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without stopping for food.

The Cape Richardson party returned on the evening of the 19th, and was sent out again on the 21st, nineteen Eskimos and twenty-two sledges, to take 6,600 pounds of dog pemmican to Porter Bay. MacMillan, being still under the weather with the grip, missed this preliminary training; but I felt certain that he would overtake the experience of the others as soon as he was able to travel. When the third party returned, on the 24th, they brought back the meat and skins of fourteen deer.

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
CAPTAIN BARTLETT AND HIS PARTY
CAPTAIN BARTLETT AND HIS PARTY
Panikpah, "Harrigan," Ooqueah, Bartlett. (A Typical Unit Division of the Expedition)
(Tents Were Used for Shelter in Earlier Autumn Hunting and Transportation of Supplies. In Winter Traveling and in the Sledge Journey Igloos Were Used)

On the 28th there was a general exodus from the ship: Henson, Ootah, Alletah, and Inighito were to hunt on the north side of Lake Hazen; Marvin, Poodloonah, Seegloo, and Arco on the east end and the south side of Lake Hazen; and Bartlett, with Panikpah, Inighito, Ooqueah, Dr. Goodsell, with Inighito, Keshungwah, Kyutah, and Borup, with Karko, Tawchingwah, and Ahwatingwah, were to go straight through to Cape Columbia.

I had planned from the beginning to leave most of the hunting and other field work to the younger members of the expedition. Twenty odd years of arctic experience had dulled for me the excitement of everything but a polar-bear chase; the young men were eager for the work; there was much to do on board ship in planning for the spring, and I wished to conserve my energies for the supreme effort.

There was no systematic training, because I do not believe in it. My body has always been able thus far to follow my will no matter what the demands might be, and my winter's work was largely a matter of refinement of equipment, and of mathematical calculations of pounds of supplies and miles of distance. It was the lack of food which had forced us to turn back at 87° 6´. Hunger, not cold, is the dragon which guards the Rhinegold of the Arctic.

I did allow myself one break in the monotony of ship life—a trip to Clements Markham Inlet, in October. Ever since April, 1902, when I had looked around the angle of Cape Hecla into the unexplored depths of this great fiord, I had had a longing to penetrate it. On the previous expedition I had started twice with that purpose, but had been prevented from carrying it out, partly on account of bad weather, partly by reason of my anxiety for the Roosevelt, which I had left in a precarious position. But now the Roosevelt was safe; and though the sun was circling near the horizon and the winter night would soon be upon us, I decided to make the trip.

On the 1st of October I left the ship with three Eskimos, Egingwah, Ooblooyah, and Koolatoonah, three sledges with teams of ten dogs each, and supplies for two weeks only. With the sledges thus lightly loaded, and the trail broken for us by the parties which had preceded us, we made rapid progress, reaching Porter Bay, thirty-five miles from the ship, for our first camp in a few hours.

Here we found two Eskimos, Onwagipsoo and Wesharkoopsi, who had been sent out a day or two before. Onwagipsoo went back to the ship, but Wesharkoopsi we took along with us to carry a load of supplies to Sail Harbor, which we expected to reach on the next march; from there he also would return to the ship.

Our camp at Porter Bay was in the permanent tent which had been erected there by the first of the autumn parties, the canvas tent with the sewed-in floor which has already been described. It was not very cold that night, and we slept comfortably after a hearty supper of beans and tea. Beans and tea! Perhaps it does not sound like a Lucullan feast, but after a day in the field in Grant Land it tastes like one.

CHAPTER XVI THE BIGGEST GAME IN THE ARCTIC

We slept splendidly on that banquet, and, breaking out early the next morning, we passed up the ice of Porter Bay to its head, then, taking to the land, crossed the five-mile-wide isthmus which separates Porter Bay from the head of James Ross Bay. Every foot of this route was familiar to me and rich with memories. Reaching the other side, we descended to the ice again and made rapid progress along the western shore. The dogs were lively and well-fed, trotting along with tails and ears erect; the weather was good, and the sun, now low on the horizon, cast long, fantastic shadows on the ice from every man and dog.

Suddenly the quick eyes of Egingwah spied a moving speck on the slope of the mountain to our left. "Tooktoo," he cried, and the party came to an instant standstill. Knowing that the successful pursuit of a single buck reindeer might mean a long run, I made no attempt to go after him myself; but I told Egingwah and Ooblooyah, my two stalwart, long-legged youngsters, to take the 40-82 Winchesters and be off. At the word they were flying across country, eager as dogs loosed from the traces, crouching low and running quickly. They took a course which would intercept the deer a little farther along the slope of the mountain.

I watched them through my glasses. The deer, when he caught sight of them, started off leisurely in another direction, looking back every now and then, suspiciously alert. When the deer halted suddenly and swung round facing them, it was clear that they had given the magic call taught by Eskimo father to Eskimo son through generation after generation, the imitation call at which every buck reindeer stops instantly—a peculiar hissing call like the spitting of a cat, only more lingering.

