Upernavik

“ The northernmost is Upernavik, beyond which there are no Christian people, or people of any kind living on the earth, except a few skin-clad savages. And, strange enough, this most northern place of Christian occupation bears a name which signifies “the summer place,” derived from Upernak, or, as it might be better spelt, Oopernak, the native Esquimaux word for summer.
Julianashaab, on the other hand, expresses a compliment to royalty. It was founded nearly a hundred years ago, at which time a king sat on the Danish throne who had a queen named Juliana. ”

“ I do not mean to be understood to give this as by any means a fair sample of the influence of Christian civilization upon the Greenlanders, for I have had frequent occasion to testify to the excellence of the native character in many conspicuous instances. Hans is nothing more than one of that very numerous class common to all peoples. Even the pastor of the little church at Upernavik can do nothing to help the mischief-making sinner; for the reader must know that Upernavik has a church. It was here that Mr. Anthon, now at Julianashaab, performed his first missionary labors. ”

“ Our explorers were safe; their perils were over!
Having lived in the open air for eighty-four days, they felt a sense of suffocation within the walls of a house. But divided among many kind, hospitable homes, they drank their coffee and listened to hymns of welcome sung by many voices.
The people of Upernavik fitted up a loft for the reception of the wayfarers, and showed them great kindness. They remained until the sixth of September, and then embarked on the Danish vessel "Mariane," whose captain was to leave them at the nearest English port on his way to Denmark. ”

“ Upernivik (Upernavik) and Tasiusak, lying still farther north in 73° 24' north latitude, are the last European settlements in Greenland, gloomy abodes lost amid the snows at the foot of yellowish or brick-red rocks. In winter the sun sets for eighty days, yet by a sort of mockery this glacial district bears an Eskimo name meaning "spring." ”

“ Sverdrup sailed from Upernavik on August 5, in our old friend the Fram, which had been refitted for the new voyage, and was soon well on his way up Smith Sound. On reaching Hayes Sound he decided to go into winter quarters there, as it was, of course, impossible to attempt to reach a much higher latitude that season, and there was plenty of good work to be done in the neighbourhood. ”

“ Then Greenland soon came into notice, and, at various times, colonies and missionary establishments, under the Danish flag, were formed along its coasts. At present there are thirteen settlements, besides commercial and missionary stations. The most northern official settlement is Upernavik, in lat. 73° N. but there is a fishing establishment, called Tesswisak, some few miles still farther on. Holsteinborg is in lat. 66° 56′ N., long. 53° 42′ W. This latter place was, according to Crantz, the fifth colony begun in Greenland, and first settled in the year 1759. ”

“ Some of the governor’s family had retired to bed; but our coming had quickly roused them, and every possible thing was done to give us welcome. The governor, or colonibestyrere, Herr Knud Fleicher, was personally known to me before, he having been at Upernavik in that capacity in 1853 and 1855. I was much surprised to find him there, and the surprise was not the less agreeable when he brought into the room a pretty, modest, and intelligent young lady of nineteen, whom he introduced as his daughter, saying to me, “Know you dis one? She comes to tank you.” ”

“ We had scarcely completed our coaling, when the weather began to threaten, the barometer fell, and shortly after noon it blew almost a gale from the southward. Our anchors soon began to jump over the ground, and the drift ice to set in. Steam was immediately got ready, and we ran through the straits to the north-westward. Passing the magnificent headland of Swarten Huk, we touched at the settlement of Proven to purchase dogs and seal-beef, and then bore away for Upernavik, steering close along the coast, and intending to attack the breeding-place of looms, at Saunderson’s Hope ”

“ It is probable that Greenland slopes westerly in general, having its main axis of elevation near the eastern border. It may be compared to a broad platter inclined westerly, with occasional chinks in the sides through which the ice discharges itself as if it were a viscous body. The principal discharge of icebergs is upon the western side into Baffin's Bay. Not less than thirteen glaciers are found upon the western side to the south of Upernavik, about 73° north latitude, and the largest ones occur farther north. ”

