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BY DAVID BINNEY PUTNAM

[David Goes Voyaging]
David Goes to Greenland

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Cap’n Bob Bartlett.

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DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND

BY
DAVID BINNEY PUTNAM
With a Foreword by
CAP’N BOB BARTLETT

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Copyright, 1926
by
Perry Mason Company
(The Youth’s Companion)

Copyright, 1926
by
G. P. Putnam’s Sons

First Impression, October, 1926
Second Impression, October, 1926
Third Impression, October, 1926
Fourth Impression, November, 1926

Made in the United States of America

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To

My Best Friend

WHO REALLY SHOULD
HAVE GONE TO GREENLAND

MOTHER

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[[v]]

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FOREWORD

David has asked me to write a foreword for his book, which I have seen him working at during these last three months as we sailed northward. Yesterday I read the manuscript which had just been typewritten from those painstaking penciled pages of the boy’s.

As I read I thought more than ever how fortunate David is, first to go with “Uncle Will” (Dr. Beebe) as far south as the Galápagos Islands on the Equator last year, and now to North Greenland. For anyone, of thirteen or thirty-nine, that’s a pretty fine spread and a great experience.

I must confess that it was with some misgivings I thought of the youngster going with us. While it was only a summer trip, almost anything is likely to happen in the Arctic and there’s always a chance of having a pretty [[vi]]rough time—hard, anyway, for a boy. But right here, as the expedition is drawing to a close (and some of it was fairly strenuous), I must say these misgivings did not materialize.

David is a thoroughbred and has a real sane idea of getting along. No one who reads his bully story can fail to realize this. From start to finish I have watched him closely and he has measured up handsomely to all, and more, that any observer could require.

And David is still a boy. He has learned much on the Beebe trip and on this one, things that will sink deep into his young soul. I believe in the years to come he will reap well of what he has sown, and what has been sown for him. School is fine and school must come first. But surely if opportunity offers to combine such experiences as these with “book learning,” it seems to me the grandest sort of education.

I have heard it said that this youngster is having no real boy’s life. Anyone who feels [[vii]]that just doesn’t know David. They haven’t seen him with lads of his own age, as I have, on the football field with his friends at home or with young Eskimos on the Morrissey and ashore in Greenland.

David is still a boy, but a boy who has happened to have a rather wide experience. He’s not a paragon. He’s just plain B-O-Y. And for many years to come he will remain young, with a young heart and the natural unspoiled freshness and happiness of youth. And to me, who have not had many boys around me as I’ve knocked about, it’s been a real pleasure to have him along.

I wonder if many boys who read David’s simple story here, with its many interesting incidents, won’t become jealous. I’m sure I should, if I could turn the clock back more years than one likes to think about. What youngster wouldn’t want to go hunting three thousand miles from home, and see walrus and polar bear and narwhal and all the rest of it? [[viii]]

That’s really what this book should do. Not really make less lucky boys jealous, you understand, but stir up their blood and make them realize that there’s lots in life over the hill and beyond the horizon. A stirring-up like that won’t hurt them. It’s good tonic for the youngsters who are lounging away their youth and getting bad starts fussing around dances and clubs and autos and all that sort of thing, when they ought to be out getting their hands dirty, their muscles hard and their minds cleaned out with the honest experiences of the sea and far places.

I hope the boys who read their way to Greenland with David in this little book (and their Dads, too) will become imbued with David’s spirit and find for themselves worthwhile Ultima Thules.

Robert A. Bartlett.

On Board the Morrissey,
Baffin Bay,
September 5, 1926. [[ix]]

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CONTENTS

[[xi]]

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ILLUSTRATIONS

[[1]]

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DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND

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[[3]]

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CHAPTER I

OFF TO GREENLAND

Last year I went on the Beebe trip to the Galápagos Islands on the steamer Arcturus which was all fixed up especially for the journey. This was a scientific expedition down to the Equator to get deep sea specimens, some of them caught at a depth of nearly three miles. The islands where we went are on the Equator six hundred miles west of Ecuador in South America, and going down we passed through the Panama Canal.

“Uncle Will”—that’s Mr. Beebe—let me go on the Pacific part of this expedition as a sort of junior guest. We had many new experiences, some of them pretty exciting. [[4]]There was diving in a helmet away below the surface of the water, and seeing volcanoes in eruption and lava streams flowing into the sea, and harpooning a big devil fish. Although I was the youngest member of the party—my twelfth birthday was down at Cocos Island south of Panama—I was able to have a part in almost everything. And of course it was great fun.

Captain Bob Bartlett is a great friend of Dad’s. It was Cap’n Bob, you remember, who was with Admiral Peary when he first reached the North Pole in 1909. Well, he and Dad often talked of a Greenland expedition, which the Captain said could be about the finest kind of a trip, with lots to do and see.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York wanted some things from the North for its new Hall of Ocean Life, as well as Arctic birds. So Dad said he would organize an expedition and get the specimens [[5]]they wanted. Among these are Narwhal, Greenland Brown Shark, walrus, all kinds of seal and many birds. Of course we couldn’t get all we were looking for, but even a part of it would make the trip worth while.

I was told that I could go on this trip to Greenland, and that as soon as school was over I was to go down to the shipyard on Staten Island where the Morrissey was being refitted, and that there would be plenty for me to do there.

We are to go as far North as about seven hundred miles this side of the Pole. In all we shall cover more than seven thousand miles and will be back in October. Perhaps if we’re late Dad will send me down by train from Sydney, for school. And we’re taking a couple of school books too, which he says I’ll have to work at when there is time.

It is certainly exciting to look forward to the adventures which I hope we will have. I’ve a Newton 2.56 rifle and a twenty-two [[6]]rifle and I hope to get a chance to do some shooting, although I think the most fun will be helping in the scientific and taxidermy work, and in getting the motion pictures. And part of my job is to write a record as we go along, to make a little book later.

“They Set Me to Work with a Paint Brush.”

Last year Mother took me below the Equator. And this year I’m going with Dad 780 miles north of the Arctic Circle—that is, if we have luck with the ice. Anyway, I’m certainly a lucky thirteen year old boy!

School closed on Thursday afternoon. Friday I went to Dad’s office and looked over some equipment. He and I had been working over the equipment and making lists and generally getting ready, for weeks. In the afternoon we went by ferry to West New Brighton on Staten Island to McWilliams’ shipyard, where our boat, the Morrissey, was.

The Morrissey is a two masted Newfoundland fishing schooner. She is one hundred feet long and has a twenty-two foot beam, [[7]]and draws about fourteen feet when heavily loaded. With us now she draws probably about twelve. Her crew are all Newfoundlanders, wonderful sailors in fair weather or foul. Captain Bartlett owns her, and Dad and some friends refitted her, putting in an engine and making many changes to take care of our party.

