the john muir exhibit - writings - cruise_of_the_corwin - chapter 12
The Cruise of the Corwin
by John Muir
Chapter XII
Zigzags among the Polar Pack
July 21.
Rainy this forenoon, clear at night. Wind blowing hard
from the southeast and raising a heavy swell. Reached Icy Cape about noon
and found to our disappointment that, notwithstanding the openness of the
season, further advance northeastward was barred by the ice. After the
sky began to clear somewhat, and the rain to cease falling, we observed
an ice-blink stretching all around the northern horizon for several hours
before we sighted the ice, a peculiar brown and yellow band within a few
degrees of the horizon. There was a dark belt beneath it, which indicated
water beyond the ice.
We then turned westward, tracing the loose-drift edge of the pack until
eight in the evening, when we turned to the east again, intending to await
the further movements of the ice for a few days, and especially a change
of wind to blow it offshore. There is a coal-vein between here and Cape
Lisburne which we will visit and mine as much coal as possible, in case
the weather permits. But as there is no shelter thereabouts, we may not
be able to obtain any and in that case will be compelled to go to Plover
Bay for our next supply.
About fifteen miles southwest of Icy Cape there is quite a large settlement
[Ututok?] of Eskimos on the low, sandy, storm-swept
shore. Cool and breezy must be their lives, and they can have but little
inducement to look up, or time to spend in contemplation. Theirs is one
constant struggle for food, interrupted by sleep and by a few common quarrels.
In winter they hibernate in noisome underground dens. In summer they come
out to take breath in small conical tents, made of white drill, when they
can get it, They waved a piece of cloth on the end of a pole as we passed,
inviting us to stop and trade with them. From Cape Lisburne up the coast
to Point Barrow there is usually a two-knot current, but the wind and the
ice have completely stopped the flow at present. The sun is above the horizon
at midnight.
July 22. A dull, leaden day; dark fog and rain until about four
in the afternoon; rained but a small fraction of an inch. About noon we
once more sighted the ice-pack. The heavy swell of the sea is rapidly subsiding
and the wind is veering to the northeast. We hope it will move the ice
offshore and allow us to round Point Barrow. The pack is close and impenetrable,
though made up of far smaller blocks than usual, owing, no doubt, to the
mildness of last winter, and to the chafing and pounding of a succession
of gales that have been driving over it at intervals all the spring. We
pushed into it through the loose outer fringe, but soon turned back when
we found that it stretched all around from the shore. By retreating we
avoided the danger of getting fixed in it and carried away. Nearly all
the vessels that have been lost in the Arctic have been caught hereabouts.
The approach to the ice was signalized by the appearance of walruses,
seals, and ducks. The walrus is very abundant here, and when whales are
scarce the whalers hunt and kill great numbers of them for their ivory
and oil. They are found on cakes of ice in hundreds, and if a party of
riflemen can get near, by creeping up behind some hummock, and kill the
one on guard, the rest seem to be heedless of noise after the first shot,
and wait until nearly all are killed. But if the first be only wounded,
and plunges into the water, the whole "pod" is likely to follow. Came to
anchor at half-past ten this evening, a little to the south of Icy Cape.
July 23. Clear and calm. Weighed anchor at eight in the morning
and ran close inshore, anchored, and landed with instruments to make exact
measurements for latitude and longitude, and to observe the dip. I also
went ashore to see the vegetation, and Nelson to seek birds and look for
Eskimo specimens. Found only four plants in bloom--saxifrage, willow, artemisia,
and draba. This is the bleakest and barest spot of all. Well named Icy
Cape. A low bar of sand and shingle shoved up by the ice that is crowded
against the shore every year. Inside this bar, which is only a hundred
yards wide, there is a stretch of water several miles wide; then, low gravelly
coast. Sedges and grasses, dwarfed and frost-bitten, constitute the bulk
of the flora.
We noticed traces of Eskimo encampments. There was blubber in abundance
from a dead whale that had been cast up on the shore. They had plenty of
food when they left. But before this they must have been hungry, for we
found remains of dogs that they had been eating; also, white foxes' bones,
picked clean. Found a dead walrus on the beach beyond the wreck of the
whale.
At one in the afternoon we weighed anchor and turned north, crossing
inside of Blossom Shoals, which are successive ridges pushed up by the
ice, and extending ten or twelve miles offshore. In a few hours we reached
the limit of open water. The ice extended out from the shore, leaving no
way. Turned again to the south. Sighted the bark Northern Light
[A whaler.]
and made up to her. She showed grandly with her white canvas
on the dark water, now nearly calm.
