Chapter IX: Part 9

It is now well known that the first country of the western hemisphere to be visited by Europeans was Greenland--nearly a thousand years ago. The European settlement, the Christianization, and the abandonment of southern Greenland, covering a period of three centuries, has lately received interesting and exhaustive treatment by a famous arctic expert who has brought together all existing data. Foreign to these investigations are the facts associated with the discovery during the past hundred years of three Inuit tribes of Greenland previously unknown to the world. It seems astonishing that nine hundred years of Greenland's history and of its exploration should have passed without revealing the existence of the Eskimos of Etah, of Omevik, and of Angmagsalik. This narrative dwells more particularly on the finding of the tribe of Angmagsalik, on the coast of East Greenland, by Captain G. Holm, Royal Danish Navy, through whose heroic efforts and wise recommendations the tribe is now under the protecting influences of the government of Denmark and has become a Christian, well-cared-for people.[24]

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In 1818 Captain John Ross, R.N., in an attempt to discover the northwest passage, though verifying the discredited discoveries of Baffin in 1616, failed in his special effort. However, he added a new people to the knowledge of the world through meeting in the neighborhood of Cape York, Baffin Bay, eight of the Inuits, now known as the Etah or Cape York Eskimos, whom he fancifully designated as the Arctic Highlanders. Elisha Kent Kane was the first to have familiar relations with and give detailed information about these isolated natives, the tribe in 1854 consisting of one hundred and forty persons. In later years the Etahs have been frequently visited by explorers, whalers, and hunters. As the most northerly inhabitants of the world at the present time, they naturally have engaged the earnest attention of all who have met these hardy, kindly, and resourceful people. Kane's fear of their extinction was groundless, as against the number of one hundred and forty, given by him, Peary's census figures of 1897 show two hundred and thirty-four, an increase of ninety-four in forty years. Rasmussen relates that within the memory of man, but evidently since Kane's time, fourteen Eskimos from the region of Baffin Land have joined the Etah natives. It is reasonable to believe that the origin of the Cape York Eskimo was through similar migrations probably two or three centuries earlier.

Prior to the nineteenth century practically the only known Eskimo people of Greenland consisted of those under Danish protection, who occupied the entire ice-free west coast from Cape Farewell 60 deg. N. to Tasiusak, 73 deg. 24' N. Traditions of the existence of tribes of natives on the east coast have long prevailed, but up to the nineteenth century there were known only a few individuals, quite near Farewell, which were visited by Wallo in 1752.

Still among the Inuits of extreme southern Greenland were numerous and curious traditions of the inhabitants of the east coast, one to the effect that far to the northward were some light-haired people of European complexion. Another tale oft told in winter gatherings was one, doubtless in ridicule, of the occasional Inuit who, holding fast to a barren land, came west only to trade and never to live. It is a beautiful legend showing true and abiding love of home and country. Dr. Rink thus translates it: "A man from the east coast of Greenland from love of his home never left it even during the summer-time. Among his principal enjoyments was that of gazing at the sun rising out of the ocean. But when his son grew up he became desirous of seeing other countries and above all of accompanying his countrymen to the west coast. At length he persuaded his father to go with him. No sooner, however, had they passed Cape Farewell and the father saw the sun about to rise behind the land than he insisted upon returning immediately. Having again reached their island home, he went out from his tent early next morning, and when his people had in vain waited for his return they went out and found him dead. His delight at again seeing the sun rise out of the ocean had overpowered and killed him."

The first definite knowledge of the Eastern Inuits came by accident, through the boat voyage of Captain W. A. Graah, who under the directions of the King of Denmark was searching for the ruins of the East Bygd--the colony of Scandinavians of the twelfth to the fifteenth century. During this search, which extended to within sight of Cape Dan, Graah found no less than five hundred and thirty-six Inuits living at about twenty different places. Of these more than one-half had never seen a white man.

Graah says of them: "The affection the Eastlanders have for their children is excessive.... Notwithstanding the little care bestowed on them, the children conduct themselves so as to seldom merit reproof.... The East Greenlanders look on begging, especially for food, as a disgrace.... As soon as a boy can creep about alone his father gives him a little javelin, which he is taught to throw at a mark. He thus speedily acquires that dexterity in the management of his weapon on which in after years he is to principally depend for his own and his family's subsistence. When he grows older he is provided with a kayak, and learns to battle with the waves, to catch birds, and to strike the seal. When the youth comes home for the first time with a seal in tow the day is made a holiday and the friends and neighbors invited to a feast, at which, while he recounts all the circumstances of the chase, the maidens present lay their heads together to choose a bride for him.

"Their intercourse with each other is marked with singular urbanity; they are modest, friendly, obliging, and forbearing.

"When the howling of the dogs proclaim the arrival of strangers the people hurry to the shore to welcome them and to invite them to their houses. The wet clothes of the visitors are taken from them and hung up to dry. Dry ones are lent in their stead, and if a hole is discovered in their boots the landlady sets to work straightway to patch it.

"They are a gentle, civil, well-behaved set of people among whom one's life and property are perfectly secure as long as one treats them with civility and does them no wrong. Their veracity and fidelity are beyond impeachment.

"The northern lights they take to be the spirits of the dead playing ball with the head of a walrus."

The principal encampments were between Kemisak and Omevik, beyond which place to the north, said the natives of Kemisak, there were no inhabitants. The Eskimos numbered two hundred and ninety-five and were called the Omivekkians.

