THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 109 



supplemented with corn. During the second summer they had 

 come to the conclusion that their "prospects" were not going to 

 yield much gold, some of their companions had left the country, 

 and the horses had been turned loose to forage for themselves. 

 According to native report, the horses survived much of the winter 

 and it is probable that they were eventually killed by wolves. The 

 thing pertinent to our situation was that about the only food of 

 Mason and Pedersen was boiled corn from the stock originally 

 brought in as horse-feed. 



I was Mr. Mason's guest for about a week. This diet was a 

 new adventure, and I took to it enthusiastically. Two companions 

 of mine were also guests, one the sailor Louis Olesen, whom we 

 had picked up in Nome, and the other the Eskimo boy Taliak, 

 whom we had engaged on the coast. Both of them objected to 

 living on corn, the Eskimo because he preferred meat, and the 

 sailor because he was not a horse and had not joined the expe- 

 dition to live on horse-feed. That attitude amused both Mason 

 and me a good deal, and I think that while Olesen was there the 

 diet was more strictly confined to corn than would have been the 

 case otherwise. 



During that week I worked out pretty clearly the details of 

 the delta survey program for the coming spring. I bought from 

 Mason a gasoline launch which had belonged to his mining outfit. 

 This launch, the Edna, was of the "tunnel-built" type, thirty feet 

 long, and her speed was said to be sixteen miles an hour. She had 

 an excellent reputation with the Police, who had seen her come 

 to Herschel Island (which necessitates from forty to sixty miles of 

 ocean voyage, according to which branch of the delta one uses), 

 and she had an adequate supply of fuel. Pedersen, who said he 

 had been engineer on a gasoline tug in the harbor of San Francisco, 

 was hired to put her in condition and to operate her. He and 

 the boat were to be at the service of Chipman during the spring, 

 while Cox was to have a smaller launch purchased from the 

 Belvedere. Between the two survey parties and the two launches 

 a good beginning would be made on the survey. The Mackenzie 

 delta is a mass of islands and tangled channels like the delta of 

 every great river, and it was not reasonable to hope that a survey 

 of all the channels could be made. But the experience of local 

 white men and Eskimos had already shown which channels were 

 the most hopeful for navigation by big ships, and these I expected 

 to get mapped and sounded. 



Although out of chronological order, I will say here that this 



