A Diary and Journal from the Second Grinnell Expedition

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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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add to these a tin soup pot, an Esquimaux lamp a lump of moss, a cup and a tinder box, for the kitchen, a roll of frozen meat biscuit. Some frozen ladys fingers, of [trussed?] fox, raw, a small bag of coffee, and twenty four peices of hard tack – ship's bread – for the Larder, our fire arms and no less essential ice poles. This nor more nor less, and you have [literally] every single item of our outfit, the means wherewith to venture into a frozen atmosphere of 92° below the freezing point and to seek an uncer= =tain [?] say 94 miles within its icy recesses.

In general eight powerful wolf like dogs will draw such a cargo like the wind. I have but four wretched animals who can hardly drag themselves.

The clothing or personal outfit demands the nicest study of experience [care and] experience. Except a spare pair of boots it is all upon the back. Only by long custom can a man make his outer garmets resist Smith Sound temperatures and even then he must have a windless atmosphere without and a heat creating body within.

Once clad he is a lump of deformity, exciting pity as he waddles over the ice unpicturesque uncouth and seemingly helpless. It is only when you see him coated with rime, his face peering from an icy halo his beard glued with frozen respiration, that you feel that his artificial skin [saves him from death and ruin] is his fortress against King Death.