144 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [Mar. 



pentant over his failure of the year before. He urgently 

 requested that he be given another trial and be per- 

 mitted to accompany Hunt to the Peary Channel. 



On the 14th, to reassure Ekblaw of the certainty of 

 his trip, about which he had been worrying consider- 

 ably, I turned over to him all my dogs and gave him a 

 free hand to help himself to any or all of the equipment 

 and supplies of the expedition. He left on the 16th for 

 the south to visit Eskimos and improve the condition 

 of his dogs at Peteravik. 



Encouraged by the daily glow of light along the sum- 

 mit of our thousand-foot hills to the south, I walked to 

 the top of Thermometer Hill, 1,100 feet above the sea, 

 for a first view of the 1915 sun. There it was, just 

 above Cape Alexander, after its long absence of 126 

 days, partly obscured in the mist rising from the open 

 water south. In a few days now it would be streaming 

 into our front windows. 



Upon the arrival of Ekblaw, Ah-now-ka, and I-o- 

 pung-ya on the 26th we learned that very few walrus 

 had been killed by the Eskimos and that the dogs were 

 starving all along the line — not an encouraging report, 

 and one which prompted me to drive down at once with 

 sledge loaded with trading material, hoping to condition 

 all the dogs that were scheduled to start on the western 

 trip in March with Ekblaw and his men. Forty below, 

 a keen wind, and a very slippery southern slope on the 

 glacier added to the interest and excitement of the jour- 

 ney. Neither the dogs nor the men could keep their 

 feet, resulting in a grand mix-up, and the unmixing called 

 for patience in the superlative degree. 



Upon my arrival at Peteravik, to my surprise I found 

 E-took-a-shoo and E-say-oo, the two men engaged to 



