was known, for Richardson had seen none, though he had seen traces of them here and there. None of the Baillie Islands or western Eskimos had within the memory of living men come in contact with any people to the eastward. They knew, however, that there once

had been such, but the opinion was current that they no longer existed. And if they existed, it was said, they were probably like their forefathers, with whom the Baillie Islands people had had dealingstreacherous, wicked, even cannibalistic people who killed all strangers. Besides, the country that lay between them and the Baillie Islanders was devoid of game, and any one who went into it would starve. At this time we had six Eskimos in our employ. We had hired them a year before, and from the first they had been pledged to accompany us into the unknown country to the eastward to look for "new people." When now they heard the terrible character given by the Baillie Islanders both to the country itself and to the people who might or might not inhabit it, they quickly lost all enthusiasm for the undertaking.

Among the uncivilized Eskimos the dislike of salt is so strong that a saltiness imperceptible to me would prevent them from eating at all. This circumstance was often useful to me, for whenever our Eskimo visitors threatened to eat us out of house and home we could put in a little pinch of salt, and thus husband our resources without seeming inhospitable. A man who tasted anything salty at our table would quickly bethink him that he had plenty of more palatable fare in his own house.

When summer came we proceeded by ice and water east along the coast, and the following winter our headquarters were near Cape Parry. We were now on the threshold of the unknown country. The coast-line to the eastward as far as Cape Krusenstern had indeed been mapped by Richardson in 1826. but of the people who might or might not inhabit the country nothing

The winter of 1909-10 proved the least pleasant of our four in the arctic. During the summer our party had been divided; Dr. Anderson with a thirty-foot wooden boat and four Eskimo companions had been left behind near Herschel Island, and though I myself and two Eskimos in our umiak reached Langton Bay early in September, Anderson was unable to get to us until after the sea had frozen over.

On arrival at Langton Bay we immediately set about making preparations

for winter. My Eskimos, Natkusiak and Pannigabluk (both natives of Alaska), were resourceful and good companions for such a task as we now had before us. Although talkative by nature, Pannigabluk did not mind being alone for a day, so we left her to make camp while Natkusiak hunted southeast and I south west in the hope of finding caribou.

At Langton Bay the Melville Mountains, about a thousand feet high, are three miles inland. They are really the sea front of a plateau that slopes almost imperceptibly south from their crest to Horton River, ten miles farther inland. Each of us climbed the mountains by a separate ravine, and each reached a commanding peak at about the same time. We were three miles apart, but could see each other clearly with the glasses. It was evident to me that Natkusiak soon got his eye on game to the south of him. for he spent but little time on his peakthere is always something decisive and unmistakable about a hunter's actions when he sets out toward a distant band of caribou. I read the signs clearly and with satisfaction, but I knew my man and that he needed no help, so, although I saw nothing from my point of vantage (except scenery, which at the approach of an arctic winter has no attractiveness except as a fitting back

ground for caribou), I started southwest in the hope of picking up something.

The afternoon developed for me into a profitless twenty-mile tramp over the spongy tundra. There were few tracks of caribou, none very fresh, and all going east-evidently we were a little too late to intercept the few animals that had spent the summer toward Liverpool Bay and were now moving to other pastures. I had given up hope of game for the day and had turned home, for the dusk of the short night was approaching, when I saw over a small ridge what I took to be the flutter of a raven. A little farther on, and I thought I saw four ravens. They were not quite in my line of march down the mountain toward the sea, so I turned my glasses on them, thinking to see if it was the carcass of a caribou they were feeding on. It was fortunate for me and for the American Museum that I was inquisitive, for this proved my first sight of the Barren Ground grizzly, Ursus arctos richardsoni, perhaps the rarest of the large land carnivoræ of the world in museums and the least known scientifically; but my inquisitiveness was unlucky for the bear, for he became the nucleus of our collection, which finally grew to number nineteen specimens. It was his four paws I

had taken for four ravens; for he had been lying on his back, pawing the air like a fat puppy and fat he was, in truth. On the rump the blubber layer was about four inches thick, for he was an old male almost ready for hibernation. In the hurry of skinning him, a good deal of the fat remained with the hide; I allowed the paws and head to go with the skin for mounting purposes, and the matted, woolly hair was wet, all of which went toward making that skin one of the heaviest back-loads I ever carried to camp-it must have weighed considerably over a hundred pounds. found that Natkusiak had seen several deer, but had been able to approach only three before it became too dark to shoot. He got those three, all fairly fat. In an arctic existence ordered as ours the necessities of life are meat and skins, the luxuries are fat, caribou meat, and shorthaired summer caribou-skins. We had, therefore, begun well. In one day we had secured meat enough for perhaps three weeks, skins enough for one suit of outer clothes, and oil enough for light for a month.

I

The next day Natkusiak and I hunted together. There were no caribou near the coast, but about ten miles inland we saw seven, all of which we shot. Ten caribou and a bear made a pretty good showing for the first two days

of hunting, but we found that we had come to the end of our rope. The animals we had secured had been the rear-guard of the east-moving herd, and it soon became evident that we could reach no more game from a huntingbase on the seacoast. We therefore cached the meat of the bear and the three deer first killed at Langton Bay, and moved camp about ten miles inland to where we had buried the meat of the seven caribou - buried with the double idea of keeping it fresh in the cool ground until the freeze-up (which was now only a few days distant) and of protecting it from foxes.

