True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World Part 20

"And truly he who here Hath run his bright career, And served men n.o.bly, and acceptance found, And borne to light and right his witness high, What better could he wish than then to die?"

--ARNOLD.

The Mylius-Erichsen arctic expedition of 1905 sailed for the east coast of Greenland in the s.h.i.+p _Danmark_, commanded by Captain Trolle, Danish Royal Navy. Its purpose was to continue the remarkable surveys of the Danish government by completing the coast-line of northeast Greenland.

From its winter quarters at Cape Bismarck, 76 14' N., autumnal sledge parties established advance depots of supplies in order to facilitate the travel of its surveying party the following spring.

The field work was under charge of Mylius-Erichsen personally, a Danish explorer of ability and experience, already distinguished for successful work in northwestern Greenland. It was planned that near the eighty-second parallel of north lat.i.tude the main party should be divided, so as to complete the work that season. Lieutenant Koch was to outline the southeastern sh.o.r.e-lines of the land to the north of Greenland, while Mylius-Erichsen was to carry his surveys inland until they joined those of Peary, thus filling in the totally unknown regions of extreme northeastern Greenland.

This plan was carried out in the spring of 1906, the two parties separating at Northeast Cape, whence Koch struck courageously north on May 1, with food for fourteen days only. Game fortunately came to him and he was enabled to advance his country's colors to an unprecedentedly northern lat.i.tude for Denmark, 83.5 N., and by his explorations to complete the survey of the most northerly land of the globe--originally named Hazen Land, which is now known as Peary Land. The brilliant discoveries, tragic experiences, and heroic struggles of Mylius-Erichsen and his topographer Hagen, and the fidelity unto death of his Eskimo dog driver, Jorgen Bronlund, are briefly outlined in this narrative.

After the long winter of sunless days and bitter cold, it was with high hopes and cheery hearts that the long line of dog-drawn sledges followed Mylius-Erichsen as they wended their way northward at the end of March, 1907. With ten sledges and nearly a hundred dogs much was to be done by the resolute men who feared neither cold nor famine, the dangers of the sea-ice, or the hards.h.i.+ps of the trail.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Amdrup and Hazen Lands, Greenland.]

Their courage and strength were soon tested by difficulties and perils of unexpected character, for they thought to find the ordinary ice-foot along the sh.o.r.e, which could be followed inward or outward as the character of the ice dictated. But there was no ice-foot. Along Glacier Gulf for the distance of one hundred and forty miles the glacial ice-cap of Greenland, known usually as the _inland ice_, moves summer and winter--with unbroken vertical front, hundreds of feet in height--slowly but unceasingly into the Greenland Sea. Between the steady southward drift of the vast ice-fields from the Arctic Ocean and the seaward march of the glacier the sh.o.r.e ice was found to be of almost incredible roughness. Magnificent, and unequalled elsewhere in the world, was the sight of this towering sea-face, but scores upon scores of miles of ever-dominating ice-cliffs through their weeks of struggle grew to be unwelcome, so that their end at Lambert Land was hailed with joy.

Here came unexpected food, which did much to make the completion of the survey possible. As they were crossing the smooth fiord ice, Bronlund's keen and practised eye saw far sh.o.r.eward tiny specks of moving animals, and he shouted loudly "_Nanetok!_" (A bear!). They proved to be two mother bears with cubs. In a trice the teams were stopped, the trace-toggles slipped from the few dogs that were used to bear-hunting, who started excitedly on the jump for the already fleeing game. Soon catching up with the lumbering animals, slow-moving on account of the cubs, the dogs, followed their usual tactics of nipping sharply the hind legs of the bear, who stops to drive off the dog or stumbles forward with the dog fast at his legs. Meantime Bronlund and Tobias, the two Eskimo dog drivers, quickly threw off the sledge loads on the floe and drove on with such speed that the hunters were soon within shot. The bears skinned and the dogs fed, the northward march was renewed in high spirits, for the slow travel had sadly reduced their food.

