124 THE NORTH POLE 



spring should have made the dash for the Pole just the 

 same. We should then have walked the three hun- 

 dred and fifty miles to Cape Sabine, crossed the Smith 

 Sound ice to Etah, and waited for a ship. 



The adjacent shore for a quarter of a mile was 

 lined with boxes, each item of provisions having a 

 pile to itself. This packing-box village was chris- 

 tened Hubbard ville, in honor of General Thomas H. 

 Hubbard, president of the Peary Arctic Club. When 

 the boxes which had served as a bed platform in the 

 Eskimo quarters of the Roosevelt's forward deck were 

 removed, the place was swept and scrubbed; then a 

 bed platform was built of boards, divided into sec- 

 tions for the various families and screened in front 

 by curtains. Under the bed platform was an open 

 space, where the Eskimos could keep their cooking 

 utensils and other personal belongings. The fas- 

 tidious reader who is shocked at the idea of keeping 

 frying-pans under the bed should see an Eskimo 

 family in one of their native houses of stone and earth, 

 eight feet across, where meat and drink, men, women, 

 and children are crowded indiscriminately for month 

 upon month in winter. 



We next landed about eighty tons of coal, so that, 

 in case we should have to live in the box houses, there 

 would be plenty of fuel. At that time of the year it 

 was not very cold. On the 8th of September the ther- 

 mometer stood at 12 above zero, the next day at 4. 



The heavier cases, containing the tins of bacon, 

 pemmican (the condensed meat food used in the 

 Arctic), flour, et cetera, were utilized ashore like so 

 many blocks of granite in constructing three houses, 



