A Diary and Journal from the Second Grinnell Expedition

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ridden man, but convalescent, I hope, here raises himself on his elbow, and checks Brooks for being "down in the mouth." and Brooks after a growling rejoinder improves his merry remniscences by turning to me.

"Capn Kane five nights to come one year you came in upon four of us down as flat as flounders. I didn't look at your boots but I knew you wore Esquimaux ones. It was a hard walk for you the greatest thing I ever hearn tell of but:- here he begins to soliloquise - Baker's dead and Pierres dead, and Wilson and I. "[Damn it] Shut up Brooks shut up" - here I broke in whispering across the boards which separated our matrresses "You will make the patients uncomfortable." But no: the old times were strong upon him, he did not speak loud but he caught me by both hands and said in his low base quiet tones, "Doctor you cried when you saw us, and didn't pull up till we jabbed the stopper down the whiskey tin and gave you a tot of it."

The general tone of the conversation around me is like this specimen (above). I am glad to hear my shipmates talking together again for we have of late been silent. The last years battle commenced at this time one year ago and it is natural that the men should recal it. Had I succeeded in pushing my party across the Bay my success would have been uequalled (as to daring and efficiency) it was the true plan, the best conceived and in fact the only one [alternative] by which

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The rest of the crew continue down. [Among them Goodfellow and Wilson are the most ill perhaps because the least amenable to treatment, the former of these poor Goodfellow is nothing more nor less than an absolute nuissance.]

The game season is nearer at hand and once able to shoot seal upon the ice, I have little fears for the recovery of a larger portion of our party. Perhaps I am too sanguine for it is now clear that we three, who have so long sustained the rest, are sinking. We cannot hold on long Bonsall can barely walk in the morning and his legs become stiffer daily. Petersen gives way at the ankles, and I suffer much from the eruption, a tormenting and anomalous symptom which affects eight of our sick. It has many of the characteristics of Exanthemata but in singular persistent varied in its phases and may prove dangerous. All the work inboard and outside is performed by Bonsall and myself. The moral value of this toilsome month is that it has taught me sympathy with the labouring man. The fatigue and disgust and secret trials of the overworked brain are God knows bad enough, but not to me more severe than those which follow the sick and jaded body to a sleepless bed. [Disease will always exist in communities, as well with the body laboured as the mind laboured. I can now understand the feelings of a man gaining his bread by the sweat of his brow, and seeing ahead the day when] I have realized what is meant by the sweat of the brow, and can feel how painful must [be?] do earnings to him to whom the grass hopper has [shall] become a [brethren?].

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April

Sunday Apr. 1

[Today] all tools day, but [we made no sport of it] it brings no merriment. The work falls heavily on us, and Petersen brought in no game. We fasted on our regular beans.

The eruption gives me excessive pain, sleepless nights and uncomfortable days. Sonntag Wilson & Brooks share the pest with me I am at a loss to what to attribute it. Several of us suffer in the seats of old injuries, both my broken hand and wounded groin bladder seem as if [re]broken & [re]wounded over again. These ghosts of old adventures bring back equally ghostly memories. I can easily shut my eyes and see the sala of the Casa [Gaona?] at Puebla:- Guadalupe smoking her cigarritta by my bedside, and the dear old general looming up as high as the bedposts, all by the dim flickering of the little waxen taper, which burns under the little cross, in the little alcove, where the Senora Madam Gaona says her prayers. "Con que a dios Señor Doctór." Dong-dong-dong" "dong, dong". Santo Domingo has started his infernal bells, no sleep to night, "Clang, clang, clang".

Monday Apr. 2d

The morning at 11. a.m. Mr. Bonsall reported a man upon the ice-foot about a mile from the brig. We supposed him to be Hans, and advanced to meet him. WHen nearer we discovered our absent sledge and team, but the man who accompanied them turned and ran towards the South.

Upon this I made Mr. Bonsall who was armed with the Sharp Rifle remain behind and avanced alone, upon which the man awaited my approach. As I neared him I recognized the deserter William Godfrey.

On conferring with this man he

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cotton or eider down for coverlids to our boat bedding on the escape. [Should the ship fail to be released] others take the needle and sow canvas bags for the same journey Brooks balls off twine in order to lay up small stuff. Goodfellow sleeps and the rest lounge.

At times when the sun comes out very brightly Brooks or Wilson or both get permission to go on deck. One of us [generally myself] assists them; and by aid of creeping and crawling the poor cripples manage to sit upon the combings of the hatch and look around in the glorious daylight. The sight seldom fails to affect them:– There are emotions among rude, roughly nurtured men which vent themselves in true poetry: Brooks has about him sensibilities which shame me.

The afternoon [gave] to the cook in a season of rest, a real lazy lounging interval, [only] arrested by the call to supper. The coming night watch obliges me to to take an evening catnap. I state this by way of implying that I never sleep O'day times.

After supper we have a better condition state of things than two weeks ago. THen the few tired out workers were regaled by the groans & tossings of the sick. There was little conversation and the phisiognomy of our smoke blackened little den was truly dismal. Now daylight pours in from the scuttle, the tea kettle sings up on the stove, the convalescents raise up upon their elbows and spin merry yarns. We are not yet sufficiently jolly for cards, but we are sufficently thankful to do without them. At 9. silence

[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.