Man The Fat Hunter

Ondatra zibethicus spatulatus (Osgood). Northwest Muskrat, Ki fa ' - lûk (Mackenzie Eskimo). 

Common throughout the whole Mackenzie basin . Observed Muskrats in the west branch of Mackenzie delta nearly to Tent Island, and in the east branch up to Toker Point, both points being well north of the tree line. On the southeast end of Richard Island, September 17th, 1909, I killed twelve Muskrats in a grass-bordered slough channel. Several rat-houses here were built of heaped-up grass-stems, moss, and mud on the edge of open water; all houses rather small, not over eighteen inches above water and two and a half or three feet across. 

Muskrats were fairly common in small lakes near Horton River, from ten to forty miles south of Langton Bay. In October, I saw several muskrat holes in the ice, two or three inches in diameter. They were covered by little bunches of grass on top of the ice encircling the hole, and were kept open all the time. I saw only one rat-house near shore built up about one foot up top above water. Muskrats have become fairly common on the east side of Great Bear Lake within the past few years, according to Mr. Joseph Hodgson, a well-informed trader of the Hudson Bay Company. The Muskrat apparently does not go much east of the Coppermine River along the Arctic coast. Throughout the Indian and Eskimo country the Muskrat is considered delicious eating. Mr. Maxfield Hamilton , the Hudson Bay Company's agent at Smith's Landing, obtained an albino skin in the spring of 1908, the second one he had seen out of one or two hundred thousand rat skins handled.

When we parted with Dr. Anderson, November 23d, at the mouth of Horton River, we each had about two days' provisions. It was blowing a blizzard from the southwest and was very cold, but the wind was nearly fair for him, and he would be able, we thought, to make our meat cache at Langton Bay in three days (which he succeeded in doing ). It would take us longer, we knew, to get home to our hunting-camp. It turned out that it took us thirteen days. The sun was gone, and there were blizzards more than half the time. We had counted on getting both ptarmigan and rabbits along the way, but on account of the snowstorms and darkness we got not a single rabbit and only seven ptarmigan. 

On the beach near the mouth of Horton River we had discovered the carcass of a bow-head whale that had (we afterward learned ) been dead four years. It would have been securely hidden from sight by the level three feet or so of snow that covered it had not the Arctic foxes smelled it out and by their tracks and burrowings given us the clue. After working half a day to shovel off the snow, we got at the carcass at last, and chopped off from the tongue of the huge animal about a hundred pounds of what we intended for dog feed. When fresh the tongue is mostly fat, but after four years of weathering there remained chiefly the connective tissues, so that what we cut off more resembled chunks of felt than pieces of meat. Of these one hundred pounds Dr. Anderson and I each had taken  half; he took no more because he expected to reach Langton Bay with its cache of caribou and bear-meat in three days; I took no more because I expected to find plenty of small game along Horton River as we ascended it toward our main camp. 

After Dr. Anderson left us we were kept in camp two days by a blizzard so violent that our dogs would not face it. Whether your dogs will or will not face the wind is the test of fit and unfit traveling weather in the Arctic, for a properly dressed man will face a wind that is too much for the Eskimo dog. These two storm -bound days used up most of our ordinary food, and on the first day of actual travel we were on half -allowance. The second day out we boiled up some sealskins that we had intended for boots ; the third day we ate some more skins and boiled a little of the whale tongue. This last all of us found unpalatable, for the tongue had been so long awash on the beach that it had become thoroughly impregnated with sea salts ( other than sodium chloride ). No doubt it was these salts, too, that made us sick, so that two or three days farther on our jour when —between men and dogs — we had finished the whale tongue, we were really better off than while we had it. We had tried slicing it thin and boiling it twice and even three times, but it seemed impossible to get rid of the quinine-like bitterness. 

