Part 20

In the recovered field-journal of Brönlund, under date of August 7, we read: "No more food! It is impossible to travel and we are more than nine hundred kilometres [five hundred and sixty miles] from the ship." On the 8th Erichsen started for the southern end of the fiord, thinking that in its ice-free valleys the chances of game would be increased. As it was necessary to travel on the ice-floes they started across the ice, changing from one floe to another when forced to do so. Unfortunately they were driven offshore and found themselves adrift. Day after day, kept seaward by wind and tide, they strove in vain to reach shore, but it was sixteen days before this was accomplished. When they landed on August 24, Brönlund writes: "We still have fourteen dogs, but no food. We have killed one of these animals and eaten half of him; the other half will serve as our food to-morrow. The half of a dog for three men and thirteen dogs is not too much to digest, and after eating it we are as hungry as before."

When land was reached Erichsen and Hagen applied themselves to hunting. Hare after hare and ptarmigan after ptarmigan were pursued and killed. But alas! the valleys were searched in vain for musk-oxen or reindeer, and it was feared that the big game of the region was exterminated.

Throughout these awful days of suspense and of hunger neither Mylius-Erichsen nor Hagen failed to maintain their courage and cheerfulness. In the intervals of needed rest between the long, exhausting hunting tramps, they kept on the even tenor of their way. Erichsen wrote a little poem to distract the attention of his companions from their present surroundings. Faithful to the last to his favorite vocation, Hagen made with care and pride beautiful sketches of the country traversed and of the lands newly discovered. Thus passed away the brief polar summer, but further details are lacking since Brönlund's journal has no entries from August 31 to October 19.

Meanwhile, Koch had made safely his homeward journey, and, although the anxiety of the officers at the ship was somewhat lessened by the news that game had been found in the far north, yet they were nevertheless uneasy as to the dangers of Erichsen's home travel. Koch, it seems, had found an open and impassable sea at Mount Mallemuk, so that he was driven to the inland ice. He there found himself obliged to cross a very narrow glacier, where its seaward slant was so nearly perpendicular that a single slip would have precipitated men and dogs into the open sea, hundreds of feet below.

Later it was decided to send a search party north, under mate Thostrup. Nor was this autumnal march without danger, even apart from the perils of travel along the coast, where the men nearly perished by breaking through the new ice. At Jokel Bay Thostrup was driven to the inland ice, the only possible route. At all times difficult, this travel was now made especially dangerous by the fact that the old glacial surface was not yet covered by the hard-packed winter drifts. Thostrup's whole sledge party on several occasions barely escaped falling into the fearful crevasses, seen with difficulty in the semi-darkness of the sunless days. As it was, several of the dogs were lost when, a snow bridge crumbling, the animals fell into a crevasse. Their seal-skin traces breaking, the dogs dropped to the bottom of the ice-chasms, which were sometimes two hundred feet or more deep. With kindly hearts the Eskimo drivers tried to shoot the poor animals, and put them out of their misery, but did not always succeed. As Erichsen had not reached the coast the journey was without result. Thostrup found untouched the caches of Lambert Land and Mount Mallemuk, and turned southward on October 18, unconscious that a hundred miles to the westward his missing shipmates, facing frost and famine, were valiantly struggling against fate and death.

The condition of the arctic Crusoes of Denmark Fiord, though there were doubtless days of cheer and hope, grew gradually worse, and by the middle of October had become terrible, if not hopeless. Although the autumnal ice was now forming, Mylius-Erichsen knew that in their state of physical weakness the long journey of five hundred miles to the ship, around Cape Northeast, could never be made. Hagen agreed with him that the single chance of life, feeble though it was, lay in crossing the ice-capped mountain range, direct to the depot on Lambert Land. Of course, the height of the ice-cap, the character of its surface, and the irregularities of the road were all unknown quantities.

