82 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



and the other that there must be the carcass of a whale to seaward. 

 Evidently the sled trail led to this carcass. We were beginning 

 to run short of dog-feed, so the next day I sent McConnell and 

 Angutitsiak with a sled to discover the whale and get a load of meat. 



During that day I decided to walk out to Cross Island, for 

 we were now abreast of it, thinking that if the Karluk were to the 

 east instead of to the west Bartlett might have sent a message ashore 

 and left a communication there for me. It was about a fifteen- 

 mile walk to the island. When I got there I found no message from 

 the Karluk and no sign of human visits during the present winter. 



This was the time of year when the days are shortest. In a 

 certain sense there are no days at all around Christmas, for the 

 sun is well below the horizon and the light at noon even on a clear 

 day is only a bright twilight. It had been cloudy all along and 

 began to snow on the way home. Therefore I had before me in 

 finding camp one of the interesting problems which continually 

 confront the arctic hunter and the solution of which is as absorbing 

 to me as that of a problem in chess. 



Any Eskimo or experienced white man is careful to have his 

 camp near some landmark, preferably one of a linear nature. In 

 other words, pitching your camp near the foot of a conspicuous 

 round hill would be of little service in finding your way home, for 

 whenever the weather became thick or the night dark you would be 

 unable to see the hill from any distance. The landmark of most 

 use is a long, fairly straight ridge or a cut-bank conspicuous enough 

 and characteristic enough not to be overlooked or mistaken for 

 another. Our present camp, which was the Eskimo camp from 

 which its owners were temporarily absent, was at a cut-bank on 

 the eastern edge of a river delta. To head straight for it I had to 

 go approximately south. But the first rule, if you want to find 

 camp in darkness or thick weather, is not to try making a straight 

 shot towards it. For if you do and miss, you will not know to which 

 side to turn to look for it. In my present case I was north of a 

 camp located on an east and west coast line. It would not be wise 

 for me, I knew, to set a course too far west, for if I did I should 

 get myself tangled among the delta islands and mudflats of the 

 river. Clearly, the thing to do was to make sure that I was going to 

 strike the land too far east, for not being a delta that land would 

 presumably be of simpler topography and I would merely have to 

 follow the shoreline west until I came to the camp. In fact, I 

 thought I knew the coast, for I had passed it several times although 

 I had never stopped there to hunt. On the present occasion, al- 