“ Upernavik, with its little colony of Danish officials and Eskimo natives, was left behind on the 21st of August, and the Polaris continued her adventurous course. Six days later, she arrived at Kane’s winter-quarters in 1853–55, and at the point where he abandoned his little vessel, the Advance. Next day her crew found a huge wall of ice in front of them, and doubled round it by steering to the west-north-west. Then again putting their vessel’s head to the northward, they made their way up Kennedy Channel, and gained the threshold of what Dr. Kane had supposed to be the Open Polar Sea. ”

“ The expedition next touched at Lichtenfels. Dr. Kane obtained here a valuable addition to his outfit of fur clothing. Stopping at Proven, a supply of Esquimo dogs was completed; lying to briefly at Upernavik, the most northern port of civilization, their equipment in furs, ice-tools, and [11] other necessary articles known to arctic voyagers, was rendered still more complete. At this last port the services of Carl Petersen were engaged for the expedition. We have met this intelligent, heroic Dane among our "Arctic Heroes." He will for a long time appear in the shifting scenes of our story. ”

“ That there was once no break in the communication between the natives of the region about Upernavik, along the shores of Melville Bay, there can be no doubt; and Kalutunah appeared to think that the same would hold good in the opposite direction. The ice has accumulated in Smith Sound as it has in Melville Bay; and what were evidently once prosperous hunting-grounds, up to the very face of Humboldt Glacier, are now barren wastes, where living thing rarely comes. At various places along the coast Dr. Kane found the remains of ancient huts ”

“ The natives of South Greenland prepare themselves for a long journey in the cold by a course of frozen seal. At Upernavik they do the same with the narwhal, which is thought more heat making than the seal, while the bear, to use their own expression, is ‘stronger travel’ than all. In the far north, where the explorer has to carefully husband such food as good fortune may cast in his way, no portion of an animal is wasted.” The Doctor, when speaking of the value of every part of a beast, says: “The skin makes the basis of soup, and the claws can be boiled to a jelly ”

“ Our country is a great island extending from the region of the former Ural mountains to the former Hudson Bay. It includes northern Russia, Finland, northern Norway and Sweden, Iceland and Greenland and part of Canada. It extends northward to the pole and it is bounded on all sides by the great mountain ranges which rose from the sea.
Our civilization is largely English speaking, and the seat of government is Upernavik in Greenland. Our population is small, considering the geographical extent of the country, and we are encouraging in every way the production of large families. ”

“ My pilgrimage from the famous modern Uppsala to Gamla or Old Uppsala will always be one of the choicest of my Scandinavian memories. Gamla Uppsala was the ancient capital of Sweden and the last stronghold of the pagan cult of Thor and Odin. In the dark forests of this Uppsala during heathen times lives of men as well as of beasts were sacrificed to the mighty gods of the North. ”

“ Meek, I believe?"
"Yes, old Joe Meek, the pioneer—you have heard of me."
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Mann. "You have caught the spirit of Oregon—you are Oregon. You have made the interest of this great country your life; I honor you for it. I feel the same spirit coming over me. What we do here is done for a thousand years, for here the great life of the Anglo-Saxon race is destined to come. I can see it; I feel it. The morning twilight of time is about me. I can hear the Oregon calling—calling; to teach here is a glorious life; the whole of humanity is in it. ”

“ For more than three hundred years the territory of Oregon was a prize for which the most powerful nations in the world contended. And for this country one after another, Spain, Russia, France and England played the rights of discovery, the game of diplomacy and the bluff of threatened war; and all of them to see in the end the final word and the rightful decision rendered, almost wholly by half a hundred American farmers in the Willamette valley. Such a page of exciting incident, unlooked for surprises, and far-reaching consequences cannot be found in the history of any other state or nation. ”

