Many years ago, on one of my first trips to the North, I once asked a white man what impression the Barren Lands had made upon him the first time he saw them in the winter. The man was one of the toughest specimens of a trapper one could ever hope to meet anywhere. He had roamed north of the trees for twenty years. He was illiterate, coarse and hardened to an unbelievable extent by the life he had led, but he had a kind of passionate love for the desolate country he knew so well.
He looked at me in a startled way, scratched his head and pondered.
“That’s a pretty hard thing to say,” he answered, “for I have no education. I guess a city guy could, if ever he was able to get there.
When I reached the Barrens for the first time, I gave them one good look from the top of a hill. The only thing I remember thinking to myself was—Hell! What’s the use of swearing now?”
Several years later I was travelling in the same country in the heart of winter, and I thought of what my friend the trapper had told me. No other words could have described better what I felt at that moment. The cold was intense. The wind blew in savage gusts, lashing the snow in a stinging, powdery smother. Nothing in sight but rolling hills of glaring ice, with a few bare boulders showing their dark heads above the white desert. Nothing to break the awful monotony of that God forsaken country. Not a tree. Not even a shrub. Not a sign of animal life. Not a track.
In winter everything goes south—the birds, the wolves, the foxes, even the caribou. White men alone in their restlessness venture northward.
“The more fools are they,” I reflected bitterly as I plodded behind my sleigh in the teeth of the gale.
Since dawn we had fought our way, mile by mile, across those everlasting hills. I say “we”, for I had a companion and a guide, an Eskimo who drove his own team of dogs while I looked after my own. Unable to understand one another, except by signs, we made a strange pair struggling through the wilderness.
After the noon meal, the native iced the runners of my sleigh then motioned to me to go on, pointing the direction towards a high hill which one could dimly see on the horizon. Meanwhile, he proceeded to ice his own runners in the usual leisurely manner of all Eskimos to whom time, weather and hardship mean nothing.
For three hours I kept on my way without being caught up by my guide.
Darkness was fast approaching and the gale increased, turning into a regular blizzard.
Tired out, anxious to make camp, I began to worry seriously about my companion. I was certain that I had not strayed from the route he had shown me, but I was afraid something might have happened to him somewhere behind me.
Seeing a small depression behind a rocky ridge where I knew I would find a certain amount of shelter, I drove my dogs to it and unhitched. Still no sign of my man! Leaving my dogs curled up beside the sleigh I started back on the trail. I walked for about ten minutes, stopping now and then to listen. Nothing but the wailing of the wind and the angry hiss of the driven snow.
I was frightened! Suddenly, a strange noise reached my ears through the howling gale. I thought I heard someone singing! In a few minutes the song increased in volume. I waited! Then I saw, emerging from the depths of the swirling snow, a team of five dogs, straining at a sledge. On the top of the load sat my Eskimo friend apparently oblivious to his surroundings. He was singing at the top of his voice and the words I heard, distinctly, were English—“It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go.” I stood there paralyzed with astonishment until he saw me, stopped and gave me a lift to camp.
As soon as I recovered from my surprise I started to question him in English. Not an answer could I get from him, except a chuckle and the same words I heard him singing.
Two weeks or so later, on our return trip, we stopped at one of our outposts. Our trader was entertaining a small group of natives with a gramophone and the tune was “Tipperary”. Then, and only then, did I get the explanation of my Eskimo’s sudden but limited outburst in English.
He had listened so often to the well-known tune that he had eventually mastered the words of the chorus which he could repeat by heart.
He had no idea of their meaning and those words were the only ones he actually could pronounce in the English language.