The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1897-12-19

yarn Of serpent ship navigated by crew ma
tves from a land at the North Pole.
But the closer the whaIers questioned the excited
and laxative natives the clearer it became that they
had seen mysterious craft of some kind, and that
they really had foundation their wild
1.-THE natives at Belcher Point" said Jim Wheeler.
intelligent New England whaler who out
with the fleet of 1885, were that this ghost ship
was some sort of messenger from the other world.
They conceived the place to be island paradise at
the polar center reserved for the good great
kmos, and governed by strange Eskimo spirits. Their
idea that terrible catastrophe was about to
visit the world, kind of universal shakeup At the
time farther to the east the natives believed the
queer ship was-well-a hallucination, device of
hendish spirits of the polar region to ence explorers
and hunters to their deaths.
you know the Eskimos can lie the Arabians to a
standstill. They have fertile imagination and
are full of odd weird fances about the night
that coaks the north almost all the No is
surprised at this state who has passed through the
weird experiences of the poars felt the peIt-
ing of the electrified particles in the atmosphere and
heard the kissing, whizzing noises that to be
nowhere and everywhere at the time Another
influence oppressive and bewidering to the ignorant
mind is the awful din and of the bucking ice
pack, above which the human voice can hardly make
itself heard. No wonder the Eskimos believe that
superhuman power, in the exaggerated form of man.
lives in the center of the polar darkness and there
performs prodigtes like the Cyclops.
This tradition of theirs about the ghost shin
that always appeared beating through the ice pack
they accepted with keen delight. 1t almost too bad
the vessel didn't tie up at the pole before 1t the
as voyage out that wrecked Indian delusion that
might have given birth to no end of interesting fables
and mythical literature"
Here is the true story Of this mysterious ghost
ship or Flying Eskimo that has been puzzing the
northern whalers and wondering Eskimo for years
past. One fair June day, the few Americans who had
wntered in the far northern settlement natives at
Cape Smythe astonished to approaching on
the distant western and in the path the spring
ice little speck which at first they took an
approaching The Arctic jam Just break
ing and it was remarkably early such an arrival
Exepectantly and specuativey the daring visitor was
watched until it doomed up, apparently under fore
and aft Sails and with jbs and staysais set. When
within miles, however, 1t plain that the
vessel partly dsmantled bark set firmly in a
ragged field of ice which moving eastward the
rate of five six miles hour There no signal
of distress flying The Americans shore discharged
their firearms without attracting any notice from
those board. The Americans shore felt
certain that the luckless must have met with
some terrible disaster. To they believed that
the strange vessel the floating sepulchre of luck
whalers caught in the ice pack the previous fall
No time was lost in jumping into kayaks and put
ting off to the derelict From the ice rim it three