CHAPTER XXXVIII.
LEAVING SMITH SOUND.—CROSSING THE NORTH WATER.—MEETING THE PACK.—THE SEA AND AIR TEEMING WITH LIFE.—REMARKABLE REFRACTION.—REACHING WHALE SOUND.—SURVEYING IN A BOAT.—THE SOUND TRACED TO ITS TERMINATION.—MEETING ESQUIMAUX AT ITEPLIK.—HABITS OF THE ESQUIMAUX.—MARRIAGE CEREMONY.—THE DECAY OF THE TRIBE.—VIEW OF BARDEN BAY.—TYNDALL GLACIER.
LEAVING SMITH SOUND.—CROSSING THE NORTH WATER.—MEETING THE PACK.—THE SEA AND AIR TEEMING WITH LIFE.—REMARKABLE REFRACTION.—REACHING WHALE SOUND.—SURVEYING IN A BOAT.—THE SOUND TRACED TO ITS TERMINATION.—MEETING ESQUIMAUX AT ITEPLIK.—HABITS OF THE ESQUIMAUX.—MARRIAGE CEREMONY.—THE DECAY OF THE TRIBE.—VIEW OF BARDEN BAY.—TYNDALL GLACIER.
The ice coming in at length with an easterly wind, and being unable to find any harbor (Cadogen Inlet was completely filled with ice), we had no alternative but to stand away to the south; and this we did at a fortunate moment, for the ice crowded in against the shore with great rapidity; and, had we waited longer, we should have been unable to escape, and would have been driven upon the beach by the irresistible pack.
We carried the wind along with us down the coast until we reached below Talbot Inlet, when we came upon a heavy pack, and held our course for Whale Sound, which I was desirous of exploring. Passing close to the land, I had an excellent opportunity for observing the coast and perfecting the chart, especially of Cadogen and Talbot Inlets, both of which were traced around their entire circuit. The coast is everywhere bristling with glaciers. A large island lies below Talbot Inlet, inside of the Mittie Island of Captain Inglefield, and not before laid down.
A RARE DAY.
ARCTIC MIRAGE.
Skirting the northern margin of the ice, we made a course to the northeastward, across theNorth Water, through one of the most charming days that I have spent under the Arctic skies. There was but the feeblest "cat's-paw" to ruffle the sea, and we glided on our way over the still waters through a bright sunshine. The sea was studded all over with glittering icebergs and bits of old floes, and here and there a small streak of ice which had become detached from the pack. The beasts of the sea and the fowls of the air gathered around us, and the motionless water and the quiet atmosphere were alive. The walrus came snorting and bellowing through the sea as if to have a look at us; the seals in great numbers were continually putting up their cunning heads all around the vessel; the narwhal in large schools, "blowing" lazily, thrust their horns out of the sea, and their dappled bodies followed after with a graceful curve, as if they enjoyed the sunshine and were loathe to quit it; great numbers of white whale darted past us; the air and the icebergs swarmed with gulls; and flocks of ducks and auks were flying over us all the time. I sat upon the deck much of the day, trying, with indifferent success, to convey to my portfolio the exquisite green tints of the ice which drifted past us, and watching a most singular phenomenon in the heavens. These Arctic skies do sometimes play fantastic tricks, and on no occasion have I witnessed the exhibition to such perfection. The atmosphere had a rare softness, and throughout almost the entire day there was visible a most remarkable mirage or refraction,—an event of very frequent occurrence during the calm days of the Arctic summer. The entire horizon was lifting and doubling itself continually, and objects at a great distance beyond it rose as if by strange enchantment and stood suspendedin the air, changing shape with each changing moment. Distant icebergs and floating ice-fields, and coast-lines and mountains were thus brought into view; sometimes preserving for a moment their natural shapes, then widening or lengthening, rising and falling as the wind fluttered or fell calm over the sea. The changes were as various as the dissolving images of a kaleidoscope, and every form of which the imagination could conceive stood out against the sky. At one moment a sharp spire, the prolonged image of a distant mountain-peak, would shoot up; and this would fashion itself into a cross, or a spear, or a human form, and would then die away, to be replaced by an iceberg which appeared as a castle standing upon the summit of a bill, and the ice-fields coming up with it flanked it on either side, seeming at one moment like a plain dotted with trees and animals; again, as rugged mountains; and then, breaking up after a while, disclosing a long line of bears and dogs and birds and men dancing in the air, and skipping from the sea to the skies. To picture this strange spectacle were an impossible task. There was no end to the forms which appeared every instant, melting into other shapes as suddenly. For hours we watched the "insubstantial pageant," until a wind from the north ruffled the sea; when, with its first breath, the whole scene melted away as quickly as the "baseless fabric" of Prospero's "vision;" and from watching these dissolving images, and wooing the soft air, we were, in a couple of hours, thrashing to windward through a fierce storm of rain and hail, under close-reefed sails.
