Nimrod in the North, or hunting and fishing adventures in the Arctic regions

Front matter

NIMROD IN THE NORTH. FREDERICK SCHWATKA NIMROD IN THE NORTH OR HUNTING AND FISHING ADVENTURES IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS. BY FREDERICK SCHWATKA. Laureate of the Paris Geographical Society, and of the Imperial Geog'l Society of RuBSia, Honorary Member Bremen Geog'l Society, etc., etc. Commander of the Longest Sledge Journey in the World (3261 miles), 1878-79-80, and Commander of the Longest Raft Journey in the World (1305 miles), 1883. NEW YORK CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited. 1885. Copyright, 1885, ByO. M. DUNHAM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. W. L. Mershon & Co., Printers and Electrotypers. Rahwav, N. J. CONTENTS. Chapter Page I. The Polar Bear, ...... 9 II. Shooting Among the Seals and Sea Horses, . 34 III. The Rifle and the Reindeer, . . . 59 IV. The Musk-Ox, ...... 87 V. NlMROD WITH A SHOT-GrUN, .... 112 VI.

NlMROD WITH A FlSH-ROD, . . . . 130 VII. Dogs and Dog-Sledging, ..... 142 VIII. Hunting and Fishing in Far-off Alaska, . . 161 IX. Hunting and Fishing in Far-off Alaska {Continued). Ill

Introduction

. o In writing of Nimrod in the North, the author has confined himself almost exclusively to such scenes and adventures as came within his personal knowledge a few years since, in the region north of Hudson' s Bay, and, more recently, in the interior of Alaska. He has sought at the same time, however, to describe in a general way the life of the sportsman in the Polar wastes, — his trials and his triumphs, his cares and his comforts, his camps and his sledges, his singular native allies and their ingenious weapons of the chase, and (above all) the animals he may pursue — or that may pursue him, — and in doing so has added a very few interesting hunting anecdotes from the Arctic works of others.

Chapter I. The Polar Bear Our

first introduction to this boreal Bruin, "the tiger of the ice," as an Arctic writer has aptly termed him, occurred in the latter part of July, 1878, when we encountered the Eskimo of the Savage Islands, oh the northern coast of Hudson's Strait, who had, among other kinds of Arctic merchandise, a number of polar bear skins to sell. These simple natives are certainly easily satisfied, or, more properly speaking, easily cheated ; for half-a-tumblerful of shot secured four saddles of reindeer meat, while a fine polar bear robe was obtained for half -plug (one-twelfth of a pound of Navy six) of tobacco and a few charges of powder. Twenty-five caps were given for one fifth as many white fox skins, and many other things were paid for in the same proportion. I bought three dogs — all they had brought in their oomien, or seal-skin scow — for my party, and when I gave them something approximately near their true value (for I was not a little disgusted with the Shylock manner in which they had been treated), their astonishment knew no bounds, and one old fellow, with a huge smile breaking through an inch of dirt, so insisted on rubbing noses with me, that, although the cere mony was a pledge of eternal friendship, I almost repented of the act of justice which he mistook for generosity.

Polar bears are quite numerous along the shores of Hudson's Strait, and as they are extremely aquatic in their habits, being often found on cakes of ice or on icebergs many miles from land, it occasionally happens that American whalers en route through these straits to their whaling grounds in North Hudson's Bay, or the Hudson Bay Company's ships, in their annual visits to their trading posts, encounter Bruin here and have many interesting bouts with him. If he is found on isolated cakes or small fioes of ice, his capture is almost certain when pursued in the well-manned small boats of the whalers, who have no trouble in overtaking him in a fair race in the water and then shooting him. But if the ice-cakes are numerous enough to force the rowers to take sinuous courses and make wide deviations, or are packed so tightly together as to obstruct the boats, Bruin generally manages to save his blanket.