Of their environment in favorable places and their amusements Graah reported: "The cove had fields of considerable extent, covered with dwarf willows, juniper berry, black crakeberry, and whortleberry heath, with many patches of fine grass. The stream, abounding in char, had its source in the glaciers of which several gigantic arms reached down from the height in the background. Flowers everywhere adorned the fields. Three hundred paces from the sea the cliffs rise almost perpendicularly, with snow-clad summits, far beyond the average height. The natives had here assembled to feast upon the char, plentiful and of large size, the black crakeberry, and angelica, gathering them also for winter use. They give themselves up to mirth and merrymaking. This evening, to the number of two hundred or more, they began by torch-light their tambourine dance, a favorite festival."

Graah believed that there were no natives living to the north of Cape Dan, and that, when the greater part of the Eskimos seen by him moved to West Greenland, in the course of a few years, the whole coast was deserted. This belief was seemingly, though erroneously, confirmed by the fact that, while Clavering saw a few natives in 74 deg. N., Scoresby, Koldewey, Ryder, Nathorst, and the Duke of Orleans, in their explorations, saw no living native on the east coast.

It remained for the expeditions of Hall, Nares, Greely, Amdrup, Holm, and Mylius-Erichsen to prove by their united observations that there was not only an Inuit settlement on the east coast, but that such natives are the descendants of the true Children of the Ice, who have crossed Grinnell Land, skirted northern Greenland, and thus come eventually to their present habitat. Their fathers were formerly inhabitants of the most northerly lands of the globe, of the lands of Grant, Grinnell, Greenland, and Hazen (or Peary).

Brief and transient may have been their occupation of many of the various encampments during their devious wanderings in the long migration, covering nearly two thousand miles of travel. Their summer tent-rings and stone winter huts dot the favoring shores of every game-producing fiord from Cape Farewell, in 60 deg. N., northward to Broenlund Fiord, Hazen (Peary) Land, 82 deg. 08' N., on the nearest known land to the north pole.

They travelled leisurely, seeking fruitful hunting grounds and living on the game of the land or of the adjacent sea. They thus netted the salmon of the glacial lakes, searched the valleys for deer, snared the ptarmigan, lanced the lumbering musk-ox, speared the sea-fowl, caught the seal, slaughtered the walrus, and they are believed to have even pursued in kayaks and lanced the narwhal and the white whale.

While Mylius-Erichsen and his heroic comrades obtained the definite information as to the extreme northern limit of Inuit habitation of all time, and paid the price of such data with their lives, it was with equal bravery but happier fortune that Captain G. Holm rescued from oblivion, and thus indirectly raised to happier life, the struggling descendants of the iron men and women whose unfailing courage and fertile resourcefulness had wrested food and shelter from the most desolate and the most northerly land environment of the world.

Once, in 1860, there came to the Cape Farewell trading station an Inuit who had lost his toes and fingertips. Though just able to grasp a paddle with his stumpy fingers, he was an expert kayaker and threw his javelin with the left hand. He said that he was from a place called Angmagsalik, and that between eight hundred and a thousand natives dwelt in that vicinity. For nearly a quarter of a century this report of the existence of an unknown tribe of Inuits remained unverified. In 1883, however, the exploration of this part of East Greenland was made by a Danish officer of extended and successful experience in the governmental surveys of southern Greenland, who fully recognized the hazardous and prolonged nature of such an expedition. The Inuits said that many lives had been lost in attempting the shore-ice of the east coast, and that a round trip to and from Angmagsalik--"Far, oh! so far to the north!"--took from three to four years.

Thoroughly familiar with the native methods of life and of travel, this officer, Captain G. F. Holm, Royal Danish Navy, adopted the safest, indeed, the only, method of coast transportation--in the _umiak_.

The _umiak_ (called the woman's boat, as it is always rowed by women) is a flat-bottomed, wooden-framed, skin-covered boat about twenty-five feet long and five feet wide. Only the framework, thwarts, and rowing benches are wooden, the covering being well-dried, blubber-saturated, hair-free skins of the _atarsoak_ (Greenland seal). Resembling in appearance the parchment of a drum-head, the seal-skin becomes quite transparent when wet so that the motion of the water is seen through it. Sometimes a light mast carries a spread seal-skin for sail, but as a rule the boat is propelled by short, bone-tipped paddles which, in the hands of several strong women, carry the _umiak_ thirty miles a day through smooth, ice-free water. When going near the ice a heavy seal-skin is hung before the bow to prevent the delicate boat skin from being cut. When a little hole is worn through, the women deftly thrust a bit of blubber through it until the boat is hauled up on the shore, which must be done daily to dry the sea-saturated covering. These boats can transport from three to four tons of cargo, and are so light that they can be readily carried on the women's backs overland.

Holm knew that his journey must entail at least one winter among such natives as he might meet, so that his equipment was very carefully selected, with a view to the gifts and trading which are so dear to the native heart. The northward journey was full of incident and of interest. Not crowding his women rowers, Holm tarried here and there for the hunt; besides, he wished both to gather information from an occasional encampment and also to cultivate loyalty in his reluctant crew by permitting his women to show their west coast riches to the east-coast heathen.

Here seal were killed and there the polar bear was chased, while the sea-fowl, the narwhal, and the white whale were the objects of pursuit to the eager native hunters, who accompanied the _umiaks_ in their light, swift-flying kayaks.

In voyaging there was the usual danger from sharp ice cutting the _umiaks_ and necessitating repairs, and from lofty bergs and ancient hummocks as they crossed the ocean mouths of the ice-filled fiords, and alas! too often there were tedious, nerve-racking delays when on desolate islands or rocky beaches the _umiak_ fleet was ice-bound for days at a time.