They were nearly in despair on reaching the south sh.o.r.e of Mount Mallemuk, as the open sea made it impossible to pa.s.s around it. With exhausting labor they finally were able to clamber up a projecting point of the seaward-flowing glacier, but their first supporting sledge here turned homeward.

Difficult as had been the ice and the glacier-scaling, they came to a real danger when around Mallemuk they were driven far out on the ocean in order to proceed northward, for the inland ice was impossible of pa.s.sage and great areas of open water gave way slowly seaward to new ice. This was so thin that it bent and crackled as sledge after sledge tried in separate and fearsome order a pa.s.sage that threatened to engulf them at any moment. Yet they came safely to Amdrup Land, 80 43' N., whence the last supporting party returned, charged to explore on their homeward journey the unknown fiords to the north of Lambert Land, where their spring discoveries of new lands had begun.

Pressing on after the return of the supporting sledges, Mylius-Erichsen was surprised and disappointed to find that the coast continued to trend to the northeast, and not to the northwest, as indicated by all charts since Peary crossed the inland ice to Navy Cliff. This northeasterly trend greatly increased the length of the journey needful to complete the survey of the entire east coast. Their equipment had been planned for the shorter distance, and it was evident that this forced detour would soon leave them without food for themselves or for their dogs unless more game should be found.

They thought that this extension would never end, but it was finally reached at Cape Northeast, 82 30' N., 12 W., no less than 22 of longitude to the eastward of Peary's location of the Greenland Sea in his discoveries of 1892 and 1895. The new cape was half-way between Navy Cliff and Spitzbergen, thus narrowing by one-half the largest connecting waterway of the Arctic and the Atlantic Oceans. It was a magnificent discovery, for which some of these explorers were to pay with their lives.

Mylius-Erichsen and Koch counselled seriously together, and well they might. They had been on the march more than a month; coming summer, with a disintegrating ice-pack, and the dreaded Mallemuk mountain precipices, sea-washed at their base, were to be faced on their homeward journey; and to crown all they had provisions for only fourteen days.

Imbued with the high Danish spirit, they duly weighed, with national calmness, the pros and the cons, only asking each other how and what, with their pitiful means, they could further do for the glory of Denmark. The heroic loyalty of both men found full expression in the decision that it was their bounden duty to go forward, and to finish the survey with which they were charged, regardless of possible dangers and personal privations. So Koch marched northward, while Mylius-Erichsen turned westward toward Navy Cliff, nearly two hundred miles distant. The westward explorations had been made much more important by the unexpected easterly extension of Greenland, which left a great gap in its northern sh.o.r.e-line that must at all hazards be surveyed. Starting with Topographer Hagen and the Greenlander dog driver, Bronlund, Erichsen reached a great inland fiord (Denmark), which he naturally took for the one charted by Peary as bordering the Greenland Sea. Though this detour carried him a hundred miles out of the direct route to Cape Riksdag, it was not wholly without results. Twenty-one musk-oxen were killed, which restored the strength of the dogs, whose gaunt frames already alarmed the party.

Here with astonishment they saw signs not alone of the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air, but everywhere were indications of their master--man himself. As they skirted such scanty bits of land as the inland ice had spared, they found along every bay or inlet proofs of former human life. There were huts and household utensils,--left as though suddenly,--circles of summer tents, fragments of kayaks and sledges, stone meat-caches, fox-traps, and implements of land hunt and sea chase, in which both reindeer and whales were in question. They were mighty hunters, these children of the ice, men of iron who inhabited the most northern lands of the earth, and had there lived where these white voyagers of heroic mould were destined to perish.

The signs of human life continued beyond Denmark Fiord to the very sh.o.r.es of Hagen Fiord, thus clearly establis.h.i.+ng the route of migration over which the Eskimo of Arctic America or of the Bering Strait region had reached the east coast, and possibly West Greenland, coming from the north.[27]

The turning-point of Erichsen's fortunes came at Cape Riksdag, where he met Koch's party returning from the north. His discoveries and surveys of southeastern Hazen Land (Peary), where he reached 83 30' N., and his tales of game, encouraged Mylius-Erichsen to go on, though he had food for eight days only for the men, eleven for the dogs, and a few quarts of oil for cooking.