Jim is the tallest of the crew. He is over six feet and looks like a cow puncher with small hips and broad shoulders. He is a fine ship’s carpenter. Tom, the boatswain, is the oldest and most experienced. He can make most anything that belongs on a sailing vessel. He was with Peary on the Roosevelt on a couple of his trips to the North, including his one to the Pole. Joe is the biggest man of the crew, and Ralph the youngest.

Billy Pritchard is about the most important man on board, to my way of thinking. He is the cook. Bill is pretty small, but he is a grand cook and has had lots of experience [[8]]at sea. He has been in the far north and has been wrecked four times. When the Morrissey came down from Newfoundland to get us, when the ship jumped in a heavy sea Billy got thrown clean out of his bunk across the galley and on top of the stove. Billy’s helper is Don, who is always very nice to me.

Our skipper is Robert A. Bartlett who was with Peary and has spent years of his life in the Arctic and is about the most experienced ice navigator living today. Cap’n Bob is most awfully nice to me and he and his brother Will Bartlett, who is the mate, say they will help me learn the names of the ropes and to box the compass and all that. You see, I’ve never made a trip on a sailing vessel before, and there is lots to learn.

Well, when I got to the ship, a paint brush was stuck in my hand and I was told to start painting on the hull, as we were then in dry-dock having a hole bored in the stern for the shaft for the new propeller. That day I [[9]]painted pretty near a quarter of the hull and all day Saturday there was other painting—bunks, lockers, hatch covers, etc. We had lots of fine Masury paint which had been given to the Expedition. And there was plenty of cleaning-up work to do.

The Morrissey is divided into three different cabins. The fo’castle has six bunks where the crew sleep. It is used for the galley also. You know, on a ship the kitchen is called “galley.” Aft of that comes the main cabin where most of us sleep. There is a big table in the middle of the room which is used for eating, writing, working, etc. There are twelve bunks and the wireless outfit in this cabin, and a large skylight put in where the old cargo hatch used to be.

The wireless is a short wave outfit, run by Ed Manley, who is an amateur who volunteered for the job and who just graduated from Marietta College in Ohio. The fine big radio equipment, with which we expect to [[10]]be able to talk right to home even from north of the Arctic Circle, was given to the Expedition by Mr. Atwater Kent and the National Carbon Company who make the Eveready batteries.

Then comes the engine room which was once the after hold where they stored fish and carried coal when the boat was used for freight. All around the engine are stores, crowded in tight so they can’t possibly shift when the boat rolls around in a storm. Some of them belong to Knud Rasmussen and some to Professor Hobbs whom we will pick up at Sydney. He is going to South Greenland to study the birth of storms on the Ice Cap there. We are picking up Rasmussen at Disko Island on Greenland and are taking these stores for him to his trading station at Thule, near Cape York. Rasmussen is a great Danish explorer and an expert on Eskimo.

Astern of the engine room comes the after cabin where the Captain, Dad, Mr. Raven [[11]]and Mr. Streeter sleep. There are six bunks, a table, a small stove and the only chair on board. Over the table is a shelf of books mostly about the Arctic and adventure. I have some special ones of my own to read, including Two Years Before the Mast, Doctor Luke of the Labrador, The Cruise of the Cachelot and Richard Carvel. And then Dad has waiting for me a couple of school books, Latin and an English grammar, which don’t sound quite so much fun.

Most of our own stores are in a special store room next to the galley and stored in the run and lazarette away aft. On deck we have over fifty barrels of fuel oil for our Standard Diesel engine which you probably know burns oil and not gasoline.

We started on Sunday, June twentieth, from the American Yacht Club on Long Island Sound. That’s at Rye, our home, and most of the men in our party visited at home with us before we started. [[12]]

It was a hot sunny day, and a great many people came out in launches and inspected the Morrissey. There was a big lunch party at the Club and Commodore Mallory gave Dad and Cap’n Bob the flag of the Club to take North with us. At about a quarter to five we got clear of the visitors and got the anchor up and started down the Sound. A great many yachts and small boats were all around us, blowing horns and whistles and giving us a grand send-off.

David and His Corona.

Grandpa’s yacht, the Florindia, took all the mothers and sisters and wives of our crowd, with my Mother and my little brother June. They went along with us as far as Sound Beach, Connecticut. And then, when they had tooted their last salute, and we had answered on our fog horn, we were actually off for the North.

Monday was a nice calm day which gave Art Young and myself a chance to stow our stuff. He bunks just below me so we have [[13]]to go half and half on the lockers. Art is the bow and arrow expert who was in Africa shooting lions. In America he has killed grizzly bear, moose and Kodiak bear with his arrows. He hopes to try his luck with a polar bear and walrus.

The Skipper Tells David About Taking Observations.

Monday morning, our first day out, we saw eighteen airplanes near Block Island, at the eastern end of Long Island Sound, all headed for New York. Perhaps they were going to welcome Commander Byrd, who was expected back in a couple of days, coming home from England after flying to the North Pole. Dad and Mr. Byrd are friends and he was at our house a little before he started on his trip in the Chantier.

There was a fine wind and a pretty small sea running all day. It was nice and sunny, but very cold, so that we all put on lots of sweaters and coats. Everyone ate dinner and supper that day. As we were going up through Vineyard Sound in the afternoon a [[14]]submarine and a lot of Coast Guard vessels passed us.

Then it began to get rougher with a stiff southerly breeze which was fine for sailing. On the next afternoon we saw a lot of small whales, about 25 feet long. Two or three of them jumped most out of the water, and once about fifty yards ahead of our boat I saw one jump completely out. He looked like a huge bullet.

That day almost all of our gang were sick, and even a couple of the crew. I spent most of the time on deck, listening to Mr. Raven and Van Heilner tell stories about spear traps and the way the Malay natives made and set traps for animals.

We were rocking so hard and keeling over so much that often the water would come in through both port and starboard scuppers. I was looking through a scupper hole when we hit a big wave and all of a sudden the water came right in and hit me in the face as I [[15]]turned around from watching Captain Bob slack the main sheet.

Ralph, one of the crew, has showed me how to make chafing gear from rope. It is used to keep the sails from slapping and wearing out against the steel cables. And Jim has taught me the names of the sails and is starting on the ropes.

The last two days of the trip to Sydney were not so good, with a lot of fog and some rain. Now and then we heard fog signals on the shore of Nova Scotia, and when the fog lifted saw the shore and lighthouses. It is great fun to go up in the crow’s nest.

[[16]]

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CHAPTER II

THROUGH THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE

We arrived in Sydney on Thursday morning, a few minutes before two o’clock, and I stayed up to see what happened. By good luck there was no fog, which made things easier.

