Ilatsiak - 65 - Reading the Past

The trip south a few months later to visit Qayaq’s Utkuh people in the Fish River area seemed to be plagued with problems from the beginning. The further west they traveled, the less snow they found and they had to make numerous detours to keep some snow under the sled’s runners. Finally arriving at the narrows, it was clear that the usually firm ice was too far into its melting phase to risk the crossing. They would have to wait until fall or perhaps, if they were lucky someone might come along with a large skin covered umiaq big enough to get them across. A few people had these boats, but none were on this side of the narrows at the moment.
Instead, it was decided that David would go hunting for caribou and seals along the coast, while Qayaq and Tulukaq remained at the narrows to wait in case an umiaq showed up.
David had seldom been along the part of the coast he now walked. It was one of those places that his people tended to avoid, even more since the white sailors had all died there. Even David gave the bay where he had discovered the tents full of dead men some years ago, a wide birth, convincing himself that he’d more likely see caibou further inland than along the coast at that spot. Heading further west than he had ever gone before, David was fascinated by a pillar he could see on a point of land ahead of him. By the end of the second day, he reached it. It was obviously built by white people as its shape and size were unlike the inuksuit frequently made by Inuit. This one was about three feet in diameter and came up to his shoulder in height. Built of the usual flat, brown stones that lay scattered everywhere, he could see that it was not that old compared to most markers seen around the country.
Knowing that canisters of information were frequently placed in these cairns, David began pulling rocks out here and there to see if anything had been placed in this one. Sure enough, he soon found a small wooden barrel, about 18 inches across and double that in length. It was the kind that many food stuffs on board the ship had come in. David removed more rocks until he freed the barrel from its rocky nest. Pulling it out, he found it heavier than he expected and he allowed it to fall to the ground. As it hit the ground, the barrel hoops gave way and the contents spilled out. There was a copper cylinder, now turned a greenish colour and two large books, which David recognized as the two ship’s logs! Opening the one from the Erebus first, he began with the last entry at the end. Now he’s learn the truth.
As he read, he once again started to feel his old illness returning. He had thought he was free of it, but here it was, coming back to him. He had to stop frequently and take a walk out to the end of the point. He would sit there and stare at the glistening sea ice covered with old melt pools and even small streams which rapidly carried more melt water off the top and into the cracks which appeared here and there. In a way it was calming just to sit there. Each time he returned to read some more, the nausea would return. Finally, David gave up. There was nothing he could have done to alter what had happened, the crushing they had taken in the ice, the abandonment several years ago, nor the desperate attempt to break out, one group heading to the Fish River under Crozier and the other led by Fitzjames heading westward to link up with Franklin’s Point Turnaround and then on to Alaska and the whalers who’d be there. Both groups had taken modified ships boats which had been dragged overland from points further north. The last entry written by Fitzjames after Crozier’s party had departed, revealed that a small group had rebelled and had returned to the Erebus. They feared leaving the ships and Fitjames gave them responsibility for guarding the ships while he was away. It was clear he knew they wouldn’t survive, but he had little choice. It was that or admit a mutiny had occurred.
The Terror, it appeared had been crushed and pushed into the shallows and destroyed during the third spring in the ice forcing the small group of ‘mutineers’ onto the Erebus.
Fitzjames had set out from the cairn with the remaining small crew of mostly ill-fit men for his voyage west. David knew immediately that they were too few in number to have been able to make it very far. There were only sufficient to man the oars with no one to spare. He wondered how far they had managed to get. The boat he had found the previous summer not far from the Fish River was obviously one of the ones used by Crozier. Those men had not got very far either it seemed, but it appeared they were crewed mostly by the most severely weakened, the men who would never have managed the trip west in open boats. It was hoped that once they had benefited from a month or two of fresh food reputedly found in the Fish River mouth, they would follow Fitzjames west. David wondered if any had. Remembering his meeting with Crozier, he didn’t look like it.