1914] TO UPERNAVIK AND BACK 123 



for rocks and grit, grating on our nerves as much as on 

 the steel runners of our sledges. Hot tea and biscuit 

 at the foot of the glacier renewed our strength for the 

 long trip to Umanak (North Star Bay), where we ar- 

 rived in twelve hours, a distance of fifty miles from 

 Ittibloo. 



Freuchen welcomed us warmly and announced his 

 readiness to start south at once. The Eskimo girls, 

 however, insisted upon a farewell dance. To the strains 

 of a squeaky victrola endeavoring to coax music out of 

 a few deeply scored and well-worn records, we stepped 

 through the plain quadrilles with the half-breed mis- 

 sionary and three South Greenland belles, one of whom 

 was with child, one just married, and tlie third plainly 

 setting her cap. It was certainly amusing to see E-took- 

 a-shoo and his bearskin pants being shoved from cor- 

 ner to corner, absolutely helpless and bewildered. 

 Seated upon his sledge, snapping out his long whip over 

 the backs of his galloping dogs, he is a picture — but 

 dancing! We decided to have another ball the next 

 night. 



After the dance we visited the Eskimo igloos. In 

 one was Tah-ta-ra, a helpless cripple of whom Peary 

 wrote twenty years ago. I had understood that his 

 body was being slowly ossified, but Doctor Hunt in- 

 formed me that it was bony ankylosis, or arthritis 

 deformans. It is a disease of doubtful etiology, but 

 it was long believed to be associated intimately w^th 

 gout and rheumatism. Their relationship seems now 

 to be disproved. Doctor Osier wTites that it is the 

 "result of infection, characterized by changes in the 

 synovial membranes, cartilage, and peri-articular struct- 

 ures, and in some cases by atrophic and hypertrophic 



