UP TO CAPE YORK 39 



at Etah, I carefully replaced the stones around it, as 

 a tribute to a brave man. At Cape Sabine, where 

 Greely's party died, I was the first man to step into 

 the ruins of the stone hut after the seven survivors 

 were taken away years before — the first man, and I 

 stepped into those ruins in a blinding snowstorm late 

 in August, and saw there the mementos of those 

 unfortunates. 



Passing the Duck Islands on the upward voyage, 

 approaching Cape York in 1908, and thinking of the 

 graves there, I little dreamed that a loved member 

 of my own party, Professor Ross G. Marvin, who ate 

 at my table and acted as my secretary, was fated to 

 add his name to this long list of arctic victims, and 

 that his grave, in uncounted fathoms of black water, 

 was to be the most northerly grave on this earth. 



We reached Cape York on the first day of August. 

 Cape York is the bold, bluff headland which marks 

 the southern point of the stretch of arctic coast inhab- 

 ited by my Eskimos, the most northerly human beings 

 in the world. It is the headland whose snowy cap I 

 have seen so many times rising in the distance above 

 the horizon line of Melville Bay as my ships have 

 steamed north. At the base of the headland nestles 

 the most southerly of all the Eskimo villages, and it 

 has marked the point of meeting, year after year, 

 between the members of this tribe and myself. 



At Cape York we were on the threshold of the actual 

 work. I had on board the ship when I arrived there 

 all the equipment and assistance which the civilized 

 world could yield. Beginning there, I was to take on 

 the tools, the material, the personnel, that the arctic 



