28 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



which she would never have been allowed to sail had there been 

 at the port of Nome rigid inspectors unwilling to except an explor- 

 ing vessel from the rules that are supposed to promote the safety 

 of ships at sea. She was so deep in the water with her heavy- 

 cargo that her decks were nearly awash, and in spite of good 

 seamanship, crashing waves occasionally got a blow at the deck 

 cargo, eventually shifting it enough to make her considerably 

 lop-sided. Things were getting interesting when, after fifteen or 

 twenty hours of a heavy sea, we got into the shelter of Cape 

 Thompson. I don't believe the skipper would have liked to admit 

 that we were running in for shelter as such, and so the understand- 

 ing was that we pulled in there to wait for the Mary Sachs and 

 to buy dogs and dog-feed. To get these commodities we followed 

 up along the land to Point Hope. 



Point Hope is just beyond the reach of tourists and of the 

 journalists who write fascinating magazine articles about "primi- 

 tive people untouched by civilization." It lies in that tame inter- 

 mediate zone where missionaries, equipped with victrolas and sup- 

 plied by yearly shipments of canned goods, labor heroically for 

 the betterment of the natives, who realize that they are badly off 

 just as soon as they are told about it. It is one of the anomalies 

 of our world that it should take the efforts of so many self-denying 

 people to awaken the wretched to a consciousness of their wretch- 

 edness. 



We occupied twenty or thirty hours in buying a few dogs and 

 a great deal of walrus meat for dog-feed at the village of Point 

 Hope, and we also engaged two Eskimos, Pauyurak and Asatsiak. 

 It was my intention to hire a number of Eskimos eventually, but I 

 preferred to pick them up farther east, where I am personally ac- 

 quainted with them and have known many since they were children. 



I should have liked to wait for the Mary Sachs which pre- 

 sumably was behind us, but our gale had been blowing from the 

 north and it was likely that the ice was on its way though still 

 unseen and possibly distant. It seemed better to get along east 

 toward Point Barrow before the ice should block the way, leaving 

 the Sachs to follow, if indeed she were behind. For about a hun- 

 dred miles northeastward we had a beam wind from the northwest 

 and open water. But the swell was gradually subsiding, so we 

 knew the ice could not be far away. 



It is a principle of esthetics that you like what you are used 

 to, and that nothing is so horrible as the absolutely strange. We 



