THE ARCTIC DISASTERS 269 



The natives, without compunction, robbed him of the greater 

 part of the bone that he had saved, and were nearly of a mind 

 to kill him. He saw the vessels shattered, sunk, and burned. 

 He suffered incredible hardships from cold and hunger, and was 

 pitifully weak when the returning whalers rescued him. 



Some of the vessels drifted with the pack; some, already 

 crushed by the ice, sank where they lay; some the natives 

 burned; some lasted out the winter. Only the bark Minerva, 

 brought back the next year by Captain Williams of the lost 

 Monticello, ever returned to America. 



The officers had, to be sure, destroyed all liquor on board the 

 abandoned vessels, but they had neglected to destroy the medi- 

 cine-chests. No sooner were the crews out of sight, than the 

 hopeful but indiscreet savages seized upon the bottled drugs. 

 Their spree was a dismal failure, for virtually a whole village 

 was poisoned; and it is said that less than a dozen years ago 

 — it is so now, for aught I know to the contrary — the remains 

 of entire families were to be seen in the underground houses 

 whither they hastened with the bottles of medicine that they 

 innocently mistook for whisky. 



Too ignorant and stupid to perceive what treasures an ill 

 wind had left at their door, the Esquimaux who escaped death, 

 when they had recovered from the lively sicknesses caused by 

 their novel beverages, rose in wrath and set fire to the first 

 vessels they came to. 



The disaster shook the whaling industry from truck to keel. 

 Besides destroying such an overwhelming proportion of the 

 Arctic fleet at a time when the whalemen, notwithstanding the 

 effect of petroleum oils on the market for whale oil and sperm 

 oil, were reestablishing themselves after the losses caused by the 

 Civil War, it forced the insurance companies to increase their 

 rates to an extent that seriously discouraged those who would 

 have rebuilt the business. Although twenty-seven vessels 

 went to the Arctic the next year and twenty-nine the year after, 

 the tide of Arctic whaling and, indeed, of all whaling, had defi- 

 nitely turned. 