If the ice-pack is very dense, the only method is the one used by the Eskimo, of bringing him to bay by pursuing dogs, the same as if on land or on the shore ice. So great, indeed, is the polar bears' love for the salt water, that it is a very unusual thing to find them far from the sea-shore, and the only time I have ever known them to leave it any distance was when the salmon ran up the small streams opened by the perpetually shining sun of the short Arctic summer ; for in the ripples and rapids of these cold creeks Bruin finds a most generous commissary department while it lasts, and at all such places he is liable to be found. After the winter has set in and the ice has formed to a considerable depth along the coasts, the native sledging parties that are then follow ing the shore ice from one village to another are the ones most likely to come in contact with this particular game.

In fact, by far the greater number of robes are thus secured by them. When in the summer this solid sheet of ice is broken up and driven out to sea by the winds and currents and tides, the polar bear often follows his icy home to its new abode, and it is here and under these circumstances that he is most generally encountered, killed and studied by civilized man, and his habits and peculiarities noted. His love for the sea, in which he is so characteristically distinct from all others of his tribe, has determined his scientific name, Ursus Maritimus, although the assertions of some POLAR BEAR ON ICEBERG BREAKING UP AT SEA. that his habits are purely aquatic must be taken with a few grains of allowance. In the summer, as I have said, he occasionally goes inland in quest of salmon, and in winter, when there is but little difference between the land and the frozen ocean, both being covered with their common mantle of drifting snows, his inland excursions are not at all rare.

The absence of encounters between polar bears and men in such places is due more to the rarity of visits by the latter than the former. It is undoubtedly the ease with which they obtain seals or the car casses of '; flensed" whales, or those which have had their blubber stripped from them by whalers, walrus and other sea-abiding animals, that attracts them so persistently to these abodes. The inland country would not furnish them enough to support their huge carcasses for even a few days, unless perchance they should fall in with the meat caches of the inland reindeer hunters, which, by the way, the Eskimo say they have been known to destroy a distance of two or three days' sledge-traveling from the main coast (probably thirty or forty miles), although it may be nearer some of the deep finger-like fiords characteristic of the Arctic coasts of some districts.

As showing their maritime character and the great distance to which they will journey on fields and cakes of ice, let one pick up an atlas showing the geographical relations between Iceland and Greenland, the distance between which is about equal to that between New York City and Washington ; yet these polar pirates often stray in this manner from the eastern coast of Greenland to Iceland in such numbers as to seriously frighten the inhabitants, being famished and desperate with hunger after their long ride and fast en route, and attacking every thing living they see, man not excepted. The natives, however, have an ingenious way of escaping their fury, if they can only spare some article of wearing apparel to amuse them or arouse their curiosity. A glove, they say. is sufficient for this purpose, for a bear will not stir further till he has turned every finger of it inside out, and as these animals are not very dexterous with their clumsy paws, this takes up enough time to allow the man to escape.

The winter camp of our little party for 1878-'79 was pitched near Depot Island, in the northernmost part of Hudson's Bay, amid a large camp of mixed Iwillik, Igloolik and Netschilluk Eskimo. I employed four families of them, thirteen souls in all, to accompany me on my proposed spring sledge journey to the Arctic Sea. Around this winter camp the natives reported that bear were reasonably common, and quite a number of them had promised that we, the white men, should be indulged in some of this exciting sport before the winter should wear away, if we would accompany them on their sledge journeys along the coast. That winter, however, yielded us no sport in this line, although one of the native members of the party, Ik-quee-sik, a big, robust Netschilluk, fully six feet in height, killed one bear on or near Depot Island, while encamped there for walrus hunting to secure oil for my party's sledge journey, and this was the only bear, I believe, whose tracks were seen near our camp that winter, although such a scarcity was unusual.