Another fiord (Hagen) was discovered, which proved fatal to the party, as Mylius-Erichsen felt that Navy Cliff, reported as overlooking the Greenland Sea, must surely be therein. He turned north on learning his error, only to eat his last food on June 4. He felt obliged to cover his mistake by going still to the west to Cape Glacier (Navy Cliff) yet 9 of longitude inland. Peary had there escaped starvation by large game, and Erichsen went forward knowing that without game death awaited him.

Now and then they shot a polar hare, a bare mouthful for three starving men and twenty-three ravenous dogs. June 14, 1907, Mylius-Erichsen connected his surveys with Navy Cliff.[28] He had a right to a feeling of pride and of exultation, for his magnificent series of discoveries, covering 5 of lat.i.tude and 22 of longitude, completed the survey of northeastern Greenland. Thus had these adventurous men given tangible form to the hopes and aspirations that for so many years had stirred the imagination of Danish explorers. These discoveries had involved outward sledge journeys of more than seven hundred miles, although the party was only outfitted for a distance of three hundred and thirty miles.

Lieutenant Trolle tells us how startlingly sudden was the change from winter to summer at the _Danmark_, Cape Bismarck. "The temperature of the snow had risen to zero (32 Fahrenheit), and then in one day it all melted. The rivers were rus.h.i.+ng along, flowers budding forth, and b.u.t.terflies fluttering in the air. One day only the ptarmigan and raven, the next the sanderling, the ringed plover, geese, ducks, and others."

Mylius-Erichsen and his comrade had a similar experience just as they turned homeward. Almost in a day the snow-covering of the sea-floe vanished, as if by miracle. Here and there water-holes appeared--the dreadful fact was clear, the ice-floes were breaking up. Forced now to the coast-land, it was plain that return to their s.h.i.+p was no longer possible. They must summer in a barren, ice-capped land, and wait, if they could live so long, until the frosts of early autumn should re-form the great white highway of arctic travel.

Mylius-Erichsen hoped that the outlying valleys of his newly discovered Denmark Fiord would afford enough game to enable them to live, at least long enough to permit them to reach some one of their depots where they could deposit the records of their surveys. They reached the fiord about the end of July, but alas! the big game of the past spring was gone! Now and then they killed a stray musk-ox and, like famis.h.i.+ng creatures, men and dogs ate for once their fill. Again and again food failed utterly, but when death came too near they killed, with sad hearts, one of their faithful dogs, until nine of them had been eaten.

In the recovered field-journal of Bronlund, under date of August 7, we read: "No more food! It is impossible to travel and we are more than nine hundred kilometres [five hundred and sixty miles] from the s.h.i.+p."

On the 8th Erichsen started for the southern end of the fiord, thinking that in its ice-free valleys the chances of game would be increased. As it was necessary to travel on the ice-floes they started across the ice, changing from one floe to another when forced to do so. Unfortunately they were driven offsh.o.r.e and found themselves adrift. Day after day, kept seaward by wind and tide, they strove in vain to reach sh.o.r.e, but it was sixteen days before this was accomplished. When they landed on August 24, Bronlund writes: "We still have fourteen dogs, but no food.

We have killed one of these animals and eaten half of him; the other half will serve as our food to-morrow. The half of a dog for three men and thirteen dogs is not too much to digest, and after eating it we are as hungry as before."

When land was reached Erichsen and Hagen applied themselves to hunting.

Hare after hare and ptarmigan after ptarmigan were pursued and killed.

But alas! the valleys were searched in vain for musk-oxen or reindeer, and it was feared that the big game of the region was exterminated.

Throughout these awful days of suspense and of hunger neither Mylius-Erichsen nor Hagen failed to maintain their courage and cheerfulness. In the intervals of needed rest between the long, exhausting hunting tramps, they kept on the even tenor of their way.