LOST IN THE FOG.
We had some ugly knocking about and some narrow escapes in the thick atmosphere, before wereached Whale Sound. A heavy pack, apparently hanging upon the Carey Islands, drove us far up the North Water; and, to get to our destination, we were obliged to hold in close to Hakluyt Island. Here, the air having fallen calm, I pulled ashore; and, when we set out to return, we found ourselves enveloped in a fog which caused us some alarm. Observing its approach, we pulled to catch the schooner before the dark curtain closed upon us, but were overtaken when almost a mile away. Having no compass we became totally ignorant of which way to steer; and, although we heard the ship's bell and an occasional discharge of guns to attract our attention, yet, so deceptive is the ear where the eye is not concerned in guiding it, that no two of us caught the sound from the same direction; so we lay on our oars, and trusted to fortune. After a while, a light wind sprung up; and the schooner, getting under way, by the merest chance bore right upon us, and came so suddenly in view out of the dark vapors that we had like to have been run down before we could get headway on the boat.
We had much difficulty, owing to the fogs, current, and icebergs, in getting up Whale Sound; but, after much patient perseverance, we arrived at length in Barden Bay, and came to anchor off the native settlement of Netlik.
The settlement was found to be deserted. The fog lifting next day, disclosing much heavy ice, among which it would be dangerous to trust the schooner, I took a whale-boat and pulled up the Sound.
The Sound narrows steadily until a few miles beyond Barden Bay, where the coasts run parallel until the waters terminate in a deep bay or gulf, to whichI gave the name of the enterprising navigator, Captain Inglefield, who first passed the entrance to it. The coast on the north side runs much further south than appears on the old charts; and two conspicuous headlands, which Inglefield mistook for islands, I have designated on my chart by the names which the supposed islands have on his. A cluster of islands at the farther end of the gulf I called Harvard Islands, in remembrance of the University at Cambridge, to members of whose faculty I am indebted for many courteous attentions while fitting out in Boston; and a range of noble mountains which rise from the head of the gulf and with stately dignity overlook the broadmer de glace, holding the vast ice-flood in check, I named the Cambridge Hills.
On the south side of the Sound, toward which the Harvard Islands seem to trend, there are two prominent capes which I named respectively Cape Banks and Cape Lincoln;[16]while two deep bays are designated as Cope's Bay and Harrison Bay. Another, on the north side, I called Armsby Bay.
[16]In honor of His Excellency N. P. Banks, Governor of Massachusetts, and of His Honor F. W. Lincoln, Mayor of Boston, at the time of my sailing, in 1860.
[16]In honor of His Excellency N. P. Banks, Governor of Massachusetts, and of His Honor F. W. Lincoln, Mayor of Boston, at the time of my sailing, in 1860.
AN ESQUIMAUX VILLAGE.
