"ESQUIMAUX JOE."

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4512, 6 September 1875, Page 3

"ESQUIMAUX JOE."

(From the Standard.) An humble individual, over whose advent no fuss is made, is at present stopping in a Fleet-street Hotel, London, "Esquimaux Joe." It is not given to every one to have drifted fourteen hundred miles on an ice floe, and that incident is amongst those of Joe's career. The cause of his visit to Loudon is to make preparations for joining the expedition in search of further traces of Sir John Franklin. He is a native of Cumberland, the ice-bound tract lying west of Davis's Strait. He cannot say how old he is, but he appears to be approaching his fortieth year. He is a thin, narrow-chested, wiry man, about sft. 3in. high, but though ho lacks breadth, and depth of frame, there is evidence of strength in his set shoulders, and of strong powers of endurance in his make generally, and in his well-knit muscles. At first glance one %vould take nim for a Chinaman ; the distinctive marks of the Mongolian race aro all thero—the strong black hair, the high cheek-bones, almondshaped eyes, and sallow complexion. Joe speaks English tolerably well; he " learned some talk " first—to use his own expression—in King William's Land ; but his English is curiously interspersed with Americanisms, and is pronounced with a slight suspicion of a Christry Minstrel accent. Joe is civilised, wears a round hat, clean linen, a grey coat of the season's mode, and carries an umbrella with a patent oilskin cover —only fancy an Esquimaux walking down Fleet-street with a neat umbrella ] —but, then, his experience of our country is of very long standing. Joe's " first old man," as he calls him, was Captain Penny, of Aberdeen, who brought him to Hull three-and-twenty years ago. Though he thus accurately recalls the name of the commander, for whom he had much affection, he forgets the name of the ship. In the course of his occasional visits to England and the United States (which he saw fifteen years ago for the first time), our visitor from Arctic Cumberland has become so unpatriotic as to cease to yearn for his own land. In the course of our conversation with the Esquimaux, we ascertained a few opinions and a few scraps of information which will bo interesting in view of the attention actually excited by Arctic exploration. This man was one of the Polaris crew which succeeded in penetrating to 82deg. 16min. N., the highest parallel yet reached by ship. Hall, a Cincinnati editor, was leader of that expedition, and would have pushed further on had he not been overruled by his second, an old whaling captain, without a spark of enthusiasm. Hall died suddenly, it is believed, of apoplexy. He always speaks of Hall, who learned the Esquimaux language and habits during a sojourn in the Hudson's Bay Territory, in terms of almost childlike fondness. " Never be such a good man as Hall again—never so good to me." Joe managed the dogs for

Hall on the sledging parties, and the sum of his practical knowledge on this very important branch of Polar travelling is worth recording :—"White men can't drive dogs ; Greenland dogs are no good ; the best dogs are to be had at Pond's Bay" (on the west coast of Baffin Bay, and north of Prince William Land). The Polaris was closely beset by ice in 77deg. N., in June, 1572, and landed nineteen of her company, of whom Joe was one, on an ice floe with boats and provisions. Suddenly the ship broke away, and the nineteen were left to their fate. By a singular interposition of Providence the floe drifted under the influence of the Polar stream down to a point in Labrador, a distance of 1400 miles, and here the derelict explorers were picked up in the spring. During that unparalleled series of trials the little party would have perished but for Joe, who taught his companions to build snow-houses and to catch seals. No better proof could be adduced of the good sense of Dr. Bessel's assertion that no expeditions should go north without some Esquimaux for hunting and dog driving. The expedition on which Joe is now going is a small private one, the only vessel engaged being the yacht Pandora ; but the command is in the hands of a competent and resolute officer, Mr. Allen Young, formerly of the Fox, the hero of the terrible sledge journey across the hummocks in Oresswell Bay in 1859, when his sledge broke down and he became snowblind, and had to be left alone in a bag for forty-eight hours. The Pandora will take a different route from the expedition that lately left Portsmouth, choosing the western passage by Lancaster Sound, her primary object being to light on some survivors of the fate of Franklin. The Esquimaux is emphatic in the belief that " nobody ever looked for Sir John Franklin right—every time hurry—no finding out things." His notion is that a summer stay in King William's Land is necessary. By tho way, he states, as if with pride, that the people of King William's Land "like fight, and carry knives all the time." Nature will peep out, and the dark eyes of Joe twinkle as he says this. His ideas as to the success of the expedition under Captains Markham and Nares are not reassuring. He thinks that the leading ship may possibly get as far as the south side of Polaris Bay, but no further. Progress after that is matter of mere luck. There is very bad ice in Bobeson Strait; it lies in great slabs of from fifty to ninety feet high ; and, altogether, when the chances of getting to the Pole are mentioned, Joe looks serious, and gloomily shakes his head. It is pleasant to know, however, that this Esquimaux, who served for years on a Scotch whaler, has no hesitation in admitting that Englishmen and American men are the best for an arctic expedition.