“ After planting trading posts at many available points in the interior and doing a large and profitable business with the Indians for two years throughout much of the territory of the present states of Oregon, "Washington and Idaho, together with a large trade with the Russians in Alaska, Astor's partners and managers in Oregon were compelled to take the alternative to fight, fly or sell out to their rival, the Northwest Company. ”

“ There will be many days on the road when such a respite will be very welcome, especially to the feminine members of the party. Excepting Portland, there is no large city in the territory covered by our tour; indeed, in California, north of San Francisco and Sacramento, there is no town larger than Eureka, with perhaps fifteen thousand people, while Eugene and Salem in Oregon and Reno in Nevada have approximately the same population. ”

“ Our efforts, however, in behalf of Minnesota brought on a great deal of envy and ill-will from people in other States who were interested in seeing the Scandinavian emigration turned towards Kansas and other States, and this feeling went so far that a prominent newspaper writer in Kansas accused me of selling my countrymen to a life not much better than slavery in a land of ice, snow, and perpetual winter, where, if the poor emigrant did not starve to death, he would surely perish with cold. ”

“ Lying in the trail by the side of a log with the hole made by a rifle bullet through him, Chief Umtux was more dangerous dead than living, and instantly the battle lines were formed in earnest and for a few hours Chief Umtux lay upon the crimsoned soil of what it seemed would at last be a genuine battle-ground of Northwestern Oregon. Steadily the two forces stood against each other, but fortunately no other shot was fired and Western Oregon was spared an Indian war. ”

“ But the people of the north-eastern part of Oregon asserted, whether justly or not, that Halleck favored California, by using the main strength of the troops in his division to protect the route from Chico to the Idaho mines, so that the California merchants should be able to monopolize the trade of the mines, while the Oregon merchants were left to suffer on the road from the Columbia River to the mines of Idaho, or to protect themselves as they best could. The stage company suffered equally with packers and merchants. ”

“ About three miles north of Upsala, the seat of the great university, is Old Upsala, more sacred than any other spot in Sweden: for here are the lofty mounds which tradition has consecrated as graves of the gods,—the gods who aforetime were held in reverent awe and honor by the Scandinavian race, and who, to this day, hold some sort of sway over the rude masses of the North. ”

“ Washington Irving's Astoria and Captain Bonneville, and the political cry of 'Fifty-four forty or fight'—which meant American possession of all south of Alaska—had roused the attention of the people of the United States to the merits of Oregon, and caused them to make extravagant claims. Long before the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which established the 49th parallel as the boundary, M'Loughlin had foreseen what was coming. The movement from the east had become a tide. The immigrants who came over the Oregon Trail in 1843 were starving, almost naked, and without a roof. ”

“ For more than a hundred miles the narrow road twists through these giant trees, coming at times to commanding headlands from which there are endless vistas of shining sea. We21 visited Eureka, the wonder city of the North, long shut in behind ranges of almost impenetrable hills and dependent on the sea alone—though now it has a railroad and lives in hopes of the coming of the new state highway. We saw Shasta of the eternal snows and Lassen’s smoke-shrouded peak. We followed the rugged coastline of Mendocino County with its stern headlands overlooking leagues of glorious ocean. ”

“ The boundary was at last settled, and still Oregon got nothing but promises, and those at long intervals of painful waiting.
In his message to the legislature December 7, 1847, Governor Abernethy said: "Our relations with the In dians become every year more embarrassing. They see the white man occupy their land, rapidly filling up the country, and they put in a claim for pay. They have been told that a chief would come out from the United States and treat with them for their lands; they have been told this so often that they begin to doubt it ”

“ The death of Umtux was a direct blow at the peace that then prevailed between the Indians and the white men in Western Oregon, and his murder was an ad of violence that disgraces the pioneer annals of Oregon, but there was more to come, and what happened afterwards shows in still another light the less noble side of the pioneer character, for the pioneer men had the faults of their virtues. ”