NORTH POLE OF THE WINDS 



so that a boat passes abruptly from quite safe 

 water into very rough seas. Further difficulty 

 arises from the strong "rips" at the turn of the 

 tide. A tide gauge loaned us by the U. S. Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey was set up for regular meas- 

 urements off our camp on University Bay and the 

 extreme range of water at the spring tides meas- 

 ured as fifteen feet. About the heads of the fjords 

 there are deep deposits of sticky glacial muds 

 which are exposed at low tide over considerable 

 areas, and we were more than once marooned for 

 hours at points distant from our base waiting for 

 the tide to rise sufficiently for us to get off. 



In order to understand how we were able to 

 save the lives of two of our party in our worst ac- 

 cident of the summer, it will be necessary to refer 

 to our attempt to replace the missing cooking uten- 

 sils and tableware. We had been in camp but a 

 few days when an Eskimo paid us a visit coming 

 from Sarfanguak in his kayak. He spoke no 

 English but it occurred to me to send a message 

 by him to David Olsen, asking him to send us the 

 cooking vessels and table utensils of which we stood 

 in such need. Since Olsen knew no English the 

 letter had to be largely a pictograph. I first drew 

 a small teaspoon and placed beside it the figure 

 six. The Eskimo looking over my shoulder nodded 



32 