The second day after moving camp inland I had one of the pleasantest surprises of my traveling experience. The general topography of the country led me to believe there should be a river at a greater or less distance to the southwest. To ascertain the truth of this I had gone about five miles southwest, when I suddenly came upon a deep ravine. Looking down this for half a mile to where it had its mouth into another and deeper ravine, I saw a small band of little Christmas trees straggling up the steep bank. I have never been half so glad to see the sun after its midwinter absence. I had intended to make an all-day hunt, but the news was too good to keep-the Eskimos were at home, I knew, and I

had to go and tell them about it. The branch of evergreen I took to them carried an invitation not to be resisted. None of us had suspected that trees were anywhere near. We had been using small green willow twigs for fire. It was already autumn; ice formed every night on the ponds, and the drizzling rains of the season made comfort impossible on the shelterless barren ground. There were no two opinions, therefore, about moving camp, and the following night found us sitting by a crackling fire of dry wood in a sheltered spruce grove in my creek-bottom. This creek proved to be a branch of Horton River, a stream about the size of the Hudson that it has been our privilege to add to the map of North America.

This was the harvest season on the arctic tundra; the caribou were still short-haired, and their skins, therefore, suitable for clothing; they were still fat, and their meat, therefore, good eating; but we knew that the approach of cold weather was about to change all that. We expected every day that Anderson's party would come to join ours, in which case-between men and dogs-our supply of meat would last less than a month. A whaling-ship had, it was true, landed about three months' supplies for us, besides ammunition and other gear, at Cape Parry, about seventy-five miles to the north, but these supplies we

hoped not to be forced to touch for a long time, for we had several years-it turned out to be three-of work ahead of us, and could count on no reinforcements. We hunted, therefore, energetically every day from dawn till dark, but saw no caribou. One day, however, I picked up two more grizzlies. We were in the habit of considering a full-grown grizzly equal in food value to about two large bull caribou. I also shot a fat white wolf, which gave us a good seventyfive pounds of excellent meat.

On September 29th we had the first heavy snowfall of the year. The snow and ice are one's best friends in the North, for they make travel easy. Up to this time we had been forced to make beasts of burden both of ourselves and our three dogs; we carried our camp-gear on our backs from place to place, and whenever we killed an animal we had to pack the meat and skin home. Carrying a hundred-pound back-load of meat ten or fifteen miles home over boggy ground is more like work than sport, especially after an all-day hunt, when darkness overtakes you while you are skinning your game or cutting up the meat. So soon, therefore, as there was sufficient snow on the ground we made a trip to Langton Bay to get our sled, and then proceeded southeast up Horton River in the hope of overtaking the caribou which, as we knew by their tracks, had gone in

that direction about three weeks before.

Before starting we cached, as safely as we could, not only our store of meat, but most carefully of all the grizzly-bear skins, which we considered priceless scientifically. We took little meat with us, and the first night out one of our dogs stole half of that. On the third day of the up-river journey we supped on the half of an arctic fox I shot that day, and breakfasted on the other half. That morning. however, we came on the tracks of eight young bull caribou. Leaving Pannigabluk to pitch camp, Natkusiak and I followed these, overtook them about five miles away, and killed seven of the eight. We soon found that we had overtaken the rear-guard of the caribou, and as we were anxious that Dr. Anderson's party should overtake us as soon as possible, we built here a permanent house of wood, sod, and moss, and prepared to spend the winter. During the remainder of October we shot sixteen more caribou and hauled their meat safely to camp.

AN ICE

At this point we made the first serious mistake of the year. I myself did not worry much about Dr. Anderson's not turning up, for I considered that he had probably been unable to get any farther than the Mackenzie delta by open water, and that he was, therefore, hardly overdue; but my Eskimos were of the opinion that his Eskimos might possibly have "struck" and refused, on account of fear of hunger, to accompany him farther east than the most easterly Eskimo settlement (at the Baillie Islands). They therefore advised that we should make the 150-mile trip to the Baillie Islands to let the news get out that we had found caribou. If we did not actually meet Dr. Anderson there, they argued, the news would eventually get to his party, and his Eskimos would then be all eagerness to come and help us eat

our store of venison. I yielded to these persuasions unwisely; we should, of course, have stayed where we were to make hay while the sun shone-to kill more caribou while we yet had daylight enough for shooting purposes. Dr. Anderson was in no danger; for if he could not get his Eskimos to go where he wanted them to, he could always stay where they wanted to stay, as I had had to do myself on a former expedition-the winter of 1906 in the Mackenzie delta.

I let the arguments of my Eskimos prevail, and we accordingly left Pannigabluk to look after our camp and protect our meat caches from the wolverines while Natkusiak and I went to the coast to look for Dr. Anderson. We met him and his party on their way to join us; it was a pleasing thing to see him a fortnight earlier than we should have done; but this trip to the coast was the beginning of our misfortunes.