The Open Polar Sea: A narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States"Hayes, I. I. (Isaac Israel)
History
The Open Polar Sea: A narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States"
Hayes, I. I. (Isaac Israel)
Arctic regions; United States (Schooner)
I talked to the oldest hunter of the tribe, an ancient,
patriarchal-looking individual named Kesarsoak,--"He of the white
hairs,"--about the future of the tribe. The prospect to him was the
same as to Kalutunah,--"Our people have but a few more suns to live!"
Would they all come up to Etah if I should return, and stay there, and
bring guns and hunters? His answer was a prompt, "Yes." He told me, as
Kalutunah had done before, that Etah was the best hunting-place on the
coast, only the ice broke up so soon and was always dangerous; while
Whale Sound was frozen during nearly all the year, and gave the hunters
greater security.
[Sidenote: TYNDALL GLACIER.]
After returning to the schooner, I pulled up into Barden Bay, taking
with me the magnetic and surveying instruments and facilities for
completing my botanical and other collections, and for photographing
the fine scenery of the bay. Landing on its north shore, we found
the hill-side covered in many places with a richer green sward than
I had ever seen north of Upernavik, except once on a former occasion
at Northumberland Island. The slope was girdled with the same tall
cliffs which everywhere meet the eye along this coast; and the same
summer streams of melted snow tumbled over them, and down the slope
from the mountain sides. The day was quite calm and the sky almost
cloudless. The sun shone broadly upon us, and the temperature was 51°.
Immense schools of whales and walrus, with an occasional seal, were
sporting in the water; flocks of sea-fowl went careering about the
icebergs and through the air, and myriads of butterflies fluttered
among the flowers; while from the opposite side of the bay an immense
glacier,[17] whose face was almost buried in the sea, carried the eye
along a broad and winding valley, up steps of ice of giant height, and
over smooth plains of whiteness, around the base of the hills, until
at length the slope pierced the very clouds, and, reappearing above the
curling vapors, was lost in the blue canopy of the heavens.
[Footnote 17: I have named this glacier in honor of Professor John
Tyndall.]
[Sidenote: TYNDALL GLACIER.]
Three glaciers were visible from my point of observation,--a small
one, to the right, barely touching the water, and hanging, as if in
suspensive agony, in a steep declivity; another, at the head of the
bay, was yet miles away from the sea; while before us, in the centre
of the bay, there came pouring down the rough and broken flood of
ice before alluded to, which, bulging far out into the bay, formed a
coast-line of ice over two miles long.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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