Bruin had evidently been attracted by the scent from the numerous walrus cairns, or little rock caches where meat is stored, that dotted Depot Island, and he came lumbering along, suspecting no danger, early one February morning. Now "early in the morning" depends upon the season, and in the Arctic February or thereabouts it means nearly eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and consequently our polar ursine friend found every body astir in order to take full advan tage of the very short day. Ikqueesik's family were alone on the island, many of his associates of the village being absent at the whale ships wintering at Marble Island, some eighty or ninety miles to the southward. The consequence was that the bear got fairly into the village before he wTas discovered even by Ikqueesik' s four or five runty, little, half-grown black dogs that looked more like wolverine kittens than the true Eskimo class of canines.

They were, however, equal to the emergency, and Eskimo-like, Ikqueesik had to first come out of his snow hut unarmed to see the cause of the disturbance, when Bruin got a good long start of him, despite the persistent nippings of the pursuing puppies that delayed him considerably. It was a running chase for a good long distance, but the dogs, encouraged by Ikqueesik's approaching presence, worked like heroes to delay the bear, and finally succeeded to an extent that gave their master a long shot at the game with his smooth-bore musket that luckily planted itself in the foreshoulder and brought Bruin effectively to bay. Loading leisurely at this distance he approached much nearer, and as a result he had one close shave from a daring charge of the ferocious beast over the hummocky ice ; but our Netschilluk Nimrod soon dispatched him and brought his robe trium phantly into camp.

He was an immense fellow, weighing undoubtedly over a thousand pounds, and would have been a bad customer at close quarters had not his shoulder been rendered worthless at the first fire. The size of the polar bear varies considerably even with those that may be considered full-grown specimens, and some naturalists class them as the largest of the genus TJrsus, yet his famous western brother, the grizzly, (Ursus Horribilis), will certainly dispute the point closely with him. This one killed by Ikqueesik was pronounced by the Eskimo to be " an-a-yo-ad'-lo," or very large, and had he been weighed I would not have been surprised to see him show 1200 pounds ; I certainly would have been surprised had he stopped short of 1000. Captain Lyon, a British Arctic explorer, mentions a polar bear which weighed 1500 pounds and measured eight feet and seven inches "from tip to tip."

It is said that Barentz, in his expedition of 1596, killed two polar bears whose skins measured no less than twelve and thirteen feet in length, and which must have represented enormous animals, rivaling even the largest grizzly. They were secured on an island near Spitz bergen. Franz-Josef Land is pre-eminently the paradise of polar bears, the Austrian expedition of 1872-4 which discovered the island encount ering and killing them by scores, yet the largest one they mentioned "was eight feet long, and therefore of unusual size." In Parry's Arctic voyage of 1819, his party succeeded in killing a bear which, although measuring eight feet and two inches in length, only weighed 900 pounds. ' ' It will be seen, ' ' says a chronicler of that expedition, ' ' that his weight is not at all in proportion to his dimensions, for he was a very large animal, as far as length and height went, but although six inches longer than the bear we killed in this country last summer, he was upward of two hundred pounds lighter."

During the fall of 1878 my hired native hunters, as well as many from the village that had clustered around, for which our tents served as a nucleus, started inland on their annual reindeer hunts to procure the hides of that animal, which are used almost exclusively for their winter clothing and bedding. Joe (Ebierbing) attached himself to a young Iwillik Eskimo, Too-loo'-ah by name, who will appear many times in these accounts as my most valuable and intelligent hunter. Toolooah and Joe, as the autumn snows commenced falling, had pitched their sealskin tent on a precipitous hill overlooking a small fresh-water lake, where the reindeer, on their autumnal southward migrations, could be seen for many miles. When the weather became too cold to allow the tent to be warmed by their rude stone lamps, an igloo or snow-house was built and the hunt continued.

One cold, gloomy, storm-boding day, when both our heroes were snugly ensconced in bed (which with the natives means stripped stark naked, lying between their dressed reindeer blankets), a terrible racket was heard near the lake, sufficient to excite their curiosity. Joe jumped up and, partially and hurriedly dressed, emerged into the open air. Toolooah, less excited, stretched out, back up, with his chin in both hands, eagerly awaiting developments. It turned out to be a big, shaggy polar bear, breaking the ice of the lake where it had an outlet into a small creek and trying to catch the fish that some instinct told him would be found there. As soon as Joe comprehended the situation, he seized a loaded musket, the only arm on the outside of the hut, and, taking deliberate aim at Bruin, who was about a hundred and fifty yards away, he let him have an ineffectual shot in the leg.

