clubs—and are very wild. To get within range of them at all one must lie low behind the rocks, and wait for them to fly overhead. In this manner we shot quite a number, and found their flesh a little fishy, but very fair. We enjoyed the afternoon’s sport immensely, and perhaps not the less that the captain had come ashore very soon after we landed to convey the pleasing intelligence that, the tide having risen, thePantherwas afloat and all right. And apart from this, we liked to have the captain on all hunting expeditions. He was generally the best shot, which detracted something, of course, since he was pretty sure to be the winner. But then he was always gay and lively; and he carried a gun which nobody but a tall, powerful man like himself could possibly have used—one of those Newfoundland sealing-guns—long enough, ordinarily, to knock a bird over without firing. But the captain was too fond of sport for work of that sort, and he invariably allowed the bird to get beyond the muzzle before he pulled trigger. Fifteen dozen birds rewarded us well for some fatigue, undergone in a temperature warm enough to enable us to dispense with coats, even although we were in latitude 74°, and surrounded on every side by ice.

The islands were so full of interest, and possessed so many romantic associations, that I wandered about them, from one to the other, rather in pursuit of my own fancy than of game. Everywhere that I went there appearedtraces of the whalemen—at one place a flag-staff, at another place the fragment of a wreck; here they had built a fire, and there they had made a camp; and upon the very summit of the outer island, five hundred feet above the sea, we discovered the walls of an old look-out station, behind which many a hardy mariner whose ship was “beset” among the ice had come and watched, perhaps for days, waiting and hoping for some favorable change of wind and weather to bring a change of ice and change of fortune.

On another part of this same island we came upon seven graves. They were about fifty yards from the beach, on a rapidly sloping hill-side facing the west, beneath a great tall cliff, which forms a conspicuous landmark for vessels approaching from that direction.

Never was place of human sepulture more desolate. Here there were no birds; there was not even a blade of grass, nor a bit of moss—not a living thing—nothing but a waste of naked rocks and loose stones, that had been tumbled by the frosts of winter from the cliffs above. The dead had been laid in some convenient place among the rocks, and the stones had been heaped upon the coffins; and at the head of each rude sepulchre there had been placed a board on which the shipmates of the dead sailor had carved his name and age, and the place of his nativity, his ship, and rank, and day of death.

There was something very touching in the evident care with which the last sad offices of the living to the dead had been performed. But even there, in the drear solitude, other men had followed after the mourners, and graves which the wild beasts had respected, and which showed such signs of tender solicitude, had been most barbarously desecrated. The graves themselves remained as they had been originally prepared, but the head-boards,on which careful hands had carved the brief record of a career that the grave closed over, were broken into splinters, and strewn upon the rocks around. A party from some whale-ship (it could be no other) had landed there, and, using the head-boards of the graves for targets, had blown them all to pieces with ball and shot. Not a single one remained intact, and the resting-place which each was meant to tell of could not possibly be identified. Nor could much be made of the splinters that I found. The records on two of these ran thus:

“Of the ship Jane, of Hull, died April 28, 1832:”“Who died on board of the ship Alexander, of Dundee, June 21, 1842, aged 42 years.”

“Of the ship Jane, of Hull, died April 28, 1832:”

“Who died on board of the ship Alexander, of Dundee, June 21, 1842, aged 42 years.”

But to neither of these was any name attached; and even this much was deciphered with difficulty, so effectual had been the aim of the vandals. Another splinter told that

“Wm. Hardy, aged 59,”

had died, but I could not make out the name of his ship or the date of his death. Even about the “Wm.” there was uncertainty. The only perfect one ran thus:

“To the memory of Thos. Roberts, seaman, Leith, who died on board the Alphen, of Peterhead, July 6th, 1825, aged 37 years.”

It was late in the afternoon when we brought up at the summit of the island in the whalers’ old look-out station, where we commanded a superb view of the surrounding region. How grandly the mountains and glaciers of Greenland loomed up on our right! How splendid was the sea around, speckled with ice, while here and there appeared a dark rocky island among the general whiteness. How tempting Melville Bay ahead, with its interminable “pack.”

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