The state of their field outfit for the crossing of the inland ice betrayed their desperate condition. In general, their equipment had practically disappeared under stress of travel and of hunting. To the very last they had carried their scientific outfit and instruments. It was a sad day when they recognized that the only way of repairing the great rents in their skin boots was through the use of the sole-leather case of the theodolite. Even that had quite gone, and without needle, thread, or leather, they could only fold wraps around their boots, now in shreds, and tie them on with such seal-skin thongs as had not been eaten. The tent was badly torn, and, with the sleeping-gear--on which had been made sad inroads for dog-food and patches for clothing--afforded wretched shelter against storm and cold. For transportation there were four gaunt dogs--the last that ravenous hunger had spared--to haul the remnants of a disabled sledge. The winter cold had set in, with almost unendurable bitterness to the enfeebled, shivering men. The weak arctic sun, now skirting the southern sky at mid-day, was leaving them for the winter, so that the dangers of crevasses and the difficulties of glacier-travel must be met either in total darkness, or, at the best, in feeble, uncertain twilight.

Discarding everything that could be spared, they reached the inland ice on October 19, the day the sun went for the winter, and barefooted they travelled across this glacial ice-cap one hundred and sixty miles in twenty-six days. Their shipmate, Lieutenant A. Trolle says: "When I think of the northerly wind and the darkness, when I consider that every morning they must have crawled out of their dilapidated sleeping-bags, though they could have had one desire, one craving--that of sleeping the eternal sleep--then my mind is full of sorrow that I shall never be able to tell them how much I admire them. They _would_ go on, they _would_ reach a place where their comrades could find them and the _results of their work_. Then at last came the end, the death of Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen a few miles from the depot, and the last walk of Brönlund, crawling along on frozen feet in the moonshine. With the sure instinct of the child of nature, he found the depot, ate some of the food, wrapped himself up in his fur, and died."

By Brönlund's body was found Hagen's chart of their discoveries, and his own field-journal in which the final entry runs: "I perished in 79° N. latitude, under the hardships of the return journey over the inland ice in November. I reached this place under a waning moon, and cannot go on because of my frozen feet and the darkness. The bodies of the others are in the middle of the fiord. Hagen died on November 15, Mylius-Erichsen some ten days later."

The courage and self-sacrifice of Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen for the advancement of the glory of their country were based on conditions readily understood. Officials of high ideals, long in public service, honored with important duties, they possessed those heroic qualities which throughout the ages have impelled chosen men to subordinate self to the common weal. Of such has been said:

"Gone? In a grander form they rise! Dead? We may clasp their hands in ours, And catch the light of their clearer eyes, And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers."

These young explorers instinctively knew that their deeds of daring would give them fitting and enduring fame. Their faith in their country was justified by the tribute that Denmark promptly erected.

But with Jörgen Brönlund, Greenlander, it was quite another tale. The virtues of self-sacrifice and of fidelity unto death are practically ignored in the traditional myths and tales of Greenland, which represent the literature, the religion, the history, and the poetry of the Eskimo people.[29]

Brönlund had long foreseen the outcome, as appears from his journal entry: "We are all dead!" From this early acceptance of his coming fate, and from the Eskimo racial trait of calm acquiescence in destiny, it would be natural that in the field the native would have first succumbed.

But, charged with a solemn, vital mission, evidently receiving the commands of his leader as the voice of God, this Inuit was faithful even over fear of death, and by his heroic efforts, freezing and starving, insured the fame of his comrades and so added to the glory of his distant fatherland (Greenland is a colony of Denmark), unknown to him.

Both through the dictates of his noble soul, and also inspired by his leader, he rose to sublime heights of heroic action. All must indeed die, but he would to the last moment of his life be true to his sledge-mates, Erichsen and Hagen. Without doubt their last words were a charge not to fail to place in the cache at Lambert Land the field-charts and his own journal, so that Denmark might know that her sons had fulfilled their allotted duty.

They mistook not their man, and the fame of Denmark's officers was insured by the heroic efforts and unfailing fidelity of their humble subordinate, the Inuit dog driver, Jörgen Brönlund--Greenlander.

