THREE YEARS IN ARCTIC

Taranaki Daily News, 18 February 1933, Page 5

THREE YEARS IN ARCTIC

TRAPPERS’ ADVENTURES ENOUGH FOR A LIFETIME. GANGRENE AND TYPHOID. Alexander Austin, a sturdy young Scot, was lately speeding across country in Canada by express train for Quebec, on his way to Scotland, home and beauty. His “buddy,” Napoleon VerviUe, FrenchCanadian, minus several toes left on ths shores of the Arctic Ocean, was recovering from gangrene in hospital at Edmonton.' The two young “gentlemen adventurers abroad” came back from three years in the Arctic, packed with the experiences of a lifetime (says the Vancouver correspondent of the New Zealand Herald). The vessel that took the two men north, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s steamer Baychimo, is now lost in the Arctic, caught in the ice near Point Barrow, Northern Alaska, by an early "freeze-up.” Her cargo of furs, valued at about £150,000, was taken off by aeroplane, making several trips to and from Nome. Last year an Eskimo expedition, co-operating with the Law of the Northland, boarded her and returned all safe. She is shifting her position with the slow, lazy . eastward movement of, the ice, which, if the timbers of the stout Clydebuilt craft hold, will carry her in two years through the North-west Passage—a feat none but a ghost-ship has ever yet achieved. DISASTER AND PRIVATIONS. “Sandy” and "Nap” went trapping, in quest of the rarest Arctic fur—white fox and silver fox. They met disaster crossing an arm of the sea from Cape Lambton. When they reached the opposite shore the ice had moved and they were forced to turn back. Six days they tramped from icefield to icefield, not daring sleep as the floes were drifting seaward; They ate the dogs’ rations and raw oatmeaL Then one of the dogs went into the larder. “It tested like soap,” said “Sandy,” as one talked with him at the home of his aunt in Vancouver. Details had to bewrung from him. “We weren’t hungry,” he said, “but we knew we must eat or pass out. It was the dog or us.” Eventually they found a passage to shore and an ’ abandoned cabin, containing a trapper’s stove. One dog short, in “48-below” weather, the adventurers pushed on for the Eskimo settlement at Storkerson Bay. It was here that “Nap’s” feet were-operated on , with a razor. He had committed the indiscretion -of sleeping; out in his, blanketed as he pressed on, hoping to reach tHef‘ Eskimos before his feet gave out The natives sent, for-an aeroplane, with the nonchalance of twentieth century city 1 dwellers, and “Nap" was bundled aloft and- taken 1800 miles to hospital. ' i ATTACK. OF TYPHOID. ’ After ’ a rest “Sandy” continued , his trapping; ’.He-fell ill with typhoid. A trader, whose father was a German, took him to his mother, who in turn was the Eskimo progeny of a Scottish father. The Teuton had a thermometer, saved from the time when he was in hospital at Aklavik. With its aid he diagnosed “Sandy’s”' illness as typhoid, ; and the patient was nursed back to health on a diet of reindeer milk. "Sandy” says there’s more chance Of making a living in his home town, Forres, Morayshire, west of Aberdeen. The rest Of his Farthest North education, he says f he will get from books.