Erichsen wrote a little poem to distract the attention of his companions from their present surroundings. Faithful to the last to his favorite vocation, Hagen made with care and pride beautiful sketches of the country traversed and of the lands newly discovered. Thus pa.s.sed away the brief polar summer, but further details are lacking since Bronlund's journal has no entries from August 31 to October 19.

Meanwhile, Koch had made safely his homeward journey, and, although the anxiety of the officers at the s.h.i.+p was somewhat lessened by the news that game had been found in the far north, yet they were nevertheless uneasy as to the dangers of Erichsen's home travel. Koch, it seems, had found an open and impa.s.sable sea at Mount Mallemuk, so that he was driven to the inland ice. He there found himself obliged to cross a very narrow glacier, where its seaward slant was so nearly perpendicular that a single slip would have precipitated men and dogs into the open sea, hundreds of feet below.

Later it was decided to send a search party north, under mate Thostrup.

Nor was this autumnal march without danger, even apart from the perils of travel along the coast, where the men nearly perished by breaking through the new ice. At Jokel Bay Thostrup was driven to the inland ice, the only possible route. At all times difficult, this travel was now made especially dangerous by the fact that the old glacial surface was not yet covered by the hard-packed winter drifts. Thostrup's whole sledge party on several occasions barely escaped falling into the fearful creva.s.ses, seen with difficulty in the semi-darkness of the sunless days. As it was, several of the dogs were lost when, a snow bridge crumbling, the animals fell into a creva.s.se. Their seal-skin traces breaking, the dogs dropped to the bottom of the ice-chasms, which were sometimes two hundred feet or more deep. With kindly hearts the Eskimo drivers tried to shoot the poor animals, and put them out of their misery, but did not always succeed. As Erichsen had not reached the coast the journey was without result. Thostrup found untouched the caches of Lambert Land and Mount Mallemuk, and turned southward on October 18, unconscious that a hundred miles to the westward his missing s.h.i.+pmates, facing frost and famine, were valiantly struggling against fate and death.

The condition of the arctic Crusoes of Denmark Fiord, though there were doubtless days of cheer and hope, grew gradually worse, and by the middle of October had become terrible, if not hopeless. Although the autumnal ice was now forming, Mylius-Erichsen knew that in their state of physical weakness the long journey of five hundred miles to the s.h.i.+p, around Cape Northeast, could never be made. Hagen agreed with him that the single chance of life, feeble though it was, lay in crossing the ice-capped mountain range, direct to the depot on Lambert Land. Of course, the height of the ice-cap, the character of its surface, and the irregularities of the road were all unknown quant.i.ties.

The state of their field outfit for the crossing of the inland ice betrayed their desperate condition. In general, their equipment had practically disappeared under stress of travel and of hunting. To the very last they had carried their scientific outfit and instruments.

It was a sad day when they recognized that the only way of repairing the great rents in their skin boots was through the use of the sole-leather case of the theodolite. Even that had quite gone, and without needle, thread, or leather, they could only fold wraps around their boots, now in shreds, and tie them on with such seal-skin thongs as had not been eaten. The tent was badly torn, and, with the sleeping-gear--on which had been made sad inroads for dog-food and patches for clothing--afforded wretched shelter against storm and cold.

For transportation there were four gaunt dogs--the last that ravenous hunger had spared--to haul the remnants of a disabled sledge. The winter cold had set in, with almost unendurable bitterness to the enfeebled, s.h.i.+vering men. The weak arctic sun, now skirting the southern sky at mid-day, was leaving them for the winter, so that the dangers of creva.s.ses and the difficulties of glacier-travel must be met either in total darkness, or, at the best, in feeble, uncertain twilight.

Discarding everything that could be spared, they reached the inland ice on October 19, the day the sun went for the winter, and barefooted they travelled across this glacial ice-cap one hundred and sixty miles in twenty-six days. Their s.h.i.+pmate, Lieutenant A. Trolle says: "When I think of the northerly wind and the darkness, when I consider that every morning they must have crawled out of their dilapidated sleeping-bags, though they could have had one desire, one craving--that of sleeping the eternal sleep--then my mind is full of sorrow that I shall never be able to tell them how much I admire them. They _would_ go on, they _would_ reach a place where their comrades could find them and the _results of their work_. Then at last came the end, the death of Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen a few miles from the depot, and the last walk of Bronlund, crawling along on frozen feet in the moons.h.i.+ne. With the sure instinct of the child of nature, he found the depot, ate some of the food, wrapped himself up in his fur, and died."