The first thing in the morning we cleaned up our cabin, and afterward we all went ashore, to a little hotel where we had baths. Bathing on the Morrissey is a very rare thing, although probably later on we will use the big round washtub which was meant for clothes but which I suppose can take us too. When Dad refitted the vessel, at the shipyard down at Staten Island, they put on the deck a big steel water tank which holds about 750 [[17]]gallons. Then there are the water barrels too so that we really are pretty well fixed.

Up North, Captain Bob tells me, when we get out of water we just go alongside an iceberg and pump the water from pools on the berg over to our tank. For this we have a little pump affair with a piece of garden hose at each end. The melted water on the bergs is fresh, unless sea spray has blown up into the pools.

That morning in Sydney I wrote some letters, to Mother and others. And then in the afternoon Robert Peary, Art Young, Ed Manley, Fred Linekiller and myself went over to the town of Sydney in our little motor launch. Sydney is about five miles away across a big bay, and is far larger than North Sydney where our ship lies.

Over there we saw a very big old square rigger with gun ports all along her sides. She was once a frigate of the British Navy, I suppose about the time of Old Ironsides. [[18]]We went aboard and looked around to see if we could find any loose belaying pins for my collection, but without luck.

David Tries Carrying Art Young Through the Mud.

The next day Dad, Art Young, Carl, Mr. Kellerman and I went off to see if we could find any trout fishing in one of the brooks which came down to the bay a few miles from our anchorage. We left our boat on a sort of beach and walked up the stream to try our luck. There wasn’t any. After fishing for a while we went back to the boat, which we had anchored a little off shore. But the tide had gone out and we found her nearly high and dry in the mud.

We pushed and we shoved and pulled in mud up to our knees for quite a time until finally we got her off. Art had no boots on so I tried to carry him out but he was too heavy. Then we brought the boat pretty close in and Dad tried to carry Art out. Dad had Art on his back—Art is a big man and weighs I suppose 190 pounds—and was [[19]]starting to come out when the extra weight shoved his feet right down in the sticky mud over his boots and when he tried to pull up his legs one boot came off and they both lost their balance and fell into the mud and water. They took it as a joke and had to walk nearly a mile before we found a place where they could get aboard easily.

In the Cross Trees.

Over at another beach we ate our lunch which we had brought with us. And near there Art and I got the first game of the expedition. After sneaking up on it we charged in. And what do you think we found?

It was a big clam bed. Altogether we dug about a bushel and that night we had a fine clam chowder. Not quite as exciting as getting a walrus, but at least it was fun and we claimed the clams really were the first game brought back to the Morrissey.

We saw Newfoundland for the first time on the twenty-eighth of June. It was a very pretty sight, the mountains with snow on their sides [[20]]that had not melted away on account of the very late season. Dad says wherever one goes it always seems that there is an unusual season. On some of the hills the sun was shining and on others great shadows were floating around. In some ways they looked much like the hills in Montana, rolling and mostly bare.

We saw three little fishing schooners off the Bay of Islands, which is a big bay on the western shore of Newfoundland. It took us from four o’clock until eight to cross the bay. We passed one of these boats about seven-thirty and heard someone playing the cornet, not very well. It sounded queer to hear a sound like that come floating across these far-away waters.

There was a beautiful sunset, so red that it looked like blood dripping out of the sky. Ahead the weather looked fine, but astern was a big black cloud with lightning darting out of it every once in a while. And it sure [[21]]did storm. It was so dark that we couldn’t see a thing. On deck I fell two or three times, as it’s pretty hard to get around in the dark on account of the deck cargo—barrels, dories, motor-boats and the Hobbs canoes, beside lots of lumber and rope.

The wind was blowing like everything and the rain came down in torrents. Art and myself put on our oilskins and boots and went on deck to cover up the skylights that were leaking an awful lot. Skylights never seem to work quite right, anyway. We put canvas and tarpaulins over them. Water was breaking over our bows. But the Morrissey didn’t seem to care a bit, and I think Cap’n Bob and Will really seemed to sort of like it. Cap’n Bob is a wonder and is most awfully nice to me. He seems to like having me work on the ropes and get into things as much as I can about the vessel.

The lightning struck pretty near us once or twice and often the whole sky was bright [[22]]with forks of blinding lightning darting about wildly.

We saw our first icebergs on the twenty-ninth, and from noon on passed about ten, four of them really big ones. One of them was about fifty feet high and a hundred feet long. An iceberg is about one eighth above water and seven eighths below. You can imagine how big the one I described must really be; and of course later we saw bergs much bigger. The smaller bergs and pieces of floating ice are called “growlers.”

Just a week ago we had reports that the Straits of Belle Isle were frozen over from Labrador to Newfoundland, but the south wind of the last few days seemed to have pretty well cleaned them out, and we went through without any trouble. In the Straits we saw two steamers, which like ourselves were probably making the first passage of this season.

After leaving the Straits we saw scattered [[23]]bergs all day until about four o’clock when we ran into our first real ice. There were lots and lots of pieces in a huge bunch about three miles by one mile. There were bergs as big as a good-sized house floating around by the hundreds. I went aloft with Ed Manley and looked around on the beautiful sight. The ice was blue on the top and a very pretty light green underneath. When up in the crow’s nest you can see the bottom of the bergs a way down.

In the morning it was pretty foggy and we came close to some big bergs. Once when I was on deck we saw a berg not a hundred yards away that looked like a small hotel, about a hundred and twenty feet high and three hundred feet long.

For two days we were in the ice pretty nearly all the time. This was the Labrador Pack, Cap’n Bob said. One morning I woke up from a jolt when we hit a piece of ice. The bow of the boat goes out of the water and [[24]]comes down with all its force and breaks up the ice; or else we sort of ride along on it a ways until it breaks loose. Anyway, it is nice to know that the Morrissey is built of good solid oak, and that there is that extra coating of greenheart sheathing around the outside to protect her somewhat from the ice.

There was ice as far as we could see all day long, and some fog. Our course had been zigzagging in and out and around the ice, and it seems strange to come upon so much of it so suddenly when just the other day there wasn’t a bit. It is smooth water where there is a lot of ice, so we made pretty good time even with all our twisting about.

One night we had quite a party, to make the time go well. With our little Pathex machine we had movies, and there was candy and our “foggy dew” orchestra played between the reels, and Art Young played solos on his funny cut-down violin which he has [[25]]taken to Africa and all over on his hunting trips. “Nanook of the North” was the picture, and Bob Flaherty, who made it, is a great friend of ours and has told me lots about the life of the Eskimos up in the Hudson Bay country. By the way, Dad says that perhaps we will go up there next summer.

It was quite sunny at times during the day and Dad and Mr. Kellerman took a great many pictures, both movies and stills. Mr. Kellerman would go out on the bowsprit and get down on the stays, taking movies of the prow cutting through the ice.

It is very exciting to see how the crew take the boat through the ice. One man is in the crow’s nest, on the foremast. He calls out where to go and then the man at the wheel repeats his words so as not to make a mistake.

