274 WHALING 



The necessary repairs were made, supplies were rushed on 

 board, and the Bear sailed from Seattle on November 27th. 

 It was planned that she should approach as near as possible to 

 Cape Prince of Wales, whither should proceed the party that 

 she was to land when the ice stopped her. For at Cape Prince 

 of Wales there were herds of domestic reindeer, and those 

 herds the party from the Bear was to drive to Point Barrow as 

 food for the starving whalers. The limitations of the load 

 that a team of dogs could haul on a long journey over a bad 

 trail, combined with the need for also hauling food for the dogs 

 themselves, made it impossible to carry north enough food 

 by any other means than on the hoof. 



On December 11th, the Bear left Unalaska in the Aleutian 

 Islands, where she had stopped three days to coal, and two days 

 later she passed St. Lawrence Island, but that same day she 

 ran into ''mushy" water and drift ice and turned back toward 

 Cape Vancouver — her men had reason to regret the change in 

 her course, for it meant some seven hundred additional miles of 

 overland travelling! — where, by great good fortune and the 

 ministrations of a strong southeast wind that had driven the 

 ice off to the west, they were able to go all the way to the beach 

 in boats. 



The men who landed to make the trip north were First 

 Lieutenant D. H. Jarvis — who had spent eight seasons in the 

 Arctic and knew both the work that lay before him and, which 

 was of considerable importance, the coast natives — and Second 

 Lieutenant E. P. Bertholf, who has written an excellent ac- 

 count of the journey, and Surgeon S. J. Call. A fourth, Alexis 

 Kolchoff , was to accompany them part way, and to find employ- 

 ment in connection with the Government herd of reindeer near 

 St. Michaels. With clothing, provisions, and camp outfits, 

 they safely reached the beach four miles from the village and 

 watched the boat go back, in the gathering darkness, to the 

 Bear. 



At the village, whither they went on foot while the natives 

 carried their outfit thither in kayaks, they waited a day to 

 pack sleds and rest the dogs, some of which had just returned 