This so astonished his bearship, who had perceived no danger, that he only looked at Joe in amaze ment, howling furiously at his slight wound. ' ' Nannook ! Nannook ! ' ' (a bear ! a bear !) yelled Joe, just after he fired, and then dodged into the low entrance of the snow-house in order to get his Winchester carbine, his head meeting, with a good round thump, that of Toolooah, who, stark naked, was emerging, Winchester in hand. By the time that Toolooah had straightened up in front of the entrance, and recov ered from his dizzy collision, the bear had commenced to appreciate that he was in an unhealthy neighborhood, with a high rate of mortal ity that could only be counteracted by a high rate of speed, and he had just swung his carcass around for a retreat when he got Toolooah' s first fire in his hams.

Then he started on the run, Toolooah giving him a second as he disappeared over a crest about forty or fifty yards further on. He was not yet permanently disabled, although carrying three wounds more or less severe ; and there was no time for our hunters to delay if the prey was to be secured. Despite his immodest appearance, and to the Eskimo mind the more deterring fact that the thermometer was below zero, Toolooah ran like a race-horse for about a hundred yards and got a long-range shot of about three hundred yards at the retreating polar, who was looking at him from his haunches on a second ridge. This shot gave him a fatal bullet in his neck. An Eskimo Nimrod, stark naked, standing half kneedeep in the snow, in the midst of an Arctic winter, gun in hand, over a fallen bear, would be a good picture to hang in one's room of hunting trophies, to contemplate in the summer time.

The robe of this bear and that secured by Ikqueesik had fallen to me, but during my year's absence on the sledge journey from Hudson's Bay to the Arctic Sea, the retiring whaler who had been hired to bring us into Hudson' s Bay from the United States appropriated them along with other trophies, for the polar bear robe has a market value in civilized marts. In quaint old Purchas' ' ' Pilgrimes " is a most interesting account of the ancient way ' ' ye white beare ' ' was hunted, and being short, I trans cribe it. It was during Barentz's second Arctic expedition, chronicled by Gerard de Veer, the historian of the voyage, who says: — "The. 6th of September some of our men went on shore, upon the firme land, (Nova Zembla) to seeke for stones, which are a kinde of diamond, whereof there are many also in the States' Island ; and while they were seeking the stones, two of our men lying together in one place, a great leane white beare came suddenly stealing out, and caught one of them fast by the necke ; who not knowing what it was that took him by the necke, cryed out and sayd, ' Who is it that pulls mee so by the necke ? ' Wherewith the other, that lay not f arre from him, lifted up his head to see what it was ; and, perceiving it to be a monstrous beare, cryed out and sayd, ' Oh, Mate ! it is a beare,' and therewith presently rose up, and ranne away.

The beare at the first falling upon the man, bit his head in sunder and sukt out his blood ; wherewith the rest of the men that were on the land, being about twentie in number, ranne presently thither, either to save the man, or else to drive the beare from the body; and having charged their pieces, and bent their pikes, set upon her that was still devouring the man, but, perceiving them to come towards her, fiercely and cruelly ranne at them, and got another of them out of the companie, which she tore in pieces, wherewith all the rest ranne away. We perceiving, out of our ship and pinnasse, that our men ranne to the BARENTZ'S PARTY AND THE BEARS. sea-side to save themselves, with all speed entred into our boates, and rowed as fast as wee could to the shoare to relieve our men. Where, being on land, wee beheld the cruel spectacle of our two dead men that had been so cruelly killed and torn in pieces by the beare.