You hear the man aloft yell, “Starbo-ard!”

And then at the wheel the helmsman repeats, “Starbo-ard!”

Then the boat swings over to port, because [[26]]when the tiller is drawn by the wheel in one way the boat goes in the other.

Altogether for me a pretty interesting and exciting First of July. The temperature was about 34, just a few degrees above freezing. And usually at this time of year I am swimming at home!

The Morrissey in Jones Sound.

One night Professor Hobbs of the University of Michigan gave us a lecture on the Greenland Ice Cap. He believes that many of the Atlantic storms start in Greenland. The country, as you probably know, is practically all ice. There is just a little strip of land around the shore, especially at the south, which is not covered with the Ice Cap. It is thought that this may be a mile or more thick, but nobody knows the exact measurement. The glaciers are tongues of the Ice Cap that kind of ooze out to the ocean and then break off into icebergs. There are about three hundred people in the part of Greenland where we are going, up North. The Greenland [[27]]Ice Cap and the Antarctic regions are supposed to be the coldest places in the world, even colder than the North Pole region.

When Peary crossed the northern part of Greenland he found that when he climbed a hill of ice the wind was in his face; and when he went down a slope the wind was on his back. In other words, that there always seemed to be a wind coming down from the ice. Professor Hobbs and his party, whom we are taking to Holsteinsborg, will study these winds, the movements of the ice and other things.

A Baffin Bay Portrait of the Author.

One time about our second day in the ice when we were winding in and out of the leads we saw a black something in the water. I yelled out to the others to come and see the seal. It was the first northern one I had seen outside of a zoo or circus. I happened to see this one because I was out on the end of the bowsprit, with Robert Peary, our chief engineer, with whom I play around a lot. [[28]]He is the son of Admiral Peary who discovered the North Pole. This is his first trip North. He and I are great friends.

You probably have heard of Eric the Red. He was a Norwegian who equipped a ship from Norway in the year 983 and set sail for a land that had been discovered by one Gunbjorn to the west of Iceland. When he got to this land he wondered how he could best get people to go there to live, so he called it Greenland. That was the real beginning of the present Greenland. After that cattle were brought and raised in the southern parts.

Greenland is about fifteen hundred miles long from South to North and about six hundred miles wide at the widest place.

We will pick up Knud Rasmussen at Disko Island where, I have read, lots of fossils have been found. I hope to get some for my collection. At home I have a small room which we call my museum, in which I am gathering together quite a lot of really interesting [[29]]things. Already I have a lot there brought back from the Arcturus expedition, and things given me by explorers and travellers who come to our house. One of my best treasures is a bunch of pieces of the shell of a dinosaur egg, given me by Roy Chapman Andrews, the man who first found these eggs in Asia. They are ten million years old.

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CHAPTER III

WE REACH GREENLAND

Our first sight of Greenland was on Monday, July fifth. It was very pretty with the great lofty mountain peaks sticking up out of the fog with snow on their tops. All afternoon we followed along the shore northward, and pretty well out. We had come a long way over from the other shore at the Straits of Belle Isle, and what with fog and currents and the ice we had dodged through, it was hard to be sure exactly where we were.

The next morning Captain Bartlett was worried because there was a strong breeze blowing and we did not know whether we had passed our port or not. We wanted to get in to Holsteinsborg. On account of the fog [[31]]and mists he had not been able to take observations.

We kept a constant lookout with the glasses and about nine o’clock saw something like a big white flag being waved near some small huts on shore. Probably it was a dried seal skin or something like that. Anyway the Greenlanders were signalling us, and we stopped because we were very anxious to get someone on board and find out exactly where we were.

We put over a small boat, and Dad, Peary the engineer, the Mate and Carl went ashore and brought the first man back to the boat. Three kayaks came out to meet them. Carl spoke Norwegian to them and asked where Holsteinsborg was. He didn’t understand so we showed him a chart and named the place. He understood that and made motions that he would show us the way there.

It was great fun to see him go up and down in the little kayak without tipping over. The [[32]]kayak is the native Eskimo boat, a sort of little canoe made of seal skin stretched over a light frame of small wood. It is decked over all except for a hole, or sort of cockpit where the man gets in sticking his feet out forward out under the deck, where it is only about six inches deep. They have a kind of skin covering that fits over the opening of the cockpit and ties up around their waist tightly so as to keep the water out entirely. The paddle is all one piece of wood, with a blade on each end. They use it holding it in the middle and dipping first one side and then the other. In South Greenland the paddle usually has bone on the end and is smooth in the handle. The northern Eskimo usually has no bone on the paddle, and has a couple of notches cut for each hand hold.

Harry Raven drew pictures of Arctic animals and the Eskimo gave us names for them in his language.

We arrived in Holsteinsborg about four [[33]]o’clock. It has a very good little harbor just inside the mouth of a fjord. A fjord is an indentation in the land, like a long narrow bay or sound, and usually the hills rise steeply on both sides. Dad says this Greenland scenery is very much like Norway.

The houses are all different colors making a very gay sight. There was a little red church on top of the hill, and all around the bottom was the village, houses made mostly of wood with sods around them to keep the cold out. Some of the native sod houses had tunnels leading into them like the igloos of the North.

The place where we landed was a little dock with a cannery on one side and a big sort of rack for kayaks belonging to the Eskimos on the other.

I had great fun trading at Holsteinsborg. Three of the sailors, Jim, Joe and Ralph, and myself went on shore with some old shirts and one pair of old pants. We went into about [[34]]ten or fifteen of the huts. There were only about twenty-five huts in the town. They were one-roomed houses with a raised sort of platform for a bed in the back of the room. The cooking and everything was done in the same room. The whole family sleep in one bed. The houses were very stuffy and smelt of skins and dogs. The dogs were all over the place, even lying in the tunnels so that you could hardly get through.

We Get a Basking Shark at Holsteinsborg.

At nine o’clock that night we left for a fjord called Ikortok, to drop Professor Hobbs and his party. We went inland about forty miles. We tied three dories together making a raft to move his stuff in from the boat. One trip the raft was a little too heavily laden and almost went down when one of the dories partly filled up with water.

While the last part of the unloading was going on, Dad, Carl and I went off to try the fishing, without any luck. On shore we saw a bird’s nest that looked as if it might be [[35]]a good specimen. We tried to get at it, climbing up a cliff, but couldn’t.

Carl Shows a South Greenland Youngster How to Use a Pathex Motion Picture Camera.

