26 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



lose caste instead of winning it. Why should a man who lives in a 

 country where seals are abundant and caribou can be had in addi- 

 tion, concern himself about establishing the fact that seals are abun- 

 dant in some other place where caribou cannot be had? Enough 

 is as good as a feast; and if you have plenty of seals here, what 

 more is there to be gained if seals are elsewhere? So we had to 

 do our work without the assistance of the Eskimos and in a field 

 which was as much beyond their intellectual vision as the ice a 

 hundred miles offshore was beyond the vision of their eyes. 



