82 SIDE-LIGHTS ON THE PEARY EXPEDITION 



all these stores which had been denied to the twenty-five desperate 

 men who wintered at Cape Sabine in 1883. 



McMillan and Borup ate some of the food and took other parts 

 with them when they left. It was as sweet and clean as the day it 

 was placed there. 



Other relics of former exploring expeditions these two from 

 the "Roosevelt" found during the course of their long hunting trips. 

 On Littleton Island, in frozen Smith Sound, they came across the 

 remains of the frame house that Commander Hall, of the ship 

 "Polaris," had erected at Thank God Harbor on his expedition of 

 1871. The Arctic \vinds had strewn most of the timbers over half 

 the island, and nothing but some of the foundation posts remained. 

 Near by were some brass fittings stamped "U. S. S. 'Polaris,' Wash- 

 ington Navy Yard, 1871." 



Still another record of past incursions into the frozen silence 

 fell to the hands of the "Roosevelt's" men. One day they came to 

 the hut of an Eskimo, who called himself Jacob Schunah, away down 

 a hundred miles and more south of the "Roosevelt," at Cape Sheri- 

 dan. Asking for food, McMillan was surprised to have whale meat 

 served on a real china plate. He turned the plate over when he had 

 finished his meal and on the bottom was the single word "Gjoa," the 

 name of the ship in which Roald Amundsen discovered a northwest 

 passage to the Pacific in 1903. 



"I offered the woman a cup in exchange for the plate, and she 

 jumped at the chance swiftly, lest I change my mind. When she 

 got the cup she laughed at me, thinking she had bested me in the 

 bargain, but I would have been willing to give a hundred cups for 

 that one bit of china. 



"During our expeditions about Cape Sheridan we came upon 

 the winter camp of the British party which went in search of the 

 Pole in 1876 under Admiral Sir George Nares. 



"We found the beach literally covered with empty coal bags. 

 Several tons of coal and a great quantity of firewood was piled 