When we went out from the land in our little boat we were in very shallow water. The propeller of our Johnson engine hit the bottom and the little engine jumped loose and fell overboard. Luckily we were able to get it again. We rowed all the way back to the Morrissey, as the engine was full of salt water and couldn’t be made to run. The tide was coming in the fjord with great force and it was a hard row, about four miles. When we came to a beach we pulled the boat up and worked on the engine. I took our gun to try and get some birds for eating or for specimens. By the time I was up at the other end of the beach they had given up hope of drying the engine and started to row, calling out that I was to walk back along the shore as that would make the rowing easier. I didn’t like the idea much but I either had to walk or stay there. I had on native skin [[36]]boots called kamiks which made it pretty hard to walk on rocks. I was afraid of dogs, too, because we had found a litter of dog pups on shore not far from where the Morrissey was anchored. And a mother dog in the North is apt to be as fierce as a wolf when she has pups. I saw one a few hundred yards away so I sat down behind a rock and waited for him to move on.

When I reached the shore near the boat they sent in a dory to take me off.

The next day we stopped at some little villages along the fjord. The Eskimos came out in small boats and kayaks, to trade with us and to see the white men and their strange schooner. They brought out a porpoise because we asked for any fish they had, for specimens.

That afternoon we arrived at a big bird rookery. It was a wonderful sight. The whole side of the cliff was covered with thousands of kittywakes nests. That is a sort of [[37]]small gull which sometimes gets down to New York in the winter. The birds were making a terrible noise, chattering continuously.

We went up beside the cliff in dories and shot a few birds for specimens and others for eating. We took movies of the birds flying around the cliff. At a distance the flying birds, great clouds of them, looked like a blizzard.

Then we started for Holsteinsborg to drop two men we had picked up there. We arrived at three o’clock in the morning and instead of having the Morrissey go in, we sent them in in the launch, as we wanted to go on to Disko as fast as we could.

[[38]]

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CHAPTER IV

ALONG THE GREENLAND COAST

We hit bad weather going north to Disko and had to go in for shelter behind some small islands about forty miles from Holsteinsborg. There were no people there. We caught a few fish and shot some birds for specimens.

On one island there were three deserted sod huts. They were all muddy and full of fish and seal bones.

When we came back from the huts I went fishing with two of my friends, Jim and Ralph. We went away outside in the dory where it was quite rough—at least I thought so. We caught a few rock cod. Jim had a great big halibut right alongside but the fish gave a [[39]]flip as he was trying to land him and got free from the hook just as he was hauling him over the gunwale.

One night when some Eskimos came on board along the coast we showed them movies of Eskimos harpooning walrus to see how it would strike them. These movies were given in our little mid-ships cabin, where we eat and most of us sleep, with our Pathex projector thrown on a small screen Fred made from the table oilcloth.

When the harpooned walrus pulled the Eskimo hunter, our guests shouted and grunted. It was very funny. They had heard of movies but had never seen any. After the northern pictures we showed some from the South Sea islands. The Eskimos had never seen people in swimming so they didn’t know quite what to make of it. When they were asked by a friend of ours who speaks Eskimo what they thought of it, they only said that they liked them all very much, [[40]]especially a picture showing lions playing with an animal trainer. They had never seen any animal like a lion. There isn’t a cat, for instance, in all Greenland, we were told.

It is great fun to see the boats come out and meet you and the Eskimos that are entirely different from us and can’t speak a word of English except for words like shirts or sugar or coffee that they have heard. For such things as these they want to trade boots and purses and skins. And in the south they make little kayaks and knives and pen holders and such things out of the ivory of walrus tusks.

They have some very nice hats made of fur and eiderdown. One man brought two little toy kayaks up to me with all the equipment on them, even the little rack to hold the harpooning line, with a tiny model of a man sitting in the kayak. I got one of these for my little museum at home. For this one he wanted an old pair of pants, or some tobacco. [[41]]Even the women want chewing tobacco. I got some very pretty purses made of seal flippers, with bone latches. It is hard to find trinkets for all of one’s friends at home.

The Eskimos on the whole are very nice and honest. Most of them can play the accordion, and they seem to be very musical and they certainly love to dance.

We have lots of things on board for gifts and trading, especially to give in return for help and labor. Money isn’t much good up here. Our stores include axes, knives, beads, needles, tobacco, pipes, candy, etc. Both men and women love gay colored cloths and small mirrors always go well.

At one of the villages we saw a lot of dogs eating a decayed shark. After the shark has been dead for a few weeks ammonia seems to form in the meat. The dogs love it and after eating it they seem to get sort of tipsy and can hardly walk.

Fred Linekiller, the taxidermist, is showing [[42]]me how to skin birds. It is very interesting to do it. The first thing to do when you shoot a bird is to put cotton in the wounds and in the mouth so the blood will not run out on the feathers. After that a needle is put through the nostrils and the beak is sewed together, so the cotton won’t come out. Then the feathers on the breast are parted and the skin cut from the breast bone down to the soft part of the stomach.

Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery.

Next cornmeal is poured in. It is used to keep the skin dry and to mop up the blood and moisture. After that is done instead of pulling the skin, it is pushed, so as not to stretch it. More cornmeal is added as the skin is pushed off. When the legs are reached they are cut at the knee joint so as to keep the bone to hold the foot in place. Just above where the tail feathers end is cut and the skin turned inside out and the skin pushed gently toward the head. It can be pushed as far up as a little beyond the eyes. Then [[43]]the head is scraped and a knife is put between the jaw bone and the back of the head opening up the head so that you get the brains out. Then the skin, inside out, is treated with arsenic powder, and after that it is put right side out again and the feathers fluffed out. Then it is ready to be taken back to the Museum to be stuffed and mounted, or studied as it is.

Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona.

When I woke up one morning I found that we were in a little but very good harbor, Godhavn on Disko Island. Cap’n Bob has to be up most of the time, especially, of course, when we are moving about. This time, for instance, he was on deck all night, and Dad was with him. Disko is a hard place to get into unless you know it awfully well.

There is a little coal mine near Godhavn. Getting the coal, and fishing, is about all they do, with some hunting especially in the winter. The women do most of the work and the men go fishing and hunting. When we went [[44]]ashore we saw the women with big baskets of coal unloading a small boat and taking the coal to be weighed and stored away in a big storehouse.

Carl, Mr. Streeter, Art Young and I went shark fishing with two Eskimos out in the mouth of the bay. We fished from about one until four o’clock but didn’t catch a thing. Later we traded some very nice little toy kayaks, all equipped, and also some little sledges with whips and rifles tied down with thongs.

At Godhavn we went all around with the Governor, Carl acting as our interpreter. It is fine having him along as he speaks pretty good Danish. He is an American, but his people are both Norwegian and in his home out in Minnesota they talked Norwegian a lot, and it is pretty much the same as Danish.

We went into the printing office where the only paper in Greenland is published. It is a monthly paper, and the printing house is a [[45]]small red building with one little press. About three thousand papers in the Eskimo language go out free to practically all the people in Greenland. The Governor gave us a bound copy for our collection. Most of the stuff in the paper is written by Eskimos up and down the coast, who send it in.