Wintering near Cape Farewell, Holm, with Garde and Knutsen, put to sea May 5, 1884, his _umiaks_ being rowed by nineteen women and five men, while seven hunters followed in kayaks. Garde devoted himself to the precipitous, ice-capped coast, and between 60 deg. and 63 deg. N. found nearly two hundred living glaciers that entered the sea, seventy being a mile or more broad. In Lindenows Fiord, 62 deg. 15' N., were found almost impenetrable willow groves near old Scandinavian ruins. Fine new ice-fiords were discovered which put forth innumerable numbers of icebergs, the highest rising two hundred feet above the sea.

The western Eskimos were alarmed either at the ice difficulties which lengthened the voyage, or feared the _angekoks_, or magicians of the east coast, and nineteen of them insisted on turning back. Holm was obliged to send them back under Garde, but with determined courage to fulfil his duty as an officer of the Danish navy, he went on with twelve faithful women and men, although he was not half-way to Cape Dan.

As before told, Graah turned back in sight of Cape Dan, believing that he had reached the limit of human habitations. Great then was Holm's surprise to here find the last of the three missing polar tribes, who to the number of five hundred and forty-eight individuals were occupying the fertile hunting-grounds of the archipelago of Angmagsalik, which consists of about twenty ice-free islands to the west of Cape Dan, about 65 deg. 31' N., adjacent to the beautiful Sermilik ice-fiord. In this district the tides and currents keep open the inland water-ways, so that seals are plentiful and easily taken, thus making it an Inuit paradise. Holm and Knutsen here wintered, 1884-5, and in their ten months' residence with these people gathered a vast amount of ethnographic and historic material pertaining to the lives of these extraordinary Inuits, who had never before seen a white man.[25]

This missing polar tribe pertains to the stone age of the world, its weapons being almost entirely of bone, while its methods of hunting follow lines long since abandoned by Inuits who have had contact with whites. Their high sense of fidelity was shown by Navfalik, who was placed in charge of stores left for the winter at Kasingortok. That winter his family suffered from lack of food, but all through these days of terrible distress and prolonged hunger the stores of the white man were untouched by this faithful Eskimo.

Of these natives Rasmussen says: "There is no people with a history which, as regards the bitterness of its struggle for existence and the eeriness of its memories, can be compared with that of the Eskimo.... His mind can be calm and sunny like the water on a summer day in the deep, warm fiords. But it can likewise be savage and remorseless as the sea itself, the sea that is eating its way into his country."

Of their endurance of cold Poulsen records: "Inside the house both grown-up people and children wear, so to speak, nothing, and it does not inconvenience them to walk out into the cold in the same light dress, only increased by a pair of skin boots. I remember seeing two quite young girls walking almost naked on the beach, fifteen minutes' walk from the house, gathering sea-weed, though the temperature was about twenty-four degrees below the freezing-point."

As a dumb witness of their method of life in their permanent homes may be mentioned the house at Nualik, more than a hundred miles to the north of Angmagsalik (discovered by Amdrup), where an entire settlement of twenty or more perished, probably of ptomaine poisoning from semi-putrid meat (a delicacy among the Eskimos as is semi-putrid game with us).

"On the platform along the back wall, as shown by the skeletons, the inhabitants had once lain comfortably between the two bear-skins, the upper one with the hair down. On the five lamp-platforms stood the lamps and the stone pots. The drying-hatches above them had fallen down, but remains of bear-skin clothes still lay on them. Under the platform there were chip-boxes and square wooden[26] cases, and on the stone-paved floor large urine and water tubs. In front of one of the small side platforms there was a blubber-board and a large, well-carved meat-trough, and scattered about the floor lay wooden dishes, blood-scoops, water-scoops, besides specimens of all the bone utensils which belong to an Eskimo house.

"Near the house stood four long, heavy stones, placed edgewise, on the top of which the _umiak_ rested (protected thus from the dogs). Scattered around were kayak frames and their bone mountings, hunting and other implements. Amongst the big heap of bones outside the house were the skulls of narwhals, dogs, and bears. Among the utensils was a blood-stopper ornamented with a neatly cut man's head, which, recognized by old Inuits at Angmagsalik, identified this party as a northerly migrating band from the main settlement."

Of the after life a glimpse is given by the talk of an east-coast Inuit to Rasmussen: "On a lovely evening a broad belt of northern lights shot out over the hills in the background and cast a flickering light over the booming sea. Puarajik said: '_Those are the dead playing ball. See how they fly about! They say that they run about up there without clothing on._'"

Of the seamy side of life he adds: "But in the winter, when people were gathered together, the larders were full, and desires centred on the shortening of the long, idle winter nights, things would be quite different [from the happy, industrious life of summer]. Much food and sitting still, the desire to be doing, the craving for change made people pick quarrels. Old grievances were resuscitated; scorn and mocking, venomous words egged on to outbursts of anger; and in winter feasts regrettable incidents occurred. Men and women, excited and goaded on by others, forgot all friendly feeling, and on most extraordinary pretexts often challenged each other to insult-songs, fought duels, and committed most appalling murders."

It is evident that among the people of the stone age there exists the same inclination to exploit and perpetuate deeds of individual and warlike prowess, that appears not only in modern history as a whole but also in news of current publication.

Acts of kindness, deeds of heroism, and displays of the fair and humble virtues that sweeten daily life are entirely absent from the old Inuit traditions. Yet these "True Tales" depict the honesty of Navfalik, the humanity of Kalutunah, the fidelity of Broenlund, and the devotion of Mertuk.

