BRAD LEY'S ACCOUNT OF THE COOK EXPEDITION 117 



difference if he landed the supplies in not precisely that place. I 

 told him to do as he liked about that, and he strung the stuff up and 

 down the coast for about five miles, and we had a lively time doing it. 

 'That will be all right/ said the Captain. 'We are putting it 

 on land ice and Dr. Cook can have the Eskimos gather it together/ 

 Meanwhile he had sent a lookout aloft to keep an eye on the ice, which 

 was beginning to drift in from both directions. It took thirteen 

 hours to land the supplies, including forty tons of coal, which shows 

 that we had something of a polar expedition to look after. The 

 coal alone would have lasted him for ten years, for both he and his 

 assistant could hardly have used three tons of it a year. 



"Three years' supplies were left with Dr. Cook. That does not 

 convey much of an idea perhaps, but if I had the inventory of it at 

 hand it would astonish those persons who speak of this expedition 

 as a haphazard affair with nothing but the nerve of Dr. Cook to 

 back it. There were tons of pemmican and that kind of material, 

 sugar, tea, coffee, canned goods, dried meats, quantities of hickory 

 for sled building, hardware, iron, steel, copper, cooking utensils of 

 all kinds, 150 feet of stove pipe, ten thousand boxes of matches, bales 

 of biscuits, one hundred and twenty thousand cans of food, 150 

 gallons of alcohol, barrels of rice and flour, guns for trading, knives, 

 beads and trinkets of all kinds and boxes of instruments for obser- 

 vation. 



"Cook was a master at handling the Eskimos. He knew their 

 capabilities and their sensibilities. At his suggestion we carried as 

 part of our stores a barrel of gum drops and these passed as currency 

 among the natives at Annootok. They would work more for a hand- 

 ful of gum drops than they would have done for so much silver, for 

 they do not know the meaning of money. 



"Our expedition had the latest devices for minimizing weight 

 and at the same time increasing efficiency. For instance, I knew of 

 an expedition several years ago which carried five or six brass stoves 

 weighing from sixteen to eighteen pounds each, to be used with 1 