The next morning about six-thirty we heaved anchor and left Godhavn. When the anchor comes up all hands are called to the windlass which works with iron bars like pump handles. If there is a lot of chain out it takes a long time and is really hard work.

In the afternoon Dad asked me to fill a little bag with trading stuff because we were going to stop at a village called Proven. We reached there about seven. It was a very small harbor so the Morrissey could not go in, and we used our launch and were greeted by the whole town at the little wharf.

At the end of the dock were about eight sharks down in the water tied up with ropes [[46]]and still alive. Later Harry Raven got one for a specimen that was ten feet long. Later he found the liver measured nearly six feet.

While Dad and the others had tea with the Governor (all these little hamlets in the south have a Dane in charge whom we call a Governor, even though the average population may be only forty people) I went out to trade for some kamaks or skin boot. These are a sort of double high shoe or boot made of seal skin with the hair turned in and with a hairy inner boot beneath which is put in grass to make it soft and warmer.

The Greenland hair seal is entirely different from the Alaskan fur seal. It has no fur but just coarse hair and has no value except for oil and its hide. I had a chance to get several pairs of kamaks but they were all only about half the size of my foot. The Eskimos are very small people and mostly the tallest only come up to about my shoulder. And naturally they have very small feet. [[47]]

At Proven I got two pairs of seal skin pants, one for a jacket and the other in exchange for a box of candy and a sweater. I also got a kind of necklace which is worn by the women for “dress up,” for a piece of soap, a bar of chocolate and an army mirror, which was a good bargain, because the necklaces are hard to make and hard to get.

We were going to get a kayak but it would be mean to take one because the Eskimos are like children and would give away almost anything for candy or pretty materials. The kayak is their main way of getting food, and is to them dreadfully important. We always tried not to take anything which was very necessary to the Eskimo, and to give them something really helpful in exchange for important things. For instance, later when we got some kayaks, we gave in exchange lumber and materials from which they could make new ones. A very popular and useful thing [[48]]we had for gifts was Tetley’s tea put up in half pound tins. This, often with a small bag or tin of sugar, was liked a lot everywhere, while we on board always drank it.

[[49]]

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CHAPTER V

UPERNIVIK AND THE DUCK ISLANDS

We left Proven about midnight, and as we started out from the little harbor past some bare rocky islands Dad and some others went ashore to try some shooting. When we came in we had seen a great many birds and ducks flying around there.

They stayed ashore from one o’clock until five, while I was asleep. Later Dad told me it was very beautiful, the water all grey and calm like silver, with a sky sort of lead color with gay tints of orange and yellow and lemon where the sun was low. They brought back tern, eider ducks and some gulls, some to eat, others to be skinned for specimens.

The next day it was very foggy so we went [[50]]slowly, dodging icebergs which we could see only when we got very close to them. At about nine the following morning we reached Upernivik, which is the last town that amounts to anything in North Greenland and is I think the furthest north town in the world. There is a Danish Governor there and a few other Danes. His name is Governor Otto and he was awfully nice to us, then and later on when we came back.

Upernivik is a nice little place built on an island. Where we landed there was only a little wharf and some store houses and supplies. From this harbor a little path or trail led over a steep hill to the real town, which was down on the other side on a slope to the south, with a grand view of Sanderson’s Hope, quite a big mountain a few miles away and overlooking an open fjord which was no use as a harbor. The village has a dozen wooden houses, including several that are very nice indeed, chiefly the Governor’s house and one [[51]]for the doctor who lives there, which also is used for a hospital. And about the wooden houses are the sod huts of the natives, most of whom seem to stick to their own style of living. There is a fine new church on the hill just over the village.

We had lunch with Governor Otto and his daughter Ruth, a girl about twelve years old, at his house, and afterward in the harbor we took some movies of an Eskimo turning over in his kayak. He didn’t seem to have a hard time at all. He just kind of fell over on one side, sitting right in his kayak or skin boat, and then came up on the other side with just a twist of his paddle. Doing this he wore a watertight suit of sealskin and a hood over his head, drawn tight about the neck. And around his waist, where he sat in the hole or cockpit of the kayak, there was a skin fastened tight about him so that no water could get in.

Robert Peary thought he would try it so [[52]]he changed into a sealskin shirt, got into the Eskimo’s kayak—it was hard for him to squeeze in he was so much larger than the Eskimo—and turned half way over. The kayak was upside down and then his head stuck up on the other side and went down again, sputtering. He just couldn’t manage to get up again, and hung head down in the water, the boat upside down right over him. I really thought he was drowning.

Robert Peary Tries a Kayak.

Then he came up a second time and yelled for help. Of course we were close to him and right away Carl got there in a rowboat and he pretty nearly fell in himself helping to get Robert straightened up. And you should have seen the Eskimos laugh! They thought it was a great joke. But Robert seemed to feel he had swallowed about all the ice water of Baffin Bay that he wanted and he was so cold he went back to the ship and changed his clothes. But I’ll bet that next summer at home in Maine he learns the trick. [[53]]

We had sent some natives out to catch sharks for specimens and Doc, Ralph and myself went after them in the launch. They had caught four big ones and had lost another overboard. These Greenland basking shark, as they are called, are very slow and sluggish. They don’t fight at all. They move very slowly and don’t seem to be savage or a bit like the sharks I have seen caught in Florida.

The next morning Governor Otto took us over to see his dogs, which during the summer he keeps on a bare rocky island about a mile away, where they are entirely to themselves. About every three days during the summer they are fed, mostly ducks which are taken out in a big basket. Most of them seem to have been kept a pretty long time and become pretty “ripe.” But the dogs certainly like them.

Art Young Tries an Eider Duck Egg from the Eskimo Cache on the Duck Islands.

We went over to the island in our launch with the Governor and a couple of Eskimos carrying the food. When they saw us coming [[54]]the dogs, about a dozen in number, crowded down to the shore and followed along as we went by, yelping and barking crazily. They knew it was dinner time.

We landed and decided to give them the birds up a bit from the water, where it was more level and Kellerman could get movies better. As the Eskimos carried up a big basket of the birds, one of them had to keep the dogs off the man with the basket. He used an oar and beat them. And at that they jumped up and tried to get at the basket of meat on the man’s shoulder whenever they got the slightest chance. I don’t doubt they would have knocked him down if he had been alone.

Then the birds were thrown out to the dogs, a few at a time. In a second they were torn to pieces and gobbled up. A dog will rip one up in a flash and choke down everything but the feathers. There were many fights. And all the time there was a great racket, [[55]]with the dogs howling and barking and yapping at each other.

It was very interesting to see the King Dog. Each team up in this country has a head dog, the King, who is boss. He is usually the heaviest and best looking dog, and certainly is the best fighter. I believe he just fights his way up to the leadership. Certainly when he “says” anything to one of the others, they do what they are told pretty quickly. Or else they get a licking.

