330 THENORTHPOLE 



dition and I believe that MacMillan wore it for some 

 days. 



All hands were now beginning to look forward to 

 the time when the Roosevelt should again turn her 

 nose toward the south and home. Following our 

 own housecleaning, the Eskimos had one on June 12. 

 Every movable article was taken out of their quarters, 

 and the walls, ceilings, and floors were scrubbed, dis- 

 infected, and whitewashed. Other signs of returning 

 summer were observed on all sides. The surface of 

 the ice-floe was going blue, the delta of the river was 

 quite bare, and the patches of bare ground ashore were 

 growing larger almost hourly. Even the Roosevelt 

 seemed to feel the change and gradually began to 

 right herself from the pronounced list which she had 

 taken under the press of the ice in the early winter. On 

 June 16 we had the first of the summer rains, though 

 the next morning all the pools of water were frozen 

 over. On the same day Borup captured a live musk 

 calf near Clements Markham Inlet. He managed 

 to get his unique captive back to the ship alive, but 

 the little creature died the next evening, though the 

 steward nursed him carefully in an effort to save his 

 life. 



On the summer solstice, June 22, midnoon of the 

 arctic summer and the longest day of the year, it 

 snowed all night; but a week later the weather seemed 

 almost tropical, and we all suffered from the heat, 

 strange though it seems to say it. The glimpses of 

 open water off Cape Sheridan were increasing in 

 frequency and size, and on July 2 we could see a con- 

 siderable lake just off the point of this cape. The 