Ice just ahead as we accompanied her northward while the Captain visited
her. The sun is low in the northwest at nine o'clock. A lovely evening,
bracing, cool, with a light breeze blowing over the polar pack. The ice
is marvelously distorted and miraged; thousands of blocks seem suspended
in the air; some even poised on slender black poles and pinnacles; a bridge
of ice with innumerable piers, the ice and water wavering with quick, glancing
motion. At midnight the sun is still above the horizon about two diameters;
purple to west and east, gradually fading to dark slate color in the south
with a few banks of cloud. A bar of gold in the path of the sun lay on
the water and across the pack, the large blocks in the line [of vision]
burning like huge coals of fire.
A little schooner [The R. B. Handy, Captain Winants.]
has a boat out in the edge of the pack killing walruses, while she is lying
a little to east of the sun. A puff of smoke now and then, a dull report,
and a huge animal rears and falls-another, and another, as they lie on
the ice without showing any alarm, waiting to be killed, like cattle lying
in a barnyard! Nearer, we hear the roar, lion-like, mixed with hoarse grunts,
from hundreds like black bundles on the white ice. A small red flag is
planted near the pile of slain. Then the three men pull off to their schooner,
as it is now midnight and time for the other watch to go to work.
These magnificent animals are killed oftentimes for their tusks alone,
like buffaloes for their tongues, ostriches for their feathers, or for
mere sport and exercise. In nothing does man, with his grand notions of
heaven and charity, show forth his innate, low-bred, wild animalism more
clearly than in his treatment of his brother beasts. From the shepherd
with his lambs to the red handed hunter, it is the same; no recognition
of rights--only murder in one form or another.
July 24. A lovely morning, sunful, calm, clear; a broad swath
of silver spangles in the path of the sun; ice-blink to the north; a pale
sky to the east and around to the south and west; blue above, not deep
blue; several ships in sight. Sabbath bells are all that is required to
make a Sabbath of the day.
Ran inshore opposite the Eskimo village; about a hundred came off.
Good-natured as usual.
A few biscuits and a little coaxing from the sailors made them
sing and dance. The Eskimo women laughed as heartily at the curious and
extravagant gestures of the men as any of the sailors did. They were anxious
to know what was the real object of the Corwin's cruise, and when the steam
whaler Belvedere hove in sight they inquired whether she had big guns and
was the same kind of ship. Our interpreter explained as well as he could.
In the afternoon we had the Sea Breeze, the Sappho, the Northern Light,
and the schooner about us. The steam whaler had only six whales. He had
struck ten, taken four, and found two dead. Last year he took twenty-seven.
The whales were in windrows then; at one time twenty-five were so near
that no gaps between them were so wide but that a man could strike on either
side. They were more abundant last year on the American coast; this year,
on the Asiatic. They are always more abundant in spring and fall than during
the summer.
Had a graphic account, from Captain Owen, of the loss of the thirty-three
ships of the whaling fleet near Point Barrow in 1874. Caution inculcated
by such experiences. Anchored this evening near the Belvedere and four
other vessels. The schooner people complain that this is a bad year for
"walrusing"; ice too thin; after killing a few the hot blood so weakens
the ice that in their struggles they break it and then fall in and sink.
July 25. Steamed northward again, intending, after reaching the
ice, to make an effort to go to Point Barrow with the steam launch, and
the lifeboat in tow, to seek the Daniel Webster, and offer aid if necessary.
[This whaler is] now shut in about Point Belcher. We found, however, that
the ice was shoved close inshore south of Icy Cape, and extended in a dense
pack from there to the southwest, leaving no boat channel even. This plan
was therefore abandoned with great reluctance, and we again moved southward,
intending to coal, if the weather allowed, near Cape Lisburne. Calm, lovely
night; slight breeze; going slowly under sail alone.
July 26. Lovely day; gentle breeze. Eight vessels insight this
morning. The Belvedere got under sail and is proceeding southward with
us. Mirages in wonderful variety; ships pulled up and to either side, out
of all recognition; the coast, with snow-patches as gaps, pulled up and
stratified; the snow looking like arched openings in a dark bridge above
the waters. About nine-thirty we noticed a rare effect just beneath the
sun--a faint, black, indefinite, cloudlike bar extended along the horizon,
and immediately beyond this dark bar there was a strip of bright, keenly
defined colors like a showy spectrum, containing nearly all the colors
of the rainbow.
