THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 3 



dragging a cart, were able to cross Melville Island in the early- 

 summer, a journey of only a few score miles. Sir John Ross, who, 

 fortunately for the advancement of polar technique, was thrown 

 in close association with the Eskimos, borrowed some Eskimo ideas 

 but used them with the ineptitude of the novice. He employed 

 sledges and made some use of dogs. It seems extraordinary that no 

 explorer thought of going directly to the Eskimos and borrowing 

 their system of life and travel in toto ; that instead of learning native 

 methods they found it necessary to discover for themselves the 

 same principles of living and traveling which the Eskimos had 

 discovered centuries before. Sir Leopold McClintock made notable 

 advances over the explorers who had preceded him. Had he matched 

 his ability not with his fellow explorers but with the Eskimos, 

 his strides forward would have been incomparably more rapid. 

 When McClintock commenced his work, a journey of a hundred 

 miles in April or May was considered remarkable and was performed 

 only at the cost of much suffering and hard labor, while at the end 

 of his service, although it covered less than twenty years, journeys 

 of a thousand miles were made without any greater strain upon 

 health or risk to life than had been the case with the hundred- 

 mile journeys. 



Yet the fear of the winter was still upon them all. Even Mc- 

 Clintock did not commence his great journey from Melville to 

 Prince Patrick Island until April. Although Nares as a lieutenant 

 had the benefit of service with McClintock and Mecham, the ex- 

 pedition which he commanded in 1878 was no advance but actually 

 a relapse into pre-McClintock methods. His statement that a com- 

 mander should be censured who requires his men to travel in the 

 Arctic before the month of April shows that not only in technique 

 but in mental attitude towards the North he had failed to make 

 any advance beyond McClintock. 



Then comes the third stage of polar exploration, of which Peary 

 is typical, a greater step forward, it seems to me, than either of 

 the preceding. The significance of this step can be made clear 

 especially to those not personally familiar with arctic conditions 

 by a truthful analogy. It is a matter of conjecture how the first 

 man navigated a raft and how the first primitive sailor handled his 

 bark. But, however it was and whenever it was, we can take it for 

 granted that the earliest traveler by water paddled fearfully from 

 bay to haven along prehistoric coasts, dreading nothing so much 

 as the gales which could convert the placid surface of the waters 

 he knew how to deal with into tumultuous seas, dangerous and even 



