A Diary and Journal from the Second Grinnell Expedition

[verso]

search. This journal will give in due time my list of equipment and general organization.

My feelings may be understood when I say that my Carpenter and all the working men save Bonsall are still on their backs and that a [months?] preliminary labour is needed before I can commence the heavy labour of transporting my boats (three in number) over the ice to the anticipated water. At the moment of my writing this the water is over eighty miles in a short line progress from our brig!

[No matter, spirits good! Hope is better! Trust best of all!!]

Thursday Apr. 12

Again blowing as yesterday from [?] We have had of late much of these winds. I regard them as very favourable to the advance of open water. The long swell from the open spaces in North Baffin’s Bay [succeeded] has a powerful effect upon the ice. I should not wonder if the ice about Life Boat Cove, off McGeary Is would be broken up by the first of May. Poor Hans is out in this storm.

Our sick have been without fresh food since the 8th but such is the [?] by our late supply that they, as yet, show no backward symptoms. McGeary and [Christian Ohlsen|Ohlsen] and Brooks and Riley dress themselves daily and are able to do much useful jobbing. Thomas begins to relieve me in cooking, [George Riley|Riley]] to take a spell at the [?] Morton cooked breakfast, am aided by McGeary, [Christian Ohlsen|Ohlsen] has already finished one cotton [?] camp blanket with which I intend to cover our last remaining buffalo skins. Wilson comes on slowly. Dr. Hayes too begins to heal. Sonntag is more cheery [less a nuissance] with the [encaptions?] of Goodfellow John & Whipple I can feel that my little household is [are] fast becoming men again. [Sastrande indefinite?]

[recto]

[the following paragraph is crossed out] and vague as is the acknowledged God to whom I give it. Gratitude unspeakable pervaded one at this sudden change. I knew the cause of our resurrection from putrid stagnation to vitality. The cause was 400 [?] of raw meat, it puzzled the [?] and [?] to say why in the next causative [?], raw walrus did this. I might spend a lifetime among the proximates and never get up to God. What damned [me?] - family - for us [agglomented?[ worms, unable [?] [?] to dissect our own Maggots[?], to travel up to [origination?]. I only know that I am very grateful. [/end deletion]

The Netelik Settlement on Northumberland Island was when [Myouk?] heard from it the refuge of the natives from the farthest south even of those from beyond [Wolstenholne?] and the last beyond about their barrier glacier. As [?] drove them they concentrated at [?] Stronghold and watched Hans says with great merriment song and dance and [?] merriment the gradual approach of starvation. [Now I am [rotted?] with news up to the date of Hans leaving Etah. ]

It seemed that the poor wretched suffered terribly even more than one neighbors of Etah. Their laws exact an equal division, and the success of the best hunsters was dissapated by the crowds of feeble claimants upon their spoils. At last the broken nature of the ice margin and the freezing up of a large zone of ice prevented them from seeking walrus. The water was inacessible, and the last resource [of killing their dogs] pressed itself [fell] upon them. They killed their dogs. Fearful as it sounds when we think how indispensable the services of the animals are to their daily existance, they cannot now number more than twenty in their entire [domain] ownership of the tribe. From glacier south to glacier north, from glacier east to the [?] ice bound coast which completes the circuit of their little world. This nation have but twenty dogs. What food can they hope for without their animals.

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I determined to go to Etah, for the double purpose of advancing my negociation for dogs and of possible Mr. [B?] capturing William Godfrey. The desertion of this man would have I feared a bad effect upon his companions, if allowed to remain unmolested so near the ship.

Before I describe my journey [?] was in fact a long walrus [?] and full of adventure I will finish the Episode of Godfrey. Under the circumstance I had to [?]. The sledge had privately placed within its [cage?] a pair of foot cuffs. And I wore a [?] leaded Colt Dex [?] concealed back of my jumper, so as to escape the knowledge of [Netek?] His nephew I detained on board the brig to be carried back in a couple of days by stand and I so disguised myself by pulling [now?] my esquimaux jumper hood ([nessak?]) that I could at a little distance be easily mistaken for the [Pautek?] boy [?] place I had taken.

