76 THENORTHPOLE 



from Dr. Cook directing him to go home this season 

 on a whaler. An examination by Dr. Goodsell, my 

 surgeon, showed that the man suffered from incipient 

 scurvy, and that he was in a serious mental state, so 

 I had no alternative but to give him passage home on 

 the Erik. Boatswain Murphy, whom I was to leave at 

 Etah, was a thoroughly trustworthy man, and I gave 

 him instructions to prevent the Eskimos from looting 

 the supplies and equipment left there by Dr. Cook, and 

 to be prepared to render Dr. Cook any assistance he 

 might require when he returned, as I had no doubt he 

 would as soon as the ice froze over Smith Sound (pre- 

 sumably in January) so as to enable him to cross to 

 Anoratok from Ellsmere Land, where I had no doubt 

 he then was. 



On the Erik were three other passengers, Mr. 

 C. C. Crafts, who had come north to take a series of 

 magnetic observations for the department of terres- 

 trial magnetism of the Carnegie Institution in Wash- 

 ington, Mr. George S. Norton, of New York, and Mr. 

 Walter A. Earned, the tennis champion. The Roose- 

 velt's carpenter, Bob Bartlett, of Newfoundland (not 

 related to Captain Bob Bartlett), and a sailor named 

 Johnson also went back on the Erik. That vessel 

 was commanded by Captain Sam Bartlett (Captain 

 Bob's uncle), who had been master of my own ship 

 on several expeditions. 



At Etah we took on a few more Eskimos, includ- 

 ing Ootah and Egingwah, who were destined to be 

 with me at the Pole; and I left there all the remaining 

 Eskimos that I did not wish to take with me to winter 

 quarters in the North. We retained forty-nine — 



