Part 10 (2/2)
We had an ample supply of pemmican, which was made of pounded dried beef, sprinkled with a few raisins and some currants, and slightly sweetened with sugar. This mixture was cemented together with heated beef tallow and run into tin cans containing six pounds each.
This combination was invented by the American Indian, and the supply for this expedition was made by Armour of Chicago after a formula furnished by Captain Evelyn B. Baldwin. Pemmican had been used before as part of the long list of foodstuffs for Arctic expeditions, but with us there was the important difference that it was to be almost entirely the whole bill of fare when away from game haunts. The palate surprises in our store were few.
By the time Christmas approached I had reason indeed for rejoicing.
Although this happy season meant little to me as a holiday of gift-giving and feasting, it came with auguries for success in the thing my heart most dearly desired, and compared to which earth had nothing more alluring to give.
Our equipment was now about complete. In the box house were tiers of new sledges, rows of boxes and piles of bags filled with clothing, canned supplies, dried meat, and sets of strong dog harness. The food, fuel and camp equipment for the Polar dash were ready. Everything had been thoroughly tested and put aside for a final examination. Elated by our success, and filled with grat.i.tude to the faithful natives, I declared a week of holidays, with rejoicing and feasting. Feasting was at this time especially desirable, for we had now to fatten up for the antic.i.p.ated race.
Christmas day in the Arctic does not dawn with the glow which children in waking early to seek their bedecked tree, view outside their windows in more southern lands. Both Christmas day and Christmas night are black. Only the stars keep their endless watch in the cold skies.
Standing outside my igloo on the happy night, I gazed at the Pole Star, the guardian of the goal I sought, and I remembered with a thrill the story of that mysterious star the Wise Men had followed, of the wonders to which it led them, and I felt an awed reverence for the Power that set these unfaltering beacons above the earth and had written in their golden traces, with a burning pen, veiled and unrevealed destinies which men for ages have tried to learn.
I retired to sleep with thoughts of home. I thought of my children, and the bated expectancy with which they were now going to bed, of their hopefulness of the morrow, and the unbounded joy they would have in gifts to which I could not contribute. I think tears that night wet my pillow of furs. But I would give them, if I did not fail, the gift of a father's achievement, of which, with a glow, I felt they should be proud.
The next morning the natives arrived at the box house early. It had been cleared of seamstresses and workmen the day before, and put in comparatively spick and span order. I had told the natives they were to feed to repletion during the week of holiday, an injunction to the keeping of which they did not need much urging.
Early Christmas morning, men and women began working overtime on the two festive meals which were to begin that day and continue daily.
About this time, the most important duty of our working force had been to uncover caches and dig up piles of frozen meat and blubber. Of this, which possesses the flavor and odor of Limburger cheese, and also the advantage, if such it be, of intoxicating them, the natives are particularly fond. While a woman held a native torch of moss dipped in oils and pierced with a stick, the men, by means of iron bars and picks, dug up boulders of meat just as coal is forced from mines.
A weird spectacle was this, the soft light of the blubber lamp dancing on the spotless snows, the soot-covered faces of the natives grinning while they worked. The blubber was taken close to their igloos and placed on raised platforms of snow, so as to be out of reach of the dogs. Of this meat and blubber, which was served raw, partially thawed, cooked and also frozen, the natives partook during most of their waking hours. They enjoyed it, indeed, as much as turkey was being relished in my far-away home.
Moreover they had, what was an important delicacy, native ice cream.
This would not, of course, please the palate of those accustomed to the American delicacy, but to the Eskimo maiden it possesses all the lure of creams, sherberts or ice cream sodas. With us, sugar in the process of digestion turns into fat, and fat into body fuel. The Eskimo, having no sugar, yearns for fat, and it comes with the taste of sweets.
The making of native ice cream is quite a task. I watched the process of making it Christmas day with amused interest. The native women must have a mixture of oils from the seal, walrus and narwhal. Walrus and seal blubber is frozen, cut into strips, and pounded with great force so as to break the fat cells. This ma.s.s is now placed in a stone pot and heated to the temperature of the igloo, when the oil slowly separates from the fibrous pork-like ma.s.s. Now, tallow from the suet of the reindeer or musk ox is secured, cut into blocks and given by the good housewife to her daughters, who sit in the igloo industriously chewing it until the fat cells are crushed. This masticated ma.s.s is placed in a long stone pot over the oil flame, and the tallow reduced from it is run into the fishy oil of the walrus or seal previously prepared.
