WRECKED ON THE COAST OF GREENLAND 



The faithfulness of our Greenland messengers was attested 

 by the arrival of these letters, bringing cheerful words to 

 our wives and sweethearts, a month or two after we, our- 

 selves, had put in a safe appearance. 



News came to us at Sukkertoppen that there was a 

 Gloucester fishing schooner off the banks of Holstenberg, 

 about a hundred miles to the north. The assistance of 

 this schooner seemed to open the only prospect of escape; 

 so a boat, under the charge of Dr. Cook, was sent imme- 

 diately to work its way along the coast, and endeavor to 

 find the vessel, and to secure the good offices of its captain 

 and crew. As we could not hope to get relief short of 

 ten days or two weeks, a party of seven or eight imme- 

 diately prepared to make an excursion thirty miles north- 

 ward to the glaciers, which come into the head of Ikamiut 

 Fiord, almost exactly upon the Arctic Circle. It is to 

 some of the experiences of this excursion that the atten- 

 tion of the reader is more specifically invited. 



The expedition started in the middle of the afternoon. 

 One large boat and two dories were required to carry us 

 and our equipment, while three kayakcrs accompanied us 

 for our protection and assistance. The swells which came 

 in from the southwest were long and high until we 

 reached the lee of a line of islands, in which our guides 

 were careful to keep us as much as possible. In due time 

 great glaciers began to look down upon us from the moun- 

 tain heights to the east; but they paused in their course 

 long before reaching the water level. A broad opening 

 to the ocean displayed itself between the islands of Sukker- 

 toppen and Sermersut, and permitted the swells from two 

 directions to toss us upon their capricious crests. A hard 

 pull now across the mouth of Ikamiut Fiord brought us 

 late at night, but still amid the splendor of the arctic 

 twilight, to the settlement on the point of the promontory 

 at the northern side of the fiord, where it joins the open 

 channel east of the large island of Sermersut. To our 

 unpracticed eyes there were no signs of human habitation 

 near; but on rounding a low projection of rocks our ears 

 were greeted with the indescribable jargon of a strange dia- 

 lect proceeding from the throats of twenty-five or thirty 

 Eskimo, young and old, who had crawled out from the 



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