I had to regret that I could not reach the further end of the gulf. The ice for about twenty miles remained quite solid and impenetrable, so that I was obliged to draw back. Skirting along the southern coast we came upon the village of Itiplik and found it inhabited by about thirty people. They were living in seal-skin tents, three in number, and were overjoyed to see us. Near by, there was a rookery of auks similar to that near Port Foulke, which, together with the seal and walrus that were observed tobe very numerous in all parts of the Sound, furnished them ample subsistence. There were in all nine families, but there was no family that consisted of more than four persons,—the parents and two children. The largest family that I have seen among them was that of Kalutunah. Hans told me of several families of three children; and Tattarat, now a lonely widower, lives on Northumberland Island, near the auk-hill of that place, with three orphans; and his wife bore him a fourth, which disappeared in some mysterious manner soon after its mother died and while it was yet a babe at the breast.
ESQUIMAU STATISTICS.
With the aid of Hans, I endeavored to get at a correct estimate of the whole tribe, and, commencing with Cape York, took down their names. In this community there can be no domestic secrets, and everybody knows all about everybody else's business,—where they go for the summer, and what luck they have had in hunting,—and talk and gossip about it and about each other just as if they were civilized beings, having good names to pick to pieces. But I strongly suspect that Hans grew tired of my questioning and cross-questioning, and stopped short at seventy-two. I have good reason to believe, however, that the tribe numbers more nearly one hundred. I obtained a complete list of the deaths which had taken place since Dr. Kane left them, in 1855. They amounted to thirty-four; and, during that time, there had been only nineteen births.
ESQUIMAU MARRIAGE CEREMONY.
Their marriage engagements are, of necessity, mere matters of convenience. Their customs allow of a plurality of wives; but among this tribe, even if there were sufficient women, no hunter probably could support two families. The marriage arrangementis made by the parents, and the parties are fitted to each other as their ages best suit. When a boy comes of age, he marries the first girl of suitable years. There is no marriage ceremony further than that the boy is required to carry off his bride by main force; for, even among these blubber-eating people, the woman only saves her modesty by a sham resistance, although she knows years beforehand that her destiny is sealed and that she is to become the wife of the man from whose embraces, when the nuptial day comes, she is obliged by the inexorable law of public opinion to free herself if possible, by kicking and screaming with might and main until she is safely landed in the hut of her future lord, when she gives up the combat very cheerfully and takes possession of her new abode. The betrothal often takes place at a very early period of life and at very dissimilar ages. A bright-looking boy named Arko, which means "The spear thrower," who is not over twelve years of age, is engaged to a girl certainly of twenty, named Kartak, "The girl with the large breasts." Why was this? I inquired. "There is no other woman for him." I thought he looked rather dubious of his future matrimonial prospects when I asked him how soon he proposed to carry off this big-breasted bride. Two others, whom I judged to be about ten years each, were to be married in this romantic style as soon as the lover had caught his first seal. This, I was told, is the test of manhood and maturity.
I talked to the oldest hunter of the tribe, an ancient, patriarchal-looking individual named Kesarsoak,—"He of the white hairs,"—about the future of the tribe. The prospect to him was the same as toKalutunah,—"Our people have but a few more suns to live!" Would they all come up to Etah if I should return, and stay there, and bring guns and hunters? His answer was a prompt, "Yes." He told me, as Kalutunah had done before, that Etah was the best hunting-place on the coast, only the ice broke up so soon and was always dangerous; while Whale Sound was frozen during nearly all the year, and gave the hunters greater security.
TYNDALL GLACIER.