Imagine a long journey about 80 miles [?] Two burrowing dirt [?] holes are seen perforating a steep bank of snow and [Mitek?], raiding a land [?], whips his dogs and sings out "Etah!". I crouch behind him pistol in hand and peer under his arm [?] at the dark objects which crawl out like [?] from a [hive hole?] to wellcome the return. Among the first is long Bill waving his hands and yelling "[Tima?]!" as loudly as the [?] savage of them all. Almost in an [?] I leap from the sledge and have my six shooter at his ear.

The man between surprise and fear was completely broken he yielded unconditionally. Returning homeward I kept him in advance of the sledge [?] him at Anoratok. He is now aboard the brigt of [?] utterly [?] by a [mangled?] walk and run of nearly 80 miles. The foot cuffs were entirely superfluous.

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are the escalated [?] of the more northern [Condt?]. At the very bottom of [Leper?] Bay are seen two perforations one a cliff fortressed Fiord, and the other a smiling ravine, both are occupied by an [?] of the same glacier, and both are landmarks for Esquimaux settlements. The fiord points to [Poternevik?], where now [Kalutanak?] and his hungry southern Corps have taken up their [greatest?] the other is the open [?] of Settlement of Etah.

A snow drift riding at an [?] of 4[?] until it mingles with the steep sides of a mountain is dotted by two dark blemishes uponts its pure white. Coming nearer you see that the [?] spots are perforations entering like the burrow of a wild beast into the bowels of the snow. Nearer still you see that above each spot is a second but smaller, and that a covered roof extends over each. These are the doors and windows of the settlement. Two tents and four families comprise the entire [?] and except for these vent holes are entirely bureed in the snow.

[sketch] When I arrived and had finished off Mr. Bill, the [?] of the burrow swarmed around me. Nahlegak! Nahlegak! [Tima?]! was yelled in chorus. Never seemed people more anxious to propitiate or pleased with an unexpected visit, but they soon [?] back again for they were airily clad and it blew a N. wester. Soon preparations inside were [?] and Mitek himself preceded me in crawling on hands and knees though an extraordinary [?] thirty paces long.

[recto]

As I emerged from this the salute of Nahlegak! was repeated, but from a number of [?] most dispiriting to a red nosed man [sovereign] who after 80 miles of ferocious exposure was about to lodge his royal [?] in their midst. A party of [?] six in number and [?] of the neighbouring settlement had been overtaken by the storm. Among these in the central place of honour, on the [blank] or dais, I soon found myself gasping the [amoniacal?] steam of an atmosphere of 90 degrees, and sharing with fourteen [?] fellow creatures a [?] gave 15 feet long by six. All were naked Legs perched in mid air, legs tined round throats; trunks on which [?] the sleeping head rose, curiously from [?]. Such a [?] voluntarily impacted mass of humanity one rarely sees. Men, women, children, [beastlings?], with nothing but their native [?] to cover them, were wedged into one wonderful exhaling [solid?] more closely than negroes on the middle passage. No hyperbole can [?] that which in serious earnest I now give as truth. This platform [measured?] but seven feet in breadth by six in depth, the shape being semi eliptical. Upon this including children and myself were slowed [?] sleepers.

The [Kolbak?] of each matron soon [?] with a flame sixteen in [?] long a [?] quarter of walrus, which laid frozen upon the floor of the [nelek?] was cut into stacks and soon the [?] smoked with a burden of ten or fifteen pounds. Mitek with a [?] amateur aid from a few of the sheperd [suplied?] this without my assistance. I saw enough of the culinary regime, to [?] it impossible for one to join in the repaste. Bill brought me a hand fulls of frozen [?], and soon

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Lice collect numerously upon their persons. These are looked upon as destroyers of comfort, not as conveying associations of the unclean. They wage war against them as we do against mosquitoes, but after killing them they eat them.

I need go no further, the words [ebesk?] which is the only approach in their language to "dirt or filth", applies merely to mechanical obstructions as [?], the dirt crust on their face is [Ebesk?] "dirt", but the spit or urine which washed it off is not dirt. The evacuations of the child [under?] so copious as to interfere with the action of the hands are not "Ebesk", the secretions of the nose and the parasitical growths of the body are food for the palate and in no respect [?] as [?] unclean.

