SIDE-L:GHTS ON THE PEARY EXPEDITION 81 



Another of the dead lieutenant's books lay near by. It was a 

 hymnal of temperance songs and in the flyleaf was the inscription: 



"To Lieutenant Frederick Kislingbury, from his old friend and 

 well wisher, the author, George W. Clarke, Detroit, Mich., May 18, 

 1881." 



Between the pages of a magazine of the date of 1881 were 

 developed plates that had belonged to George W. Rice, the official 

 photographer of the Greely party. On the floor was a fugitive sheet 

 of paper closely written. It was the dope sheet on all the best per- 

 formances of the trotting horses in America in 1880. 



MacMillan brought out from a bearskin wallet another folded 

 sheet of foolscap and spread it on top of one of the sledges. 



"This may interest you also," he said, and the correspondents 

 craned their necks. There was a part of a humorous speech that a 

 member of the party had prepared, possibly to enliven some holiday 

 feast that was celebrated before the pinch of famine came just 

 two paragraphs and the formal opening, "Mr. Toastmaster." 



"There are some fair friends somewhere, who doubtless would 

 be pleased to be about our festal board to-night," were the words on 

 the foolscap, "but the somewhat inclement weather probably has 

 prevented their attending. I'm afraid the gentlemen assembled here 

 to-night will have more than the usual post-prandial difficulty in 

 returning to their homes, for the aurora borealis is confusing at 

 best." 



Borup picked up in the hut an ocarina, one of those wooden 

 wind instruments that look like a sprouted sweet potato. The lati- 

 tude of Fort Conger was cut into the wood. 



There was much food in the hut, food which the Greely party 

 had been forced to leave behind on the despairing march to the 

 south. Hominy, coffee, tea, canned potatoes, canned rhubarb, bacon 

 which Observer Ernest, long now in the New York Weather Bu- 

 reau, had piled with his own hands, so he said ; hard bread and sugar 



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