Schwatka's Search: Sledging in the Arctic in Quest of the Franklin Records. William H. Gilder
forty-five or fifty years of age, gave us valuable information. His father, many years ago, opened a cairn on the northern shore of Washington Bay, in King William Land, and took from it a tin box containing a piece of paper with some writing on it. Not far from this same spot were the ruins of a cairn which had been built by white men and torn down by Inuits. The cairn had been built upon a large flat stone, which had the appearance of having been dragged to its present location from a stony point near by. The cairn itself was found to be empty, but it was generally believed by the Inuits that there was something buried beneath this stone. It was very heavy, and as they had only been there in parties of two or three at a time, they had never been able to overturn the stone, though they had repeatedly tried. Nutargeark also said he had brought a spoon with him from King William Land, which corresponded in description with the one Barry took to the United States. He said it was given to him by some of his tribe, and that it had come from one of the boat places, or where skeletons had been found on King William Land or Adelaide Peninsula, he could not remember exactly where. He had not given the spoon to Captain Barry, but to the wife of Sinuksook, an Iwillik Esquimau, who afterward gave it to a Captain Potter. We saw Sinuksook's wife a little later, and she distinctly remembered having given the spoon to Captain Potter. It was necessary, therefore, to find this officer.
[Illustration: CAIRN MARKING DEPOSIT OF PROVISIONS.]
During the first week in January, 1879, we learned that he was wintering at Marble Island, being now second in command on the whaler 'Abbie Bradford'. So Henry Klutschak and I made our way to Marble Island, with the first sled that had crossed from the main-land, being eight days on the road from Depot Island. We had reason to believe that Captain Barry and the 'Eothen' would also be at our destination, and that we could there replenish our stores. The trip was uneventful, except that when four days out I ran out of food through sharing my hard bread and pork with the natives, of whom there were twelve on my sled. They had plenty of tepee walrus meat, which was good food for them, but which I could not at that time eat. So for four days I had not a mouthful to eat, though I walked and ran nearly the whole distance travelled. I did not experience much inconvenience from weakness until the last day, which was that on which we came across the ice from Little Rabbit Island. When nearly half-way over, and moving rapidly over the new ice, the sled on which I was seated broke through, and all its occupants were precipitated into the water. The front part of the sled still hung by the ice, which bent beneath its weight. When I was struggling to get out the ice kept breaking off in huge cakes, and my clothing getting heavier and heavier all the time, I began to think that I would not be able to save myself; but at last I succeeded in rolling out upon the hard ice, and turning around to see if my help was needed in rescuing the women and children, found them already safely landed on the floe. The thermometer ranging thirty-eight degrees below zero, we were not long standing in the wind before our clothes were frozen stiff, so that it was almost impossible to bend a limb.
We succeeded in getting the sled out again, and started once more for Marble Island. I went ahead to pick out a route for the sled, and again the treacherous ice gave way under me, and I sank below the surface. It was with great difficulty that I regained the firm ice, and by this time my clothing was so heavy and stiff that I had to take off my outside tocklings, or trousers, in order to walk at all. It was now about ten o'clock in the morning, and in half an hour we reached about two miles distant from the island, but only to find an impassable channel of open water from a quarter to half a mile wide. We could see some one walking upon the shore of the island, but could hold no conversation with him. The natives who were with me said that when the tide turned perhaps the channel might close, and they proposed to wait; but in the meantime I was afraid I might freeze to death unless I kept moving. In the course of a few hours, during which I found out that I could not get back to Rabbit Island before dark, I became so faint for the want of food that I had to get some tepee walrus from the natives, and I ate it with a keen appetite. It did not taste as badly as I anticipated, so I ate a quantity, including some pieces of hide, about three quarters of an inch thick, which was cut into small pieces and looked like cheese. After eating several pieces I thought I would bite off the outside rind, which, on closer examination, I noticed to be the short stiff hair of the animal which I had been eating. Presently I began to feel warm all over my body, despite my frozen clothing—a condition attributable partly to the peculiar qualities of frozen food, and partly perhaps to the rasping in my interior, produced by the stiff walrus hair that I had eaten. It was now nearly dark, but we could see that the ice-floes were coming together, and crunching up a pudge of soft ice between them. At last the men started out over this pudge, stepping quickly from one piece of moving ice to another, until at last we reached firm footing again, though only by the exercise of considerable agility and looking sharply to where you went. It was a great relief to be again upon the shore; but we were still a considerable distance from the ships, and the Inuits proposed to lie down on the snow until daylight, as they could not see and did not know the route. I was afraid to stop moving, and proposed to keep walking in the direction of the harbor. All who came ashore, therefore, started with us; but the road at last became so difficult that I felt it necessary to rest quite often, wearied as I already was by previous hardships.
