Farthest North: The Life and Explorations of Lieutenant James Booth Lockwood, of the Greely Arctic ExpeditionLanman, Charles
History
Farthest North: The Life and Explorations of Lieutenant James Booth Lockwood, of the Greely Arctic Expedition
Lanman, Charles
Arctic regions; Lady Franklin Bay Expedition (1881-1884); Lockwood, James Booth, 1852-1884
The steamer came to anchor at Littleton Island at 9 A. M. on the 2d of
August, just as the steering-gear gave way. A party went to “Life-boat
Cove” and brought back a number of articles left by the Polaris
Expedition of 1873. They saw neither Esquimaux nor reindeer, but shot a
walrus. Lieutenant Greely made an effort to find the cairn left there by
Nares, and the letters left for Nares by the Pandora. He found the
letters but not the cairn, though there was a dismantled cairn afterward
seen by others. Lockwood with a party of men put ashore several tons of
coal, which, as it had to be carried up some thirty feet above the
sea-level, he found no easy job. While thus engaged, this party had an
adventure with some walruses, not unattended with danger. Having excited
a drove of them by a simultaneous fire, the animals came toward the
boat, and at one time held its inmates in peril. Lockwood alone was
prepared to meet the foremost, and by good luck slew one of them, when
all the rest disappeared. The walrus can be killed only through the
brain, and when wounded, the animal is exceedingly ferocious. Numberless
boats have been destroyed by them. Lamont thinks the walrus superior to
the bear for food. Those they saw were evidently a female and her young,
and their safety was in having killed the mother. Littleton Island
affords a good illustration of these shores. The sides rise
precipitously, sometimes in steps composed of immense cubes of
trap-rock, sometimes in steep slopes formed from the crumbling of the
same. The top of the island is seven hundred feet high, according to
Nares, and generally quite level. Of soil, there is none. The summit
afforded a fine view of the sound, though somewhat obstructed by fog. No
floating ice; and the western coast with its snowy mountains quite
distinct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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