CHAPTER XXV.

SENDING FORWARD SUPPLIES.—KALUTUNAH AS A DRIVER.—KALUTUNAH CIVILIZED.—MR. KNORR.—PLAN OF MY PROPOSED JOURNEY.—PREPARING TO SET OUT.—INDUSTRIOUS ESQUIMAU WOMEN.—DEATH AND BURIAL OF KABLUNET.—THE START.

During the next few days the dog-sledges were going and coming between the schooner and Cairn Point continually, carrying to the latter place the stores needed for our summer campaign. The temperature still held very low, and I did not deem it prudent to send out a foot party. I knew by former experience how important it is for a commander to keep inexperienced men under his own eye, for one frozen man will demoralize a dozen, and a frosted foot is as contagious as the small-pox.

KALUTUNAH CIVILIZED.

Kalutunah's team was turned over to Mr. Knorr, and in doing this I gratified both parties and served my own interests. The novelty of serving me, and of traveling with me, had by this time worn off, and I could plainly see that the chief was quite as well satisfied to remain with his wife and babies as to trust himself to the uncertain fortunes of the ice-fields, more especially as his curiosity to see how this man that he called the big chief behaved himself had been fully gratified. The recent journey had convinced him that I was fully entitled to his respect, since I did not freeze, and altogether conducted myself as well as an Esquimau would have done under like circumstances;and this was a great deal in his eyes. It was not difficult to perceive that Kalutunah started with me expecting to take me under his protecting wing; and if he did not have the pleasing satisfaction of seeing me groaning with the cold, at least he should have the opportunity to instruct me how to live and how to travel; but when I began to instruct him, and turned the tables on him, he was much disappointed; and when to this violation of propriety I added the still more unpardonable offense of refusing him a bear-hunt, his enthusiasm oozed out very rapidly; and if he admired the Nalegaksoak the more he desired to follow him the less, particularly as the dangers of the service preponderated over the emoluments. Indeed, the fellow was disposed to avail himself fully of the advantages of his new situation, and I soon made up my mind that he was henceforth a pensioner upon my bounty, so I doubled his riches and made him the happiest Esquimau that ever was seen. My thoroughly energetic, daring and skillful hunter, who prided himself upon the excellence of his equipments and the abundance of his supplies, for once in his life found himself so situated that he was freed from all necessity of giving thought to the morrow. It was truly a novel sensation, and it is not surprising that he should wish to enjoy the short-lived holiday. He was greatly amused,—amused with himself, amused with the Nalemaksoak who had made him so rich and allowed him to be so lazy, and amused with the white man's dress with which he was bedecked, and in which he cut such a sorry figure. His face was never without a full-blown grin. I gave him a looking-glass, and he carried it about with him continually, looking at himself and laughing at his head with a cap on it, andat his reel shirt which dangled beneath an old coat. It was all very fine and very wonderful. "Don't I look pretty?" was the poser which he put to everybody.

KALUTUNAH UNCIVILIZED.

But this pleasing state of mind into which he had been thrown by this new style of costume was doomed to be short-lived. The novelty wore off in a few days. It ceased to amuse him; and he discovered, no doubt, that in gratifying his vanity he was vexing the flesh. One day he appeared on board in his old suit of furs. "What has become of the cap and red shirt and coat?" "Oh! I tumbled into the water, and my wife is drying them!" The truth leaked out afterward that he had gone home, changed the white man's finery for the cold-resisting fox-skins, and had chucked the whole suit among the rocks.

Kalutunah's team fell to Mr. Knorr from sheer necessity, since there was no one else in the ship except Hans who could handle the whip. Knorr, with commendable foresight, had commenced his exercises early in the winter, plainly foreseeing that his chances of accompanying me throughout my northern journey were not likely to be diminished by knowing how to drive dogs. The labor properly devolved upon one of the sailors; but the field was open to all alike; and the young gentleman, finding that official dignity stood in the way of his ambition, with a spirit which I was not slow to appreciate, did not long hesitate in his choice.

I have elsewhere mentioned that the labor of driving dogs is not an easy one. Indeed, of all the members of my party, Mr. Knorr was the only one who succeeded well. Even in Southern Greenland, among the Danes long resident there, it is rare to find a skillful driver. Neither of the sailors, Carl nor Christian,whom I had taken from Upernavik, could throw the lash anywhere else than about their legs, or into the face of whomsoever might happen to sit upon the sledge. As for hitting a dog, they could scarcely do it by any chance.

PREPARING TO START.

My recent journey had decided my course of action. The last view which I had from the top of the lofty cliff behind Cairn Point convinced me that my only chance for the season was to cross the Sound from that place, for my observations up the Greenland coast had shown me, as has been already observed, the impracticability of reaching the Polar Sea by that route. McCormick had immediate charge of the work of preparation, and pushing every thing forward with his customary energy, we were ready to start before the close of March. But the temperature still continued to range too low for safety, and I only awaited a rise of the thermometer. Our little community was now full of life and business.