We. seeing that, encouraged our men to goe backe again with us, and with pieces, curtelaxes, and half-pikes to set upon the beare, but they would not all agree thereunto ; some of them saying, our men are already dead, and we shall get the beare well enough though we oppose not ourselves into so open danger ; if wee might save our fellowes' lives then wee would make haste ; but now wee need not make such speed, but to take her at an advantage, with most securitie for ourselves, for we have to doe with a cruell, fierce, and ravenous beast. Whereupon three of our men went forward, the beare still devouring her prey, not once fear ing the number of our men, and yet they were thirtie at the least ; the three that went forward were Cornelius Jacobson, Wilhelm Geysen and Hans Von Nuflen, Wilhelm Barentz's purser ; and, after that the sayd master and pylot had shot three times, and mist, the purser, stepping somewhat further forward, and seeing the beare to be within the length of a shot, presently levelled his piece, and discharging it at the beare, shot her into the head, betweene the eyes, and yet shee held the man still fast by the necke, and lifted up her head with the man in her mouth ; but she began somewhat to stagger, wherewith the purser and a Scottish man drew out their curtelaxes and strooke at her so hard that their curtelaxes burst, and yet shee would not leave the man ; at last Wilhelm Geysen went to them, and with all his might strooke the beare upon the snout with his piece, at which time the beare fell to the ground, making a great noyse, and Wilhelm Geysen, leaping upon her, cut her throat."

Just how brave, ferocious, or dangerous the polar bear may be, it is extremely hard to say, owing to the variety of disposition and dissimilar traits it has exhibited in this respect, under the scrutiny of equally credible observers. One authority says : — " It is the largest, strongest, most powerful and, with a single exception, the most ferocious of bears," the exception evidently meaning the grizzly. Yet the many mutilated persons I have seen in the great west who have been intimate with the "cinnamon" bear of that region, and describe him as equal in ferocity with, and superior in activity to, the grizzly, would certainly not be willing to surrender his claims to those of the polar bear. Again, the testimony of those wTho have shot a helpless animal swimming in the sea from the deck of an exploring steamer, is of no more value than that of a menagerie keeper who has poisoned a caged Bengal tiger.

I am inclined to place the polar bear below both the cinnamon and grizzly in bravery, although the superior of either in activity. His long, lithe. snake-like form, compared with the bungling carcasses of the others, would show this without further argument or practical demonstration, yet it has received the latter without doubt. Those who speak of the ferocity produced by a carnivorous diet may think the polar should ex cel his omnivorous brethren of the south, as he is wholly of this type ; yet, singularly enough, his system of dentition is exactly the same as that of the other bears. Still, as has been said, the polar bear has exhibited all degrees of bravery, from that of the most ferocious disre gard of life to the most abject cowardice. The old Norsemen, than whom no braver men ever lived, came in contact with these glacial grizzlies when their most venturous explorers discovered Greenland, and Eric the Red, their bold leader, is said to have quarreled furiously with one of his best friends from sheer envy because the latter had killed a polar bear, and thus distinguished himself among those who valued bravery as highly as it has ever been held since, when his chief should have been given this honored opportunity.

They certainly re garded him as a plucky adversary. "Killing a bear," says Chevalier Rink, once Danish inspector of Greenland, "has, in ancient as well as in modern times, been considered one of the most distinguishing feats of sportsmanship in Greenland." If the Eskimo of Greenland are the peers of their polar brethren on the main continent, they would certainly pick no mean opponent to be thus distinguished. All Arctic authorities seem to unite in the assertion that the mother is unsparing in her exhibition of bravery to protect her young, and hardly a boreal book exists that does not recount one or more of these instances of maternal affection ; and yet I am compelled to narrate an incident that came under my own personal observation, that will shatter somewhat even this unanimity of opinion.

