Discovery of Thomsen's Body"Anderson noticed something black laying on the ice alongside
a old piece of ice also a hole where foxes and wolves had been digging he went
over to investigate it and found it to be a piece of new tanned deer skin which
had been dug up out of the hole. We thought this might be a old snowhouse or a
cache so we set to work taking turn, about digging because we only had one small
snow knive made out of a piece of slede shoeing and no shovel we used one of our
plates for shovel after digging down about 4 feet we found to our great surprise
and sorrow the body of Charles Thompson belonging to one of our men from our Cape
Kellot base. Capt Bernards companion. He was lying about 30 inches from a old
ice hummock on his right side with his left hand inside his shirts and the left
sleeve of his shirts over his face his shirts were torn on the left on upper side
and there were cuts on his left upper arm about 1/2 and 3/4 inch long probably
done by some animals digging and tearing his clothes. there was no blood or scabs
visible. There was no mitten on his right hand. He had two skin shirts on and
snow shirt outer shirt new. light hair. inner shirt old. very light. snow shirt
new - light skin socks with black woolen socks inside on left foot a short deer
leg boot. on right foot deer skin camp slipper. sash and belt around his outer
shirt. belt sheet and knife (8 inch Colonial) He was lying in a very peaceful
position like if he layed down purposely for to have a sleep. Which does not seem
reasonable. A man whom was a expert snowhouse builder and having an 8 inch knife
along with him to lay down in the open and freeze to death Unless there was something
that prevented him from building say the losse of his mittens which may have been
the cause. or that he had gone out of his mind. After we dug him out we lifted
his body on the slede and hauled it up to a small patch of bare ground and layed
him there we have nothing to bury him with. After that we searched the vicinity
for a couple of miles around and not being able to find anny more evidence we
went on expecting to find some more. billy and Alignak have small hatched with
them and I know they will cover him up when they come along. I hope Capt Bernard
came out of this all right although I have my doubts" |