138 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [Feb. 



coffee, sugar, milk (!!!), and biscuit. With such a bill 

 of fare, I did not care whether I moved or not. E-took- 

 a-shoo didn't for several hours. 



The time came for us to leave these good friends. 

 The nearest settlement was a hundred miles away, the 

 Eskimos having gone north from Ak-bat. Could we 

 make it in one march .^^ It was full moonlight and fifty 

 below; not a breath of wind. The road was as hard 

 as iron and flat as a floor. Ideal conditions! Our dogs 

 were rested and well fed. Their little legs worked for 

 eighteen hours. Up to within five miles of home not 

 a trace had slacked, not a tail had lost its curl. Whitey, 

 the hardest and most faithful puller in the team, stag- 

 gered and fell. I stroked her head, slipped her harness, 

 and left her lying on the trail. I watched her a long 

 time, a receding dot in the fading trail, until she merged 

 into the night. In the morning she was curled up with 

 the team. She is with me now as I write. For her the 

 long white trail is over. The others fairly dashed into 

 Umanak, every one strong to the last and ready for 

 more. Faithful, magnificent animals! They will live 

 with me always! 



There was no dog food here, which prompted us to 

 move right on, following a one day's rest for our dogs. 

 Where we were to get our next food we did not know. 

 It looked like another starvation period for our dogs 

 until we could reach the big spring encampment of the 

 Eskimos at Nerky and Peteravik, where a hundred 

 natives are often to be found hunting walrus in the open 

 water far offshore. 



The sea ice at Cape Parry was so completely gone and 

 the ice-foot so impassable that, after a cursory examina- 

 tion, we walked back to our sledges. To go up over the 