Among the striking features of the beautiful city of Copenhagen are statuary by the famous Thorwaldsen and other great sculptors, which proclaim the fame and preserve the memory of kings and statesmen, of authors and admirals--men great in war and in peace, in civic worth and in learning. It is to the honor of the city that lately there has arisen a unique and striking memorial to commemorate worth and fidelity in fields far beyond the sunset, remote from commercialism and from civilization. Thus Denmark keeps fresh in the hearts and in the minds of her people the heroic struggle unto death of Mylius-Erichsen and of Hagen, and of the Danish Eskimo Brönlund. Such steadfast sense of duty and heroic powers of accomplishment are not the heritage of Denmark alone, but of the nobler men of the wide world.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] The discoveries of Lieutenant (now General) Greely around Lake Hazen, of Lockwood and Brainard in northwest Greenland and Hazen Land, prove that the route followed was via Greely Fiord, past Lake Hazen, across Kennedy Channel, over Hall Land, probably through the upper valley of Nordenskiöld Inlet, and along the shores of Peary Channel to Denmark Fiord.

[28] According to the lately published report of the gallant Danish explorer, Mikkelsen, the recovered records of Mylius-Erichsen show that the insularity of Greenland was not discovered by Peary at Navy Cliff. Peary Channel is only a fiord indenting northeastern Greenland, which extends northward as shown in the attached map of Amdrup Land.

[29] Among two hundred Eskimo tales and traditions given by Rink and Rasmussen there does not appear to be a single one wherein the qualities of self-sacrifice and absolute fidelity are the essential or main ideas.

THE WIFELY HEROISM OF MERTUK, THE DAUGHTER OF SHUNG-HU

"Deeper devotion Nowhere hath knelt; Fuller emotion Heart never felt." --GOETHE (_Dwight's translation_).

Rarely, if ever, has there been recorded in history a more varied and adventurous life than that of Mertuk, wife of Hans Hendrik, who came into literature through the magical pen of Elisha Kent Kane as the "pretty daughter" of Shung-hu, an Etah Eskimo. She was born (and reared) as a veritable Child of the Ice, being one of the members of the northernmost tribe of the world,--a people, in the last century, of absorbing interest as a surviving offshoot of the Stone Age.

Mertuk married Hans Hendrik, an Eskimo of Moravian faith from Danish West Greenland, who was practically a deserter from Kane. This northern idyl was the reverse of Ruth of the Bible, since for the sake of Mertuk, Hans abandoned his family and his country, willingly separating himself from the comforts and certainties of civilized life for the vicissitudes and inconveniences of an archaic environment. Despite a lovely wife, Hans soon discovered the wretched discomforts and unwelcome methods of life on the Etah coast, where hunger and physical sufferings were not infrequent attendants on even the most skilful and active hunter.

When the polar expedition of Dr. Isaac I. Hayes touched in 1860 at Cape York, Hans joined the doctor's forces taking his wife and child with him; next year they emigrated to Danish Greenland when Hayes sailed south.

Ten years later Hans, with Mertuk and three children, joined Hall's north-polar expedition, which made a ship's record for the world. At Thank-God Harbor was born Mertuk's youngest child, Charles Polaris, nearer the pole than any other known infant. With undaunted courage and uncomplaining fortitude she endured, with her four children (one a babe of three months), the fearful vicissitudes of the Polaris drift, set forth in another sketch, "The Marvellous Ice-Drift of Captain Tyson," carrying her babe in her seal-skin hood while dragging a heavy sledge over rough ice.

With quiet dignity, in keeping with her cool equanimity and her unblanching acceptance of hardships in the white North, Mertuk accepted the extraordinary experiences incident to temporary life in the great emporium of American civilization--New York City--which she was the first of her tribe to visit. Returning to Danish Greenland with her children, she there passed the rest of her less eventful life, busy and happy in the domestic duties pertaining to her family and to her Inuit neighbors.

