A Diary and Journal from the Second Grinnell Expedition

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almost unbroken, prevails throughout our dormitory, and the watch officer, slips on his bear skin and full of thoughts of tomorrow resigns himself to a round of little routine observances, the most worthless of which is this, unbroken record of the changing days.

Thurs. Apr. 5th

The sick still improve slowly but sensibly. John, Goodfellow, and Stephensen are the most laggard. Bonsall to my great relief reacts under the accumulated battery of curatives which I explode upon him. Petersen is the same, he will eat no raw meat. Kane took the mass colchicum and an an Indian vapour sweat, which seems to have arrested his e[r]ruption and given him relief. My [pricipal?] treatment among the present stage of patients is by diuretics especially cubebs. Nothing that I have tried so soon softens the rigid effused legs and knees of my people. Frictions and cold water stand first upon my routine list of remedies. Bark and Iron are given. Surreptitiously in beer & tea [fine palates] [They must have, the brutes!] but except comphor dissolved in hot seal oil I use no applications to the swelled limbs. Potash fails now, and lime juice has lost its effect.

The eruption I have analysed at last with the microscope, its primary form in papular, but its characters are those of a true erythema, complicated by whelks like lichen and urticaria If different from urticaria only in the slight purple circle which invests the isolated papules, a result due to the haemmorhagic diathesis of the scurvy patient. The whelks exactly resemble those of uticaria

[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.

[verso] I did not bring Hans back with me but gave him orders My orders to Hans had been to been to go to Peteravik and invite Kalutanek to the brig. I sent by him a present of a Capstain bar - valued on account of the excellent adaptation of the wood for harpoon shafts. Morton scrubbed me in a tub of hot water for I was lice from head to foot - but mercurial ointment gave me some relief and I succeeded at last in sleeping.

All things else were doing well, and the sick steadily advancing towards health [and] strength.

Wednes. Cont^d.

The open water has not advanced from the south more than four miles within the past three weeks. It is still barely within Cape Alexander. This water is a source of serious anxiety to me for the South Easters seem to have hardly affected it. Our experience has taught us that the swell created by South winds rapidly breaks up the ice, now there can be no swell to the S^o. or these heavy gales would have done the same. I argue from this two unfortunate conditions one the presence of of [?] pack in the North Water of the whalers and the other a melancholy correspon- ding tardiness in the approach of water - upon this water depends the liberation of our brig, as well as the transit of our boats crew [and] [?] should we be obliged to forsake her. Last year (as by 1^st ice inspection, of her [?] [and] [?] Sea note book) we found on the 10. May, the water already surrounding Littleton I^d and rising to within two miles of Refuge Inlet.

[recto] It is now 40 miles further off!!

Thursd. Apr. 19.

Petersen and Ohlsen work by short spells getting ready for the load of carpentering duties necessary for boats sledges [etc.] Every thought is turned by me to the contingency of a forced departure. I will not leave the brig until it is absolutely certain that she cannot thaw out this season but I will have every thing matured for our instant departure as soon as her fate is decided.

We are still without workers, and the pressure of things to be done most alarming but every detail is arranged, and if the sick go on as they have done I do not doubt but that we can carry our boats some thirty or 40 miles over the ice before a decision as to the advance of the waters enables me to remain with or desert the brig.

Friday Apr. 20

Started a relief watch of Reilley Bonsall and Morton to saw out sledge runners from our cross beams. They can only manage 1/2 hour per [?] as they are very weak and the terms. at night descent to -26^o. Nearly all our beams are consumed for fuelt, butI have have saved enough to construct two long sledges runners of 17. [?] each. I could not permit Mr. Ohlsen to use short sledges, made up from the [?] 11 feet sledge of Hardwicke (D. Raes[?] pattern[?[) I want a sledge sufficiently long to bring the weight of the whale boat and her stowage within the line base of the runner, that will prevent warbling and pitching (or rocking fore [and] aft) in crossing hummocked ice, and enable us to cradle the boat so firmly to the sledge as to give neither an undue strain. Ohlsen sees the force of this view [and] we are

[verso] breaking out our cabin bulk head to extract the beam. [?] [?] back is down. Cold vapour fills our cabin [?] every thing is comfortless, blanket makes a poor substitute for the moss padded wall which had protected us from -60^o.

Hans nearly due is daily expected. Jenny one of his dogs has a bad foot. Kane a diarrhoea from cold after walrus meat, McGary nearly well [and] few scurvy symptoms.

Satur. Apr 21

Morton's heel nearly closed, and apparently a sound bone underneath. He has now been since October laid upon his back. Soon I can set this faithful and valuable man to active duty, I feel as if we had an accession of half a dozen Long Bills to our company, a doubtful compliment to Morton.

