CAPTAIN BARTLETT’S CHART OF THE SIBERIAN COASTAND BERING STRAIT“After we had finished our second round of tea, they made signsto show that they wanted to know where we came from.I took out my charts, showed them where wedrifted, pointed out Wrangell Island and toldthem of the men there, showed themwhere the ship sank and wherewe had just landed.”See page 213.
CAPTAIN BARTLETT’S CHART OF THE SIBERIAN COASTAND BERING STRAIT“After we had finished our second round of tea, they made signsto show that they wanted to know where we came from.I took out my charts, showed them where wedrifted, pointed out Wrangell Island and toldthem of the men there, showed themwhere the ship sank and wherewe had just landed.”See page 213.
CAPTAIN BARTLETT’S CHART OF THE SIBERIAN COASTAND BERING STRAIT
“After we had finished our second round of tea, they made signsto show that they wanted to know where we came from.I took out my charts, showed them where wedrifted, pointed out Wrangell Island and toldthem of the men there, showed themwhere the ship sank and wherewe had just landed.”See page 213.
Spreading out the chart I inquired by signs about the people that we might find on our journey eastward, I was assured that we should see them all along the coast and that there were one or two communities of them like this on the way to Cape North. I could find Cape North on the chart, on which, of course, it was clearly marked. TheChukches, however, did not know what I meant when I used the name but finally one of them said “Irkaipij.” He repeated it again and again and at last I understood that it was another name for the same place. I laid a lot of matches on the chart, showing our course, and the same man, by means of these matches, indicated that at Cape North were several arangas. From the presence of cooking utensils, tea and tobacco I concluded, and, as I learned later, correctly, that I should run across Russian traders here and there on our march.
I wondered whether these Chukches were travellers and ever left the coast to journey into the interior of the country. By drawing pictures of trees and reindeer on the chart I found that I could make them understand what I wanted to know; then by marking on the chart they showed me that they made journeys of fifteen sleeps’ duration before they reached the reindeer country. I learned afterwards that there were two kinds of natives, the coast Eskimo and the deer men, the latter a hardier type of man than the former. The coast natives get their living by hunting, their chief game being walrus, seal and bear. Some of them have large skin-boats for travelling from settlement to settlement, covering in this way considerable stretches of coast. They do not go out upon the drift ice. Two years before, so Kataktovickdiscovered, two hunters had got adrift on the ice and had not come back; we were now requested to tell whether we had seen any signs of them.
They establish their arangas when possible near a river, where they can fish for salmon and trout and get ice to melt for water, instead of using snow, a large quantity of which is needed for such a purpose. I found a number of men and women along the coast who were between fifty and sixty years of age, but they looked and acted older; they seem to be pretty generally affected with turberculosis, more or less developed, and do not take the right care of themselves. When they get too old and feeble to support themselves and have become a burden to others, they destroy themselves. I do not think they make any graves,—at least I saw none; apparently their bodies are left for the birds and animals to eat.
I did not, of course, acquire all my information about the natives from the first ones I met, though to be sure they were a typical group and exemplified, the more I studied them, all the customs of the country, especially that of continual feasting of the stranger within their gates.
About eleven o’clock that night we all lay down together on the bed-platform,—men, women and children; the youngsters had all remained outside the curtain until that time. The air was hot andill-smelling, and filled with smoke from the Russian pipes which the Chukches used, pipes with little bowls and long stems, good for only a few puffs. When they were not drinking tea they were smoking Russian tobacco. All the time, with hardly a moment’s cessation, they were coughing violently; tuberculosis had them in its grip. When they lay down to sleep they left the lamps burning. There was no ventilation; the coughing continued and the air was if anything worse and worse as the night wore on. Some time between two and three in the morning I woke up; I had been awake at intervals ever since turning in but now I was fully aroused. The air was indescribably bad. The lamps had gone out and when I struck a match it would not light. The Chukches were all apparently broad awake, coughing incessantly. I felt around for the curtain and when I found it held it open. This was evidently a new experience for them; they were clearly afraid of draughts. I was a guest, however, and they politely refrained from outward objections.
My diary for the next day, April 6, begins: “Anniversary of the discovery of the North Pole. No doubt in New York the Explorers’ Club is entertaining Peary.”
All day the wind blew hard from the northwest, with blinding snowdrifts. Had we been ever soinclined to move we could have done little travelling and our enforced stay gave us a good chance to dry out our clothes, which had became saturated with salt water and perspiration, and to mend the numerous tears where the jagged corners of the raftered ice had got in their work. I borrowed boots and stockings from the natives for Kataktovick and sent him out with another Eskimo to repair our sledge, which was much the worse for wear. We made some new dog-harness and repaired the old. I tried to buy a dog or two here but the natives had none to sell; in fact they had very few dogs at any time.
Towards afternoon Kataktovick came in and told me that he thought one of the natives would go on to Cape North with us, taking with him his dog and his small sledge. This was welcome news, for by guiding us along the uncertainties of the trail he could expedite our travelling.
I had two or three cheap watches and other small articles and had saved half a dozen razors of my own; these things I divided among the natives along the way. Money, of which I had only a little, was not much good. To the old woman who had taken off my boots when we first arrived here I gave a cake of soap and some needles, to her daughter some empty tea tins and to her twelve-year-old boy a watch and a pocket-knife. TheSiberian women are very industrious; they do all the housework, of course, sewing and mending the skin clothing, and, if need be, they drive the dogs.
With the conditions now favorable for progress along shore, I knew that, with luck, I should be able to reach civilization and arrange to have aid sent to the men on Wrangell Island. I thought about them all the time, however, and worried about them; I wondered how the storms which had so delayed our progress across Long Strait had affected Munro’s chances of retrieving the supplies cached along the ice from Shipwreck Camp and getting safely back to the main party, and how the men would find life on the island as the weeks went by and they separated according to my instructions for the hunting which would sooner or later have to be their main dependence.