The total omission of similar tales of admirable and humane conduct from the legends and the folksongs of the Inuits of the stone age doubtless depends in part on the savage superstitions, wherein magical powers and forces of evil are greatly exalted, and in part on the disposition to dwell on the unusual and the terrifying.

So there are reasons to believe that the survivors of the stone age in East Greenland exhibit in their daily life human qualities of goodness and of justice that were characteristic of their rude and virile ancestors.

Such, though inadequately described, are the newly found Inuits of the Angmagsalik district of East Greenland, the sole surviving remnant of the untutored aborigines of the north polar lands. Their human evolution is of intense interest, as it has been worked out under adverse conditions of appalling desolation as regards their food and their travel, their dress and their shelter, their child-rearing and their social relations.

That the world knows the last of the missing polar tribes, and that this remote, primitive people is now being uplifted in the scale of humanity, must be credited to the resolute courage, the professional zeal, and, above all, to the sympathetic human qualities of Captain Holm and his faithful officers and assistants.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] See map on page 235.

[25] The data relative to this expedition is not available in English, but has been published in full in vol. IX, "Meddelelser om Gronland (Communications on Greenland)," in Danish text. With its generous policy the Danish Government has taken these natives under its fatherly protection, so that their future welfare is assured against exploitation, degradation, and early extinction.

[26] The wood was obtained from the drift-wood along the east coast, supposed to come from Asia, along the line of drift shown by the voyage of the _Fram_.

THE FIDELITY OF ESKIMO BROeNLUND

"And truly he who here
Hath run his bright career,
And served men nobly, and acceptance found,
And borne to light and right his witness high,
What better could he wish than then to die?"
--ARNOLD.

The Mylius-Erichsen arctic expedition of 1905 sailed for the east coast of Greenland in the ship _Danmark_, commanded by Captain Trolle, Danish Royal Navy. Its purpose was to continue the remarkable surveys of the Danish government by completing the coast-line of northeast Greenland. From its winter quarters at Cape Bismarck, 76 deg. 14' N., autumnal sledge parties established advance depots of supplies in order to facilitate the travel of its surveying party the following spring.

The field work was under charge of Mylius-Erichsen personally, a Danish explorer of ability and experience, already distinguished for successful work in northwestern Greenland. It was planned that near the eighty-second parallel of north latitude the main party should be divided, so as to complete the work that season. Lieutenant Koch was to outline the southeastern shore-lines of the land to the north of Greenland, while Mylius-Erichsen was to carry his surveys inland until they joined those of Peary, thus filling in the totally unknown regions of extreme northeastern Greenland.

This plan was carried out in the spring of 1906, the two parties separating at Northeast Cape, whence Koch struck courageously north on May 1, with food for fourteen days only. Game fortunately came to him and he was enabled to advance his country's colors to an unprecedentedly northern latitude for Denmark, 83.5 deg. N., and by his explorations to complete the survey of the most northerly land of the globe--originally named Hazen Land, which is now known as Peary Land. The brilliant discoveries, tragic experiences, and heroic struggles of Mylius-Erichsen and his topographer Hagen, and the fidelity unto death of his Eskimo dog driver, Joergen Broenlund, are briefly outlined in this narrative.

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After the long winter of sunless days and bitter cold, it was with high hopes and cheery hearts that the long line of dog-drawn sledges followed Mylius-Erichsen as they wended their way northward at the end of March, 1907. With ten sledges and nearly a hundred dogs much was to be done by the resolute men who feared neither cold nor famine, the dangers of the sea-ice, or the hardships of the trail.

Their courage and strength were soon tested by difficulties and perils of unexpected character, for they thought to find the ordinary ice-foot along the shore, which could be followed inward or outward as the character of the ice dictated. But there was no ice-foot. Along Glacier Gulf for the distance of one hundred and forty miles the glacial ice-cap of Greenland, known usually as the _inland ice_, moves summer and winter--with unbroken vertical front, hundreds of feet in height--slowly but unceasingly into the Greenland Sea. Between the steady southward drift of the vast ice-fields from the Arctic Ocean and the seaward march of the glacier the shore ice was found to be of almost incredible roughness. Magnificent, and unequalled elsewhere in the world, was the sight of this towering sea-face, but scores upon scores of miles of ever-dominating ice-cliffs through their weeks of struggle grew to be unwelcome, so that their end at Lambert Land was hailed with joy.

Here came unexpected food, which did much to make the completion of the survey possible. As they were crossing the smooth fiord ice, Broenlund's keen and practised eye saw far shoreward tiny specks of moving animals, and he shouted loudly "_Nanetok!_" (A bear!). They proved to be two mother bears with cubs. In a trice the teams were stopped, the trace-toggles slipped from the few dogs that were used to bear-hunting, who started excitedly on the jump for the already fleeing game. Soon catching up with the lumbering animals, slow-moving on account of the cubs, the dogs, followed their usual tactics of nipping sharply the hind legs of the bear, who stops to drive off the dog or stumbles forward with the dog fast at his legs. Meantime Broenlund and Tobias, the two Eskimo dog drivers, quickly threw off the sledge loads on the floe and drove on with such speed that the hunters were soon within shot. The bears skinned and the dogs fed, the northward march was renewed in high spirits, for the slow travel had sadly reduced their food.

They were nearly in despair on reaching the south shore of Mount Mallemuk, as the open sea made it impossible to pass around it. With exhausting labor they finally were able to clamber up a projecting point of the seaward-flowing glacier, but their first supporting sledge here turned homeward.