The King has a queen, and it is fun to see the way he looks out for her. When the Queen got a duck or part of one, the King just sort of looked on and saw to it that no other dog interfered. If one of them got excited and started to move in on the Queen and her dinner, the King gave a growl—and that ended it. Or if another dog had a bit of duck, and the King came along, the other fellow just dropped what he had, perhaps running off or sort of turning over on his back [[56]]and grovelling on the ground. There certainly was discipline on that island.

When it was all over there was just a few feathers scattered around on the rocks and the dogs were mostly with bloody mouths and heads where they had torn up the meat. Anyway, they all seemed to have had a good meal and for the first time settled down quietly, to wait for the next dinner time three days later. In the winter they have their work, and lots of it, and of course they are awfully important in the life of the northern people. There are no horses and of course no automobiles or anything like that. So everything is drawn on sleds, and the sleds are moved by dogs.

The King Dog of Governor Otto’s Team, with His Queen.

The dog skins are especially fine. The fur is heavy and soft and glossy. Dad bought some dog skins to have a coat made.

That afternoon we left Upernivik to go north across Melville Bay. Everyone was on hand to see us off and the Governor fired [[57]]the little cannon up on the hill where they had the Danish flag hoisted. They gave us a salute of three guns and we answered with three shots from a rifle.

The Duck Islands are a few little rocky islands a dozen miles or so off the mainland of Greenland just at the south side of Melville Bay. About two o’clock the next afternoon we reached them, anchoring in a sort of harbor between the two largest islands. The bigger one is I suppose about two miles long and half a mile or so wide, very hilly and all rocks. About the shores, where there is a little level land, the rocks are covered with moss and there are stretches of bog and mud.

We went around a good deal on both islands and saw a great many eider ducks which nest here in large quantities. In the old days when the whalers came into Baffin Bay this was a headquarters and then they used to gather duck eggs by the boat load.

Feeding the Dogs at Upernivik.

[[58]]

We saw many ducks nesting. The nest is just a little fluffy round mass of the soft feathers, right on the ground. They pull the feathers out of their breasts, so that when you get the female ones they look as if someone had plucked a handful of down from their undersides. This is what is called eider down, and is used in very fine mattresses and pillows. It is very warm and is also quite valuable. The Eskimos collect the eider down from the nests and from the birds, and it, with skins of foxes and seal, and a few other articles like walrus ivory and narwhal tusks, is one of the chief ways they have of trading with the outer world.

The male and female eider ducks are very different. The female is all brown, while the male is brown only a little on his breast and belly, and with a lot of white on his back and neck, and feathers that are dark grey or nearly black. The female moves very slowly and is very tame and easy to get close to and to kill. [[59]]We got a good many for eating, and they are kept hung in the rigging to be used as Billy the cook wants them. The male is much wilder and flies faster and is pretty hard to shoot. There were very few male at Duck Island. While the females are nesting the males seem to go off by themselves. Later we saw a good many up in the fjords back of Upernivik. Both are very big and heavy birds, and awfully good eating.

Back in 1850 and on for thirty years or so there was much whaling in these waters. Many of the ships came from Scotland. On the hill or small mountain at Duck Island there is a whaler’s cairn, and also a walled-in place where they had their lookout. In that cairn, by the way, in 1888 Peary left a record. We could find nothing. Probably the Eskimos had cleaned out everything long ago.

In one piece of lowland near the water, where there was a little dirt, we found the [[60]]graves of some whalers. They were covered over with stones and only one head board with a name, was left. It said: “In memory of William Stewart, A.B., S. S. Triune of Dundee, June 11, 1886. Aged 24.”

Art took me shooting with my sixteen-gauge shotgun, but I didn’t do so well. I haven’t tried shooting on the wing much and I’m pretty bad at it. Shooting with the twenty-two rifle seems easier. Art himself is a grand shot, with either rifle or shotgun.

We found many eggs, and Dad and some of the others, on the other island, found great caches of eggs, hundreds of them evidently gathered by Eskimos who had visited the islands earlier in the season and left them there to get them later. They were put away in a sort of hole with rocks piled up around and over them so that they were perfectly protected, and with the chinks of the rock packed up with moss. They also found the skull of a polar bear. [[61]]

We found three eggs with little ducks just hatching out. These we brought back to the boat. I put one under a mother duck which I had found alive in an Eskimo trap and the other two behind the galley stove where it was nice and hot. Two of them lived quite a while and then they were killed, painlessly, and put away for specimens. We got some nests for the Museum and I got one for my own collection.

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CHAPTER VI

ACROSS MELVILLE BAY

By the twentieth of July we were pretty nearly across Melville Bay. That was just exactly a month from the time we started from home which is most awfully good time. Of course we were very lucky for all the way we had practically no real trouble with ice.

Melville Bay usually is about the most dangerous and hardest place in the north. Lots of years it may take weeks to make the passage, and sometimes there just isn’t any way to get by it. Later Dr. Rasmussen told me that he has been drifting, frozen in the pack ice, for six weeks solid while trying to get through to the north, and in mid-summer at that. [[63]]

After we left Duck Island I put in quite some time getting our things ready for trading and for presents. Of course we weren’t going to do any real trading, except for little personal things some of us wanted. Most of the stuff was to give natives who helped us in the hunting and collecting of specimens. One of my nice jobs was filling a lot of tin cans with screw tops with candy and sugar. And we also sorted out some gay sweaters and jerseys which Mr. Alex Taylor, who lives at Rye, had given the expedition. (All our crew, by the way, now have Alex Taylor sweaters and they certainly came in handy.)

We arrived at Cape York on the night of July 20th. Cape York is a big cape which marks the northern end of Melville Bay and really is the beginning of far North Greenland. The people living there and in the few settlements further north are the Smith Sound tribe of Eskimos, who live nearer the North Pole than any other people. About at this [[64]]latitude is further north than the most northerly points of the mainland of any of the continents, North America, Europe, or Asia. So we felt we really were beginning to get pretty far north.

In a Fjord Back of Upernivik.

The Cape itself is a high mountain which sort of spills right down into the sea. The slopes, some of them, are quite red, and the snow is all colored crimson too, from a sort of dust which seems to cover it. This part is called the Crimson Cliffs, and they have been seen and described by about every Arctic expedition. In behind the cape is a great glacier which breaks off right into the water very conveniently. Cap’n Bob put the Morrissey right up alongside the ice wall and men jumped down on the glacier from the bowsprit and carried lines and fastened the ship so she lay right alongside, as if the ice were a wharf. Of course there was no wind and the water was quiet.

Then they took a hose and ran it up a way [[65]]and put one end in one of the many streams which were running down the top of the glacier, melted snow water. There was enough slope to carry the water into our big tank on deck. Also the sailors filled the barrels, using buckets. It was a great way to get a full load of real ice water.

