348 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH 



E-took-a-shoo and I built a big cairn on the sandstone 

 ledge of a little cape that ran out into the head of the 

 fjord. We found on this cape the ruins of two Eskimo 

 stone houses, and from the great slabs of those struct- 

 ures we built, in part, the big cairn. In a bottle in 

 the foot of this cairn we left a record of our achieve- 

 ments up to that time. On the back of the record I 

 indited a stanza of our most popular Illinois song. I 

 wished to put up a conspicuous, permanent cairn at 

 this point, that any one coming into the fjord in the 

 future could readily find it and verify my having been 

 there. 



In one day's march we again got back to Camp Fos- 

 heim, and went in search of the four musk-oxen that we 

 had left for our return. We could see only one dark 

 mass where we had left the four, but we supposed the 

 other three were merely out of sight behind some little 

 ridge or hummock. We were much surprised to find, 

 when we got to it, that our one dark spot was a dead 

 musk-ox, and that the others were gone. During our 

 absence up the fjord, a pair of wolves had attacked one 

 of the herd, a full-grown bull, had succeeded in bringing 

 him down, and had eaten part of his carcass. The 

 other musk-oxen had fled. The story of the struggle 

 was written legibly in the snow; there could be no doubt 

 of its character. One of the wolves, apparently the 

 female or smaller, had attracted the attention of the 

 musk-ox by attacking his head, while the male, the 

 larger, had secured a hold of his hind quarters and 

 dragged him down. The wolves had sneaked away upon 

 our approach, for the places where they had been lying 

 were still warm. Though we had been cheated out of 

 the fresh meat we had expected, we had definitely estab- 



