KIDNAPPED AS BABY

Evening Star, Issue 19614, 21 July 1927, Page 9

KIDNAPPED AS BABY

TEH YEARS WITH INDIANS DOCTOR'S REMARKABLE LIFE Kidnapped as a three-year-old baby, and brought up by Indians, after they had killed his parents and set fire to their lonely shack in the great Arctic wastes, in the days of tho old Hudson Bay Company, Dr H. J. Esin crude, now lives in Melbourne, where ho arrived recently from tho United States. His life is like a chapter from one of Jack London’s or Rex Beach’s romances, with a touch of ,R. M. Baliantync, who was an old Hudson Bay Company servant.

When Dr Esmondo was thirteen years of age he was recovered from tho Indians’ control by an old missionary priest who had known his parents, and had been searching for the missing boy for ten years. The missionaries directed the boy’s education along such good lines that he qualified as a doctor. Now Dr Esmoude spends his time travelling round the globe. Married to an Australian, ho intends to make Melbourne his home for the future. Of a quiet, reserved disposition, the doctor seems to have absorbed the Indian distaste for demonstration. He impressed by his very reserve. _He spoke of his life among the Indians in the great wastes of snow and ice. “ All I can remember of the awful tragedy that befell my parents,” _ Dr Esmon'de said in a recent interview, “ is of the flames when the Indians set our home on fire. I can recall oven now the flashing of the fire and the coming of the Indian attackers. My father, who was a doctor, and my mother lived in their timber capin on the banks of the Proserpine River. The nearest settlement was a place_ called Rampart, and their nearest neighbor, another Hudson’s Bay Company representative, was about 700 miles distant. I am speaking now of the ‘ seventies,’ when settlers were almost unknown in those regions. The half brood, who did tho rougher work for my father, was absent at the time of tho Indian attack. I learned later. Even to-day I don’t like to think of the awful agonies my father and mother must have undergone on that tragic night.

TEN YEARS OF NOMADIC LIFE. “ The hut was about 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle. All that district was in the Nor’-West Territory, and was under the control of the Hudson Bay Company, which later handed it over to the Canadian Government. And later still it became known as the Yukon. At that time nobody dreamed that the country wovdd one day be invaded by fortune seekers hurrying forward to make their fortunes—so they hoped—on tho goldfields. The yellow metal was well hidden under the snow and ice. “ Tho Dogrib tribo of Indians, who had taken me away with them, were kind to me in their own undemonstrative way. We followed the game whereever it went, and roamed the country for hundreds of miles. All tho signs in the book of nature, as wo knew it there, became as easy for me to read ns is tho alphabet to a Melbourne schoolboy. The great open fields were mv school. When wo found _ game plentiful wo lived well; when it was scarce wo lived loan. Tho law of nature, of course. “ In those ten nomadic years of my life I learned tho Indian dialects and the Eskimo tongue. My training stood me in good stead in after life. _ It taught me to take what came philosophically. I learned early how to make for the timber when caught in a blizzard and dig myself and my dogs into a snowbank. It might be for hours or for days that wc should remain snug in that shelter, but we would he provisioned for our journey and would come out safely. If a man were trapped by a heavy blizzard in what were known as the ‘had lands’—endless miles of open, country without timber—it was all up with him. Only a miracle could save him.” ON DOG SLEIGHS OVER THE SNOW. Dr Esmoudo’s story of his journeys on dog sleighs caused wonder at tho hardihood of the men who go_ out to dangers that lie ahead in their treks over the snow plains. Away north, where they get used to living in the shadow of' the Pole, they treat lightly blizzards and northerly busters lying in wait for them round the next clump of timber.

“ A ninn can do from forty to fifty miles a day on a dog sleigh,” said tlio doctor. “On the other hand, lie may do only from five to ton miles. It depends mostly on the sort of track yon Imre. ‘ "My host single-day performance with a dog team was ,seventy-five miles. That was on a perfect track, of course. Sly longest journey was I,3HD miles, from cast of Dawson City to Nome, on the Alaskan coast. It took mo more than seven weeks to do the trip, “Settlements were few and fin ■ between in those early day-, it was a. long, lonely trek. The Khvauike gold rush had not begun, and it was not the sort of country that the ordinary individual would visit as a holiiay resort. A TEAM OF SIXTEEN DOCS. “ I carried floor, bacon, beans, and coffee. Of course, I had my rifle and ammunition. The dons were fed om-o a day with smoked salmon. An average load for a sleigh would he between 3501 b and -1001 b. “Among the Indians I learned to drive a team of sixteen dogs, which 1 harnessed fan-wise, Indian fashion. This arrangement permitted each dog to bo harnessed cliiecUy to the sledge and it had to pull its weight. “Eight dogs constituted the average teams of the old 1 sonr-do.uzh ’ miners on the Klondike fields. The animals v ere harnessed in couples, one in front of the other. “Usually those dogs are referred to ns ‘huskies.’ The real huskies,_ how : ever, are the clogs used for the lighter work, while the heavier work fs done by malaluits, who hear the same relation to the huskies that the Clydesdales do to the light draught horse.” The doctor explained that the huskies are a cross between tire wolves and the collies that the Scottish employees of the Hudson Bay Company tool* from Scotland with them. They wore ant to he treacherous, and were not the sort of dogs to pet after a day’s work. GLOBE TOUCH WITH THE ESKIMOS.

“ I came into close touch with the Eskimos during my wanderings,” the doctor continued. “I have stayed in their igloos—snow houses—and felt as snug as we arc at an ordinary fire, although it was below aero outside. When they retire to bed the entire family snuggles into the one large family sleeping bag, minus their clothes. They huddle together for warmth. Although the conditions would make a modern city health officer speeehh's's at the fashion in which health laws ara ignored by the nonchalant Eskimo, they are as happy as they arc dirty. “ After ten years of roving hfc ray missionary friend succeeded ■in his quest anti found roc. Ho had learned from a hint hero and a word there I that the Dogrib Indians had a white hoy living with them. Having heard of ray parents’ tragic fate he surmised that I was that boy. Ultimately he tracked me down. I can never forget what he has done for me. strange to look across. tho bridge of years and picture that little white baby that grew to boyhood in such strange surroundings, living a nomadic life with savages, and speaking the Indian and Eskimo tongues.

“Australia will bo my heme in future. All tho same, there are joyous experiences for the hoy or man born ’way up there ncur the Arctic; Circle that are outside the ken of folks who inow naught but sunny, lands..’ 1