PEARY'S FIRST VOYAGES 135 



soon as the house was up and the stores packed, the majority started away 

 in search of game. 



"The spot where they were landed, and where they had erected their camp, 

 was on a verdure-covered slope lying between the sea and the high range of bluff 

 hills which towered about i,ooo feet over them. In the spring the ground was 

 covered with grass and flowers; the bay in front was full of seal, walrus, 

 whales and other marine inhabitants, and along the hills behind experience 

 showed that game was present in abundance. The Etah Eskimo, the most 

 northerly people in existence, lived their quaint, out-of-the-world lives along 

 the shore of the bay and neighboring inlets, and, as soon as the camp was 

 settled, they were kept busily employed in the making of fur garments, proving 

 themselves docile and peaceful. It was often difficult for the members of the 

 expedition to realize that the site of their camp, with the abundance of food 

 to be had, was only from fifty to eighty miles from the spots where the cast- 

 aways of the Polaris suffered so acutely and the members of the Greely expe- 

 dition slowly starved, many of them to death. For more than a year the little 

 party of seven lived in good health, without a suggestion of scurvy making 

 its appearance and with only one fatality, which, moreover, was accidental." 

 The Pearys gave much time on this expedition to study of the life of the 

 Eskimos, whose traits will be considered later on in this volume. Some of the 

 interesting things they learned were as follows : 



"Mrs. Peary, as the first white woman the Eskimos had ever seen, was a 

 particular object of attention. As their custom is for men and women to dress 

 very much alike, they could not quite understand Mrs. Peary's costume, and 

 when the first arrivals saw her and Lieutenant Peary together, they looked from 

 one to the other, and ultimately had to ask which of the two was the white 

 woman. 



"The tribe did not number two hundred in all; they held no communica- 

 tion with the Eskimo farther south, and, except for the occasional visit of a 

 sealer or a whaler, knew nothing of the outer world. None had ever seen 

 a tree growing, nor had they ever penetrated over the ridge of land which lay 

 back from the coast, and over which glimpses were caught of the great ice-cap. 

 The latter, they said, was where the Eskimo went when they died, and if 

 any man attempted to go so far the spirits would get hold of him and keep 

 him there. They consequently warned Lieutenant Peary against venturing. 

 There was no seal up there; no bear; no deer; only ice and snow and spirits, 

 so what reason had a man for going ? 