The route chosen by our guide was to follow the shore ice around until the harbor was reached. This was a very circuitous and dangerous road, as in the darkness one would frequently pitch headlong over a steep precipice upon the snow beneath. My trousers were so stiff that I could not bend my knee or lift my foot high enough to clear ordinary impediments, and I fell very often. It was fortunate for me that I never fell upon the shore ice beneath the cliff, for in many places it was very deep, and I could not see where I trod. When I commenced falling I never knew where I would alight, though I usually brought up in some friendly snow-drift. At last all the Inuits grew so impatient to reach the ships that they left Henry and me to find our way as best we could, and pushed on as rapidly as their better vision and greater familiarity with the country would permit. In half an hour from the time they left us they had reached the harbor; but with their accustomed indifference to the comfort of others they failed to say that two "kodlunars" (white men) were still out upon the island—one of them too weak and frozen to keep up with them. As soon as the officers learned the fact from them, Captain Barry despatched "Domino," one of the natives with his ship, to find us and bring us to the vessel. We saw a lantern which he carried, and, coming down from the cliff upon the smooth ice, were overjoyed to find ourselves in the harbor and but a few hundred yards from the ships. We shouted at the top of our voices, and "Domino" ran at once to us. I never was so glad to see any one in my life, for I felt that the terrible ordeal through which I had passed was at an end. We were soon in the warm cabin of the 'Eothen', where my frozen garments were removed and warm, dry "kodlunar" clothing substituted. Were it not for the previous training we had undergone in igloo life, I could not have survived the hardships of that day. As it was, I felt very little inconvenience, except from a severe cold, which always follows a change such as moving from an igloo into the heated air on shipboard. My appetite was enormous, and it seemed as if I could not eat enough of the generous fare of our hosts. I soon regained my usual robust health, and gained flesh at the rate of a pound a day for three weeks.
In the harbor, besides the 'Eothen', and the 'Abbie Bradford', the latter commanded by Captain Fisher, we found the 'Abbott Lawrence', Captain Mozier, and the 'Isabella', Captain Garvin, all except the 'Eothen' being from New Bedford. The ships were all comfortably housed with boards, and so banked up with snow that ordinary coal fires made them uncomfortably warm. It was painful to see, however, that scurvy had broken out in the fleet, and each vessel has had an average of half a dozen cases during our stay with them. They had more than the usual amount of fresh meat at this season, and it was difficult to account for the unusually large percentage of scurvy, unless Captain Fisher's theory were the correct one. He attributed it to the unusual severity of the fall and early winter-season, which, he said, was unprecedented in his experience of over fourteen years in these waters. The ships were driven into winter quarters nearly a month previous to the usual time by a succession of gales and heavy weather, which occasioned the loss of one vessel of the fleet—the brig 'A. J. Ross' of New Bedford, Captain Sinclair, which went ashore near Cape Kendall, on the eastern coast of Rowe's Welcome during the latter part of August. Though scurvy had been so prevalent it had not been so severe as usual, and as yet the graveyard on "Deadmen's Island," on the outer harbor, had received no accession from the crews. The successful treatment of the