THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 179 



Two hours after building is begun the dogs have been unhar- 

 nessed, each tied in his place and fed, everything outside has been 

 made snug for the night, and every man is comfortably inside the 

 snowhousc, eating a warm supper. With a feeling of security that 

 in the early part of our sea exploration was based merely on con- 

 fidence in our theories but later came to rest on experience as well, 

 we customarily sat after supper burning merrily the kerosene or 

 seal oil, firm in the faith that to-morrow would provide fuel no less 

 than food. This explains any seeming inconsistency between our 

 accounts of warmth and well-being and the stories of others who, 

 like us, have used snowhouses but have found them cold and com- 

 fortless. They were on fuel rations and we were not. It was the 

 economizing of fuel rather than the severity of the climate or the 

 inadequacy of the housing that kept them cold. In many a well- 

 appointed house in our civilized lands people have shivered in the 

 last few years because they were on an allowance of fuel. It may 

 well upset traditional ideas of the Arctic and of exploration to 

 realize that when Europeans and Americans in the winter of 1917-18 

 were wrapped in rugs before a coal-less grate or by a chilled radiator, 

 our men were sitting in their shirt sleeves, warm and comfortable, 

 in snowhouses built on the floating ice of the polar sea. 



I am in the habit of repeating and most of my companions 

 agree that hardships are not necessarily involved in the work of 

 the arctic explorer. On the sea ice, of course, there is the possi- 

 bility that the cake on which you stand may break up. It is 

 also true that most of us prefer other food to seal meat, but all 

 of us who have spent more than a year "living off the country" 

 are quite of the Eskimo opinion that there is no food anywhere 

 better than caribou meat; and if you have any experience in the 

 life of a hunter you will realize that in the winter when we are 

 hunting on some such land as Banks Island and when we sit in 

 these warm houses, feasting with keen appetites on unlimited quan- 

 tities of boiled caribou ribs, we have all the creature comforts. 

 What we lack, if we feel any lack at all, will be the presence of 

 friends far away, or the chance to hear good music. At any rate, 

 it is true that to-day in the movie-infested city I long for more 

 snowhouse evenings after caribou hunts as I never in the North 

 longed for clubs or concerts or orange groves. And this is not 

 peculiar to myself. The men who have hunted with me are nearly 

 all of the same mind. They are either in the North now, on the 

 way back there by whaling ship, or eating their hearts out because 

 they cannot go. 



