North-Pole Voyages: Embracing Sketches of the Important Facts and Incidents in the Latest American Efforts to Reach the North Pole, from the Second Grinnell Expedition to That of the PolarisMudge, Zachariah Atwell
History
North-Pole Voyages: Embracing Sketches of the Important Facts and Incidents in the Latest American Efforts to Reach the North Pole, from the Second Grinnell Expedition to That of the Polaris
Mudge, Zachariah Atwell
Arctic regions; Arctic regions -- Discovery and exploration -- American; Discoveries in geography -- American
Blind George became a constant visitor. At one time Mr. Hall gave him a
much worn coat, showing one of the several holes in it. George
immediately took a needle, and, bringing his tongue to the aid of his
hands, threaded it, and mended _all_ of the rents very neatly. At
another time Mr. Hall put into George's hand a piece of steel with a
magnet attached. The way the steel flew from his hand to the magnet
amazed him. At first he seemed to think it was not really so; but when
he clearly felt the steel leap from his fingers, he threw both steel and
magnet violently upon the floor. But feeling he was not hurt, and that
some little girls laughed at him, he tried it again more deliberately,
and was better satisfied. Mr. Hall next gave him a paper of needles,
desiring him to bring the magnet near them. He did so, and when the
needles flew from his hand by the attraction he sprung to his feet as if
an electric current had touched him, and the needles were scattered in
every direction over the floor. He declared that Mr. Hall was an
"Angekok."
On the fourteenth of August another whaling vessel belonging to the
owners of the "George Henry" arrived at Grinnell Bay. Her name was the
"Georgiana," Captain Tyson; so there were now four vessels near each
other--the "Rescue" and "Black Eagle," besides those just named. There
were social, merry times. But Captain Buddington, having built a hut
here that some of his men might remain to fish, took his vessels farther
south, for winter-quarters, into a bay separated from Frobisher Bay on
the south by only a narrow strip of land. This Mr. Hall named Field Bay.
Here, snugly hid in an inlet of its upper waters, the vessels proposed
to winter. The Esquimo were not long in finding the new anchorage of the
whites, and in a few days a fleet of kayaks containing seven families
appeared. Among them was Kudlago's oldest daughter, now married to a
native the sailors called Johnny Bull. She had not heard of her father's
death, and stepped on deck elated at the thought of meeting him. "Where
is my father?" she inquired of Ugarng's wife. When she was tenderly told
the sad story of his death she wept freely.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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