I must not give the impression that we were really starving, or even suffering much from hunger. We had plenty of seal-oil sealskin bag full of it - and of this we ate all we wanted. All of us found, however, that we could not take much of it "straight” the stomach needs bulky food; it craves to be filled with something. For this reason we used to eat the oil soaked up in tea leaves, ptar migan feathers, or caribou hair. Most commonly we used to take long-haired caribou skin, cut it in small pieces, dip the pieces in oil, and eat them that way. This is, too, the method we used in feeding oil to dogs in an emergency; on this trip, as on many other occasions, we and our dogs fared exactly alike. The tenth day out (December 4th) we camped near the place where two months before we had cached our grizzly bear skins. I had then been so profoundly impressed with their value to science that I had spent a day in burying them safely in frozen ground; now their food value impressed us so strongly that we spent a day in digging them up to eat the heads and paws, though we destroyed thereby the scientific value of the skins. There was one ham of caribou cached at the same place, but that and the heads and paws of the bears all went in one day, as well as five Canada jays we had killed and kept as ornithological specimens, our dogs getting a share, of course. They were now so weak that we had to pull most of the weight of the sleds ourselves, though we were a little weak, too. I have noticed — and Dr. Anderson's experience has been the same as mine —that on a diet of fats alone one gradually loses strength, but that this symptom of malnutrition is not so conspicuous as sleepiness and a mental inability to call quickly into action such strength as one has. 

After a day of high living on the one caribou ham, eight bear-paws, and five Canada jays we were down to a diet of skins and oil again. We also ate our snow-shoe lashings and several fathoms of other raw hide thongs — fresh rawhide is good eating; it reminds one of pig's feet, if well boiled. It occurs to one in this connection ( seriously speaking) that one of the material advantages of skin clothing over woolens in Arctic exploration is that one can eat them in an emergency, or feed them to one's dogs if the need is not quite so pressing. This puts actual starvation off by a week or so. As for eating one's dogs, the very thought is an abomination. Not that I have any prejudice against dog-meat, as such; it is probably very much like wolf, and wolf I know to be excellent. But on a long, hard sled trip the dogs become your friends; they work for you single-mindedly and uncomplainingly ; they revel with you in prosperity and good fortune; they take starvation and hard knocks with an equanimity that says to you : “We have seen hard times together before, we shall see good times again ; but if this be the last, you can count on us to the end.” To me the death of a dog that has stood by me in failure and helped me to success is the death of a comrade in arms; to eat him would be but a step removed from cannibalism. 

After finishing our bear- paws we had only two more days on deer skins and oil, and it was lucky we had no more, for on the evening of the second day when we were about eighteen miles short of our camp, Ilavinirk, Mamayauk, and Kunasluk all complained of weakness and Mamayauk seemed so sick that we feared not being able to move camp the following day. For some days past the dogs had not been pulling much. They had been losing strength faster than we, for although they had about the same allowance as we of deerskins and oil, they were forced to sleep outdoors in the cold while we had al ways our cozy and cheerful camp, and the cold saps strength as quickly as does hard work . Ilavinirk and I had therefore been pulling the sleds with little assistance from the dogs, and now it seemed clear that if he were to cease work and Mamayauk's weight were to be added to the sled, it would be out of the question for me alone to try to move it . Evidently the one thing for me to do was to try to hurry ahead to where Pannigabluk was guarding our meat cache, to fetch a back-load of food for men and dogs. 

Although I was both tired and sleepy I accordingly, at the end of the day's work on December 7th, shared with the rest my last meal of skins and oil, and then, between 8.30 P.M. and 4.15 next morning, I walked through a starlit night against a fairly strong wind the eighteen miles to our camp. I found Pannigabluk up and cooking over a cheerful open fire, for, like many other elderly people, she was an early riser. It was a pleasant home-coming. Contrary to what might have been expected, I did not sit down to a huge meal. I was too tired for that, and sleepy, and tumbled at once into bed. It was not until 10.30 o'clock in the forenoon that Pannigabluk, according to my directions, awoke me to eat. At 11.45 I was on the road back, with thirty pounds or so of dried meat. I met the party about five miles away from our camp, for Mamayauk had felt better in the morning and was able to travel. We made camp where I met them and by noon the next day we were all sitting around huge troughs of boiled venison in our comfortable winter house. Most of the meat we had killed in the fall was still on hand. Pannigabluk had of course eaten some while we were away, and a wolverine had stolen a few pieces from under her very nose — they are animals with a genius for thievery and mischief. For the time our prospects were not bad, except that out of the six Eskimo I now had with me three were more or less sick from the effects of the diet of deer hair and oil -or rather, perhaps, from the effect of overeating when they got where meat was abundant. We now had meat to do us about two months, we thought, but we were short of fat. Some blubber cached on the coast was one of the things Dr. Anderson had gone to get for us. 