July 27. A lovely day, bright and calm and warm. Coaling ship
from a vein in a sandstone cliff twenty miles northeast of Cape Lisburne.
In company with the Belvedere. Seeking fossils. Discovered only two species
of plants. Coal abundant. Mined, took out, and brought on board fifteen
tons to-day. The Belvedere also is coaling and taking on water. Three Eskimo
canoes came from the south this evening and camped at the stream which
flows into the sea on the north side of the coal bluff. The dogs followed
the canoes alongshore. After camping they came alongside, but not before
their repeated signs of peace, consisting of throwing up hands and shouting
"Tima," were answered by the officer of the deck. This custom seems to
be dying out, also that of embracing and nose-rubbing.
July 28. Lovely, tranquil day, all sunshine. Taking coal until
half-past four in the afternoon. Then sailed toward Herald Island. I spent
the forenoon along the face of the shore cliffs, seeking fossils. Discovered
only four, all plants. Went three miles westward. Heavy snowbank, leaning
back in the shadow most of the distance, almost changing to ice; very deep
and of several years' formation--not less than forty feet in many places.
The cliffs or bluffs are from two hundred to nearly four hundred feet high,
composed of sandstone, coal, and conglomerate, the latter predominating.
Great thickness of sediments; a mile or more visible on upturned edges,
which give a furrowed surface by unequal weathering. Some good bituminous
coal; burns well. Veins forty feet thick, more or less interrupted by clayey
or sandy, strata. Fossils not abundant.
While I was scratching the rocks for some light on the history of their
formation, eight canoe loads of Eskimos with all their goods, tents, children,
etc., passed close along the shore, going toward Icy Cape; all except one
were drawn by dogs--from three to five to each canoe-attached by a long
string of walrus hide, and driven by a woman, or half-grown girl, or boy.
"Ooch, ooch, ooch," they said, while urging them along. They dragged the
canoe with perhaps two tons altogether at two and one half miles per hour.
When they came to a sheer bluff the dogs swam and the drivers got into
the canoe until the beach again admitted of tracking. The canoe that had
no dogs was paddled and rowed by both men and women. One woman, pulling
an oar on the starboard bow, was naked to the waist. They came from Point
Hope, and arrived last evening at a camping-ground on the edge of a stream
opposite the Corwin's anchorage. This morning they had eight tents and
all the food, canoes, arms, dogs, babies, and rubbish that belong to a
village. The encampment looked like a settled village that had grown up
by enchantment. Only one was left after ten in the morning, the occupants
busying themselves caching blubber of walrus. In the sunshine some of the
children enjoyed the luxury of running about naked.
Eleven-thirty; a calm evening. The sun has just set, its disk curiously
distorted by refraction and light diminished by vaporous haze, so that
it could be looked at, a glorious orb of crimson and gold with a crisp
surface. . . . Horizontal layers of color, piled on each other evenly,
made the whole look like cheeses of different sizes laid neatly one on
top of the other. Sketched the various phases. It set as a flat crimson
cake of dull red. No cloud; only haze, dark at the horizon, purple higher,
and then yellow.
July 29. Calm, lovely, sunny day. Thermometer standing at, 50°
F. in the shade; warm in the sun; the water smooth with streaks; ruffled,
like an alpine lake; mostly glassy, stirred with irregular breaths of air.
lee visible about noon, near "Post-Office Point." [Said to
be a point north of Bering Strait in the Arctic Ocean where, for some reason,
the drift of oceanic currents is not strong. Whalers and other vessels
customarily went there to exchange mail and news.] Fine-grained,
hazy, luminous mist about the horizon. A few gulls and ducks. Sun barely
dipped beneath the horizon. Curiously modeled by refraction; bars dividing
in sections always horizontal. Ducks flying at midnight.
July 30. Another glassy, calm day, all sunshine from midnight
to midnight. Kotzebue's gull, the kittiwake, about the ship; no seals or
walrus. Herald Island came in sight about one o'clock. At a distance of
eight to ten miles we reached the ice, but made our way through it, as
it was mostly light and had openings here and there. But we suffered some
hard bumps; pushed slowly and got close alongside, much to the satisfaction
of the crew.
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