Trapping, Exploring, Hunting

...asdog meat was low, it was decided that the morrow should be used in securing as many as possible of these longhaired monsters.

On the morning of the 29th a heavy fog threatened to spoil our sport. We managed to get away at 8:30 A.M., with the two light sleds leading and all the dogs, as the thick clouds seemed to be lifting. At 11 o'clock in the forenoon, after we had been wandering around in the drifting mist, guiding our movements as much as possible by the wind, we came on the trail of some six or seven of the animals apparently not ten minutes old. Great fears were entertained that the musk-oxen had heard our approach and were now probably doing their level best to escape. The dogs were rapidly unhitched from the sled and from one to three given to each of the eleven men and boys present. Taking their harnesses in their hands or tying them in a slip noose around their waist, they started at once on the trail, leaving the sleds and a few dogs with two Innuit women. The dogs, many of them old musk-ox hunters and with an appetite sharpened by hard work, and a diminishing ration, tugged like mad at their harnesses and hurried along at a rate that threatened a broken neck many a time over the rough gorges. We soon came upon them and dispatched ten, including calves. 

The musk-ox of the Arctic is about two-thirds the size of the American bison, but in appearance is nearly as large owing to immense heavy coat of long weeping willow-like hair that covers him down to the knees, as if he was carrying a load of black brush The musk-ox calves are readily captured by dogs. However, it is impossible to furnish them with proper nourishment to sustain life and I believe there are no cases on record where these most curious animals have been exhibited at a museum. 

Again we were compelled to camp without water. The elevated country was getting quite sandy and destitute of the numerous lakes we had been accustomed to travel upon. The first two days of May, prophetic of the month, kept us snugly confined to our igloos while a fierce northwest storm raged without. On May 3rd we found a small lake which promised water and we were not disappointed, although we had to dig through the thick ice to a depth of eight feet and four inches. Reindeer were also getting scarcer through this apparently waterless country and but a few scattering ones were to be seen or secured. Our musk-ox meat came in a very fortunate nick of time.

Continuous bad weather delayed us at Cape Herschel until June 12, when we started off with a single sled, led by Toolooah accompanied by his family and boy Awanak. We left all our heavy luggage. The remainder of the Innuits of the party were to remain at Camp Herschel until our return, unless any delay should occasion my remaining longer than the breaking up of the summer's ice. In this eventuality, at their own judgment they would return to the mainland where the reindeer are more plentiful. 

On June 15 the last of the hard bread was used and the time was now rapidly approaching when our diet would be a la Innuit until Camp Daly was again reached - some six months hence. My intention was to march to the head of Washington Bay, (which I did on the 17th) thence directly northward across land to Collinson Inlet (before the rapidly disappearing snow was too far gone to render sledging impracticable) then my search would be continued on the salt water ice along the coasts, which lasts a month or six weeks longer. By this means I hoped to reach the mainland of Adelaide Peninsula before the latter ice broke up, and not be coming long distance on our way homeward on the autumn snows. My route across land to Colinson Inlet would, according o the Admiralty charts, take me some wener or twenty-five miles.

On June 23...Arctic aquatic fowl were now getting quite plentiful, and, to vary our monotonous diet of reindeer and seal meat, we secured many. 

The best summation of the Expedition is in Schwatka's own words, delivered at a dinner in his honor given by the American Geographical Society at Chickering Hall, New York City, on the evening of October 28, 1880. In his Address, he stated: 

"It was the longest sledge journey ever made both in regard to time and distance, having been absent from its base eleven months and four days, and having traversed 2709 geographical or 3124 statute miles if estimated to Marble Island, our nearest point where we returned to civilized food). 

"It was the first sledge journey conducted through the heart of an Arctic winter, and a winter pronounced by the natives to be exceptionally severe as the meteorological table will fully confirm. Not but that quite a number of sledge journeys have been undertaken by white men in the Polar midwinter, but I know of none before this encompassing the whole duration of that unfavorable season; and, in fact, they have been generally very short and under circumstances where comfort commensurate with the exposure could be easily attained at some suitable base."

 "It was the first expedition wherein the white men of a party lived solely upon the same diet, voluntarily assumed, as its native allies. This fact, coupled with those already stated, shows that white men are not only able to live the same as Esquimaux in the Arctic, and with equal comfort, but also to prosecute any projects that their superior intelligence may dictate or their ambition may desire, and under all the circumstances that the natives themselves would similarly venture to undertake for less laudable objects. 

"In its searches the party was the first to make an extended summer's exploration over the ground covered by the unfortunate Franklin Party crews in their deplorable endeavors to reach aid although a glance at the map will show that their base was in a far less favorable position for such an undertaking than that of the greater majority of the numerous searchers who proceeded us. "It established the loss of the records of the Franklin Party beyond all reasonable doubt. As these alone have been the main incentive to the many expeditions since Dr. Rae's in 1854 (who established the loss of the party) this success, although unfortunately of a negative nature, is of no small character, since this fact, coupled with the loss of the party, and the burial of their dead, must necessarily settle the Franklin problem in all its important aspects."