IN THE YEAR 1851 Captain Budington, of Groton, Conn., passed the winter in Cumberland inlet, west of Greenland. Here he met Joe and Hannah on the island of Kim-ick-su-ic, so called because its flat centre, covered with grass, resembles a dogskin. Hannah was twelve years old, dressed in fur pantaloons and short fur overdress, and bore the name of Too-koo-li-too in her own language. Joe was a good deal older, and his real name was Ebierbing.

A few years afterward a merchant from Hull, England, Mr. Bolby, met them at Cumberland gulf, where they had come off the island to trade, and prevailed upon them to take the long journey to England. When he reached home he made a large company, and in the presence of these guests the young woman Hannah was married to Joe. Mr. Bolby took them to several places in England and Scotland, and they were finally presented to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Queen was deeply interested in these people from the far North in British America, and asked them to dine with her. If the Queen was pleased with the sincere, uneducated, fur-dressed pair, Hannah was no less pleased with the gracious Queen in her elegant home, so entirely different from a snow hut. She always said Victoria was “very kind, very much lady.” After two years they returned to Cumberland inlet, and in 1860 Charles F. Hall, the explorer, met them.

Everybody in both England and America had become deeply interested in the fate of Sir John Franklin. He had left England in 1845 with two ships, the “Erebus” and “Terror,” with one hundred and thirty-four persons, in search of the North Pole. After two years relief parties were sent out to find them. Lady Franklin spent all her large fortune in sending out ships to search for her missing husband.

Finally, in 1850, the graves of three of the men were found at the far North, on Beechy island, west of Hannah’s home, so that the course which Franklin took was known. Four years later Dr. Rae, of England, heard from the Eskimos that a large company of white men had starved on King William Land, far to the northwest of Baffin’s bay, and he obtained from the Eskimos many articles which belonged to Franklin and his men.

After England had spent over five million dollars in searching for Franklin it was ascertained that both his ships had gone to pieces in the ice off the west coast of King William Land, and that his poor men had starved and frozen, as they wandered over the ice in a vain search for food or friends. Then skeletons were found in boats or in snowbanks, and their boots, watches, and silver had become the property of the Eskimos. Sir John died two years after the ships left England, and must have been buried in the ocean.

Some persons believed that the Franklin party were not all dead. Charles Francis Hall was an engraver at Cincinnati, O. He was poor, and with no influential friends, but he felt that the Lord had called him to the work of finding some of the Franklin men. He read all he could find about Arctic life. He asked money of prominent men and learned societies, and finally, after enough obstacles to discourage any other man, obtained funds to build a boat and put up twelve hundred pounds of food for the journey. A New London firm gave him a free passage on one of their ships, and he went, in 1860, to the far North, discovering relics of Sir Martin Frobisher’s expedition, made three hundred years before. His boat was lost, so he had to return to America, and brought with him Joe and Hannah, who had been with him two years, and who were devotedly attached to him.

In 1864 Hall started again with Joe and Hannah, and north of Hudson bay lived five years among the Eskimos, eating their raw food and living in their igloos or snow huts. Joe, with great skill, would kill a walrus, which sometimes weighs two thousand pounds, or would watch two whole nights near a hole in the ice where the seal comes up to breathe, that he might spear it for his master.

In 1866, May 14, the only child of Joe and Hannah died, while on one of Hall’s journeys. According to custom, the distracted mother at the plain funeral carried the dead baby in a fur blanket suspended from her neck. Captain Hall put this note in the fur cap covering the head of the child: “These are the mortal remains of little King William, the only child of Ebierbing and Too-koo-li-too, the interpreters of the lost Franklin Research Expedition. God hath its soul now, and will keep it from harm.”

Later, Hall visited King William Land, and brought away one hundred and twenty-five pounds of relics of Franklin and his men. Among these was a complete skeleton, proved from the filling of a tooth to be that of an officer of the ship “Erebus.” Hall felt sure now that all the party were dead. Joe and Hannah came back to the States with Hall, bringing a little three-year-old girl whom they adopted. They bought her of her parents for a sled. Hannah named her Sylvia Grinnell, after the Grinnell family, celebrated for their gifts towards Arctic research, but her real name was Punna.

Captain Hall made his third voyage in the ship “Polaris” in 1871 for the North Pole, taking his devoted Joe and Hannah and little Punna. He reached a higher point in Smith sound than had been reached by any other vessel at that time, and anchored in a harbor protected by an iceberg four hundred and fifty feet long and three hundred broad, calling the place Thank God harbor. In the autumn of this year Hall died very suddenly, and his men spent two days in digging a grave only two feet deep. He was buried at eleven in the forenoon, but so dark was it in that high latitude that lanterns were carried. Poor Hannah sobbed aloud at the death of her best friend. The party on the “Polaris” determined to return, but, being caught in the ice, were obliged to abandon her and throw the provisions and clothing out on the ice-floe. In the midst of this work, in the night, the ship drifted away, with fourteen persons on board, leaving on a piece of ice one hundred yards long and seventy-five broad Captain Tyson and eight white men and nine Eskimos, including three women and a baby eight weeks old. Hannah and Punna were among them.

A dreadful snow-storm came on, and the shivering creatures huddled together under some musk-ox skins. Later they built a little house from materials thrown out of the ship, and floated down Baffin’s bay and Davis strait, the ice constantly crumbling and the sea washing over them. They used all their boats save one for fuel, and were only kept alive through the heroic efforts of Joe and another Eskimo, Hans, who caught some seals for them, which were eagerly eaten uncooked, without removing the hairy skin. They had only a little mouldy bread, and the sufferings of the children from hunger were painful to witness.

Once, when nearly all were dead from starvation, Joe saved them by killing a bear. He and Hannah refused to leave Captain Tyson and the party when they were drifting past their homes at Cumberland inlet, even when it was probable that the Eskimos themselves must be used for food by the famished white men. After drifting one thousand five hundred miles in six months (one hundred and ninety-six days), one of the most thrilling journeys on record, the party were rescued off the coast of Labrador by the English ship “Tigress.”

Hannah and Joe settled at Groton in 1873, in a little house purchased for them by their good friend, “Father Hall.” Joe became a carpenter, and Hannah made up furs and other articles on her sewing-machine.

The next year Hannah, at the age of thirty-eight, died of consumption, her health broken by the exposure on the ice-floe. She had long been an earnest Christian, loving and reading her Bible daily. She was tenderly cared for by Mrs. Captain Budington and others, saying at the last, “Come, Lord Jesus, and take thy poor creature home!” A handsome stone marks the grave of the faithful Hannah in the cemetery. Joe came often to the graves on the hillside of Groton, and said at last, “Hannah gone! Punna gone! Me go now again to King William Land; I have to fight; me no care.” He went with Lieutenant Schwatka in the Franklin search party, June 19, 1878, and never returned to the United States.