LITMIR.BIZ

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was called into requisition. Each boat was provided with two large iron cylinders, 14 inches in diameter and 18 inches high. Each of them held an iron saucer or lamp, in which we could place our melted pork-fat or blubber, and, with the aid of spun-yarn for a wick, make a roaring fire. I need not say that the fat and oil always froze when not ignited. Into these cylinders, which were used merely to defend our lamp from the wind and our pots from contact with the cold air, we placed a couple of large tin vessels, suitable either for melting snow or making tea or soup. They were made out of cake-canisters cut down. How many kindly festival associations hung by these now abused soup-cans! One of them had, before the fire rubbed off its bright gilding, the wedding-inscription of a large fruit-cake.

      “We carried spare tins in case the others should burn out: it was well we did so. So completely had we exhausted our household furniture, that we had neither cups nor plates, except crockery. This, of course, would not stand the travel, and our spare tin had to be saved for protecting the boats from ice. At this juncture we cut plates out of every imaginable and rejected piece of tinware. Borden’s meat-biscuit canisters furnished us with a splendid dinner-service; and some rightly feared tin jars, with ominous labels of Corrosive Sublimate and Arsenic, which once belonged to our department of Natural History, were emptied, scoured, and cut down into tea-cups.”

      The 17th of May was fixed as the date of setting out, and each man was to be allowed 8 lb. of personal effects. Until the boats were hauled a considerable distance from the brig, the party returned to it at night. When the last farewell to the brig was made, the entire ship’s company took part in the ceremonial. It is best described in Dr. Kane’s own words: —

      “We read prayers and a chapter of the Bible; and then, all standing silently round, I took Sir John Franklin’s portrait from its frame and cased it in an india-rubber scroll. I next read the reports of inspection and survey which had been made by the several commissions organised for the purpose, all of them testifying to the necessities under which I was about to act. I then addressed the party: I did not affect to disguise the difficulties that were before us; but I assured them that they could all be overcome by energy and subordination to command, and that the 1300 miles of ice and water that lay between us and North Greenland could be traversed with safety for most of us, and hope for all. I added that as men and messmates it was the duty of us all, enjoined by gallantry as well as religion, to postpone every consideration of self to the protection of the wounded and sick; and that this must be regarded by every man and under all circumstances as a paramount order. In conclusion, I told them to think over the trials we had all of us gone through, and to remember each man for himself how often an unseen Power had rescued him in peril, and I admonished them still to place reliance on Him who could not change.”

      On reaching the boats, the party were regularly mustered and divided between the two. A rigid inspection was made of every article of personal equipment. Each man had a woollen under-dress and an Esquimaux suit of fur clothing – kapetah, nessak, and nannooke complete, with boots of their own make. One pair of boots was made of canvas faced with walrus-hide, and another inside these made of the cabin Brussels carpet. In addition to this, each man carried a rue-raddy – a shoulder-belt to drag by – adjusted to fit him comfortably, a pair of socks next his skin, and a pair of large goggles for snow-blindness, made Esquimaux-fashion by cutting a small slit in a piece of wood. The provision-bags and other stores were numbered, and each man and officer had his own bag and a place assigned for it, to prevent confusion in rapid stowing and unstowing. Excluding four sick men, who were unable to move, and Dr. Kane, who had to drive the dog-team and serve as common carrier and courier, they numbered but twelve men, which would have given six to a sledge – too few to move it. It was therefore necessary to concentrate the entire force upon one sledge at a time.

      The routine established by Dr. Kane was the most precise: – “Daily prayers both morning and evening, all hands gathering round in a circle and standing uncovered during the short exercise; regulated hours; fixed duties and positions at the track-lines and on the halt; the cooking to be taken by turns, the captains of the boats alone being excused. The charge of the log was confided to Dr. Hayes, and the running survey to Mr. Sonntag. The thermometer was observed every three hours.”

      Dr. Kane prepared the hut at Anoatok for the reception of the sick, and carried a large part of the provisions there. During the first fortnight after the sledges left the brig he journeyed between 700 and 800 miles in doing this work by means of his dog-sledge – a mean travel of about 57 miles a day.

      Before reaching open water on the 16th of June, enormous difficulties had to be overcome, and one man lost his life through an injury to his back in making an attempt to keep one of the sledges from going through the ice.

      The boats had now to be caulked and swelled to prepare them for a long and adventurous navigation.

      Nearly the whole Esquimaux settlement followed and assisted them as far as the open water, and Dr. Kane thus describes the scene near the time of bidding them farewell: —

      “Each one has a knife, or a file, or a saw, or some such treasured keepsake; and the children have a lump of soap, the greatest of all great medicines. The merry little urchins break in upon me even now as I am writing: – ‘Kuyanake, kuyanake, Nalegaksoak!’ ‘Thank you, thank you, big chief!’ while Myouk is crowding fresh presents of raw birds on me as if I could eat for ever, and poor Aningnah is crying beside the tent-curtain, wiping her eyes on a bird-skin!

      “My heart warms to these poor, dirty, miserable, yet happy beings, so long our neighbours, and of late so staunchly our friends. Theirs is no affectation of regret. There are twenty-two of them around me, all busy in good offices to the Docto Kayens; and there are only two women and the old blind patriarch Kresuk, ‘Driftwood,’ left behind at the settlement.

      “But see! more of them are coming up, – boys ten years old are pushing forward babies on their sledges. The whole nation is gipsying with us upon the icy meadows.

      “We cook for them in our big camp-kettle; they sleep in the Red Eric; a berg close at hand supplies them with water; and thus, rich in all that they value, – sleep and food and drink and companionship, – with their treasured short-lived summer sun above them, the beau ideal and sum of Esquimaux blessings, they seem supremely happy.

      “Poor creatures! It is only six months ago that starvation was among them: many of the faces around me have not yet lost the lines of wasting suspense. The walrus-season is again of doubtful productiveness, and they are cut off from their brethren to the south, at Netelik, and Appah, until winter rebuilds the avenue of ice. With all this, no thoughts of the future cross them. Babies squall, and women chatter, and the men weave their long yarns with peals of rattling hearty laughter between.

      “Ever since we reached Pekiutlik, these friends of ours have considered us their guests. They have given us hand-sledges for our baggage, and taken turn about in watches to carry us and it to the water’s edge. But for them our dreary journey would have been prolonged at least a fortnight, and we are so late even now that hours may measure our lives. Metek, Myouk, Nessark, Erkee, and the half-grown boys have been our chief labourers; but women, children, and dogs are all bearing their part.

      “Whatever may have been the faults of these Esquimaux heretofore, stealing was the only grave one. Treachery they may have conceived; and I have reason to believe that, under superstitious fears of an evil influence from our presence, they would at one time have been glad to destroy us. But the day of all this has passed away. When trouble came to us and to them, and we bent ourselves to their habits, – when we looked to them to procure us fresh meat, and they found at our poor Oomiak-soak shelter and protection during their wild bear-hunts, – then we were so blended in our interests as well as modes of life that every trace of enmity wore away. God knows that since they professed friendship, albeit the imaginary powers of the angekok-soak and the marvellous six-shooter which attested them may have had their influence, never have friends been more true. Although, since Ohlsen’s death, numberless articles of inestimable value to them have been scattered upon the ice unwatched, they have not stolen a nail. It was only yesterday that Metek, upon my alluding to the manner in which property of all sorts was exposed without pilfering, explained through Petersen, in these two short sentences, the argument of their morality: —

      “ ‘You

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