The Esquimaux were not an unimportant element in the hive. The most useful service came, however, from the ancient dames who presided over the domestic affairs of the snow house and the hut at Etah. They were sewing for us constantly, and were probably the first women in the world who ever grew rich

"Plying the needle and thread."

AN ESQUIMAU FUNERAL.

But misfortune fell at length within the snow-hut. Poor old Kablunet, the voluble and kind-hearted and industrious wife of Tcheitchenguak, took sick. Her disease was pneumonia, and it ran its course with great rapidity. All my medicines and all my efforts to save her were of no avail, and she died on the fourth day. This unhappy event had nearly destroyedmy prestige as a Narkosak, and indeed it would have done so completely had it not been for the fortunate occurrence of an auroral display, during which time Jensen, whom my journal mentions as "a convenient and useful man," informed the Esquimaux that the white man's medicine will not operate. And thus was saved my reputation. She died at five o'clock in the evening; at six she was sewed up in a seal-skin winding-sheet, and before it was yet cold the body was carried on Hans's sledge to a neighboring gorge and there buried among the rocks and covered with heavy stones. The only evidences of sorrow or regret were manifested by her daughter, Merkut, the wife of Hans, and these appeared to be dictated rather from custom than affection. Merkut remained by the grave after the others had departed, and for about an hour she walked around and around it, muttering in a low voice some praises of the deceased. At the head of the grave she then placed the knife, needles, and sinew which her mother had recently been using, and the last sad rites to the departed savage were performed. Tcheitchenguak came over and told me that there was no longer anybody to keep his lamp burning, and that his hut was cold, and with a very sorrowful face he begged to be allowed to live with Hans. My consent given, that of Hans was not deemed necessary; and so the snow-hut became deserted, and the cheerful family that had there dispensed a rude hospitality was broken up; and the "house of feasting" had become a "house of mourning," and Tcheitchenguak had come away from it to finish alone his little remaining span of life. Old and worn down by a hard struggle for existence, he was now dependent upon a generation which cared littlefor him, while she who alone could have soothed the sorrows of his declining years had gone away before him to the far-off island where the Great Spirit, Torngasoak the Mighty, regales the happy souls with an endless feast on the ever green banks of the boundless lake, where the ice is never seen and the darkness is never known,—where the sunshine is eternal, in the summer of bliss that is everlasting,—the Upernak that has no end.

The temperature having somewhat moderated, I determined to set out in the evening of the third of April. Although the sun had not yet reached the horizon at midnight, there was quite light enough for my purposes, and by traveling in the night instead of the day we would have greater warmth while in camp, which is really the time of greatest danger from the cold; for when on the march men have usually little difficulty in keeping warm, even at the lowest temperatures, provided there is no wind. Besides this, there is still another difficulty obviated. The constant glare of the mid-day sun is a very severe tax upon the eye, and great caution is needed to guard against that painful and inconvenient disease known as "snow-blindness." In order to protect my men against it, as much as possible, I had supplied each of them with a pair of blue-glass goggles.

THE FIELD PARTY.

THE START.

My field party consisted of every available officer and man in the schooner, twelve in number. We were all ready to start at seven o'clock; and when I joined them on the ice beside the schooner their appearance was as picturesque as it was animated. In advance stood Jensen, impatiently rolling out his long whip-lash; and his eight dogs, harnessed to his sledge, "The Hope," were as impatient as he. Next cameKnorr with six dogs and the "Perseverance," to the upstander of which he had tied a little blue flag bearing this, his motto, "Toujours prêt." Then came a lively group of eight men, each with a canvas belt across his shoulder, to which was attached a line that fastened him to the sledge. Alongside the sledge stood McCormick and Dodge, ready to steer it among the hummocks, and on the sledge was mounted a twenty-foot metallic life-boat with which I hoped to navigate the Polar Sea. The mast was up and the sails were spread, and from the peak floated our boat's ensign, which had seen service in two former Arctic and in one Antarctic voyage, and at the mast-head were run up the Masonic emblems. Our little signal-flag was stuck in the stern-sheets. The sun was shining brightly into the harbor, and everybody was filled with enthusiasm, and ready for the hard pull that was to come. Cheer after cheer met me as I came down the stairway from the deck. At a given signal Radcliffe, who was left in charge of the vessel, touched off the "swivel," "March," cried McCormick, crack went the whips, the dogs sprang into their collars, the men stretched their "track ropes," and the cavalcade moved off.

The events which follow I will give from my "field-book," trusting that the reader will have sufficient interest in my party to accompany them through the icy wilderness into which they plunged; but for this we will need a new chapter.

Snowflake (same as No. 5)

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