The incident of Mertuk's wifely heroism, herein told in detail, is drawn from an unpublished diary of Mr. Henry W. Dodge, mate of the schooner _United States_, then wintering under Dr. Hayes at Port Foulke.[30]

The sketch of the childhood of this heroic and interesting woman is based on various passages of explorers and writers familiar with the incidents of Etah life.

* * * * *

Among the forceful and friendly natives of Etah sixty years since, in the days of Kane, was Shung-hu, famed equally for his qualities as a man and for his daring as a mighty hunter. He especially displayed his skill in the successful pursuit of the polar bear, whether on land along the coast, on the fast ice under the frowning snow-cliffs of Humboldt Glacier, or on the moving ice-floes of Smith Sound. Apart from his alert action and dignified bearing, his person was notable through his ample whiskers, on chin and on lips, which age and exposure had already softened by their silvery coloring. Indeed, he was the only full-bearded native in the nation, as is related by Hayes, whose distressed and starving boat party was only able in the last extremity to reach the _Advance_ through the aid of the Angekok Kalutunah and his comrade Shung-hu.

Among the much-loved children of Shung-hu was a daughter, Mertuk, whose mother's name is unknown, but she doubtless had that deep affection and tender care for her daughter which are common traits of these iron women of the Etah coast.

Nature and necessity had made the family lead a life of constant wandering, and so the child shared the seasonal and oft irregular journeys along the shut-in, narrow coast-land between the great Humboldt Glacier and the sea-beaten cliffs of Cape York. It was always a journey for food--birds and bears, deer and seals, walruses and narwhals, as time and good-fortune dictated.

Carried by her mother, little Mertuk travelled in true native fashion, thrust naked and feet foremost into the back part of the ample seal-skin hood. There she rode in warmth and comfort, safely seated astride of a soft, rounded walrus thong, which passed under the arms of the mother and was made fast around her neck.

Mertuk thus grew and throve, happy and healthy, under conditions which to boys and girls of our own country would have seemed impossible of endurance. Sometimes the tiny child would be thrust out in a temperature in which mercury would freeze solid, and with laughter felt the biting, stimulating cold that only made the hood more welcome as a home-nest. It was the way of the wild, which must be followed in this country of sunless winters and of blinding blizzards, which every brave Inuit loved.

To this Eskimo maiden the whole world was made up of a few score men, women, and children of the igloos, of a dozen kinds of birds in the air, and on the cliffs; of white hares, bluish foxes, and reddish deer on land; of smooth seals, white whales, horned narwhals, and big-tusked walruses in the sea; and last but by no means least the enormous amphibious, sharp-clawed bear whose glistening, yellowish-white skin furnished material for the furry garments in which her father Shung-hu was always clothed.

At an early age Mertuk came to know the living creatures which were the sources of food and the means of life. She could tell the seasonal time in which came and went the wild fowl, of their breeding and of their young. The haunts and habits of the swift-footed animals of the glacier-enclosed land were all known to her, as well as the favorite resorts of the monsters of the bordering icy ocean, which furnished the hides and bones, the sinew and ivory, without which there would be neither needles and thread for the igloo, nor lances and sledges for the hunter.

It was a land of meat and flesh in which she lived, with no bread or vegetables, and the taste of sugar and of tea, the flavor of salt and of pepper, were absent from her food. She knew not books, matches, fire-arms, boats, stoves, crockery, nor cloth whether of cotton or fibre, of silk or wool. It was a land without wood, iron, medicines, or stimulants, and equally without government, schools, churches, hospitals, or even houses--unless one could so name the stone huts, the skin tents, or the transient snow igloos.

Her mother early taught her all the kinds of women's work which could make her useful to her tribe or to her family, and without doubt instilled in her a sense of some of the feminine graces which have softened the harshness of the world in all climes and in every country throughout the ages. Here they were a part of the life of the stone age, which the Etahs had inherited untainted by the outside world.