When we arrived at our home camp, December 7th, it seemed for the time being that all our troubles were over. We took a look the next day at our stock of caribou meat and it was an imposing pile. But then, frozen carcasses always do make a great showing. We agreed that there must be food enough there for two months for men and dogs, and fresh caribou tracks were numerous all around the house, so that it seemed we surely ought to be able to get plenty more fresh meat when the stock on hand was gone.

That evening when I came home I found that Palaiyak also, as well as Pannigabluk, was sick. Evidently it was the diet that was telling on them. On our journey up river from the sea we had lived on oil straight, and we had eaten so much of it that by the time we reached our camp we had only a pint or two left in a bag of oil that should, under ordinary circumstances, have lasted us for several months. The meat we had was all lean; we had therefore for some time been living on a diet of exclusively lean meat, which had aggravated the diarrhoea from which Ilavinirk suffered and which had now brought down my two companions. 

Evidently, with two invalided out of three, it was not possible for us to proceed farther with our hunt, and we decided to return home. It was not only the illness of my companions that prompted this, but also the belief that Dr. Anderson and Natkusiak must surely have arrived by now, and I felt that with them to help me, the chances of success in the hunt to the south would be immeasurably greater. 

On our return home, however, there was no sign of Anderson, which caused us worry of two sorts ; for something must have gone wrong with him to keep him away so long, and something was likely to go wrong with us, if he did not come back, with only one able hunter to take care of seven people and six dogs in a country which the caribou seemed to have temporarily abandoned. And the tantalizing thing was to feel that the caribou could not be far away and that if we only had one or two able-bodied men to make up a sled party we were sure to overtake them. Inaction was not to be thought of, however, and Ilavinirk , although he was sick, realized this as keenly as I did, so he urged that we make another attempt to hunt upstream , in which he himself and Palaiyak would follow the river, making camps for me, while I hunted the east bank of the river into the Barren Ground, as I had hunted the west bank through the forest on the first attempt made with Pannigabluk and Palaiyak. On December 22d I happened to think that Natkusiak had, two months before, set some dead-fall traps and baited them with pieces of blubber. I now revisited these traps and found that in some of them the blubber bait was still there. I picked these up and brought them home, and that evening all of us had some fat along with our meat, which did us a considerable amount of good.

I did now what I should have done the day before approached the animals directly, got within two hundred and fifty yards and secured them all . They turned out to be two young bulls and a cow with a calf. I did not stop to skin them, but covered them hastily with snow so as to prevent their freezing quickly, and made for the river as fast as I could , hoping to overtake Ilavinirk before he had moved camp far; for we had agreed in the morning before I left that he was to proceed up river on the presumption that I would be unsuccessful in the day's hunt and get as far south as possible, - we thought the farther south we got, the better our prospects. 

Ilavinirk had gone about the programme energetically , and it was only after about ten miles of hard running that I overtook him getting ready to pitch camp in the mouth of a small creek. Daylight was gone and both Ilavinirk and Palaiyak were played out, so that we had to camp where we were and take the chance of wolverines and wolves stealing our precious meat during the night. The next day, when we went to fetch the meat, we found that a wolverine had eaten up a portion of one of the caribou. We shot the wolverine, and as its meat was much fatter and juicier than the caribou meat, it paid us well for the little it had stolen. 