After returning to the schooner, I pulled up into Barden Bay, taking with me the magnetic and surveying instruments and facilities for completing my botanical and other collections, and for photographing the fine scenery of the bay. Landing on its north shore, we found the hill-side covered in many places with a richer green sward than I had ever seen north of Upernavik, except once on a former occasion at Northumberland Island. The slope was girdled with the same tall cliffs which everywhere meet the eye along this coast; and the same summer streams of melted snow tumbled over them, and down the slope from the mountain sides. The day was quite calm and the sky almost cloudless. The sun shone broadly upon us, and the temperature was 51°. Immense schools of whales and walrus, with an occasional seal, were sporting in the water; flocks of sea-fowl went careering about the icebergs and through the air, and myriads of butterflies fluttered among the flowers; while from the opposite side of the bay an immense glacier,[17]whose face was almost buried in the sea, carried the eye along a broad and winding valley, up steps of ice of giant height, and over smooth plains of whiteness, around the base of the hills, untilat length the slope pierced the very clouds, and, reappearing above the curling vapors, was lost in the blue canopy of the heavens.
[17]I have named this glacier in honor of Professor John Tyndall.
[17]I have named this glacier in honor of Professor John Tyndall.
TYNDALL GLACIER.
Three glaciers were visible from my point of observation,—a small one, to the right, barely touching the water, and hanging, as if in suspensive agony, in a steep declivity; another, at the head of the bay, was yet miles away from the sea; while before us, in the centre of the bay, there came pouring down the rough and broken flood of ice before alluded to, which, bulging far out into the bay, formed a coast-line of ice over two miles long.
The whole glacier system of Greenland was here spread out before me in miniature. A lofty mountain ridge, like a whale's back, held in check the expandingmer de glace, but a broad cleft cut it in twain, and the stream before me had burst through the opening like cataract rapids tumbling from the pent-up waters of a lake. The sublimity and picturesqueness of the scene was greatly heightened by two parallel rocky ridges, whose crests were to the left of the glacier. These crests are trap-dykes, left standing fifty feet perhaps above the sloping hill-side below them, by the wasting away of the sandstone through which they have forced their way in some great convulsion of Nature.
On the day following, I visited this glacier and made a careful examination of it, pulling first along its front in a boat and then mounting to its surface.
GOTHIC GLACIER.
It would be difficult to imagine any thing more startling to the imagination or more suggestive to the mind than the scene presented by this two miles of ice coast-line, as I rowed along within a few fathoms of it. The glacier was broken up into the most singular shapes, and presented nothing of that uniformityusual to the glacier's face. It was worn and wasted away until it seemed like the front of some vast incongruous temple,—here a groined roof of some huge cathedral, and there a pointed window or a Norman door-way deeply molded; while on all sides were pillars round and fluted, and pendants dripping crystal drops of the purest water, and all bathed in a soft, blue atmosphere. Above these wondrous archways and galleries there was still preserved the same Gothic character,—tall spires and pinnacles rose along the entire front and multiplied behind them, and new forms met the eye continually. The play of light and the magical softness of the color of the sea and ice was perfectly charming, as the scene I have heretofore described among the icebergs. Strange, there was nothing cold or forbidding anywhere. The ice seemed to take the warmth which suffused the air, and I longed to pull my boat far within the openings, and paddle beneath the Gothic archways. The dangers from falling ice alone prevented me from entering one of the largest of them.
GLACIER STREAM.
Pulling around to the west side of the glacier, I clambered up a steep declivity over a pile of mud and rock, which the expanding and moving ice had pushed out from its bed. Once at the top of this yielding slope, the eye was met by a perfect forest of spires; but it was not easy to get on the glacier itself. Along its margin, half in mud and rock and half in ice, a torrent of dirty water came tearing along at a furious pace, disclosing the laminated structure of the ice in a very beautiful manner; and this was not easily crossed. At length, however, I came to a spot where the chief feeder of this rushing stream branched off at right angles, coming from the glacier itself, and Ihad no difficulty in wading across above the junction of the two arms. Following thence up the eastward branch as it dashed wildly down in a succession of cataracts, cutting squarely across the laminæ or strata (which lay at an angle of about 35°), I came at length to a place where the ice was much disturbed, and rose by broken steps from the plain on which I stood to the height of about one hundred and fifty feet, and right out from this wall came the rushing torrent, hissing and foaming from a monstrous tunnel, to which the Croton Aqueduct would be a pigmy. It was a strange sight. The ice was perfectly pure and transparent; and yet, out of its very heart, was pouring the muddy stream of which I have made mention, and which, although the comparison is rather remote, reminded me of the image which Virgil draws of the Tiber, when Æneas first beheld its turbid waters, pouring out from beneath the bright and lovely foliage which overspread it.
