The first day of my march to Marble Island I met Ikomar coming with
relief for our camp, and took from his sled one of two boxes containing
hard bread and some pork, molasses, and tobacco, sending another box
and the remainder of the food to Henry and Frank, who would come down
to Marble Island when Ikomar returned. I found a note from Lieutenant
Schwatka, in which I read that a bottle of whiskey was among the stores
sent; but in the excitement of the occasion and my interest in some
papers of 1879, I forgot to look for it. My surprise and disappointment
can therefore be imagined that night, when Toolooah dragged the bottle
forth from the bottom of the bread box, and asked what it was. We each
drank some of the contents, and I noticed, on pouring it into a tin
cup, that it was of the consistency of thick syrup, and the cup
absolutely froze to my lips, at the same time burning them as if with a
red-hot knitting-needle. I had often before heard of a bottle of
whiskey freezing to a person's lips, but until that moment I had
regarded the assertion as a base effort to deceive and to divert the
mind from the actual cause of a too prolonged hold of the bottle. I
found the whiskey a great comfort on the trip to Marble Island, and
could not help feeling that our long winter journey would have been
made much more comfortable by some form of ardent spirits, probably
diluted alcohol, to be partaken of in small quantities each night on
arriving in camp, or after unusually fatiguing work and exposure.
I reached the ship 'George and Mary' at midnight of Saturday the
21st, and found every one in bed, except Captain Baker, who received
me very kindly, and at once impressed me as a straightforward,
generous-spirited man. The cabin of his vessel is exceedingly small
and inconvenient, but the officers submitted to much discomfort in
our behalf. I found that the crew had been entirely free from scurvy,
which had so seriously afflicted the crews of the fleet at Marble
Island the previous winter. The entire freedom from this disease seems
to be attributable to Captain Baker's excellent management, and the
constant feeding of fresh reindeer, walrus, or seal meat to the crew,
as well as to those in the cabin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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