Spent some time at Etah in examining glacier and sketching household utensals. [Miss S cannot comment on [these?].] among other old friends I saw [Auhahtok?] now recovering from the severe [post?] bite which with a similar misfortune befel [?] in their fearful adventure among the drifting ice. I gave [?] (Bladder float) a piece of red flannel and pow wowed him. He resides with [Utuneat?] in the second hut which is much smaller than Mitek's, his wife is a sister of [Kalutenak?], and quite pretty. I could hardly believe that this [young?] couple would have killed their first born child and pretending ignorance of the matter. I [?] after its health. They turned their hands downward, as much as to say "its gone" but showed no sign of confusion. They did not even pay its memory the cheap compliment of tears, which among thes e people are always at hand.

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There is a singular custom [among them] which I have [?] here and which [?] to the [?], and has its analogues in more cultivated [centres?]. I allude to regulated formalities of mourning the dead with spells of copious weeping. In this all present are expected to join and [?] requires you to wipe the eyes of the Cheif mourner. Often they assemble by concert for this purpose, but very generally one will break out into [?] and the others [?] follow without at first, knowing for what particular bereavement they are weeping.

Any calamity may be thus mourned, the failure of a hunt, the fracture of a walrus line the death of a dog or a grand mother. Mrs. Eider duck né Small belly ([Egurk?]) once looked up from her [kolupdiet?] and burst into a gentle gush of woe; with remarkable presence of mind I took out my handkerchief made of [marten?] out of my [long] an unused [white] [?] and after wiping her eyes, politely wept a few tears myself. This little passage of woe was soon over Eider Duck returned to her [Kolupdiet?] and Naligak to his note book.

The six storm arrested strangers were off early in the morning on their hunt. I sent by them messages of compliment to [Kalutak?] a [kalutaket?] and [?] to advance my negociation for dogs. In the afternoon I started on a walrus hunt [myself]. [?] & myself being sledgemen. We had but Mitek's four dogs.

Walrus form the staple food of the Rensselaer Bay Esquimaux throughout the greater part of the year. To [?] S. about [?[ Channel the seal & [?] & white whale [?] at [?] appropriate seafood, but in

[verso] As I have slept but a few hours I cannot give details of this wonderful journey - it did not however advance one single iota my wishes of another search

[?] [and] [?] were sent away fully laden with wood and other presents and an engagement from me taken for Mitek to come up with his four dogs. They themselves to loan me one dog from each team making two which added to Mitek's would be six fast animals. Upon the continued loan of which I provided future payment to all the parties. It pleased me to find that I had earned a character with these people at first so suspicious and distrustful. They left on board each man his dog without a shade of doubt as to my good faith - after which - begging me to watch the poor animals feet as the famine had nearly exterminated their stock - they gave me good wishes and departed for Etah to aid me with Mitek. To understand this act in all its courtesy and trust you must suppose the dog a valued horse one of about twenty [absolutely] needed for wants of a large area of territory. lint to a transient visitor upon the contingency of a reward which he himself was to determine upon a risky service in which if unsuccessful in attaining his end there had to be no payment [?] to return the beast to his owner seventy miles distant from your dwelling !

All doing well on board - sick

[recto] improving but out of meat again. I have just eaten like a glutton the last mouthful. Mr. Brooks sent Godfrey down to the huts at Petervik for a fresh load which may be expected by Monday. So we live earning our bread by a wild life - totally unlike the quiet routine of our English predecessors.

This is their season for the "winter sledge parties" with us winter has past and spring is full upon us. The winter in its deepest darkness saw us [groping?] down to the walrus grounds - or seeking reindeer on the hills. Not for five months (nearly six) have we eaten [that] ship's poison - salted pork and beef - we have lived as the natives live, and shunned no exposure. I must have journied, by mingled walk run and ride, by sledge during this horrible winter over [eleven hundred] eight hundred miles. Why, the reflection comes to me, why may not Franklin's men, at least some of them, have done and be now doing the same thing. We are the nearest counterparts to poor Franklin's supposed case [than] of any who have preceded us. What man with his [eyes] opened by hard experience dared say that his (Franklin's) party are extinct.

[I am] Engaged sewing [fur clothing] for the next attempt should [to reach the [?] in case] Mitek [should] say yes. This last ride had torn my clothing to rags even my seal skin trousers. there is an art in sitting a sledge equal to that of backing a horse. I thought until this last wild goose chase that I had acquired it but my conceit has been taken out of me.