This forms the body of native ice cream. For flavoring, the housewife has now a variety from which to select. This usually consists of bits of cooked meat, moss flowers and gra.s.s. Antic.i.p.ating the absence of moss and gra.s.s in the winter, the natives, during the hunting season, take from the stomachs of reindeer and musk oxen which are shot, ma.s.ses of partly digested gra.s.s which is preserved for winter use. This, which has been frozen, is now chipped in fragments, thawed, and, with bits of cooked meats, is added to the mixed fats. It all forms a paste the color of pistache, with occasional spots like crushed fruit.
The mixture is lowered to the floor of the igloo, which, in winter, is always below the freezing point, and into it is stirred snow water. The churned composite gradually brightens and freezes as it is beaten. When completed, it looks very much like ice cream, but it has the flavor of cod liver oil, with a similar odor. Nevertheless, it has nutritive qualities vastly superior to our ice cream, and stomach pains rarely follow an engorgement.
With much glee, the natives finished their Christmas repast with this so-called delicacy. For myself a tremendous feast was prepared, consisting of food left by the yacht and the choicest meat from the caches. My menu consisted of green turtle soup, dried vegetables, caviar on toast, olives, Alaskan salmon, crystallized potatoes, reindeer steak, b.u.t.tered rice, French peas, apricots, raisins, corn bread, Huntley and Palmer biscuits, cheese and coffee.
As I sat eating, I thought with much humor of the curious combinations of caviar and reindeer steak, of the absurd contradiction in eating green turtle soup beyond the Arctic circle. I ate heartily, with more gusto than I ever partook of delicious food in the Waldorf Astoria in my far-away home city. After dinner I took a long stroll on snow shoes. As I looked at the star-lamps swung in heaven, I thought of Broadway, with its purple-pale strings of lights, and its laughing merry-makers on this festive evening.
I did not, I confess, feel lonely. I seemed to be getting something so much more wholesome, so much more genuine from the vast expanse of snow and the unhidden heavens which, in New York, are seldom seen. Returning to the box-house, I ended Christmas evening with Edgar Allen Poe and Shakespeare as companions.
The box-house in which I lived was amply comfortable. It did not possess the luxury of a civilized house, but in the Arctic it was palatial. The interior fittings had changed somewhat from time to time, but now things were arranged in a permanent setting. The little stove was close to the door. The floor measured sixteen feet in length and twelve feet in width. On one side the empty boxes of the wall made a pantry, on the other side were cabinets of tools, and unfinished sledge and camp material.
With a step we rose to the next floor. On each side was a bunk resting on a bench. The bench was used as a bed, a work bench and seat. The long rear bench was utilized as a sewing table for the seamstresses and also for additional seating capacity. In the center was a table arranged around a post which supported the roof. Sliding shelves from the bunks formed table seats. A yacht lamp fixed to the post furnished ample light. There was no other furniture. All of our needs were conveniently placed in the open boxes of the wall.
The closet room therefore was unlimited. In the boxes near the floor, in which things froze hard, the perishable supplies were kept. In the next tier there was alternate freezing and thawing. Here we stored las.h.i.+ngs and skins that had to be kept moist. The tiers above, usually warm and dry under the roof, were used for various purposes. There, fresh meat in strips, dried crisp in three days. Taking advantage of this, we had made twelve hundred pounds of dog pemmican from walrus meat. In the gable we placed furs and instruments.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CAPTURE OF A BEAR ROUNDING UP A HERD OF MUSK OXEN]
[Ill.u.s.tration: SVARTEVOEG--CAMPING FIVE HUNDRED MILES FROM THE POLE]
The temperature changed remarkably as the thermometer was lifted. On the floor in the lower boxes, it fell as low as -20. Under the bunks on the floor, it was usually -10. The middle floor s.p.a.ce was above the freezing point. At the level of the bunk the temperature was +48. At the head, standing, +70, and under the roof, -105.
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