Difficult as had been the ice and the glacier-scaling, they came to a real danger when around Mallemuk they were driven far out on the ocean in order to proceed northward, for the inland ice was impossible of passage and great areas of open water gave way slowly seaward to new ice. This was so thin that it bent and crackled as sledge after sledge tried in separate and fearsome order a passage that threatened to engulf them at any moment. Yet they came safely to Amdrup Land, 80 deg. 43' N., whence the last supporting party returned, charged to explore on their homeward journey the unknown fiords to the north of Lambert Land, where their spring discoveries of new lands had begun.

Pressing on after the return of the supporting sledges, Mylius-Erichsen was surprised and disappointed to find that the coast continued to trend to the northeast, and not to the northwest, as indicated by all charts since Peary crossed the inland ice to Navy Cliff. This northeasterly trend greatly increased the length of the journey needful to complete the survey of the entire east coast. Their equipment had been planned for the shorter distance, and it was evident that this forced detour would soon leave them without food for themselves or for their dogs unless more game should be found.

They thought that this extension would never end, but it was finally reached at Cape Northeast, 82 deg. 30' N., 12 deg. W., no less than 22 deg. of longitude to the eastward of Peary's location of the Greenland Sea in his discoveries of 1892 and 1895. The new cape was half-way between Navy Cliff and Spitzbergen, thus narrowing by one-half the largest connecting waterway of the Arctic and the Atlantic Oceans. It was a magnificent discovery, for which some of these explorers were to pay with their lives.

Mylius-Erichsen and Koch counselled seriously together, and well they might. They had been on the march more than a month; coming summer, with a disintegrating ice-pack, and the dreaded Mallemuk mountain precipices, sea-washed at their base, were to be faced on their homeward journey; and to crown all they had provisions for only fourteen days.

Imbued with the high Danish spirit, they duly weighed, with national calmness, the pros and the cons, only asking each other how and what, with their pitiful means, they could further do for the glory of Denmark. The heroic loyalty of both men found full expression in the decision that it was their bounden duty to go forward, and to finish the survey with which they were charged, regardless of possible dangers and personal privations. So Koch marched northward, while Mylius-Erichsen turned westward toward Navy Cliff, nearly two hundred miles distant. The westward explorations had been made much more important by the unexpected easterly extension of Greenland, which left a great gap in its northern shore-line that must at all hazards be surveyed. Starting with Topographer Hagen and the Greenlander dog driver, Broenlund, Erichsen reached a great inland fiord (Denmark), which he naturally took for the one charted by Peary as bordering the Greenland Sea. Though this detour carried him a hundred miles out of the direct route to Cape Riksdag, it was not wholly without results. Twenty-one musk-oxen were killed, which restored the strength of the dogs, whose gaunt frames already alarmed the party.

Here with astonishment they saw signs not alone of the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air, but everywhere were indications of their master--man himself. As they skirted such scanty bits of land as the inland ice had spared, they found along every bay or inlet proofs of former human life. There were huts and household utensils,--left as though suddenly,--circles of summer tents, fragments of kayaks and sledges, stone meat-caches, fox-traps, and implements of land hunt and sea chase, in which both reindeer and whales were in question. They were mighty hunters, these children of the ice, men of iron who inhabited the most northern lands of the earth, and had there lived where these white voyagers of heroic mould were destined to perish.

The signs of human life continued beyond Denmark Fiord to the very shores of Hagen Fiord, thus clearly establishing the route of migration over which the Eskimo of Arctic America or of the Bering Strait region had reached the east coast, and possibly West Greenland, coming from the north.[27]

The turning-point of Erichsen's fortunes came at Cape Riksdag, where he met Koch's party returning from the north. His discoveries and surveys of southeastern Hazen Land (Peary), where he reached 83 deg. 30' N., and his tales of game, encouraged Mylius-Erichsen to go on, though he had food for eight days only for the men, eleven for the dogs, and a few quarts of oil for cooking.

Another fiord (Hagen) was discovered, which proved fatal to the party, as Mylius-Erichsen felt that Navy Cliff, reported as overlooking the Greenland Sea, must surely be therein. He turned north on learning his error, only to eat his last food on June 4. He felt obliged to cover his mistake by going still to the west to Cape Glacier (Navy Cliff) yet 9 deg. of longitude inland. Peary had there escaped starvation by large game, and Erichsen went forward knowing that without game death awaited him. Now and then they shot a polar hare, a bare mouthful for three starving men and twenty-three ravenous dogs. June 14, 1907, Mylius-Erichsen connected his surveys with Navy Cliff.[28] He had a right to a feeling of pride and of exultation, for his magnificent series of discoveries, covering 5 deg. of latitude and 22 deg. of longitude, completed the survey of northeastern Greenland. Thus had these adventurous men given tangible form to the hopes and aspirations that for so many years had stirred the imagination of Danish explorers. These discoveries had involved outward sledge journeys of more than seven hundred miles, although the party was only outfitted for a distance of three hundred and thirty miles.

Lieutenant Trolle tells us how startlingly sudden was the change from winter to summer at the _Danmark_, Cape Bismarck. "The temperature of the snow had risen to zero (32 deg. Fahrenheit), and then in one day it all melted. The rivers were rushing along, flowers budding forth, and butterflies fluttering in the air. One day only the ptarmigan and raven, the next the sanderling, the ringed plover, geese, ducks, and others."