The tunnel out of which the waters poured was about ten yards wide and as many high, the supporting roof being composed of every form of Gothic arch, fretted and fluted in the most marvelous manner, and pure as the most stainless alabaster; yet the distant effect within the tunnel was quite different,—the dark stream beneath being reflected above; and truly, if I might be allowed to paraphrase a line of Dryden,—
"The muddy bottom o'er the arch was thrown."
"The muddy bottom o'er the arch was thrown."
"The muddy bottom o'er the arch was thrown."
"The muddy bottom o'er the arch was thrown."
I clambered within this tunnel as far as I could, along a slippery shelf above the tumbling waters, until the light was almost shut out behind me, but far enough to perceive that, on my right hand, other tunnelsdischarged into this main sewer, as the underground culverts which drain into the main artery the refuse of a city.
CLIMBING THE GLACIER.
Returning to the open air, I pursued my way up the glacier for a couple of miles further, and discovered that this stream had its origin in the mountain on the right, where the melting snows rolled over the rocky slope, evidently by a newly formed channel, for the water was tearing through moss-beds and deposits of sand and silt, and, rushing thence on the glacier, tumbled headlong hundreds and hundreds of feet, down into a yawning chasm. This chasm or crevasse no doubt extended to the bottom of the glacier, and the water, after winding along the rocky bed under the ice, finally has found its way into the cracks formed by the ice in its descent over a steep and rugged declivity, and has slowly worn away the tunnels or culverts which I have described.
I had now come to the gorge in the mountain through which the glacier descends to the sea. The view of the glacier from the margin is, at this point, somewhat like what I fancy themer de glaceat Trélaporte, in the Alps, would be if the Grande Jorasse and Mont Tacul, and the other mountains which form the cradle for theglacier de Léchaudand theglacier du Géant, and their tributaries, were all leveled. Instead of the variety disclosed in the Alpine view, the eye lights here upon one expanding stream instead of many streams, which narrows as it approaches the pass until it is about two miles over; thence descending the steep declivity to the sea, breaking up as it moves over the rougher places in the manner before described.
GRANDEUR OF THE GLACIERS.
In all my glacier experience I had not seen anything so fully exhibiting the principles of glacier movement or so forcibly illustrating the river-like character of the crystal stream. To scale the glacier further was not in my power; but the eye climbed up, step by step, through the mountain-pass to the giddy summit, and as the imagination wandered from this icy pinnacle over sea and mountain, it seemed to me that the world did not hold any more impressive evidence of the greatness and the power of the Almighty hand; and I thought how feeble were all the efforts of man in comparison. As I turned away and commenced my descent, I found myself repeating these lines of Byron, penned as his poet-fancy wandered up the ice-girdled steeps and over the ice-crowned summits of the Alps:—
"... these areThe palaces of Nature, whose vast wallsHave pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,And throned Eternity in icy hallsOf cold sublimity."
"... these areThe palaces of Nature, whose vast wallsHave pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,And throned Eternity in icy hallsOf cold sublimity."
"... these areThe palaces of Nature, whose vast wallsHave pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,And throned Eternity in icy hallsOf cold sublimity."
"... these are
The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
And throned Eternity in icy halls
Of cold sublimity."
A Sketch
TYNDALL GLACIER—WHALE SOUND(FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY DR. HAYES.)
TYNDALL GLACIER—WHALE SOUND(FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY DR. HAYES.)
TYNDALL GLACIER—WHALE SOUND
(FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY DR. HAYES.)