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Updated: May 31, 2025
His little wife seemed more annoyed than curious. "Just think! One crown the two!" "I have bought ptarmigans at eightpence the brace; but " she added in a more conciliatory tone, so as not to upset him altogether, "that was in a very cold winter." "Well, but you must admit that I bought them very cheaply." Was there anything she would not admit in order to see him happy?
The island exceeds five thousand miles square, and yielded to the gun, three musk oxen, twenty-four deer, sixty-eight hares, fifty-three geese, fifty-nine ducks, and one hundred and forty-four ptarmigans, weighing together three thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pounds not quite two ounces of meat per day to every man.
Now, two years later, I realized that from Windbound Lake we could have reached Michikamau in five or six days at the very outside, and less than two weeks, allowing for delays through bad weather and our weakened condition, would have brought us to the George River, where, at that time of the year, ducks and ptarmigans are always plentiful.
These garden-patches are full of gay colors of gentian, erigeron, anemone, larkspur, and columbine, and are enlivened with happy birds and bees and marmots. Climbing to an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet, which is about fifteen hundred feet above the level of the glacier at this point, I saw and heard a few marmots, and three ptarmigans that were as tame as barnyard fowls.
"Good luck! Good luck at last!" said Skipper Ed. And so it was that the famine ended. There was small variety for the table, to be sure, but there was always plenty of good venison, varied with ptarmigans, and now and again a porcupine. And after all they were able to go to the ice edge on the winter seal hunt, and a profitable hunt it proved.
Curlews, ptarmigans, cormorants, and ospreys are also seen in greater or less numbers. The steamer lands us for a few hours at Tromsöe, a small island in latitude 69° 38´ north, a thriving place of six thousand inhabitants, a goodly number for a town within the Arctic Circle. It is the capital of Norwegian Lapland. Both to the north and south of the town snow-clad mountains shut off distant views.
Ptarmigans, still in their coat of mottled brown and white, gather in flocks upon the naked hills to feed, where upland cranberries cover the ground in red masses; or on the edge of marshes where bake apple berries have changed from brilliant red to delicate salmon pink and offer a sweet and wholesome feast.
Perhaps they go farther inland, and too far for him to follow. I have seen times when ptarmigans were so thick men killed them for dog food, and perhaps the next year there would not be a ptarmigan to be found to put into the pot for dinner.
Emily's t' have some t' eat after we has breakfast." Dinner was a great success. There were roast ptarmigans stuffed with fine-chopped pork and bread, and the unwonted luxuries of butter and sugar and then the plum pudding served with molasses for sauce. That was fine, and Emily had to have two helpings of it.
Several times we put up ptarmigans, that flew away with the curious "brek-kek-kex" that is their rallying cry, showing white spots on their dull-hued plumage, which would soon grow into the pure, snowy livery of winter days. A few snipe flew up from the side of water-holes, with shrill cries and twisting flights.
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