Our hunt had begun well. There is a saying that “well begun is half done.” In our case well begun was four fifths done, for another week of hunting gave us only one caribou, which I shot by moonlight one early morning the only caribou I have ever shot by moon light, although since then I have killed more than one wolf by night. 

This hunt, like the one before, I broke up rather sooner than I otherwise might, with the idea that Anderson must surely have returned by now and that I would get him and Natkusiak to help me. Considering how sick and weak he was, Ilavinirk’s conduct at this time was worthy of the highest admiration , but of course he could not do the work of a well man. We had hunted south about forty miles without finding the caribou there any more numerous than they were near home. Our return journey took us two days, and we got home on the evening of January 5th, to find that Ander son had not yet arrived . 

On the days between December 28, 1909, and January 8, 1910, there are no entries in my diary, for on every one of those days I was off hunting during the hours of daylight and we had no light in the house at night by which diary entries could be written. We had now been nearly a month without oil or fat of any kind, either for food or for light. But on January 8th the women, after gathering together all the old bones and breaking them up, had succeeded in boiling a little tallow out of them, and by its light I made the diary entries for the past ten days from memory, while the women mended clothes and did other sewing they had been unable to do before for want of light. 

Of our entire seven I was now the only one not actually sick , and I felt by no means well . Doing hard work in cold weather on a diet nearly devoid of fat is a most interesting and uncommon experi ment in dietetics, and may therefore be worth describing in some detail. The symptoms that result from a diet of lean meat are practically those of starvation . The caribou on which we had to live had marrow in their bones that was as blood, and in most of them no fat was discernible even behind the eyes or in the tongue. When we had been on a diet of oil straight, a few weeks before, we had found that with a teacupful of oil a day there were no symptoms of hunger ; we grew each day sleepier and more slovenly, and no doubt lost strength gradually , but at the end of our meals of long - haired caribou skin and oil we felt satisfied and at ease. Now with a diet of lean meat everything was different. We had an abundance of it as yet and we would boil up huge quantities and stuff ourselves with it . We ate so much that our stomachs were actually distended much beyond their usual size — so much that it was distinctly noticeable even outside of one's clothes. But with all this gorging we felt continually hungry. Simultaneously we felt like unto bursts ing and also as if we had not had enough to eat . One by one the six Eskimo of the party were taken with diarrhoea. 

By the 10th of January things were getting to look serious indeed. It was apparent not only that we could not go on indefinitely without fat, but it was also clear that even our lean meat would last only a few days longer. We had on December 11th estimated that we had two months' supplies of meat, and now in a month they were gone. Our estimate had not been really wrong, for if we had had a little fat to go with the meat, it would no doubt have lasted at least sixty days, but without the fat we ate such incredible quantities that it threw all our reckoning out of gear. It was not only that we ate só much, but also the dogs. They had been fed more meat than dogs usually get and still they were nothing but skin and bones, for they could not, any more than we, get along on lean meat only. 

The caribou in the neighborhood were increasing in numbers now and I saw them almost every day, but I had the most outrageous luck. One day, for instance, I saw a band in clear, calm weather ; it was one of those deathly still days when the quietest step on the softest snow can be heard by man or beast for several hundred yards. As the animals were quiet I did not dare to attempt approaching them, thinking that the next day might be cloudy or windy or in some way more suitable to deer- stalking, for it is a noticeable fact that even though the day be practically still, the condition of the air when the sky is clouded is such as to muffle any noise and to make the approach to deer within , say , a hundred yards feasible. The next day was windy, but altogether too windy, for it was one of those blind ing blizzards when it is impossible to see more than forty or fifty feet. Because our condition was desperate, I nevertheless hunted that day and walked back and forth over the place where the caribou had been the day before, knowing that it was possible, although unlikely, that I might fall in with the animals. I did not fall in with them , however, and the next day was a blizzard of the same kind and my hunt had the same result. The third day Ilavinirk and I went out together and found the caribou still, strange to say, in the same spot, but a half mile or so before we came up to them a fawn suddenly appeared on the top of a hill near us and saw us. It is the nature of a frightened caribou to run toward any caribou that are in the neighborhood and to frighten them away also, so that there was nothing for us to do but to shoot this fawn, although we knew that the shooting would scare the large band away, which it did. 

