Photograph copyrighted, 1914, by Lomen Bros., NomeMUGPI“Keruk carried her baby, Mugpi, on her back all the wayto Wrangell Island.”See page 141
Photograph copyrighted, 1914, by Lomen Bros., NomeMUGPI“Keruk carried her baby, Mugpi, on her back all the wayto Wrangell Island.”See page 141
Photograph copyrighted, 1914, by Lomen Bros., Nome
MUGPI
“Keruk carried her baby, Mugpi, on her back all the wayto Wrangell Island.”See page 141
At about noon we finally got away—Kataktovick, McKinlay, Mamen and I. McKinlay, wearing man-harness, helped pull my sledge, while I guided and drove the dogs. On account of his dislocated knee-cap which bothered him constantly and once on the march got out of place and had to be put back, with strenuous efforts on my part and much silent suffering on his, Mamen could not help pull Kataktovick’s sledge but had to limp alongside and make his way as best he could. He chafed very much over his temporary uselessness and I had to cheer him up as well as I could by telling him constantly what wonderful work he had already accomplished.
We placed a record in a copper tank on the ice, telling where the ship was lost and when we left camp, with the names of the members of the various parties as they had left. In camp and on the ice we left behind us two transits, about 3,000 pounds of pemmican, 80 cases of biscuit, 200 sacks of coal, ten cases of gasoline, two drums of coal oil, with various odds and ends; over the camp we left the British ensign flying. I had my charts with me. On the day we left, on account of a sudden clearing up of the atmosphere and a temporary cessation of the almost continuous whirling snowdrift, I had a good view of Wrangell Island, the first sure view I had had of it.
We had reached a point beyond the second camp by nightfall. Here we stopped. We had intended to make the third camp, but it was getting very dark, we had been up all the previous night, had worked hard all day and were very tired, so we were forced to pitch our tents and had to spend a miserable night under canvas. The tent was not large enough for us, yet all four of us occupied it and our breathing filled it with condensation. Our dogs, too, were rather sluggish the first day out, for they had been well stuffed with food during the time of our enforced delay in camp.
We welcomed daylight the next morning and turned out at four o’clock, and after our standard ration of tea, biscuit and pemmican, were soon on the march. All hands were glad to be off and the dogs, too, worked better than on the first day, so we made good progress. In most places the road had been destroyed by the storm of the past few days, so the work of the preliminary sledging parties was of little use to us, though sometimes we could make out where the trail led; chiefly, however, we had to make our own way, guided by the empty pemmican tins and flags, where these still stayed up, and by the sight of Wrangell Island to the southwest. We managed to keep the general direction of the travelled road from camp to camp,though it often took time and care to study out the way to go.