A HUNTING TRIP TO NORTHERN GREENLAND 

 JJy Flllerto.n Mekrili. 



Oil July 21, 1890, tlie steiini sealer Diitmi left S3^dne3', Cape ]>reton 

 Island, bound for northwestern Greenland. She was commanded 

 b}' Mr H. L. Bridgman, secretary of the Peary Arctic (Tul), and was 

 to take suj)plies for Lieutenant Peary and his party, and to bring l)ack 

 news of what they had accomplished during the i)revious year. J5e- 

 sides the Pear}' relief expedition, there was on board a North Green- 

 land hunting party, eight in number, led l)y Mr Russell W. Porter, of 

 Boston, of which company 1 was a member. 



The Diana steamed through the Gulf of St Lawrence and Belle Isle 

 Strait, and on July 24 entered Domino Run, from whence her course 

 was laid for Disko Island. That same night we encountered an ice- 

 pack of small floes, and it was fifteen hours before we were again in 

 open water. On July 30 we touched at Godhavn, next at Uiier- 

 nivik, and soon afterward we reached Melville Bay. We expected 

 to have a tussle with the Melville Bay pack, but found, much to our 

 surprise, that it was nowhere to be seen, having })roljably been blown 

 to the westward, so that we crossed the bay in twenty-two hours, thus 

 }) eating all previous records. At the Eskimo settlement at Cape York 

 we met the first of the Whale Sound natives — the Arctic Highlanders. 

 At Dahymple Island we killed many eider ducks, and at Saunders 

 Island obtained three Eskimo guides for the hunting party. On 

 August 4 the Diana dropped anchor between Hakluyt and North- 

 umberland Islands, in the mouth of Inglefield Gulf, this being the 

 region chosen for walrus hunting. With tents and equipments we of 

 the hunting party landed on Northumberland, in a little cove almost 

 surrounded by mighty rock masses surmounted b}' a crowning ice- 

 cap. The ship steamed away to the north. 



As we had not learned the art of harpooning — a walrus if shot l)e- 

 fore being harpooned usually sinks at once — the beginning of the work 

 was left to the natives. When a walrus was discovered in the open 

 water, an Eskimo started off in a skin kayak, we following at a little 

 distance in a large boat, ready to do our part with the rifle wben the 

 animal had been harpooned. After the harpooning we w'ould make 

 for the inflated seal-skin float, which w'as attached to the harpoon 

 line, and make it fast, and then as soon as possible draw it into the 