January 11th Ilavinirk and I were again out looking for caribou. He used to accompany me in the morning on the chance of our see ing something near home, but as his strength did not allow a long day's hunt he would return early while I went on as much farther as the daylight allowed. On this day we saw simultaneously to the north of us a caribou on top of one hill and three men on top of another hill. These must be Anderson, Natkusiak , and Pikaluk, we thought, and evidently they were hunting the same caribou that we saw. It was one of those still days, however, so that the chance of shooting him was not great for either party. We headed towards the caribou and so did the three men, but the caribou ran away long before we got near it. 

It turned out that these three men were not the ones we had expected, however, but three Eskimo, one of whom, Memoranna, is well known under the name of Jimmie to those who have read Amundsen's account of the Northwest Passage voyage. The others were Okuk, a Baillie Islands man , and a Mackenzie River “boy,” Tannaumirk, who was really about twenty-five years of age but who has an appearance and a disposition that preclude his being considered as grown up. They had come the 200-mile journey from the Baillie Islands to visit us with the hope of being able to get some caribou skins for clothing. They had had no particular luck so far in their hunts, but they had with them a little seal oil which they immediately offered to share with us. That night, therefore, we had lights again in our house and plenty of oil to eat. It was only a matter of two or three days from that time until all of us were in good form again.

Memoranna was unable to tell us anything about Dr. Anderson, and now that our party was in fair health again I decided to go at once in search of him. We also needed to replenish our store of oil somehow , for the supply that Memoranna had brought with him was sufficient for a week or two only. There were three places where we had fat cached away; the nearest was about thirty miles downstream, where we had covered up with stones the fat of three grizzly bears killed in the fall, amounting to about a hundred and twenty-five pounds; ten miles farther, at Langton Bay, was the fat of one grizzly bear, one polar bear, and about half of a bearded seal, all together something over two hundred pounds; while at Cape Parry was the blubber which Dr. Anderson had gone to fetch, consisting of three or four hundred pounds that Captain Cottle had given us from the whale killed on the Banks Island voyage. 

I took with me the boy Palaiyak of our own party and engaged Tannaumirk of Memoranna's party to go with us. In three days we reached our first cache of blubber to find it thoroughly rifled by wolverines. A day farther north we found that at Langton Bay a wolverine had gnawed its way through a two-inch pine plank, had entered our storehouse and eaten all but fifteen or twenty pounds of the blubber. This wolverine had lived so well on our stores that he was the fattest animal of his species I have ever seen killed; his meat was correspondingly good eating.

January 21st we arrived at the cabin built by the wreck of the Alexander, where we had stored our belongings in the fall, and found it occupied by our entire party. It was a great relief to find them all there and a great surprise too, at the time. I never realized until I actually saw them how strong had been my inclination to expect that I would never see them again. But although they were all there, they were by no means well, for Dr. Anderson and Pikaluk were both in bed convalescing from pneumonia. They had had a pretty hard time. Pneumonia is a serious thing under any circumstances and especially in such a place as they were in, for not only was the house unsatisfactory, but the food at their disposal was not such as is suited to sick men. Ever since their convalescence had begun they had been hungering especially for fresh meat, and this was a place where no fresh meat was to be had, except a few foxes, for which Natkusiak trapped energetically. On an average he was getting about one fox per day. A stray caribou had wandered out upon the cape about Christmas time, and Natku siak had secured him also, which was a great help to them. Pika luk had been taken sick first, and Dr. Anderson had nursed him for a week, after which he was himself taken sick. 

It was clear that Dr. Anderson and Pikaluk would not be fit for traveling for a month at least, and there was immediate necessity that a sled go back to our people inland with a supply of blubber for them. I therefore dispatched Natkusiak and Palaiyak at once off inland, for now that I had found Dr. Anderson I did not care to leave him again while he was sick. Tannaumirk also stayed with us, for there was no special reason for his going inland.