THE FROZEN NORTH
Elisha Kent Kane
(from Dr. Kane's "Journal of Arctic Explorations in Search of Sir John Franklin." 1856.)
"JANUARY 6, 1855, Saturday.— If this journal ever I gets to be inspected by other eyes, the color of its pages will tell of the atmosphere it is written in. We have been emulating the Esquimaux for some time in every thing else; and now, last of all, this intolerable temperature and our want of fuel have driven us to rely on our lamps for heat. Counting those which I have added since the wanderers came back, we have twelve constantly going, with the grease and soot everywhere in proportion.
"I can hardly keep my charts and registers in any thing like decent trim. Our beds and bedding are absolutely black, and our faces begrimed with fatty carbon like the Esquimaux of South Greenland. Nearer to us, our Smith's Straits Esquimaux are much more cleanly in this branch of domestic arrangements. They attend their lamps with assiduous care, using the long radicles of a spongy moss for wick, and preparing the blubber for its office by breaking up the cells between their teeth. The condensed blubber, or more properly fat, of the walrus, is said to give the best flame.
"Our party, guided by the experience of the natives, use nearly the same form of wick, but of cotton. Pork-fat, boiled to lessen its salt, is our substitute for blubber; and, guided by a suggestion of Professor Olmstead, I mix a portion of resin with the lard to increase its fluidity. Sundry devices in the way of metal reverberators conduct and diffuse the heat, and so successfully that a single wick will keep liquid ten ounces of lard with the air around at minus 30°.
"The heat given out by these burners is astonishing. One four-wicked lamp not very well attended gives us six gallons of water in twelve hours from snow and ice of a temperature of minus 40°, raising the heat of the cabin to a corresponding extent, the lamp being entirely open. With a line-wick, another Esquimaux plan, we could bake bread or do other cookery. But the crust of the salt and the deposit from the resin are constantly fouling the flame; and the consequence is that we have been more than half the time in an atmosphere of smoke.
"Fearing the effect of this on the health of every one, crowded as we are, and inhaling so much insoluble foreign matter without intermission, I have to-day reduced the number of lights to four; two of them stationary, and communicating by tin funnels with our chimney, so as to carry away their soot.
"Mr. Wilson has relapsed. I gave him a potash (saleratus) warm bath to-day, and took his place at watch. I have now seven hours' continuous watch at one beat.
"January 12, Friday. — In reviewing our temperatures, the monthly and annual means startle me. Whatever views we may have theoretically as to the distribution of heat, it was to have been expected that so large a water-area but thirty- five miles to the S.W. by W. of our position would tell upon our records; and this supposition was strengthened by the increased fall of snow, which was clearly due to the neighborhood of this water.
"January 13, Saturday. — I am feeding up my few remaining dogs very carefully; but I have no meat for them except the carcasses of their late companions. These have to be boiled; for in their frozen state they act as caustics, and, to dogs famishing as ours have been, frozen food often proves fatal, abrading the stomach and oesophagus. One of these poor creatures had been a child's pet among the Esquimaux. Last night I found her in nearly a dying state at the mouth of our tossut, wistfully eyeing the crevices of the door as they emitted their forbidden treasures of light and heat. She could not move, but, completely subdued, licked my hand, — the first time I ever had such a civilized greeting from an Esquimaux dog. I carried her in among the glories of the moderate paradise she aspired to, and cooked her a dead-puppy soup. She is now slowly gaining strength, but can barely stand.
"I want all my scanty dog-force for another attempt to communicate with the bay settlements. I am confident we will find Esquimaux there alive, and they shall help us. I am not satisfied with Petersen, the companion of my last journey: he is too cautious for the emergency. The occasion is one that calls for every risk short of the final one that man can encounter. My mind is made up, should wind and ice at all point to its successful accomplishment, to try the thing with Hans. Hans is completely subject to my will, careful and attached to me, and by temperament daring and adventurous.
"Counting my greatest possible number of dogs, we have but five at all to be depended on, and these far from being in condition for the journey. Toodla, Jenny, — at this moment officiating as wet-nurse, — and Rhina, are the relics of my South Greenland teams; little Whitey is the solitary Newfoundlander; one big yellow and one feeble little black, all that are left of the powerful recruits we obtained from our Esquimaux brethren.
"It is a fearful thing to attempt a dog-trot of near one hundred miles, where your dogs may drop at any moment, and leave you without protection from fifty degrees below zero. As to riding, I do not look to it: we must run alongside of the sledge, as we do on shorter journeys. Our dogs cannot carry more than our scanty provisions, our sleeping-bags and guns.
"At home one would fear to encounter such hoop-spined, spitting, snarling beasts as the Esquimaux dogs of Peabody Bay. But, wolves as they are, they are far from dangerous: the slightest appearance of a missile or cudgel subdues them at once. Indispensable to the very life of their masters, they are treated, of course, with studied care and kindness; but they are taught from the earliest days of puppy-life a savory fear that makes them altogether safe companions even for the children. But they are absolutely ravenous of every thing below the human grade. Old Yellow, who goes about with arched back, gliding through the darkness more like a hyena than a dog, made a pounce the other day as I was feeding Jenny, and, almost before I could turn, had gobbled down one of her pups. As none of the litter will ever be of sledging use, I have taken the hint, and refreshed Old Yellow with a daily morning puppy. The two last of the family, who will then, I hope, be tolerably milk-fed, I shall reserve for my own eating.
"January 14, Sunday. — Our sick are about the same; Wilson, Brooks, Morton, McGary, and Riley unserviceable, Dr. Hayes getting better rapidly. How grateful I ought to be that I, the weakling of a year ago, am a well and helping man!
"At noonday, in spite of the mist, I can see the horizon gap of Charlotte Wood Fiord, between Bessie Mountain and the other hills to the southeast, growing lighter; its twilight is decidedly less doubtful. In four or five days we will have our noonday sun not more than eight degrees below the horizon. This depression, which was Parry's lowest, enabled him by turning the paper toward the south to read diamond type. We are looking forward to this more penumbral darkness as an era. It has now been fifty-two days since we could read such type, even after climbing the dreary hills. One hundred and twenty-four days with the sun below the horizon! One hundred and forty before he reaches the rocky shadowing of our brig!
"I found an overlooked godsend this morning, — a bear's head, put away for a specimen, but completely frozen. There is no inconsiderable quantity of meat adhering to it, and I serve it out raw to Brooks, Wilson, and Riley.
"I do not know that my journal anywhere mentions our habituation to raw meats, nor does it dwell upon their strange adaptation to scorbutic disease. Our journeys have taught us the wisdom of the Esquimaux appetite, and there are few among us who do not relish a slice of raw blubber or a chunk of frozen walrus-beef. The liver of a walrus (awuktanuk) eaten with little slices of his fat, — of a verity it is a delicious morsel. Fire would ruin the curt, pithy expression of vitality which belongs to its uncooked juices. Charles Lamb's roast-pig was nothing to awuktanuk. I wonder that raw beef is not eaten at home. Deprived of extraneous fibre, it is neither indigestible nor difficult to masticate. With acids and condiments, it makes a salad which an educated palate cannot help relishing; and as a powerful and condensed heat-making and anti-scorbutic food it has no rival.