Mylius-Erichsen and his comrade had a similar experience just as they turned homeward. Almost in a day the snow-covering of the sea-floe vanished, as if by miracle. Here and there water-holes appeared--the dreadful fact was clear, the ice-floes were breaking up. Forced now to the coast-land, it was plain that return to their ship was no longer possible. They must summer in a barren, ice-capped land, and wait, if they could live so long, until the frosts of early autumn should re-form the great white highway of arctic travel.

Mylius-Erichsen hoped that the outlying valleys of his newly discovered Denmark Fiord would afford enough game to enable them to live, at least long enough to permit them to reach some one of their depots where they could deposit the records of their surveys. They reached the fiord about the end of July, but alas! the big game of the past spring was gone! Now and then they killed a stray musk-ox and, like famishing creatures, men and dogs ate for once their fill. Again and again food failed utterly, but when death came too near they killed, with sad hearts, one of their faithful dogs, until nine of them had been eaten.

In the recovered field-journal of Broenlund, under date of August 7, we read: "No more food! It is impossible to travel and we are more than nine hundred kilometres [five hundred and sixty miles] from the ship." On the 8th Erichsen started for the southern end of the fiord, thinking that in its ice-free valleys the chances of game would be increased. As it was necessary to travel on the ice-floes they started across the ice, changing from one floe to another when forced to do so. Unfortunately they were driven offshore and found themselves adrift. Day after day, kept seaward by wind and tide, they strove in vain to reach shore, but it was sixteen days before this was accomplished. When they landed on August 24, Broenlund writes: "We still have fourteen dogs, but no food. We have killed one of these animals and eaten half of him; the other half will serve as our food to-morrow. The half of a dog for three men and thirteen dogs is not too much to digest, and after eating it we are as hungry as before."

When land was reached Erichsen and Hagen applied themselves to hunting. Hare after hare and ptarmigan after ptarmigan were pursued and killed. But alas! the valleys were searched in vain for musk-oxen or reindeer, and it was feared that the big game of the region was exterminated.

Throughout these awful days of suspense and of hunger neither Mylius-Erichsen nor Hagen failed to maintain their courage and cheerfulness. In the intervals of needed rest between the long, exhausting hunting tramps, they kept on the even tenor of their way. Erichsen wrote a little poem to distract the attention of his companions from their present surroundings. Faithful to the last to his favorite vocation, Hagen made with care and pride beautiful sketches of the country traversed and of the lands newly discovered. Thus passed away the brief polar summer, but further details are lacking since Broenlund's journal has no entries from August 31 to October 19.

Meanwhile, Koch had made safely his homeward journey, and, although the anxiety of the officers at the ship was somewhat lessened by the news that game had been found in the far north, yet they were nevertheless uneasy as to the dangers of Erichsen's home travel. Koch, it seems, had found an open and impassable sea at Mount Mallemuk, so that he was driven to the inland ice. He there found himself obliged to cross a very narrow glacier, where its seaward slant was so nearly perpendicular that a single slip would have precipitated men and dogs into the open sea, hundreds of feet below.

Later it was decided to send a search party north, under mate Thostrup. Nor was this autumnal march without danger, even apart from the perils of travel along the coast, where the men nearly perished by breaking through the new ice. At Jokel Bay Thostrup was driven to the inland ice, the only possible route. At all times difficult, this travel was now made especially dangerous by the fact that the old glacial surface was not yet covered by the hard-packed winter drifts. Thostrup's whole sledge party on several occasions barely escaped falling into the fearful crevasses, seen with difficulty in the semi-darkness of the sunless days. As it was, several of the dogs were lost when, a snow bridge crumbling, the animals fell into a crevasse. Their seal-skin traces breaking, the dogs dropped to the bottom of the ice-chasms, which were sometimes two hundred feet or more deep. With kindly hearts the Eskimo drivers tried to shoot the poor animals, and put them out of their misery, but did not always succeed. As Erichsen had not reached the coast the journey was without result. Thostrup found untouched the caches of Lambert Land and Mount Mallemuk, and turned southward on October 18, unconscious that a hundred miles to the westward his missing shipmates, facing frost and famine, were valiantly struggling against fate and death.

The condition of the arctic Crusoes of Denmark Fiord, though there were doubtless days of cheer and hope, grew gradually worse, and by the middle of October had become terrible, if not hopeless. Although the autumnal ice was now forming, Mylius-Erichsen knew that in their state of physical weakness the long journey of five hundred miles to the ship, around Cape Northeast, could never be made. Hagen agreed with him that the single chance of life, feeble though it was, lay in crossing the ice-capped mountain range, direct to the depot on Lambert Land. Of course, the height of the ice-cap, the character of its surface, and the irregularities of the road were all unknown quantities.

The state of their field outfit for the crossing of the inland ice betrayed their desperate condition. In general, their equipment had practically disappeared under stress of travel and of hunting. To the very last they had carried their scientific outfit and instruments. It was a sad day when they recognized that the only way of repairing the great rents in their skin boots was through the use of the sole-leather case of the theodolite. Even that had quite gone, and without needle, thread, or leather, they could only fold wraps around their boots, now in shreds, and tie them on with such seal-skin thongs as had not been eaten. The tent was badly torn, and, with the sleeping-gear--on which had been made sad inroads for dog-food and patches for clothing--afforded wretched shelter against storm and cold. For transportation there were four gaunt dogs--the last that ravenous hunger had spared--to haul the remnants of a disabled sledge. The winter cold had set in, with almost unendurable bitterness to the enfeebled, shivering men. The weak arctic sun, now skirting the southern sky at mid-day, was leaving them for the winter, so that the dangers of crevasses and the difficulties of glacier-travel must be met either in total darkness, or, at the best, in feeble, uncertain twilight.