While we were working in the Eskimos came off in their kayaks. We bought a fine kayak for a rifle and some ammunition. The very next day, when we were ashore, we found that the owner of the traded kayak already had a new one well started. I suppose in a few days more he was all fixed up with a boat again. And with his really fine rifle he ought to do most awfully well hunting. I certainly hope so. A kayak to an Eskimo is about the most important thing in life. I imagine a rifle would come next. Compared to an automobile with us, our auto is only a luxury which we really could get along without.

Tupiks, the Eskimo Summer Houses Made of Skins, at Karnah.

About a mile from the little settlement of [[66]]Cape York there is a “bird mountain.” That’s what they call the places where they find the dovkies, or little auks. These are small birds which live on mountain sides where there are talus slopes—that is, big slides of loose rocks all piled up. They make their nests down in the holes and cracks and they are very hard to find.

An Eskimo went with us in the launch around to this bird mountain. We climbed up the slope to a regular place they use where there was a sort of rough blind made out of the loose stones. He carried a net with a long handle. We sat down on the slope, partly hidden by the blind. Then the birds would fly past, always in the same direction. They seemed to be always on the move, getting up off the rocks and swinging around in a great circle out over the sea and back again. There were thousands of them.

As a bird would fly past us, almost near enough to touch sometimes, the Eskimo [[67]]would make a quick swoop with the net, and plop a dovkie would be in it. Then he would quickly pull in the net, take the bird out, kill it and be ready for another. This is chiefly the work for women who are awfully good at it and catch hundreds and I guess thousands. They are fine eating, and the skins are used for making bird feather clothing, as lining to wear next the skin.

After our Eskimo friend Kaweah had showed us how to do it, I tried. It looked awfully easy. But it wasn’t. I made a lot of misses.

Dad and Dan Streeter were looking on and taking pictures, and they laughed as I swiped at the birds and missed them.

“Three strikes and out!” they’d call when I scored three misses.

But after a while I did catch a few, and some I just hit with the net pole and knocked them down, sort of stunned, when we got them. Dad and Dan also tried, but they [[68]]didn’t break any records. A fellow with a batting eye like Babe Ruth ought to do pretty well at this game. Anyway, it was great fun, and was of course the first time I ever caught birds with a net. Funnily, almost the next day I actually did catch some others with a loop on a string.

Where the vessel lay that afternoon was right next a big lot of bay ice, pans of ice with some water between them. In the distance here and there we could see seal. They sit up in the sun, but almost always right near a hole in the ice. And the minute they get frightened they slide off and are gone. Even if you shoot them, unless death is very quick, they are likely to flop off into the water, where they sink.

Dan and one of the Eskimos tried some stalking, crawling up on the seal or pooeesee as the Eskimos call them. And he had pretty good luck, hitting three, two of which they got. They also got pretty wet crawling over [[69]]the ice and through pools of water melted by the sun. Anyway, it was our first game. The seal meat was fine, too.

The next morning we had moved northward to Parker Snow Bay. We were anchored there when I woke up. It’s a beautiful place, a little bay right on the coast, with a bit of flat land with a glacier coming right down behind it and stretching up to the great ice cap. Two steep fine mountains are on either side of the glacier, and one of them we named Bartlett Peak. Along the shore one of these mountains has steep cliffs which fall right down into the water. And there is a great bird rookery, or loomery as the Newfoundland folks call it.

On the shore we saw a blue fox. And then after breakfast we went to work at the rookery to get specimens. It was a beautiful calm sunny day and we really had a grand time. Some of us were at it until afternoon and sent back a dory to bring us some lunch. [[70]]

We climbed up a cliff, getting at it on the easier side of a steep little point. From there we could reach right down to some of the nests. We could even touch some of the birds, both auks and kittywakes. They were sitting on the nests, either with eggs or very young birds. (Three weeks later when we came back there were many more young ones.)

It was here that I used a light line to catch several birds. I made a slip noose in the end and let it a few feet over the edge of the cliff so that it rested on a nest. Then when the bird came back, if she settled down right, I pulled the noose suddenly. It worked quite well.

Bob Peary, who is very handy at getting around and climbing, put a rope around himself and we let him down over the cliff to get eggs and nests. Art Young and Carl were the “anchors” on the other end of the rope. Once on his way down in one place Bob [[71]]stepped on a loose rock and knocked it out. When it fell it started a big bunch and they all went tumbling down into the water with a great splash and crash.

The cliff was right straight up and down, with a sort of shelf sticking out perhaps twenty feet from the water. After a while Bob went down there, where he could stand and then Dad was let down with a small movie camera to get some pictures. Later the launch went around below them, and while the men at the very top held the line tight, the men in the launch held it tight at the bottom and first Dad and then Robert slid down it into the boat, after first letting down the bucket with eggs and a box of nests and some little ones they had gathered up.

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CHAPTER VII

SHIPWRECK

On Monday July twenty-sixth we struck a hidden rock off Northumberland Island which is at the mouth of Whale Sound away up at Latitude 77 degrees and twenty minutes north, on the east side of Baffin Bay. We were cruising around the island trying to locate some Eskimo whom we wanted to get on board to help us hunt. We were just getting into the good game territory. The evening before we saw seventeen walrus from the deck.

Captain Bob had been told back at Cape York that certain Eskimo were at places where they usually lived, but when we got in sight of them the tupiks were deserted. These [[73]]people move about a lot following up where the hunting is best, and probably the fact that the ice had gone out of the fjords and bays unusually early had made them change about unexpectedly.

Anyway, we were pretty close in shore, examining four sod houses on a point. A big wall of rock stuck out of the mountain behind, coming down toward the water. It is what geologists call a “dyke”—harder rock which stands up under the rain and snow, like a wall, with the softer stuff sloping down from it on either side, sort of washed away.

Well, this “dyke” evidently stuck well out underneath the surface of the water. Afterward we found there was deep water on both sides of it, right close up. But we managed to hit the very outer knob of it, about ten feet or so below the surface.

It was about twelve thirty in the morning when we hit, broad daylight of course, with the sun shining brightly and fortunately no [[74]]wind or sea running. It was very, very exciting. I was almost thrown out of my bunk when we hit. There was a jar and a jolt and then everything stopped. We had often hit into light ice, which jarred the vessel a bit, but never anything like this.

As quick as I could I put on my pants and was just getting on my stockings when Dad called down from the skylight for all hands to get on deck and never mind dressing. I woke up Bob Peary and Doc and we all rushed on deck.

We moved oil casks for half an hour from the after part of the ship to the bow so as to take the strain off the stern where the vessel had struck and was sticking on the rocks. It was just high tide when we hit. We raised the foresail, jib and jumbo and had the engine going full speed, but she didn’t budge. Then, as the tide began to leave us, we took a lot of stores ashore in our dories and started in to do what we could for the next tide.

The Morrissey on the Reef Off Northumberland Island.

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