By Bronlund's body was found Hagen's chart of their discoveries, and his own field-journal in which the final entry runs: "I perished in 79 N.

lat.i.tude, under the hards.h.i.+ps of the return journey over the inland ice in November. I reached this place under a waning moon, and cannot go on because of my frozen feet and the darkness. The bodies of the others are in the middle of the fiord. Hagen died on November 15, Mylius-Erichsen some ten days later."

The courage and self-sacrifice of Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen for the advancement of the glory of their country were based on conditions readily understood. Officials of high ideals, long in public service, honored with important duties, they possessed those heroic qualities which throughout the ages have impelled chosen men to subordinate self to the common weal. Of such has been said:

"Gone? In a grander form they rise!

Dead? We may clasp their hands in ours, And catch the light of their clearer eyes, And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers."

These young explorers instinctively knew that their deeds of daring would give them fitting and enduring fame. Their faith in their country was justified by the tribute that Denmark promptly erected.

But with Jorgen Bronlund, Greenlander, it was quite another tale. The virtues of self-sacrifice and of fidelity unto death are practically ignored in the traditional myths and tales of Greenland, which represent the literature, the religion, the history, and the poetry of the Eskimo people.[29]

Bronlund had long foreseen the outcome, as appears from his journal entry: "We are all dead!" From this early acceptance of his coming fate, and from the Eskimo racial trait of calm acquiescence in destiny, it would be natural that in the field the native would have first succ.u.mbed.

But, charged with a solemn, vital mission, evidently receiving the commands of his leader as the voice of G.o.d, this Inuit was faithful even over fear of death, and by his heroic efforts, freezing and starving, insured the fame of his comrades and so added to the glory of his distant fatherland (Greenland is a colony of Denmark), unknown to him.

Both through the dictates of his n.o.ble soul, and also inspired by his leader, he rose to sublime heights of heroic action. All must indeed die, but he would to the last moment of his life be true to his sledge-mates, Erichsen and Hagen. Without doubt their last words were a charge not to fail to place in the cache at Lambert Land the field-charts and his own journal, so that Denmark might know that her sons had fulfilled their allotted duty.

They mistook not their man, and the fame of Denmark's officers was insured by the heroic efforts and unfailing fidelity of their humble subordinate, the Inuit dog driver, Jorgen Bronlund--Greenlander.

Among the striking features of the beautiful city of Copenhagen are statuary by the famous Thorwaldsen and other great sculptors, which proclaim the fame and preserve the memory of kings and statesmen, of authors and admirals--men great in war and in peace, in civic worth and in learning. It is to the honor of the city that lately there has arisen a unique and striking memorial to commemorate worth and fidelity in fields far beyond the sunset, remote from commercialism and from civilization. Thus Denmark keeps fresh in the hearts and in the minds of her people the heroic struggle unto death of Mylius-Erichsen and of Hagen, and of the Danish Eskimo Bronlund. Such steadfast sense of duty and heroic powers of accomplishment are not the heritage of Denmark alone, but of the n.o.bler men of the wide world.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] The discoveries of Lieutenant (now General) Greely around Lake Hazen, of Lockwood and Brainard in northwest Greenland and Hazen Land, prove that the route followed was via Greely Fiord, past Lake Hazen, across Kennedy Channel, over Hall Land, probably through the upper valley of Nordenskiold Inlet, and along the sh.o.r.es of Peary Channel to Denmark Fiord.

[28] According to the lately published report of the gallant Danish explorer, Mikkelsen, the recovered records of Mylius-Erichsen show that the insularity of Greenland was not discovered by Peary at Navy Cliff.

Peary Channel is only a fiord indenting northeastern Greenland, which extends northward as shown in the attached map of Amdrup Land.