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Updated: May 31, 2025
They were successful in securing thirteen musk-oxen in that neighborhood, and in Bellows Valley they shot a number of the "Peary" caribou, the species "Rangifer Pearyi," a distinct class of reindeer inhabiting that region. On the return of Dr. Goodsell, he told of his fascinating experiences in that wonderland. Leaving the Roosevelt, he had turned inland at Black Cliff Bay.
Beyond it stretches away to an unknown distance towards the Pole a dense archipelago of large islands, the narrow channels between them bridged over in winter by massive sheets of ice, affording an easy passage to the reindeer, musk-oxen, and other animals which migrate southward during the colder portion of the Arctic winter.
Sandy plains extend on a level with the summit of these cliffs, and at the distance of six or seven miles are terminated by ranges of hills eight hundred or one thousand feet high. The grass on these plains affords excellent pasturage for the musk-oxen and they generally abound here. The hunters added two more to our stock in the course of the night.
A little later in the month, Borup went to Clements Markham Inlet to hunt musk-oxen, and from there he went to Cape Columbia, where he erected the cairn containing the record of the last and successful expedition of the "Peary Arctic Club."
Past the glaciers he went with his little party, down the Bellows Valley to the Ruggles River, an actual stream of clear-running water, alive with the finest of salmon trout. Adopting the Esquimo methods, he fished for these speckled beauties with joyful success. Here he rounded up and shot the herd of musk-oxen, and here he bagged his caribou.
Sometimes it alarms and startles the game, while the hunter is crawling up to it; and I have known it to bother myself for a while of a day, when I was after grouse. It's a great favourite with the Indians though as it often guides them to deer, or musk-oxen, by its flying and screaming above where these animals are feeding. Just in the same way it guided me.
Through the white vapor of their breath, which half hid their great horned heads, Ootah could see the eyes of the musk-oxen they were greenish and phosphorescent. Occasionally the creatures roared sullenly, but the fight was less exciting than it would have been had they been less torpid from hunger and cold.
They can defend themselves by their powerful horns against the wolves and bears which, as the Indians say, they not unfrequently kill. The musk-oxen feed on the same substances with the reindeer, and the prints of the feet of these two animals are so much alike that it requires the eye of an experienced hunter to distinguish them.
Yet this very darkness enabled the party to get to the top of the hill which bounded the valley wherein the musk-oxen were grazing without being perceived. Had the herd discovered us and taken alarm our hunters in their present state of debility would in all probability have failed in approaching them.
It has long been known that the Greenland Eskimos have a tradition of an island in an iceless sea, lying away in the far north, where there are many musk-oxen, and, from what I have been told by our friend Chingatok, I am disposed to think that he and his kindred inhabit this island, or group of islands, in the Polar basin not far, perhaps, from the Pole itself. He says there are musk-oxen there.
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