I cannot describe my feelings when these monsters surrounded us, their great tusks almost touching the boat, and the bullets whistling about my ears in every direction. Whenever a volley of shots greeted them, the whole bunch jumped into the air and then plunged under water, leaving us in doubt as to where they would reappear. If they should happen to come up under the boat, we should probably be the ones to take the plunge; this uncertainty was very exciting, especially as the brutes went down and came up in bunches, leaving us seventy-five or a hundred to fight while the rest plunged.
Ikwa had evidently never seen so many “awick” at one time, and became very much frightened, finally pounding the sides of the boat with his harpoon and yelling at the top of his voice, in which he was joined by Matt. When we finally got out of the turmoil we had four heads with tusks, and would have had more, but the bodies sank before we could secure them. As we could not proceed up the gulf in the boat, we camped about three miles southeast of Cape Cleveland. The boat was pulled up on a bit of sandy beach, and with the aid of the boat-hooks and a couple of tarpaulins we fixed up a very comfortable boat-tent.
Thursday, September 24. It was decided last night that Matt and Dr. Cook should set out on foot for “Nowdingyah’s,” an Eskimo camp of which we had been in search; so we had coffee early, and by eight o’clock the boys started off with their rifles and some pemmican.[2] About ten o’clock the boys came in woefully tired, vowing that they had walked forty miles, and reported finding Nowdingyah’s camp, but all four igloos were deserted. Ikwa said that their owners were “pehter-ang-ito” (far away) hunting; these northern Eskimos are in the habit of leaving their settlements, to which they periodically return.
It may be of interest to my readers to know just what pemmican is. The best lean beef is cut in strips and dried until it can be pulverized, then it is mixed with an equal quantity of beef suet. To this mixture are added sugar and currants to suit the taste, and the whole is heated through until the suet has melted and mixed with the other ingredients, when it is poured into cans and hermetically sealed. It is only a modification of the old-fashioned way of preserving meat when whole families drove out on the prairies and hunted buffalo. As soon as shot the buffalo was skinned and the green skin sewed into a bag, into which the meat, after it had been sun-dried and mixed with the suet, was packed. As the skin dried and shrunk, it compressed the meat, which in this way was preserved indefinitely. Pemmican is not at all unpleasant to the taste, especially if eaten with cranberry jam.