434 Jlr. Crane^s Visit to Hall at Repulse Bay, 1867. 



It will be a harsh criticism which pronounces his judgment defect- 

 ive, or its exercise hast v. He demonstrated the correctness of his 

 belief in the possibility of living for a long period out of the pale 

 of civilized life by his own passing through such a term without 

 extreme suffering or any long illness. He was not, then, far out of 

 the way in judging that some of Franklin's men also might have been 

 found so living, and even for a period of ten years. 



His abilitv, industry, and perseverance, manifest in the endur- 

 ance of so long an absence from the endearments of country and home 

 and in his subjection to the revolting customs of the degraded around 

 him, are yet more manifest in the victories over what again and again 



cosy harbor formed by three small islands at the head of Repulse Bay, lat. 66° 26' N., long. 86° 22' 

 W. Mr. Hall's (the Arctic explorer) tent and quarters are on headland to the westward of us. 



" Friday, .ilw^M^^ 16, 1867. — * ^ # * Coming aboard at 4 j). ni., found the ship crowded 

 with natives ; the tirst I have seen. Mr. Hall and party, sent out by Mr. H. Grinnell, of New York, 

 came aboard and were hospitably received. Accepted an invitation to visit Hall ashore ; shall 

 ])robably do so to-morrow. Conversed for fully an hour with the explorer. Found that he had 

 read almost everything that had ever been written on the sul)ject of Arctic exploration. Judging 

 from his conversation, 1 should not call him an educated, but certainly an intelligent man. 



"Saturday, AikjuhI 17, 1867. — Called upon Hall as I was returning from an expedition to 

 the mainland. His tupik, or seal-skin tent, was jiitched not very far from our anchorage, on the 

 side of a rocky headland called by the natives Tita-totv-yak-loo-Iik (Bloodless Laud), and which 

 I subsequently discovered was the sonthornmost point of Melville Peninsula. When I visited 

 Hall ashore, I found him "at home" amid the usual repugnant accessories of Arctic life, clothed 

 in Innuit costume, seated a la Tare on a deer-skin rng ; an lunuit squaw on one side and her 

 husband on the other. An intelligent looking native dog crouched lazily at his feet. These 

 three companions, the Escjuimaux man, woman, and dog, I was afterward informed, had been the 

 explorer's constant and faithful adherents in all his perilous wanderings. Hall's quarters in 

 no wise differed from the InuTiit habitations generally. Their interior i)resented fully as repul- 

 sive a spectacle as I had evc^r witnessed in any African hut or Indian wigwam. I was told by 

 him that this mode of life was entirely from choice, and that in accommodating himself to it he 

 was only preparing for future struggles against the rigors and perils of this frightful climate. 

 He said that he felt capable of enduring severer hardshijis than ever he had yet undergone, and 

 was satisfied that in accustoming himself to native habits and native diet he was adopting the 

 only sure method of escaping the great Arctic curse — scurvy. During our short sojourn in Re- 

 l)ulse Bay I had re])eated long and interesting conversations with him. He had then just re- 

 turned from a long sledge journey to the westward, and was contemi>lating .another, which 

 would be still further westward, to King William's Land in February. If this expedition realized 

 liis expectatious, he proposed to return as soon as jtracticable to the United States, when ho 

 would endeavor to enlist the aid of the Goverinncnt. and extend the scope of his explorations so 

 as to embrace the dincoverv of the NorthwcHt Passaiie." 



