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The night is coming quickly, the long months of darkness, of quiet and cold, that, in spite of my years of experience, I can never get used to; and up here at Sheridan it comes sooner and lasts longer than it does down at Etah and Bowdoin Bay. Only a few days' difference, but it is longer, and I do not welcome it.
At Etah, on going ashore, we were met by the most hopelessly dirty, unkempt, filth-littered human being any of us had ever seen, or could ever have imagined; a white man with long matted hair and beard, who could speak very little English and that only between cries, whimperings, and whines, and whose legs were swollen out of all shape from the scurvy.
To us, up there at Etah, such a story was so ridiculous and absurd that we simply laughed at it. We knew Dr. Cook and his abilities; he had been the surgeon on two of Peary's expeditions and, aside from his medical ability, we had no faith in him whatever.
And this is the story of day after day from Cape York to Etah Harbor, which we reached on August 12. At Etah we take on the final load of coal from the Erik and the other supplies she has for us, and from now on it will be farewell to all the world; we will be alone with our company, and our efforts will be towards the north and our evasive goal.
Instead of sailing on to Etah, Peary ordered the ship into Whale Sound, in order that walrus-hunting could be done, so that the Esquimos should have a plentiful supply of meat for the following winter. Three walrus were captured, when a storm sprang up with all of the suddenness of storms in this neighborhood, and the ship crossed over from Cape Alexander to Cape Chalon.
The first warm snows of August and September, falling on a thickly pleached carpet of grasses, heaths, and willows, enshrine the flowery growths which nestle round them in a non-conducting air-chamber; and as each successive snow increases the thickness of the cover, we have, before the intense cold of winter sets in, a light cellular bed covered by drift, six, eight, or ten feet deep, in which the plant retains its vitality. ... I have found in midwinter, in this high latitude of 78° 50', the surface so nearly moist as to be friable to the touch; and upon the ice-floes, commencing with a surface-temperature of-30°, I found at two feet deep a temperature of-8°, at four feet + 2°, and at eight feet + 26°. ... The glacier which we became so familiar with afterwards at Etah yields an uninterrupted stream throughout the year."
Peary's last and successful trip began when the steamship Roosevelt, commanded by Captain Bartlett, sailed out of New York harbor, July 6, 1908. The vessel traversed Baffin Bay and reached Cape York August 1. At Etah, an Eskimo settlement, three weeks were consumed in storing supplies and selecting Eskimo guides and purchasing dog-trains.
But it was a good thing that something happened to frighten the inland-dwellers, for they had themselves an evil custom of carrying off lonely folk, especially women, when they had lost their way in the fog. And that is all I know about the Giant Dog. There came a sledge driving round to the east of Etah, up into the land, near the great lake.
He had gratified his ambitions in shooting musk-oxen, but he had not killed a single polar bear. At Etah there were two boys, Etookahshoo and Ahpellah, boys about sixteen or seventeen years old, who had been with Dr. Cook for a year, or ever since he had crossed the channel to Ellesmere Land and returned again. These boys are the two he claims accompanied him to the North Pole.
There is a cache of Dr. Cook's provisions here, which Franke turned over to the Commander, and Mr. Whitney has agreed to help Murphy and Billy to guard it. Mr. Harry Whitney is one of the party of men who came here on the Erik to hunt in this region, and he has decided to stay here at Etah for the winter and wait for a ship to take him out next summer.
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