GETTING RECRUITS 75 



soft green grass of this little arctic oasis; and on the 

 distant horizon the steel-blue of the great inland ice. 

 When the little auks fly high against the sunlit sky, 

 they appear like the leaves of a forest when the early 

 frost has touched them and the first gale of autumn 

 carries them away, circling, drifting, eddying through 

 the air. The desert of northern Africa may be as 

 beautiful as Hichens tells us; the jungles of Asia may 

 wear as vivid coloring; but to my eyes there is 

 nothing so beautiful as the glittering Arctic on a 

 sunlit summer day. 



On August 11 the Erik reached Etah, where the 

 Roosevelt was awaiting her. The dogs were landed 

 on an island, the Roosevelt was washed, the boilers 

 were blown down and filled with fresh water, the fur- 

 naces cleaned, and the cargo overhauled and re-stowed 

 to put the vessel in fighting trim for her coming encoun- 

 ter with the ice. About three hundred tons of coal 

 were transferred from the Erik to the Roosevelt, and 

 about fifty tons of walrus and whale meat. 



Fifty tons of coal were cached at Etah for the 

 Roosevelt* s expected return the following year. Two 

 men, boatswain Murphy and Pritchard, the cabin boy, 

 with full provisions for two years, were left in charge. 

 Harry Whitney, a summer passenger on the Erik, 

 who was ambitious to obtain musk-oxen and polar 

 bears, asked permission to remain with my two men at 

 Etah. The permission was granted, and Mr. Whit- 

 ney's belongings were landed. 



At Etah, Rudolph Franke, who had come north 

 with Dr. Cook in 1907, came to me and asked permis- 

 sion to go home on the Erik. He showed me a letter 



