A Diary and Journal from the Second Grinnell Expedition

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The icicles hang from the eaves of the Ice foot giving it a very picturesque base of pure white colums and as they continue under the roof of the ice, they lose themselves in the distance, like, the gradually shaded pillars of a portico. This effect throughout a continued face of two miles is very impressive.

Morton is doubtless making a hard trial to track out the Esquimaux. These visits, even when unsuccessful as to fresh meat, are of value to us, as they keep the natives in wholesome respect for us. They are evidently much impressed by our physical prowess, and we are so aware of this that, we carefully conceal from them either cold or fatigue when travelling together. I could not help being amused, although it was no laughing matter, at Myosu, an Esquimaux four times the man that I was, hooking on to my arm for support. This was on one of my dog [trot?] journeys to Anatok, and I had been walking for 30 miles ahead of the sledge. As it would not do to confess my frailities - I had to bear the wretch, tired as I was, nearly to the land ice.

Wednes. Oct. 19

Our black dog Erebus returned to the brig, he had probably been released by Morton or broke loose.

The sun at meridian no longer reaches our brig his beams give a warm yellow to the N.E. heartlands on their southern faces far into the fiord. This and Sylvia Head are our only remnants of the dying day. Far out upon the floes we have the pinnacles

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Sunday. Oct 22.

Morton reports the huts as about sixty five miles of march from the brig. Their route was by the old track to Anatok and thence by mingled ice foot and young floe, as far as Cape Hatherton Refuge Inlet (Fog Inlet) presented a remarka -ble sight. A broken mass of this fall and last spring ice, extended from its inner sides out to seaward to the open water, a most imposing spectacle for it seemed as if some force had tilted the tables in a same angle of inclination each table being a rhomboid not greater than ten yards in its longest diameter. This area was impenetrable, a series of entries, re entering in distant perspective each lined by ice spires from 8 to 20 feet high, hid horizon from the tenants of the sledge and so confunded the dogs that it was impossible to retain the points of the compass. This ice was doubled, Morton went out to seaward until he reached the Polynia and then committing himself to the flat recently frozen ice, made the passage in safety.

From Cape Hatherton they went to the cache as ordered but to my sorrow found evidences of bad faith on the part of the party abandoning the Expedition. These misguided men had not respected my injunctions as to the property at the boat. In the teeth of a written order, they carried off our scanty stock of needles matches, thread &c. All our sugar nearly all our rice and worse that all this the sole remaining remnant of Liquor Some ten gallons which

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and protected from the No. and N.E. by a rockly island and the hilly slope of the main land.

There were four huts, two of which were in wind, adding to our many evidences of the diminishing numbers of the Smith Sound race. Only five winters ago as many families occupied these dwelllings, now but two remain. Four deaths took place last spring. Of these two families, for I apply the word not to groups of kindred but tenants of the the hut, Myosu his Father Mother a brother and Sister, compose one while Awahtok & Otuniah each with wives, and among them three young ones occupy the second.

They received them kindly, giving them water to drink, rubbing the feet, drying the shoes &c &c. The women who did this with something of a good wife air of prerogative, seemed to soften down the brutality which persuaded the Bachelor settlement at Anatok. The lamps were cheerful, smokeless, and well tended the huts not nearly so filthy as the Anatok Caves. Each fire represented its family, and in each of the huts two fires I mean of course lamps. Here kept constantly burning. A frame of bone hooks and walrus line was stretched over each lamp for drying the wet clothes of the household. Except a few dog skins which are placed by the walrus under the small of the back the dais was as destitute of sleeping accommodations as the ruined hut of Anatok. A single walrus hide was laid upon the [bare?] stones for Morton and Hans.

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Sunday Dec. 31

Dog will eat dog in the arctic regions. I left on Friday.

[Returned to the brig at 5 1/2 P.M. wonderfully fresh after a mingled walk and drive of 80 miles.]

The dogs began to show signs of our accursed tetanoid spasm at Ten Mile Ravine. Before we reached the Basalt Camp six out of eight were nearly useless. The Therm indicated -44° and a wind (No 4.) blew out of the gorge from the glacier. Petersen wished to return but was persuaded to walk on with me to the huts at Anaotoc, in the hope that a halt would restore the animals. This we did after a march of 30 miles. The sinuosities of this Bay gave fearful travel the broken ice clung to the rocks and we could only advance by ascending and descending to the ice foot and the floe as the case required. After eleven hours we made the Esquimaux hut having made by sledge & foot travel 45 miles. [new paragraph] We found Esquimaux [?] any trace of the Esquimaux having [lost?] [unclear]. We filled in the broken [front?] with snow., housed the dogs and unable to sleep on account of the cold crawled in among them. Next morning we broke down our door and tried the dogs again. They could hardly stand.

A gale now came in from the S. W. obscuring the moon. We were forced into the hut again, and after corking up all openings with snow made a fire with our Esquimaux Lamp and raised the temperature to 30° below zero. Cooked coffee and fed dogs on the dead meat after which both Petersen and self our clothing having frozen stiff, fell asleep through sheer exhaustion. The wind outside blowing

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2. From Ten mile Ravine to Basalt Camp 6. m

3. From B. Camp to Helen River 10. (bottom of Bedevilled Reach)

4. Helen River to Devil's Jaws 9 (off Godsend Id inshore side)

5. Godsend Id to Anaotok. 4

Total travel 39

Anaotok to First Hummock Pass]3

Hummack Pass to Old ice South 7. Old ice & young to Second Pass 22 Across Second H. Pass to S. end of Littleton Id 8 S. End of Littleton to Point Salvation 2 Point Salvation to Esquimaux Huts 12 54

Total in miles 83 Temp = about -45° Range of same -40 to -60°

Resources. Five nearly starved dogs. Hans and Dr Kane. a light sledge and outfit.

Outfit

To encounter broken ice in the midst of darkness and at a temperature destructive to life, every thing depends upon your sledge. Should it break down, you might as well break your own leg, there is no hope for you. Our sledge is made of well tried oak, dove tailed into a runner shod with iron. No iron except [save] the screws and [riots?] which confine the sledge to its runners is used besides [throughout the structure]. In [such] this intense cold, iron snaps like glass and no immoveable or rigidly fastened woodwork would stand for a moment the fierce concussions of an arctic drive. Every thing is put together with lashings of seal skin, [tied securely in its place] and the whole fabric - seemingly a