Science: Northern Passage

Year and a half ago Napoleon (“Nap”) Verville of Edmonton, Alberta, had ten toes and a desire to see whether Eskimos were living on Melville Island, 1,500 mi. due north of Edmonton. Last week he was back in Edmonton with seven toes and an exciting report of hardy misadventure.

Nap Verville* left from Selwood Bay in his 45-ft. motored schooner Dora. With him were Alex (“Sandy”) Austin, 21, and some Husky dogs. To get to Melville Island the party had to skirt the westerly shore of Banks Island, the westernmost of the stupendous archipelago which clutters the Arctic north of Canada. Off Banks Island an ice floe struck the Dora, shoved her completely over an uncharted islet, cracked her beyond repair. The two men managed to reach big Banks Island with sledges & dogs, proceeded northward, sheltering themselves in snow-block houses, cooking only one meal a day, at other times chewing quok (frozen meat).

When they reached the north shore of Banks Island, it was still summer, with eight hours of daylight. Said Nap Verville last week: “There’s grass there and flowers that look like little daisies, some yellow and some white. There are willows there, too. I don’t suppose that is their real name, but I call them underground willows. They only grow about an inch high and then turn back under ground and run along for several feet and come up again.

From Banks Island on they were never out of sight of wolves. They crossed the ice of McClure Strait to Melville Island. Wolves! They saw tracks of an Eskimo sledge going northwest toward Prince Patrick Island. Tracks indicated that 16 or 18 dogs were pulling the sledge, six or eight people accompanying them. This sight was first reward for the two hard-ridden explorers. They thus proved what the Canadian Government had contended was unlikely—that Eskimos never passed north of Banks Island. The pleased pair now bore eastward toward Winter Harbor to see what might lie there. Near Winter Harbor they found three herds of musk oxen and an old Eskimo settlement. Reported Adventurer Verville: “These Eskimos have milk-white skins, except where their face and hands have become tanned and weather-beaten.

“I, myself, am almost sure they are sons or grandsons of members of the Franklin expedition.*

“They told me, too, they had found skulls and bones of white men washed up along the coast from Prince of Wales Island right down to Boothia Peninsula.”

The two men started homeward last November. At one time they “had only one oogiuk [sea lion] skin for ourselves and the dogs for two days. But the main trouble was water. If we hadn’t let our beards grow, we would have been dead men. That is the way we got water—just sucked the icicles we broke off our beards. I learned that trick from an Eskimo on Banks Island.”

Nap Verville shot a pair of wolves that rushed him. The bitch supplied them meat for two days. Near Storkersen Bay they visited Alex Stefansson. Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s son by an Eskimo woman.

As the two were crossing the ice from Banks Island to the mainland, the ice broke off. They tried to get to Victoria Island to the east, succeeded in returning to Banks Island.

They ate a dog. Sandy Austin “played out.” Nap Verville got back to Stefansson’s where he “warmed up some seal oil and thawed my feet until I could see how far they had been frozen. I took Stefansson’s razor and cut off the dead flesh. They told me afterward that that was all that saved my life. I stayed there until spring. Then Stefansson took me out on his boat, the Nanuk.”

*His brothers Joe and Noel Verville last winter trailed, trapped and helped kill mad Albert Johnson (TIME, Feb. 29).

*Lost 1848 along King William Island.