The beam was too long to be carried through our hatches it caught between our [?] and main mast we therefore saw it as it stands and will carry up the slabs separately. These slabs are but 1-1/2 in. wide and [?] must be strenthened then by iron bolts and cross pieces, still they are all that we have. I made the bolts out ofour cabin curatin rods, long disused. Mr. Petersen aids Ohlsen in grinding his tools, they will complete the job tomorrow for we must work on Sunday now, and by Monday be able to commence work Petersen, who is a first rate tinker undertakes to manufacture our cooking [and] mess gear. I have a sad looking assortment of battered rusty tins to offer him but with stovepipe much may be done.

Sick the same, John is getting his legs, Whipple will be made to get his. I suspect him, Goodfellow is as usual my one impracticable nuissance. I can't get him

[recto] out of bed or dry his mattrass. We have only two days more of meat on hand but we eat or have eaten without stint and expect daily to see Hans with a fresh supply.

Sunday Apr. 22.

Gave rest for all but the sawyers who keep manfully at the beam some notion of our weakness may be formed from the fact of these five poor fellows averaging among them but one foot per hour and a volunteer spell by Petersen and Ohlsen. I read our usual allowances prayers, and Dr. Hayes who feels sadly the loss of his foot came aft and also by consent crawled upon deck to sniff the daylight. He had not seen the sun for 5 months and three weeks. Bonsall sleeps in his hammock truly increasing the ventilation of my own corner since the scurvy had prostrated the party. I as a matter of principle have retained no bunk no peculiar of any sort. On the platform and abreast of it say 8 feet by 18 we stow 8 sleepers an undue division of atmostphere for respiration. For me while a single one of the returned party are without a dry berth I will retain none for myself. My bunk first went to Dr. Hayes, and when his stump healed to Goodfellow via Morton, who gave the boy his bed and took my own himself. It is a part of Henry's dignity to refuse the direct occupation of my bunk, but to accept Mortons by my interposition, the same gallant gentleman will refuse a plate of food culled by my own hand, but will heat freely of my cookery presented by another. The records of his short lived return to duty were neglected he neither dated nor registered his meteorological observations and now the only break in upon the integrity of the series is due to him. I had to reinstate as gentleman passenger.

Copy to here [?]

Hans continued stay leads me to hope that Kalutanak may bite at my proposal of a hunting party and thus afford dogs for my journey.

[verso] I run on deck and am greeted by another of our wild contrasts. Three teams of dogs are baying at their tethering cords and five Esquimaux yelling "Jima!."

Among the most prominent of the natives was Kalutinak - a glance assured me of the success of my dog project, it was evidently a hungting party - two noble teams of six dogs - harpoons - lances - light equipment every thing convinced me at a glance - Now for to fuse the hunt into an exploration of the N. Channel. I will wait - Indian fashion until eat [food] and sleep brings [the] talk. [Even with] [these savages haste is indecorous].

The natives are around me eating their stew laughing and questioning and breaking in upon poor Petersen whose services are usurped by myself. Kalutak has the place of honour on my own platform - he has the nature of a gentleman this Kalutak. He receives and thanks me for my presents. the first "Kuyanake" "thank ye" that I have yet heard from Smith Strait Esquimaux - "he will be happy to join his friend the big headsman ([naklisak?]) in a hunt. He does not believe that three [there?] are [ominmak?] (musk ox) but he [?] in the north dessert but he knows that we may expect bears."

Thus it is at last [is] a prospect of the leading wish of my heart being gratified. I see clearly that I can purchase an exten- sion of their journey and trusting in Provi- dence, a few hours will see me ready.

A fortnight ago I was on the floes and twice within this week I've been sledging it again - more than 300 miles of hard wearing travel only to bring about this result Now that I see things open ahead of me my sick recovering - the coming duties chalked out and under weigh - I cannot help

[recto] feeling that something is watching me and modifyiing my path for fixed ends. That I frail Elish Kane the bedridden of last year should [now] be the only well and able man of this expedition is puzzling enough. It may be that I am reser- ved to take my dear friend Henry Grinnell by the hand and say your confidence has not been misplaced - I have not failed you or myself. It may be "as in strange lands the traveller walking slow, in doubt and great perplexity, a little before moonrise heard the low wail of an unknown sea."; that I taxed beyond corporeal endurance give way on the brink of consummating my hopes crying "I have discovered a new land but I die!."

Wednes. Apr. 25.

Kalutanak called himself my [asakaotut?]* or "friend" and seems greatly pleased by the distinction which I draw between him and the other Esquimaux. He sits with the accordion - of which none ever accord - braying horrible discord but is always devout in his respect and intelligent and interested in his questions. Oh my expressing a fear as to the effect of raw meat upon me - to the exclusion of other diet - he said that he had noticed that frozen beef agreed with his bowels and helped to warm him when he changed from summer to winter food. This man quotes "his experience "I have found." Constantly. All the others seem to rely implicitly upon his opinions yet poor Kalutak has not become oracular. I like the man, he has man stuff in him.

A couple of snow birds were seen by Mr. Bonsall on 23^d inst. - a week earlier than last year. * "I like you well"