Discarding everything that could be spared, they reached the inland ice on October 19, the day the sun went for the winter, and barefooted they travelled across this glacial ice-cap one hundred and sixty miles in twenty-six days. Their shipmate, Lieutenant A. Trolle says: "When I think of the northerly wind and the darkness, when I consider that every morning they must have crawled out of their dilapidated sleeping-bags, though they could have had one desire, one craving--that of sleeping the eternal sleep--then my mind is full of sorrow that I shall never be able to tell them how much I admire them. They _would_ go on, they _would_ reach a place where their comrades could find them and the _results of their work_. Then at last came the end, the death of Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen a few miles from the depot, and the last walk of Broenlund, crawling along on frozen feet in the moonshine. With the sure instinct of the child of nature, he found the depot, ate some of the food, wrapped himself up in his fur, and died."

By Broenlund's body was found Hagen's chart of their discoveries, and his own field-journal in which the final entry runs: "I perished in 79 deg. N. latitude, under the hardships of the return journey over the inland ice in November. I reached this place under a waning moon, and cannot go on because of my frozen feet and the darkness. The bodies of the others are in the middle of the fiord. Hagen died on November 15, Mylius-Erichsen some ten days later."

The courage and self-sacrifice of Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen for the advancement of the glory of their country were based on conditions readily understood. Officials of high ideals, long in public service, honored with important duties, they possessed those heroic qualities which throughout the ages have impelled chosen men to subordinate self to the common weal. Of such has been said:

"Gone? In a grander form they rise!
Dead? We may clasp their hands in ours,
And catch the light of their clearer eyes,
And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers."

These young explorers instinctively knew that their deeds of daring would give them fitting and enduring fame. Their faith in their country was justified by the tribute that Denmark promptly erected.

But with Joergen Broenlund, Greenlander, it was quite another tale. The virtues of self-sacrifice and of fidelity unto death are practically ignored in the traditional myths and tales of Greenland, which represent the literature, the religion, the history, and the poetry of the Eskimo people.[29]

Broenlund had long foreseen the outcome, as appears from his journal entry: "We are all dead!" From this early acceptance of his coming fate, and from the Eskimo racial trait of calm acquiescence in destiny, it would be natural that in the field the native would have first succumbed.

But, charged with a solemn, vital mission, evidently receiving the commands of his leader as the voice of God, this Inuit was faithful even over fear of death, and by his heroic efforts, freezing and starving, insured the fame of his comrades and so added to the glory of his distant fatherland (Greenland is a colony of Denmark), unknown to him.

Both through the dictates of his noble soul, and also inspired by his leader, he rose to sublime heights of heroic action. All must indeed die, but he would to the last moment of his life be true to his sledge-mates, Erichsen and Hagen. Without doubt their last words were a charge not to fail to place in the cache at Lambert Land the field-charts and his own journal, so that Denmark might know that her sons had fulfilled their allotted duty.

They mistook not their man, and the fame of Denmark's officers was insured by the heroic efforts and unfailing fidelity of their humble subordinate, the Inuit dog driver, Joergen Broenlund--Greenlander.

Among the striking features of the beautiful city of Copenhagen are statuary by the famous Thorwaldsen and other great sculptors, which proclaim the fame and preserve the memory of kings and statesmen, of authors and admirals--men great in war and in peace, in civic worth and in learning. It is to the honor of the city that lately there has arisen a unique and striking memorial to commemorate worth and fidelity in fields far beyond the sunset, remote from commercialism and from civilization. Thus Denmark keeps fresh in the hearts and in the minds of her people the heroic struggle unto death of Mylius-Erichsen and of Hagen, and of the Danish Eskimo Broenlund. Such steadfast sense of duty and heroic powers of accomplishment are not the heritage of Denmark alone, but of the nobler men of the wide world.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] The discoveries of Lieutenant (now General) Greely around Lake Hazen, of Lockwood and Brainard in northwest Greenland and Hazen Land, prove that the route followed was via Greely Fiord, past Lake Hazen, across Kennedy Channel, over Hall Land, probably through the upper valley of Nordenskioeld Inlet, and along the shores of Peary Channel to Denmark Fiord.

[28] According to the lately published report of the gallant Danish explorer, Mikkelsen, the recovered records of Mylius-Erichsen show that the insularity of Greenland was not discovered by Peary at Navy Cliff. Peary Channel is only a fiord indenting northeastern Greenland, which extends northward as shown in the attached map of Amdrup Land.

[29] Among two hundred Eskimo tales and traditions given by Rink and Rasmussen there does not appear to be a single one wherein the qualities of self-sacrifice and absolute fidelity are the essential or main ideas.

THE WIFELY HEROISM OF MERTUK, THE DAUGHTER OF SHUNG-HU

"Deeper devotion
Nowhere hath knelt;
Fuller emotion
Heart never felt."
--GOETHE (_Dwight's translation_).

Rarely, if ever, has there been recorded in history a more varied and adventurous life than that of Mertuk, wife of Hans Hendrik, who came into literature through the magical pen of Elisha Kent Kane as the "pretty daughter" of Shung-hu, an Etah Eskimo. She was born (and reared) as a veritable Child of the Ice, being one of the members of the northernmost tribe of the world,--a people, in the last century, of absorbing interest as a surviving offshoot of the Stone Age.