My party of four white men and Toolooah' s family were on their southward search along the western coast of King William's Land, in August, 1879, and had encamped inland about five or six miles from Erebus Bay, while crossing over the peninsula between it and Terror Bay, fifteen miles wide. While thus moving our effects, I had occasion to send Toolooah back to the former bay to get a large drift log that I had seen there and had split up to be used for firewood. He took a number of the dogs, harnessed, and only a snow-knife, a two-edged one, about sixteen inches long in all, and which had had the wooden handle knocked off of the tang in order to crease one end of the logs so that the drag-rope would not pull off. Nearing the shore of the bay, he discovered a she-bear and a goodly sized cub trotting along the edge of the water, which the dogs, when slipped, soon brought to bay.

Nothing daunted, Toolooah separated the dam from the cub by pelting the former vigorously with stones, and while she was employed growling at the snapping dogs a short distance off, he dispatched the cub with his decrepit knife ; then, after running the mother out to sea on the ice-floe, he brought the carcass of the cub triumphantly into camp, tied on the spreading pieces of the split log. I told Toolooah a story of Captain Hall's, which he relates in his book, of having killed a polar cub while his native allies were in a fruitless chase after the separated dam, and their consequent fright and dismay when they saw it. They so feared the vengeance of the returning mother, that they made almost incredible exertions to avoid it, such as doubling upon their retreating track repeatedly and traveling nearly all night.

I inquired of Toolooah if he was not afraid of the mother following his plainly marked trail to the tent and wreaking due ven geance. But he smiled as he answered that he hoped she would, as he felt very angry at himself for being caught in such a predicament with out his gun, and if she would only come along again he would make due amends. He said he had known several instances wherein the cub of the polar bear had been killed, and where the mother had not been injured, but had never known any evil to result from the anger of the latter, unless it occurred right on the field of battle, where she often displays great energy in the defense of her young, though she certainly showed a lamentable absence of that trait in this particular instance. It would seem from this that either Captain Hall' s allies were needlessly frightened, or that the disposition of the polar bear varies much with the locality.

Joe, who was with Hall in all his Arctic travels and remembered this incident, says that both views are partially correct, and in fact, that the polar bear is very uncertain in his combativeness. Probably had a less active hunter than Toolooah, who was agility personified, undertaken the assault, the result would have been differ ent ; but his rapidity evidently confused the animal, so that the whole tragedy was over before she really comprehended the situation. As illustrating in an interesting adventure the extreme savageness of the polar bear, I take from good authority the following anecdote : — "Not many years ago, the crew of a boat belonging to a ship in the whale-fishery shot at a bear at a little distance, and wounded it. The animal set up a dreadful howl, and ran along the ice toward the boat.

Before he reached it a second shot was fired, which hit him. This served but to increase his fury. He presently swam to the boat, and, in attempting to get on board, placed one of his fore feet upon the gunwale ; but a sailor having a hatchet in his hand cut it off. The animal, however, still continued to swim after them till they arrived at the ship ; and several shots were fired at him, which took effect ; but on reaching the ship he immediately ascended the deck ; and the crew having fled into the shrouds, he was pursuing them thither when a shot laid him dead on the deck." Mr. Hearne, an Arctic explorer, says that the males of this species are, at a certain time of the year, so much attached to their mates, that he has often seen one of them, when a female was killed, come and put his paws over her, and in this position suffer himself to be shot rather than quit her corpse.

About the middle of October, 1879, while Toolooah was in Terror Bay, he killed three polar bears in about half as many minutes. He had descried them from a distance, as he was driving his dogs and sledge over the eastern ridge of the bay, and managed to so direct his course among the hummocks of ice (the ice-hummocks are the immense cakes of ice as large as one and two-story buildings, that have not melted during the summer, and are frozen every winter in a thick mass) as to get within a couple of hundred yards of them before they noticed his presence, when he slipped the dogs from the sled, and although the open water along the shore ice, to which they always take when pursued, was but one or two hundred paces distant, they were so slow in getting under way, that one was brought to bay by the dogs before it could reach the water, which Toolooah dispatched with a single shot of his Winchester through its head, and so quickly that when he gained the edge of the ice-floe the other two were not over forty or fifty yards away, swimming for dear life, although they did not manage to save themselves, as two well directed shots laid them out.