The two men leveled their rifles, and the magnificent buck went down in his tracks. The dogs had been watching, with heads and ears erect; but at the report of the rifles they swung sharply to the shore, and the next instant we were hurrying across the rocks and over the snow, the dogs dragging the sledges as if they had been empty.

When we reached the two hunters they were standing patiently beside the deer. I had told them not to disturb him, as some good photographs were desired. He was a beautiful creature, almost snow-white, with magnificent branching antlers. When the photographs were taken, all four of the men set to work, skinning and cutting him up.

FAMILY GROUP OF PEARY CARIBOU (RANGIFER PEARYI), ARRANGED BY "FROZEN TAXIDERMY" AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY FLASHLIGHT FAMILY GROUP OF PEARY CARIBOU (RANGIFER PEARYI), ARRANGED BY "FROZEN TAXIDERMY" AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY FLASHLIGHT

The scene is vivid in memory: the towering mountains on both sides of James Ross Bay, with the snow-covered foreshore stretching down to the white surface of the bay; in the south the low-lying sun, a great glare of vivid yellow just showing through the gap of the divide, the air full of slowly dropping frost crystals; and the four fur-clad figures grouped around the deer, with the dogs and the sledges at a little distance—the only signs of life in that great white wilderness.

When the deer was skinned and dressed, the pelt was carefully rolled and put on one of the sledges, the meat was made into a pile for Wesharkoopsi to take back to the ship when he returned from Sail Harbor with empty sledge, and we pushed along the western shore of the bay; then, taking to the land again, still westward across this second peninsula and low divide, till we came to the little bight, called Sail Harbor by the English, on the western side of Parry Peninsula.

Here, out at the mouth of the harbor, under the lee of the protecting northern point, we made our second camp.

Wesharkoopsi deposited his load of supplies, and I wrote a note for Bartlett, who was west of us on his way to Cape Columbia. That night we had deer steak for supper—a feast for a king.

After a few hours' sleep we started, straight as the crow flies, across the eastern end of the great glacial fringe, heading for the mouth of Clements Markham Inlet. Reaching the mouth of the inlet, we kept on down its eastern shore, finding very good going; for the tides rising in the crack next the shore had saturated the overlying snow, then freezing had formed a narrow but smooth surface for the sledges.

A part of this shore was musk-ox country, and we scanned it carefully, but saw none of the animals. Some miles down the bay we came upon the tracks of a couple of deer. A little farther on we were electrified by a tense whisper from the ever sharp-sighted Egingwah:

"Nanooksoah!"

He was pointing excitedly toward the center of the fiord, and following the direction of his finger we saw a cream-colored spot leisurely moving toward the mouth of the fiord—a polar bear!

If there is anything that starts the blood lust in an Eskimo's heart more wildly than the sight of a polar bear, I have yet to discover it. Hardened as I am to arctic hunting, I was thrilled myself.

POLAR BEAR, ARRANGED BY "FROZEN TAXIDERMY" AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY FLASHLIGHT POLAR BEAR, ARRANGED BY "FROZEN TAXIDERMY" AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY FLASHLIGHT

While I stood in front of the dogs with a whip in each hand, to keep them from dashing away—for the Eskimo dog knows the meaning of "nanooksoah" as well as his master—the three men were throwing things off the sledges as if they were crazy.

When the sledges were empty, Ooblooyah's team shot by me, with Ooblooyah at the up-standers. Egingwah came next, and I threw myself on his sledge as it flew past. Behind us came Koolatoonah with the third team. The man who coined the phrase "greased lightning" must have ridden on an empty sledge behind a team of Eskimo dogs on the scent of a polar bear.

The bear had heard us, and was making for the opposite shore of the fiord with prodigious bounds. I jumped to the up-standers of the flying sledge, leaving Egingwah to throw himself on it and get his breath, and away we went, wild with excitement, across the snow-covered surface of the fiord.

When we got to the middle the snow was deeper, and the dogs could not go so fast, though they strained ahead with all their might. Suddenly they scented the trail—and then neither deep snow nor anything else could have held them. Ooblooyah, with a crazy team and only himself at the up-standers, distanced the rest of us, arriving at the farther shore almost as soon as the leaping bear. He loosed his dogs immediately, and we could see the bear in the distance, followed by minute dots that looked hardly larger than mosquitoes swarming up the steep slope. Before our slower teams got to the shore, Ooblooyah had reached the top of the slope, and he signaled us to go around, as the land was an island.

When we reached the other side, we found where the bear had descended to the ice again and kept on across the remaining width of the fiord to the western shore, followed by Ooblooyah and his dogs.

A most peculiar circumstance, commented on by Egingwah as we flew along, was that this bear, contrary to the custom of bears in Eskimo land, did not stop when the dogs reached him, but kept right on traveling. This

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