The daughter's supple fingers soon braided evenly and closely the sinews of the narwhal into the tense and needful bow-strings, for Shung-hu hunted reindeer with bow and arrows. Her strong hands tightly stretched the drying seal-skin, through which later her bone-needles and sinew-thread were so skilfully plied that the skin broke before the seams gave way. With deft action and with an unwonted taste she so shaped her bird-skin clothing and blue-fox hoods as to win praise for her garments from men and women alike. Her skill with the lamp soon became equal to that of the oldest expert of the tribe. Choosing and drying the long moss best suited for wicks, she applied a bit of walrus fat to the moss threads, and twisted them into a dense, even roll. While other lamps gave forth volumes of smoke, Mertuk so skilfully trimmed the lighted moss-wick that it gave an equal steady flame along the edge of the _koodlik_ (pot-stone lamp). An adept in all woman's work, always in health, gay, witty and even-tempered, Mertuk came also to be a comely maiden--well-formed in figure, fair of face, though very tiny in stature.

But even in this land of Eskimo plenty there come seasons of dire distress, when famine stalks abroad and slow starvation strikes down the weaklings of the tribe. In such a time of want and hunger Hans Hendrik came to the Etah tribe, to aid the half-famished folk in the hunt of the walrus, then needed to save from lingering death the sick men of Kane's ship as well as the strong people with Kalutunah and Shung-hu. Mertuk had watched from a distance this wonderful youth, who spoke Inuit queerly, to the sly amusement of the listening Etahs. But he carried a long, strange weapon--fire-flashing, ear-splitting, and death-dealing--that killed a bear or a walrus at great and unheard-of distances. In the brief intervals of the urgent hunt he came to Shung-hu's igloo to sleep, to eat their scant fare, and to feed his wolfish dogs, which were ever fighting with those of Shung-hu. The hunt was fast and furious, and with such success that steaks and liver, walrus-skin and rich blubber, were again in plenty.

Of the joyous feast after this particular hunt, in which Mertuk partook with other famishing Etahs, Kane quotes Hans Hendrik, "an exact and truthful man," as saying: "Even the children ate all night. You (Kane) know the little two-year-old that Awiu (possibly the mother of Mertuk) carried in her hood--the one that bit you when you tickled her. That baby cut for herself, with a knife made out of an iron hoop and so heavy that she could hardly lift it, cut and ate, ate and cut, as long as I looked at her. She ate a _sipak_--the Eskimo name for the lump which is cut off close to the lips [of the eater]--as large as her own head. Three hours afterward, when I went to bed, the baby was cutting off another lump and eating still."

The work of the hunt proved too strenuous for the Danish Greenlander, and finally Hans was worn out by exposure and fatigue, while he fell sick from cold and wet. In this condition he sought the breek[31] of Shung-hu's igloo for rest until he gained strength to enable him to return to Kane, to whom he had sent walrus meat.

The care of the strange Inuit fell on Mertuk. Prompt and gentle in her ministrations and attentions, jovial in her speech, and witty in conversation, she soon ensnared the heart of Hans. Indeed, from all accounts, she had that peculiar winning bashfulness that is so attractive among certain of the children of nature. Besides her tasteful dress she had a sense of order and of cleanliness, not always found among the Etahs. She not only kept her long, raven-black hair unmatted, but had also gathered her tresses into a tuft on the top of her head, where it was fastened by a finely embroidered seal-skin strap. This gave her a semblance of size and height quite needed, for she was only a trifle over four feet tall.

Hans soon took careful notice of his nurse, who talked with overflowing mirth, while her busy fingers, in the intervals of personal service, unceasingly plaited the tough sinew-thread with which arrow-heads are secured or other hunting implements perfected. Deft and quick, busy with work, careful of her little brothers, she seemed to be the maiden suited to his taste, although the claims of other women were presented to him during his stay. Before he was strong, he had asked that she should become his wife. Most of her maiden comrades had sobbed and lamented when the time came for them to change the care-free, petted, and joyous child life for the onerous duties of an Etah matron. But Mertuk's heart glowed with happy feelings, and she sang with joy when the great Eskimo hunter, who had killed three of the five great walruses, asked that she would be his wife.