Mertuk married Hans Hendrik, an Eskimo of Moravian faith from Danish West Greenland, who was practically a deserter from Kane. This northern idyl was the reverse of Ruth of the Bible, since for the sake of Mertuk, Hans abandoned his family and his country, willingly separating himself from the comforts and certainties of civilized life for the vicissitudes and inconveniences of an archaic environment. Despite a lovely wife, Hans soon discovered the wretched discomforts and unwelcome methods of life on the Etah coast, where hunger and physical sufferings were not infrequent attendants on even the most skilful and active hunter.

When the polar expedition of Dr. Isaac I. Hayes touched in 1860 at Cape York, Hans joined the doctor's forces taking his wife and child with him; next year they emigrated to Danish Greenland when Hayes sailed south.

Ten years later Hans, with Mertuk and three children, joined Hall's north-polar expedition, which made a ship's record for the world. At Thank-God Harbor was born Mertuk's youngest child, Charles Polaris, nearer the pole than any other known infant. With undaunted courage and uncomplaining fortitude she endured, with her four children (one a babe of three months), the fearful vicissitudes of the Polaris drift, set forth in another sketch, "The Marvellous Ice-Drift of Captain Tyson," carrying her babe in her seal-skin hood while dragging a heavy sledge over rough ice.

With quiet dignity, in keeping with her cool equanimity and her unblanching acceptance of hardships in the white North, Mertuk accepted the extraordinary experiences incident to temporary life in the great emporium of American civilization--New York City--which she was the first of her tribe to visit. Returning to Danish Greenland with her children, she there passed the rest of her less eventful life, busy and happy in the domestic duties pertaining to her family and to her Inuit neighbors.

The incident of Mertuk's wifely heroism, herein told in detail, is drawn from an unpublished diary of Mr. Henry W. Dodge, mate of the schooner _United States_, then wintering under Dr. Hayes at Port Foulke.[30]

The sketch of the childhood of this heroic and interesting woman is based on various passages of explorers and writers familiar with the incidents of Etah life.

* * * * *

Among the forceful and friendly natives of Etah sixty years since, in the days of Kane, was Shung-hu, famed equally for his qualities as a man and for his daring as a mighty hunter. He especially displayed his skill in the successful pursuit of the polar bear, whether on land along the coast, on the fast ice under the frowning snow-cliffs of Humboldt Glacier, or on the moving ice-floes of Smith Sound. Apart from his alert action and dignified bearing, his person was notable through his ample whiskers, on chin and on lips, which age and exposure had already softened by their silvery coloring. Indeed, he was the only full-bearded native in the nation, as is related by Hayes, whose distressed and starving boat party was only able in the last extremity to reach the _Advance_ through the aid of the Angekok Kalutunah and his comrade Shung-hu.

Among the much-loved children of Shung-hu was a daughter, Mertuk, whose mother's name is unknown, but she doubtless had that deep affection and tender care for her daughter which are common traits of these iron women of the Etah coast.

Nature and necessity had made the family lead a life of constant wandering, and so the child shared the seasonal and oft irregular journeys along the shut-in, narrow coast-land between the great Humboldt Glacier and the sea-beaten cliffs of Cape York. It was always a journey for food--birds and bears, deer and seals, walruses and narwhals, as time and good-fortune dictated.

Carried by her mother, little Mertuk travelled in true native fashion, thrust naked and feet foremost into the back part of the ample seal-skin hood. There she rode in warmth and comfort, safely seated astride of a soft, rounded walrus thong, which passed under the arms of the mother and was made fast around her neck.

Mertuk thus grew and throve, happy and healthy, under conditions which to boys and girls of our own country would have seemed impossible of endurance. Sometimes the tiny child would be thrust out in a temperature in which mercury would freeze solid, and with laughter felt the biting, stimulating cold that only made the hood more welcome as a home-nest. It was the way of the wild, which must be followed in this country of sunless winters and of blinding blizzards, which every brave Inuit loved.

To this Eskimo maiden the whole world was made up of a few score men, women, and children of the igloos, of a dozen kinds of birds in the air, and on the cliffs; of white hares, bluish foxes, and reddish deer on land; of smooth seals, white whales, horned narwhals, and big-tusked walruses in the sea; and last but by no means least the enormous amphibious, sharp-clawed bear whose glistening, yellowish-white skin furnished material for the furry garments in which her father Shung-hu was always clothed.

At an early age Mertuk came to know the living creatures which were the sources of food and the means of life. She could tell the seasonal time in which came and went the wild fowl, of their breeding and of their young. The haunts and habits of the swift-footed animals of the glacier-enclosed land were all known to her, as well as the favorite resorts of the monsters of the bordering icy ocean, which furnished the hides and bones, the sinew and ivory, without which there would be neither needles and thread for the igloo, nor lances and sledges for the hunter.

It was a land of meat and flesh in which she lived, with no bread or vegetables, and the taste of sugar and of tea, the flavor of salt and of pepper, were absent from her food. She knew not books, matches, fire-arms, boats, stoves, crockery, nor cloth whether of cotton or fibre, of silk or wool. It was a land without wood, iron, medicines, or stimulants, and equally without government, schools, churches, hospitals, or even houses--unless one could so name the stone huts, the skin tents, or the transient snow igloos.

Her mother early taught her all the kinds of women's work which could make her useful to her tribe or to her family, and without doubt instilled in her a sense of some of the feminine graces which have softened the harshness of the world in all climes and in every country throughout the ages. Here they were a part of the life of the stone age, which the Etahs had inherited untainted by the outside world.